Virtual Worlds Review

Been looking for a virtual world that suits your tastes? Browse through the Virtual Worlds Review. It's a guide to famous places like Second Life, There, Sims Online, and not so famous but interesting ones like Faketown. Brought to you by Betsy Book of BBI Systems, New York.

Comments

[Richard Bartle]

1.

There's a listing of graphical worlds on the MUD Connector at http://www.mudconnect.com/mud_graphical.html . This includes some in-development worlds, too. Of course, the MUD Connector has 1,800 non-graphical virtual worlds on its books, too.

Another great place to look is the Multiplayer Online Game Directory at http://www.mpogd.com/,
which covers all kinds of multi-player games but has a section for massively multi-player ones that includes virtual worlds (as well as strategy games etc).

Gamespy/RPGPlanet has a list at http://www.gamespy.com/games/genres/mmog.shtml . There are several other sites with this kind of material on them, too.

Richard

[Lee Delarm]

2.

While we're at making links to game listing sites, http://www.topwebgames.com also has a listing of games. There's are more the BBG (browser based game) type but they have full graphical worlds mixed in. Not a very good search tool though.

[Betsy Book]

3.

Thanks for the links, Richard and Lee. VWR specializes in the subgenre of MMOGs that emphasize social interaction over gaming. In other words, the worlds that are the spiritual heirs of social chat rooms with a little gaming influence thrown in for good measure.

Tons of overlap in these categories, I know, but I wanted to provide a resource for folks who are interested in a visual chat experience but wouldn't necessarily go for the D&D/RPG/fantasy themed places. As you both correctly point out, there are already plenty of great resources for those. While all virtual worlds included on the VWR site do have gaming/RPG aspects incorporated within them, they are more accurately categorized as "online hangouts" than games.

The two glaring exceptions are The Sims Online and Disney's Toontown. I just couldn't resist including Toontown because it's historically important as the first mainstream large scale MMOG for younger kids. As for TSO, last April when I launched the site I had much greater hopes for TSO as a social space. Instead it has become a place with very little substantial conversation with the majority of participants afk while their avatars slave away at driving skills up. Clearly the audience for TSO sees this space more purely as a game than an opportunity to hang out and make friends. Most folks interested in the social aspects of TSO left in droves and headed for places like There and Second Life instead.

Let me know if you have any recommendations for specific worlds that would be good to include on VWR.

Betsy

[Richard Bartle]

4.

Betsy Book>VWR specializes in the subgenre of MMOGs that emphasize social interaction over gaming.

Fair enough, but this would be like putting up a web site called "Vehicular Transport Review" that only reviewed motorbikes.

Richard