Juju

Slashdot has a story asking if the Metaverse has finally Launched?. A new system called simply "There" has entered public beta. Its an interesting 3D chatroom that is being compared to The Sims Online. However as one person put it: "I'd rather not have to worry about my "urination" meter while hanging out with friends in a virtual world thank you.". Well put. There looks sweet due to the fact that it not only has a nice interface but more importantly has a developer program where people can skin existing objects and model their own unique objects (using gmax - a free version of 3D Studio) for a price and actually sell them in game (for real cash). All it needs is a sword fighting program. They also plan on making money by selling virtual items like Nike shoes. groan All in all it looks sweet and I look forward to getting into beta.

What really amazes me is that Blaxxun is behind all this. Woah... I didn't even know they were still around. I remember trying out their stuff way back in the day. (circa 1996) Back when I was seriously into Activeworlds. Which got me thinking and found that Activeworlds is still alive and kicking too. I even found that my Citizen account was still in the system. I even owned a world server, unfortunately I can't remember the name of my world to see if it's still in their system to renew. Man this brings back memories. Maybe I'll have to resurrect my old world server and play around with it again. Unfortunately even though my computer and 3D card is probably 100 times faster, Activeworlds doesn't look that much better then it did back then.

While reading the comments on Slashdot, I found out about something called NeL, an open source platform for developing massively multiplayer online games. And unlike most other open source mmog engines, this one is actually being used to develop a really slick looking game called Ryzom. (even though it's by a bunch of cheese-eatin' surrender-monkeys) Check out these screenshots. No mmog is complete without half naked chicks in bikinis. Unfortunately it's still in beta also, hope I get in too.