Xymbers Slade's "From The Primordial Soup" Interactive Story/Game

Xymbers Slade, whom in the Newser's earlier days was a contributor of both stories, horoscopes based on his inworld tarot card deck, and some occasional cartoons, has been making himself busy lately. In the "Reddit forums under the pseudonym "TheDiscordedSnarl," he's set up a kind of interactive story/game that fans of "Spore" and from years ago "Sim Earth" might be interested in: "From The Primordial Soup." Here, people can guide the evolutionary development of an organism by discussion and voting.

So far, about 1.3 billion years in story time have progressed. The single-cell organism that the readers started out with has evolved into a multicellular organism. It shares the ocean with several other organisms, some it feeds upon, some that try to feed upon it.

As of now, the interactive story has 186 participants, a few of whom have contributed some artwork. It should be interesting to see how Xymbers/Discorded's game progresses as the reader-guided creature continues to evolve.

Bixyl Shuftan

Relay for Life in InWorldz Season Opener

The Relay for Life for Second Life raises hundreds of thousands of US dollars for cancer research every year. But the Relay does not confine itself to just one virtual world. Last Saturday, August 6, the Relay for Life of InWorldz had their Kickoff event. While a smaller event then it's Second Life counterpart in March, it still drew a number of people.

Read more in Other Grids, MMOs, and Games. 

Woodbury in Kitely Grid

Several years ago, Linden Lab shut down the Woodbury location and group in Second Life, banning many of their members. With a strong reputation for being a hangout for griefers, the news of their departure was greeted with relief by many. Recently Second Life Newser would get a tip that the group had a place in virtual reality, but in a different grid: Kitely. So it was decided to investigate.

Read more in Other Grids, MMOs, and Games.

Gaming Goings-On: Rust, Star Trek Online, And Tree of Life

While the gaming world is currently abuzz with "Pokemon Go," those with little interest in the genre are no doubt wondering what else is available. There is of course Second Life, of which one of it's major events, the Relay Weekend, is in a couple days. But when not on Second Life, what else is there. For my gaming friends, they've found a couple the Newser has written about in the past, "Star Trek Online" and "Rust," have had recent updates. Star Trek Online now allows one to play the part of a Federation ship captain at the time of the Original Series. Rust now has the "Experience Point" system that's been talked about for months. There's also a new game out that's a little less edgy than some other popular survival MMOs: Tree of Life.

Read the review in Other Grids, MMOs, and Games.

Rust Misdventures in Angel Island and Free Wood

A few months ago, I wrote about my return to the survival MMO "Rust," and how it's changed from when me and my Second Like friends last played it a couple years ago. Since then, we've been building, trying to avoid the bears and helicopter, dealing with the "PvP kiddies," and dusting ourselves off and rebuilding after "world killer" updates. A couple of us, including yours truly, also took a look at public servers, which had a different set of dangers than private ones.

Read the story in Other Grids, MMOs, and Games.

InWorldz Celebrates Seven Year Anniversary

 As Second Life gets ready to celebrate it's anniversary, the InWorldz Grid is celebrating it's own. In late March, the IW7B took place, with numerous exhibits across many sims and a number of events, such as live music performances. After a week however, the official events were over, though the exhibits remained.

 While our main week of events is over there is still plenty to do and see.  We have many exhibits, art displays, and interactive activities for you to see throughout the rest of the month.

Celebrate 7 epic years of creativity, collaboration and community in InWorldz at IW7 B-day Bash and Expo!

Second Life's Birthday events are noted for their huge cake stages built on the corners of four sims. The IW7 didn't have that, but did have a "Cake Maze."

Among the other open-ended virtual worlds, InWorldz ranks the second largest in terms of active users and accounts, reaching 100,000 in May 2014. It's numbers had been boosted by Second Life residents taking greater interest in the place in 2013 during the content creator rights controversy. Attention from the Newser has waned somewhat since those days. But we still check there once in a while, for big events such as these.

To see the exhibits, once logged into InWorldz, head to the sim InWorldz Events Scenic 21 (127, 129, 20)

Bixyl Shuftan

Second Life vs. Entropia

Second Life is not the only virtual world around. There are other freeform virtual worlds, such as InWorldz. But some are a little different. Entropia, designed by the Swedish-based company Mindark, is much like a Massive Multiplayer Online Game with it's options for combat, resource gathering, and quests. But players can trade resources, as well as socialize. In the past, the game has made real life news for the selling of locations for thousands of dollars. Hearing about Entropia, Wesley Regenbogen decided to see for himself how it was.

Read Wesley's article in Other Grids, MMOs, and Games.

Return to Rust

About two years ago, the Newser first took a look at the survival MMO game "Rust." Recently we decided to take a look again to see what's changed. And quite a bit has changed. While it still starts with you having nothing but a rock, there is the addition of new terrain, new enemies, new tools, and more things that make gameplay quite a bit different from before.

Read the review in Other Grids, MMOs and Games.

Xymber Slade's "Civilization of the Internet" Interactive Story/Game

Longtime readers may remember Xymbers Slade, known in the past for his game and avatar reviews, as well as occasional screenshot cartoons. Under the pseudonym "Dr. Hervis Jasper," he's doing an interactive story/game about the evolution of a single cell lifeform to a multicellular organism, and on to more complex organisms to presumably something intelligent, which then developed a civilization.

 

It's a game where a bacteria arises from the depths to become first an animal, then a somewhat-intelligent animal, then an intelligent creature, onward and upward from a prehistoric group to a tribal (or not so tribal?) creature, and so on and so forth until you reach space... to infinity and beyond! Or something, at any rate.

Every day at the game's webpage, there will be an update, "For the first week and few days, you will be prompted to tweet suggestions for evolutions to the bacterium. Things such as color, how it moves, how it eats, what it eats, ANYTHING that you can think of that would make it beneficial. Feel free to suggest prey species, predators, anything to enrich this bacterium's environment." At first, the turns will represent 100 million years. Once one billion years have passed, options will open as to the organism's evolution, with "you will all vote and the one with the highest votes goes through."

So how will it end? In Xymber's words, "That's for the Internet to decide... and for me to find out!" So if you're curious to see what evolves from his interactive story/game, keep an eye on it, and tweet some suggestions how it goes.


The page can be found at: http://riseoftheinternet.wix.com/oneszeroesandtwos

Bixyl Shuftan

Game Review: World of Warships

Nydia Tungsten is back with her first gaming review in a while. Here, she looks at "World of Warships." The game is from Wargaming.net, the makers of the popular "World of Tanks." Gameplay is a little like the noted tank game as there are units of different strengths and one with long range fire. But "the other WoW" as it's sometimes called is not simply the tank game moved to the water.

Read Nydia's review in Other Grids, MMOs, and Games.

World of Warcraft Drops to 5.5 Million Active Players, Blizzard Will No Longer Report Numbers

Shortly after the release of the total subscription numbers of "Guild Wars 2" put into question if "World of Warcraft" was still the top MMO, on November 2, Activision/Blizzard announced in it's quarterly report that it's subscriptions "remained relatively stable, ending the quarter at 5.5 million subscribers." Although a slight drop compared to it's earlier plummet from ten million to 5.6 in several months, it was another sign that the game's best days are long behind it.

As it turns out, this will likely be the last time World of Warcraft's current numbers will be given out. Blizzard stated it will do so no more, "this is the last quarter that we plan to provide subscriber numbers," the company stated. "There are other metrics that are better indicators of the overall Blizzard business performance."

It seems even Blizzard has concluded "World of Warcraft" will no longer have draw it once had.

For years since it was released in 2003, "World of Warcraft" was more than just a game. It wasn't just the leader in the Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game genere, it was seen as *the* game. It became a part of pop-culture, characters in TV shows playing the game, stories of people playing the game until falling unconscious from exhaustion, and more. Many of it's features, such as players being divided into two opposing factions, talent trees, quests and quest giving NPCs, became more or less standard in MMOs as a whole. With over 12 million at it's peak, companies tried and failed to come up with a "WoW killer," and instead settled into nich markets, such as based on popular sci-fi franchises like Star Trek and Star Wars, and developed along the "Free to Play" model instead of requiring a montly subcription.

Of the news, Hamlet Au commented "The King is dead." That's a bit of an exaggeration as the game is still number one in it's genre. "World of Warcraft" isn't entirely done in popular culture. In June 2016, Legendary Pictures will be showing a movie based on the game "Warcraft" in theaters nationwide. And there is another expansion of the game in the works, "Legion." But Blizzard's announcement is clearly a turning point for the once unmatched MMO that will be seen less and less for what's going on with it now, and more and more as a historic game like "Doom," "Pac Man," and "Space Invaders" were the games of their times.

Sources: Gamespot,  Breitbart,

Bixyl Shuftan

Guild Wars 2's Numbers Raise Questions about World of Warcraft's Status

For more than twelve years, the genre of Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games was dominated by "World of Warcraft." But lately it's been crashing in numbers. And something happened recently that put it's status as the champion of MMOs in doubt.

Since shooting up from 6.8 million subscribers to 10 million in November 2014, World of Warcraft's numbers have plummeted, down to 5.6 million in August with no sign of slowing down. And while the MMO that once was *the* game in its genre has been shrinking in numbers, others have been growing. One, Guild Wars 2, recently announced it had reached 7 million accounts, up from 5 million in August. The growth is attributed in part to it's new expansion "Heart of Thorns."

So does this mean Guild Wars 2 is now the number one MORPG? Not necessarily. World of Warcraft's numbers are of active accounts while those of Guild Wars 2 are of all of it's accounts, active or not. Over time, World of Warcraft has had a total of over 100 million accounts.

So it looks like World Of Warcraft is still the Champion MMO, at least for now. That it was in doubt is a reminder with it's dropping numbers, the best known of MMOs just doesn't have the draw it used to. While this isn't the end of it's days as the champion, it seems just a matter of time.


Sources: Gamespot, IGN

Bixyl Shuftan

Relay For Life in InWorldz

With "Making Strides" taking place in Second Life, it's easy to miss another Relay for Life event going on: the Relay for Life fundraising season in the InWorldz grid.  This year, their theme is, "Our Community of Hope."

This Saturday October 17 is the main event of the season. At 8AM is the "Warm-Up" party. At 9AM, the Opening Celebrations take place. The event goes on until 9PM Pacific time.

Wildstar Beaumont recently came up with a photo catalog of screenshots of the Relay track to give some hints of what will be around on the course this weekend.

"Go Relay!"

Prometheus Grid Offline, Future Uncertain

Earlier this month, Second Life Newser reported on the new "Prometheus" OpenSim Grid. Since then the virtual world has needed a reboot, wiping out it's contents. And one of it's staff recently informed the Newser that the main owner of the virtual world has pulled out of the team, throwing it's future in doubt.

The numbers of the world had been small, with four sims online, and a little less then two dozen active residents.

The Prometheus Grid.

Some Second Life users like to explore other virtual worlds to see what else is out there. Some have been out there for quite some time. But there are still some just starting up. The makers of the new Prometheus Grid contacted the Newser and requested a meet-up. So Bixyl Shuftan hopped over to see this new grid with currently just a few sims and residents, but high hopes.

Read more in Other Grids, MMOs, and Games.

Press Release: Roleplay for Life

The Roleplay for Life team consists of multiple roleplay sim communities representing many genres.  Roleplayers as a whole are very "COMMUNITY" focused and are a natural fit for raising money for this worthy cause.

In 2014, I decided we needed our own team for Relay For Life to focus our charitable efforts in virtual worlds where we all spend a lot of time.  We all joined to form the Roleplay for Life group for many of the typical reasons groups join Relay for Life: it's a great, noble cause; because we know someone who has been affected by cancer; and to affect positive change in our community.

We also hoped to use our unique connection with roleplayers, who often tend to be a "fringe category" of player, to raise mutual awareness between the various charities and the roleplaying community within InWorldz. We felt our involvement in Relay for Life benefits not only a wonderful cause, but also benefits those who may feel removed from the mainstream, but wish to become more involved in such events.

We raised over $285,000 Iz's during the 2014 RFL season to help raise money and awareness for cancer and its cure. Our goal in the 2015 season is to exceed that total through the hard work of our team members and the generosity of the InWorldz residents.

Bim Rasmuson, Captain
Roleplay For Life
RFL InWorldz 2015 Campaign

World of Warcraft's Next Expansion Announced As Subscriptions Drop to Nine Year Low

The latest expansion of the most popular of Massive Multiplayer Online games was announced late last week. World of Warcraft's next chapter will be called "Legion," the name coming from the return of one of Azeroth's enemies: The Burning Legion. With details such as a new hero class, the Demon Hunter, the game is getting some discussion among WoW fans. But the announcement came soon after some disappointing news about it's subscription numbers.

Read more in Other Grids and MMOs.

Tales from Minecraft: Going "To The Moon" Tinkering With Iguanas

So what have the "Furry Gamers" group of the Sunweaver/Angels been up to when not in Second Life? Lately they've been spending some time in a new version of FTB Minecraft called "Resonant Rise," with mods "Tinkerer's Construct with Iguana Tweaks." The result has been a new kind of Minecraft mayhem, with new kinds of terrain to explore, more and extra powerful monsters to fight, and new ways to build tools. And for Jasmine, it meant her own space program in a quest to go to Minecraft's Moon.

Read more in Other Grids and MMOs.

What’s Happening In High Fidelity?

Besides Second Life, DrFran has also been checking out the virtual world Philip Rosedale has been working on lately: High Fidelity. While SL 2.0, or Sansar, remains very much an unknown to those outside Linden Lab, High Fidelity has been in open alpha for anyone wanting to go in and try things out. While the avatars aren't always "pretty," Rosedale has been focusing on problems that have been constant banes for Second Life users.

Read more in Other Grids and MMOs.

Gaming News: Steam Suddenly Ending Modder Payment System, WoW Numbers Drop, A Cheater's Public End

There's been some interesting gaming news lately. The latest numbers of World of Warcraft are out. Guild Wars 2 got the attention of gamers from all around when a cheater people complained about on the forum had a youtube of his fate posted there. And we finally look into Steam's payment system for those wanting to make mods for the still popular Skyrim game, which was taken down after only for days. One of the problems with it, some brought up, was how Skyrim's modders were being treated by the game's creators.

Read more in Other Grids and MMOs.