Terra Nova

Parsing Philip Rosedale

I had a chance to interview Philip Rosedale earlier this month, leading to a broad set of posts by bloggers who follow virtual worlds (and Second Life) pretty closely.  You can see the whole thing here (with links to the analysis by Christian Renaud, Nic Mitham, Wagner James Au, Ben Duranske, Bettina Tizzy, Roland Legrand, and Dusan Writer), but after the break I include some of the more interesting quotes.

We are going to be talking about it today at noon pacific time.  You can watch online, and participate in backchat, without going into Second Life, here.

April Showers Bring...May Finals?

I've realized that May was not the best month to guest blog, especially when I had about 100 students and their final projects to grade. But that's all over now and I apologize for the gap in my posts and will now try to overload you with information about game accessibility for the remainder of the month! Stay tuned!

Open Letter to Blizzard Entertainment

[Editorial Note: The following letter is a statement by the author posting it and by those who have signed it; and it is cross-posted at Many-to-Many. It is not a public statement by Terra Nova, or any of the Terra Nova authors who have not signed it]

Open Letter to Blizzard Entertainment—Speech Policy for GLBT guilds in World of Warcraft

Recently, Sara Andrews, a player in Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft (WoW) recruited for a Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transexual (GLBT) Friendly guild in the general chat channel on the Shadowmoon server. She was reported to a Game Master by another player, and subsequently sanctioned for “Harassment – Sexual Orientation”. Under the Terms of Use of WoW, it is forbidden to transmit offensive material, including abusive or sexually explicit material.