It’s official: Your ‘Alternative’ to SL is Here. Now.
Well, all you people who are so fed up with the way the grid runs, LL manages and your viewer crashing woes, your MMO Virtual World has arrived – and it’s NOT Hipihi! And, this isn’t hot air – it’s real!
So many have complained and whined about the unreliability of the SL grid, issues with Linden Lab and how they run the grid, complaints about viewer stability and missing inventory items and land squatters and bot campers and… and… people who just plain sneeze wrong and look funny!
“ZOMG! I’d leave so fast if only there were an alternative. I only stay because I don’t have a choice. Dammit.”
Well, this is more or less what I always see on the Linden Lab Second Life Blog. The good news is the alternate is real. And already well established. Electronic Arts has seen the light and is creating “EA Land” – directly modeled after Second Life. In fact, TSO (The Sims Online) will be rolled into EA Land and the ‘world’ will supposedly be much much larger.Read the entire article here (presented with except):
EA Turns The Sims Online Into Free EA-Land, Second Life Competitor
EA-Land is the new, free Sims Online (TSO). The 12 different cities from TSO are being moved to EA-Land and the game area is being expanded to be “100 times bigger than the previous size of any city.” Existing TSO users will be able to purchase land in EA-Land before the new (reincarnated) world is open to the public with paying TSO users becoming “EA-Land subscribers” in a similar fashion to the way Linden Lab charges for land in Second Life.Users of EA-Land will have the ability to upload custom content and (more importantly) buy these customizations from other players. Sounding a lot like Second Life? It gets better
Very interesting… I’ll be exploring their site further.
Some random musings:
They plan on approving everything that goes into the world. How will this be manageable if the population and created items soar to millions?
Their logo makes me think this is marketed to children… and with a look at their site, the design style, color palette, and (gag) Comic Sans font… I think they either need to rethink their branding or get a designer who doesn’t have a love affair with Playskool (TM).
thanks for the link!
I concur.
It still won’t really come too close to what SL is. but, for all those people ‘warning’ Linden Lab that they are going to bail as soon as a ‘decent’ alternative arrives, I hope they’re willing to put their money where their mouth is.
In a nutshell – yes, Linen Lab is not perfect. far from it even. But what other company, or even government for that matter, would allow you so much freedom.
Okay, ridiculous freedom.
And yes, Second Life is *relatively* unstable. What I mean to say is: the squeakiest wheel gets the attention. It’s the hugely vocal minority who are having all the problems.
I would venture to say that 75% of all regular users do not have such huge issues with SL as often and many of the whiners do. Yes, we all run into out hair and prim attachments at our pelvis at times, and yes, the viewer crashes at times, and yes, teleporting fails… at times…
We all experience it.
In reality, if it were *that* bad, we really would leave and never come back. We would seek out places like EA-Land. But, the benefits and enjoyment of SL… the freedoms, the interaction, the community…
I just don’t see anyone else coming up with the same magic recipe. Nothing will ever really be a ‘replacement’ for SL. Alternatives will and do exist.
But, just like Coca-Cola tastes and lot different from Pepsi, they’re still both colas.
To clear something up:
Thema Felix said:”They plan on approving everything that goes into the world. How will this be manageable if the population and created items soar to millions?”
All cc in EA-Land has to be submitted before being approved. Then it goes into the game permanently for all the players to see or buy. Also, when your avatar loads into the game all the cc doesn’t load along with it. CC loads per the places your player visits.
If you’ve ever played SIMS 1 you’ll notice the similarities, and if you ever play EA-Land online you’ll notice all the great differences: like skilling, making money, buying and selling cc stuff, etc etc etc..check it out yourself. When I say interactions in Ea-LAnd I mean just that: hi-5, your avatar dancing, kissing, hot tub, etc etc etc etc. There are even clubs! I could go on and on and on.
I must admit I was a TSO addict for many years..I came back recently because of all the new things they are giving us. In EA-Land you can make money OR you can buy money (as in SL). BUT you have a choice, every player gets player money each week regardless; not to mention they can “earn” it via “virtual jobs”. If in EA-Land you decide to use the “ATM” to purchase more player money..you will have the option to “cash it out” or rather get it back at a later date. So, essentially you can play the game, without paying extra money at all. Just the 9.99/mnth or subscribers fee.
Right now, there is a 14 day free trial. OR you can play for free in Test Center 3.
Check out:
http://www.ea-land.com
http://www.sims.stratics.com
for all the other things you can do that are way too long to list.
And I agree the logo right now is pretty icky..but I’m 36, and I love the game! I lasted in SL about 2 weeks before I got bored and quit. I mean after visiting peoples houses and riding in a jeep, there was nothing left to do but chat..I noticed everyone gathered in one place to do that for some reason *puzzled*. NO the graphics aren’t as good, but the trade off is WAY worth it.. Even ways to interact must better than SL.
If you decide to give it a try, look me up in EA-Land under Jasmine Moon (of course!)
Ahaha. It doesn’t appeal to me *at* *all*. Did you see what they’ve chosen for the name of their currency? “FunBucks”? The website is also pretty hideous… I thought it was a joke at first. So far not impressed — not even enough to deviate from SL to explore it. I hope the people who love it do enjoy it, though… it simply isn’t for me, even if I used to enjoy playing The Sims.
no, the currency is not names FunBucks .. it is still Simoleans. FunBucks was a player suggestion where many people voted for it, however, since many complains were issued against this whole new names for the currency .. the voting has been canceled.
Well, that’s good to hear. I was feeling bad for the players if they were going to go with those votes. They should have stayed with Simoleans from the beginning and avoided the extra work of inducing voting.