Second Life
I joined Second Life (the free part, although I ... erm ... did break down and shell out $5 to have the money to buy this really great dress :D ), and I'm liking it.
It actually seems like a better-done Star Wars Galaxies, without the Star Wars and the movie set pieces. It has the great sandbox quality of SWG without the rampant bugginess, the player-run economy without the phony limits of the bazaar (which led to a great business in buying things off the bazaar that noobs priced too low then reselling them at the going rate -- which is how I retired from there with 23 million credits hehe), and the most inventive crafting and scripting I've ever seen in a sandbox-type game.
From what I've heard, I guess that SL had a lot of issues with sexual stuff in the past, which they seem to have taken care of by making islands devoted to such things and requiring proper dress everywhere else, and while this isn't enforced completely, it's a generally safe environment for the sex-phobic. They have a Teen Second Life which is completely separate, so presumably everyone in SL is over 18 ... but I've seen a couple of obviously 13 year olds who came in all WHEREZ TEH SEX?! and were disappointed to see that adults in SL are generally acting like adults, rather than participants in a porn movie.
They're talking about merging Teen SL with SL, thus giving the result of restricting things further (if you talk to the idea's detractors), but I don't really know what if any difference it'd make. I've only been there a week, and I don't know that SL would really appeal to the usual teenage shoot-em-up crowd.
But so far I'm having fun. I was going to do my usual work my way up from the bottom gig like I did in SWG, but like I said I did break down and chuck in a five just to have some cash (ended up being something like $1300 game dollars, so I don't anticipate having to do this again in the foreseeable future). It seems as though the best way to make money is by crafting, which is my forte, and you can turn excess game cash into real cash completely within the TOS -- in fact they have in-game ATMs to do so!
:D
It actually seems like a better-done Star Wars Galaxies, without the Star Wars and the movie set pieces. It has the great sandbox quality of SWG without the rampant bugginess, the player-run economy without the phony limits of the bazaar (which led to a great business in buying things off the bazaar that noobs priced too low then reselling them at the going rate -- which is how I retired from there with 23 million credits hehe), and the most inventive crafting and scripting I've ever seen in a sandbox-type game.
From what I've heard, I guess that SL had a lot of issues with sexual stuff in the past, which they seem to have taken care of by making islands devoted to such things and requiring proper dress everywhere else, and while this isn't enforced completely, it's a generally safe environment for the sex-phobic. They have a Teen Second Life which is completely separate, so presumably everyone in SL is over 18 ... but I've seen a couple of obviously 13 year olds who came in all WHEREZ TEH SEX?! and were disappointed to see that adults in SL are generally acting like adults, rather than participants in a porn movie.
They're talking about merging Teen SL with SL, thus giving the result of restricting things further (if you talk to the idea's detractors), but I don't really know what if any difference it'd make. I've only been there a week, and I don't know that SL would really appeal to the usual teenage shoot-em-up crowd.
But so far I'm having fun. I was going to do my usual work my way up from the bottom gig like I did in SWG, but like I said I did break down and chuck in a five just to have some cash (ended up being something like $1300 game dollars, so I don't anticipate having to do this again in the foreseeable future). It seems as though the best way to make money is by crafting, which is my forte, and you can turn excess game cash into real cash completely within the TOS -- in fact they have in-game ATMs to do so!
:D