Animation Blog

We know the heavy players in the realm of commercial and free virtual worlds. There is the immovable giant that is Second Life. There is the popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) World of Warcraft. Even the free virtual world for kids that is Poptropica has entered the top 300 sites. So if you are an up and coming virtual world what can you do to separate yourself from the pack?

It may sound simple but you really have to outsmart the opposition.

Metaplace is one of these virtual worlds. It doesn’t have the same user-base firepower as the aforementioned examples but it did itself a favor when it announced that users can now embed their blogs within this virtual worlds.

Blogs? Now why would you spend your time blogging away in a virtual world?

Well, it all comes down to further interactivity. Once immersed in a virtual world you can get to interact with fellow users. Similar with real world, you would want to expand your communication options from the traditional modes of in-game chat and even VOIP.

So is the blog embedding capability worth the hype it is trying to generate? The new feature should be placed in the context of the entire world. Metaplace after all is an MMORPG designed in Flash and part of the thrills of a game is trying to surmount challenges and tell your friends about it. Metaplace has given their best effort in making sure that the entire world is worth the visit once you get past the blog embedding feature.

First and foremost, Metaplace really gives it to the users to fully customize not only their appearances as avatars but of the whole world as well. According to Metaplace founder Raph Koster, everything in the game is streamed directly from the server, meaning one can literally change anything in your world.

So are you the secretive type who wants to keep the entire world you created all to yourself? I hate to break your bubble but the whole point of virtual worlds is a higher level of interactivity with other online users. In short, spread the fun. You worked hard to achieve the look of your world and avatar so let others see it and rate it. Tell them about it and invite them to visit your site thanks to the blog posts you will embed to your world.

There are about 30,000 worlds now in Metaplace according to Koster and it’s never too late to add to this total. Don’t fear that the world you will create will be restricted to a template or a cookie cutter. Koster is proud to say that the possibilities are endless when it comes to Metaplace worlds. There are even those which used Metaplace as a tool for educating schoolchildren.

When Metaplace lobbied the idea of embedding blogs into your world, there is an underlying thought of openness to the entire community – and that is the goal of Metaplace to users and their individual worlds. Create your world and share it – whatever you create, even for profit, Metaplace won’t ask for a cut. Well, it’s really all for you.

The openness feature of Metaplace can be undermined a bit however if it does not clearly point out a solid plan to protect the privacy of children. As of late, the first line of defense would be to indicate one’s date of birth and if they are not yet in the mature range, mature worlds will be rendered invisible. But this one has many possible loopholes so here’s to hoping this area will be thoroughly solidified. Do note that Metaplace is not the only one with this problem. Almost all MMORPGs have this issue.