Tag Archives: second life

Blizzard issued a response regarding the inability to access Battle.net or World of Warcraft servers from Iran. According to the post, the issue stems from applied US sanctions instead of government bans on specific content – although the latter is still true as well.

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A number of MMOs have become inaccessible from inside Iran, apparently due to government bans on specific content.

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Think Second Life is dead? Think Linden Lab can’t score another hit? Not if their new CEO has anything to say about it. More »

A massive rumor floating around the net today has Microsoft throwing its wallet at Linden Labs.

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This was a rather large week in MMOs as far as news went, and not all of it was Halloween related.

Past the break you will hear all about how Ultima Online is still going strong, get familiarized with the new patch for Aion, read up on Cryptic’s Blood Moon event via a dev chat, PvP henchmen and Guild Wars, Alganon’s delay, China’s ban on males playing females in games, and many other bits of stuff that didn’t hit the front page during the week.

Also, we hope everyone who plays MMOs enjoyed the Halloween and Fall festivities that their particular favorites hosted. Loads had celebrations, more than likely every single one of ‘em. If we forgot to mention your particular game, head on over to the list through the link ther and add it in the comments section so that we may give it its proper shout-out.

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Linden Labs has announced that Second Life users have logged over one billion hours in the game along with spending over one billion in-world money on game transactions.

Good Lord that’s loads of time and fake money.

Here are some more astounding numbers, courtesy of the press release posted after the break:

• Users around the world have spent more than one billion hours in Second Life which rounds out to around 115,000 years with user hours growing 33 percent year-over-year to an all-time high of 126 million in Q2 2009.
• Users spend an average of about 100 minutes in-world per visit.
• The equivalent of more than $1 billion has been transacted between Residents in Second Life, who purchase virtual goods and services from one another. The in-world economy grew 94 percent year-over-year from Q2 2008 to Q2 2009. Now at nearly $50 million each month in user-to-user transactions, the Second Life economy is on an annual run rate of more than a half billion US dollars, making Second Life the largest virtual economy in the industry.
• Residents create more than 250,000 new virtual goods every day. There are now more than 270 terabytes of content and this is growing by approximately 100 percent every year.
• More than 18 billion minutes of voice chat have been used since voice was introduced in 2007. Voice minutes grew 44 percent year-over-year from Q2 2008 to Q2 2009, and more than 6 billion minutes of voice have been delivered in 2009.
• 1,250 text-based messages are sent every second, and more than 600 million words are typed on an average day. Roughly 60 percent of active Second Life Residents are based outside of the US, representing more than 200 countries, and the Second Life Viewer is available in 10 languages.
• The total land area of Second Life is now equivalent to approximately 2 billion square meters – roughly the size of the state of Rhode Island. Land in Second Life has grown roughly 18 percent since Q1 2009 and approximately 75 percent since Q1 2008.

Holy hell.

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Loads of World of Warcraft stuff is coming out of BlizzCon 09, but you knew that already.

We also told you about the new CCP game Dust 514 this week thanks to GamesCom, but there is other stuff that went on in the world of MMOs as well.

The Avaline service is now available in Second Life, Warhammer Online is having it’s Wild Hunt Event, an Aion has revealed the Cleric class.

More is through the break.

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Tim Guest, author and Second Lifer, has died of heart-failure at the age of 34.

Guest was a contributor to Martin Stanford’s 7pm program on Sky News,and part of Rivers Run Red who built the Sky News Second Life island.

He wrote loads about the appeal of virtual worlds in Second Lives: A Journey Through Virtual Worlds which was widely acclaimed as realistic and honest dissertation of the realities and potential of Second Life and other virtual environments.

His writing helped ordinary people understand online games and virtual communities, breaking down the barriers and allowing a bit more understanding of the subject.

There’s more over on Massively and Sky News.

Thanks, BraveArse.

It’s Saturday again, and time for your dose of MMO news.

This one has been branded the “trouble” edition, because certain MMOS were either in trouble, or getting out of it this week.

First off, Stargate Worlds is rumored to be in massive trouble, Age of Conan isn’t in as much any more, and China has ungrounded World of Warcraft but only a tiny bit. It can still go out on dates, but not whore about the countryside like it had been doing. What a tart.

Other than those bits, the week in MMOs was a bit uneventful. Yeah sure, the major news hit the front page as usual, but there are a few things you may want to know about that didn’t. For that, and the rest of it, along with a song devoted to Second Life, read on below.

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Loads this week in MMO news, and some is more interesting than what we have been offered in previous weeks.

FussionFall is getting an expansion for its 5 million users, the EQI&II trademark rumors turned out to be new expansions, Star Wars will be on hand at Comic-Con, and Conan got a new update.

Also, Warhammer and LotRO are celebrating the summer with festivities to make things a bit more zany and fun.

Find out all about these and others after the break.

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E3 is almost upon us so there is bound to be some new MMO announced or a bit of decent enough MMO news coming out of the event by this time next week, so expect this post to either be thicker – or thinner. Depends on how huge the news was to begin with when it hits.

This week, there is more of the usual. Screens, dev diaries, class changes, new quests being added. World of Warcraft had the most bit of news though, and even if it wasn’t earth-shattering, it was still a bunch.

Read on after the break for your fix.

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Nielsen Media Research says that out of 180,000 homes in the USA, Second Life is the second most played title on PC behind World of Warcraft.

Weekly usage for the game averages 760 minutes per user while World of Warcraft users spend 653 minutes per week playing.

Dark Messiah of Might and Magic was third, Civ IV fourth, and Bookworm fifth.

The full chart is over on Massively.

Loads of little goings on the land of MMOs last week, but as per usual, the biggest stuff hit our front page.

WoW patch anyone?

Get the rest after the link.

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Nothing major really took place in the land of MMOs this week, but there were are loads of little things that matter to someone out there.

That’s why we’re here.

Read on.

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Yes, we know. It’s not Sunday. It is, however, Monday, and that makes looking at all the MMO news from last week even more sensible.

We think so, anyway. Read on.

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Yes, we know this should have gone up yesterday. We were so busy with GDC last week that we almost forgot to do it, but how could we live with ourselves if you didn’t get your weekly MMO news update?

We couldn’t. Loads going on with all of your favorites last week, so hit the link.

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This week wasn’t too eventful in the way of MMO news, other than Warhammer consolidating server populations and luring gamers back with some goodies. But we already touched on that, it’s, like, old.

Today, news reached us that Second Life is trying to deal with all of the adult content in the game, Zork is no longer going to be an MMO, and EverQuest II players are currently inebriated with Brewday. Who wouldn’t look forward to Brewday?

Hit the break for all you need to know about the goings-on in the land of MMOS this week.

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It’s that time once again, kiddos. Here’s your weekly all-in-one spot for the goings-on in the world of MMOs that didn’t get its own post.

‘Fraid there’s nothing too earth shattering this week — but who knows: you may find the bits below interesting after all.

Read on.

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According to this Variety report, Gore Verbinsky’s signed on to direct a movie based on the exploits of a Second Life player.

The film is to be based on a Wall Street Journal article about the MMO and its detrimental impact on the real lives of players.

The article by Alexandra Alter focuses on a married man who spends as many as 20 hours a day on a computer, existing through an avatar who is a thriving, musclebound entrepreneur. In reality, he is a diabetic, chain-smoking 53-year-old.

Linden Labs will be pleased.

More through there.

Linden Lab has announced that Second Life has now passed the 1.5 billion square metre mark, having grown 44 percent in the second quarter of this year alone.

Said the company, “Our growth was due to the popularity of our newly launched Openspace land product along with a change in pricing to make the purchase of land more accessible to first time buyers.

“Openspace regions are full 65,000 square meter regions with an upfront fee of $250 and a recurring monthly fee of $75. We decreased the price for full regions by 40% to $1000 upfront (the recurring monthly fee remains $295).”

Nice work if you can get it. More through the link.