10 best subscription MMO's includes SL

[Love Zhaoying]

1 minute ago, EliseAnne85 said:

I've been in SL on and off for three decades

Whut? I'm bad at maths, but not THAT bad!

 

[EliseAnne85]

4 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Whut? I'm bad at maths, but not THAT bad!

 

It's three now, isn't it?  The 2000's, the 2010's and now the 2020's.  

[Love Zhaoying]

7 minutes ago, EliseAnne85 said:

It's three now, isn't it?  The 2000's, the 2010's and now the 2020's.  

"In 3 different decades" isn't the same as "for" 3 decades! But your maths is fine by me.

[EliseAnne85]

50 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

"In 3 different decades" isn't the same as "for" 3 decades! But your maths is fine by me.

Okies, I should have said "spanning across three decades"...  (I'll edit my other post).

 

Edited March 3, 2023 by EliseAnne85

[Rolig Loon]

Darn, I was about to try my hand at one-upmanship.  I've been alive for two millennia.   

[EliseAnne85]

21 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

Darn, I was about to try my hand at one-upmanship.  I've been alive for two millennia.   

Oh my gah, that would be one long story to tell the people of SL, via drama, no less.  lol

[Kimmi Zehetbauer]

Some MMOs are only free up to a certain level or point --- like the WoW one.

[Rowan Amore]

2 hours ago, EliseAnne85 said:

It is awful!  I've been in SL on and off spanning across three decades (which I can't hardly believe) and I can assuredly tell you and others no one has ever tried to "tell me their story via drama" nor have I ever tried to tell anyone my story via drama on SL.  It's the worst article about SL I've ever encountered.  I don't even know how I'd begin to tell someone my story via drama on SL.  smh

Maybe they're using the actual meaning of drama which does describe SL pretty well IMO...

Drama...an exciting, emotional, or unexpected series of events or set of circumstances

 a written work that tells a story through action and speech 

Edited March 3, 2023 by Rowan Amore

[Ayashe Ninetails]

The dude wrote 572 articles in 2 years. I wouldn't recommend taking his phrasing too seriously. Man's gotta be exhausted. 😄

[Orwar]

4 hours ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

The dude wrote 572 articles in 2 years.

   An article a day keeps the madness away. 

[EliseAnne85]

11 hours ago, Rowan Amore said:

emotional

Hmmmmm....could the writer have meant - Hence, they tell each other their story via emoting?   It's still poorly phrased but the whole sentence sounds like it was told to him by someone whose first language was not English and the non-English speaking person interprets emoting as drama.  So, perhaps the writer meant "players write their own stories together via emoting".  

But, that's the concluding line, like that is what SL is about.  It makes SL sound romantic but that is only a small part of SL when one considers all the diversity here.  Plus, I haven't emoted since 2007.  

Here is what was written in the article:

 Hence, players tell their own stories here with others via drama.

Edited March 3, 2023 by EliseAnne85

[Ayashe Ninetails]

6 hours ago, Orwar said:

   An article a day keeps the madness away. 

Lol - sad part is it's probably not his only gig. Not with that pay rate. Poor guy's probably churning out more words per year than Stephen King. 😂

  

3 minutes ago, EliseAnne85 said:

Hmmmmm....could the writer have meant - Hence, they tell each other their story via emoting?   It's still poorly phrased but the whole sentence sounds like it was told to him by someone whose first language was not English and the non-English speaking person interprets emoting as drama.  So, perhaps the writer meant "players write their own stories together via emoting".  

Don't look too deeply into it. He didn't mean anything by it. Really, the guy's quite literally writing 5+ articles a week bare minimum (as per his contribution count on his bio page, which is also poorly written, and the company's writing requirements). He probably has no time to play even a tiny fraction of the hundreds of games he writes about. These are not well-researched articles. Look through his other work. It's all the same format, which is by design. That site publishes around clicks and engagement and keyword stuffing (one article uses "iconic" 3 times in the same tiny paragraph, oof) - not for any sort of actual reading enjoyment.  😄

My guess is he heard about Second Life somewhere somehow, said yeah that works, and tossed it in. Likely used the word "drama" to link it to the "RPG" angle to squeeze it into the list. Most of those games are/were heavy-hitters on the roleplay front. Wouldn't be surprised if he had no idea that Second Life has roleplay communities, too, so went with - hey it's social right, there's gotta be drama at least, let's go with that!

[Love Zhaoying]

12 hours ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

The dude wrote 572 articles in 2 years.

Exactly what I was thinking earlier - I know someone who used to write "articles for pay".  It's all about the output.

[Love Zhaoying]

2 minutes ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

My guess is he heard about Second Life somewhere somehow, said yeah that works, and tossed it in. Likely used the word "drama" to link it to the "RPG" angle to squeeze it into the list. Most of those games are/were heavy-hitters on the roleplay front. Wouldn't be surprised if he had no idea that Second Life has roleplay communities, too, so went with - hey it's social right, there's gotta be drama at least, let's go with that!

This is how we got Internet articles before ChatGPT!

The moral is - nothing really changes.

[Ayashe Ninetails]

1 minute ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Exactly what I was thinking earlier - I know someone who used to write "articles for pay".  It's all about the output.

I used to write articles for pay. Keyword - used to. That lasted all of not very long at all. They were smokin' all kinds of things with those pay rates, and I was working with a site that paid a bit higher than most - until they lowered everyone's rates and I bounced. Funny enough, it hasn't changed - I still see gigs all over the place fishing for writers at under minimum wage, 5-6 articles a week, source your own images, etc. Maaaaaaaaaaaaan, later for that.

On the other side of the spectrum, hanging out on a forum with a bunch of freelance copywriters and people who wrote white papers taught me that there are writers who won't roll out of bed for less than 4-digits per piece with a month or longer deadline, so it's not all bad. 😂

 

12 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

This is how we got Internet articles before ChatGPT!

The moral is - nothing really changes.

Nah. There are some really nice articles out there about SL. The kind with research and interviews even! Gotta turn to the better tech magazines to find them, though. 

[Orwar]

15 minutes ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

Lol - sad part is it's probably not his only gig. Not with that pay rate. Poor guy's probably churning out more words per year than Stephen King. 😂

   I certainly hope no one's paying the author enough to live off of that rubbish. 

[Orwar]

12 minutes ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

I still see gigs all over the place fishing for writers at under minimum wage, 5-6 articles a week, source your own images, etc.

   I feel as if, even before the whole AI-generated article stuff got thrown into the mix, the whole pays-per-click advertising model thing made for a very quantity-focused approach. You know those websites where you click on an article, and they use 1200 words to explain something that would have required one sentence, and then they shove 24 other articles in your face with subjects ranging from celebrity scandal press bollocks, to the latest fad diet, to absolutely astonishingly ludicrous get-rich-quick schemes ('become a mail order bride to China today!'), to the latest life-hack for switching a lightbulb with a pasta spoon (all in 1200 words or more!) .. I think they're a substantial part of the reason why people these days end up as stupid as they do.

[Love Zhaoying]

34 minutes ago, Orwar said:

   I certainly hope no one's paying the author enough to live off of that rubbish. 

Writing is all about the article-count and word-count! (said tongue-in-cheek)

It is interesting to read how some of the Sci Fi writers of the Golden Age would get paid pennies per word for the monthlies that became classics.

[Ayashe Ninetails]

3 minutes ago, Orwar said:

   I feel as if, even before the whole AI-generated article stuff got thrown into the mix, the whole pays-per-click advertising model thing made for a very quantity-focused approach. You know those websites where you click on an article, and they use 1200 words to explain something that would have required one sentence, and then they shove 24 other articles in your face with subjects ranging from celebrity scandal press bollocks, to the latest fad diet, to absolutely astonishingly ludicrous get-rich-quick schemes ('become a mail order bride to China today!'), to the latest life-hack for switching a lightbulb with a pasta spoon (all in 1200 words or more!) .. I think they're a substantial part of the reason why people these days end up as stupid as they do.

Very much so. For a while, SEO-focused writing and keyword stuffing was all the rage, so you'd constantly find sites like the one Paul linked above. Whole niche "magazines" and blogs absolutely packed with listicles and short-form 500-word articles that made absolutely no good sense to a human being. That practice has eased somewhat, as now Google wants more natural-sounding articles with authority and flow and quality content written to be read - which is why you get massive autobiographies you have to scroll through just to get to the list of ingredients for the meatball recipe you're hunting for on that cooking blog. It seems people struggle with the simple concept of "write for a human, dangit" - so it's gone from one extreme to the other. 😵

I'm quite surprised to see that Gamerant (and their sister sites) still favor that weird search engine style of writing. Maybe their news articles and features aren't written like that, but why even have "filler listicles" at all. I guess it still works - I dunno.

If you browse Second Life, metaverse, and gaming articles on tech, business, and financial sites, it's like night and day. They've got interviews, they actually do research, they use the correct lingo, etc. 

[EliseAnne85]

1 hour ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

Don't look too deeply into it. He didn't mean anything by it. Really, the guy's quite literally writing 5+ articles a week bare minimum (as per his contribution count on his bio page, which is also poorly written, and the company's writing requirements). He probably has no time to play even a tiny fraction of the hundreds of games he writes about. These are not well-researched articles.

I've never read one this far off the mark because it almost seems the writer is saying it's a MMORPG, when, in reality, it's an MMO/MMORPG.  It can be an MMORPG if one chooses to go that route.  He could have said one can purchase their own land and make their own RP games on their own sim if they choose to, which is really only one slice of the SL pie.  But, as far as the subscription to play, WRONG!  That's just wrong.

[Ayashe Ninetails]

1 hour ago, EliseAnne85 said:

I've never read one this far off the mark because it almost seems the writer is saying it's a MMORPG, when, in reality, it's an MMO/MMORPG.  It can be an MMORPG if one chooses to go that route.  He could have said one can purchase their own land and make their own RP games on their own sim if they choose to, which is really only one slice of the SL pie.  But, as far as the subscription to play, WRONG!  That's just wrong.

The entire article is wrong. There was no research done. I really wouldn't expect the writer to know SL even has land for sale, let alone the ability to support roleplay combat systems. He didn't even mention you can play several hundred hours of FFXIV for free. In fact, the entire FFXIV section is just...random words thrown together. And next to WoW, that's currently the most active and popular game on his list.

[Istelathis]

17 hours ago, Kimmi Zehetbauer said:

Some MMOs are only free up to a certain level or point --- like the WoW one.

I think for WoW you can play for free, so long as you grind enough gold to purchase a subscription token from players selling them.  It is not something I would want to do on a monthly basis, but for those who know how to play the auction house it is relatively easy I guess, or at least it used to be when I played it.  I remember the introduction of these tokens was not very well received as it more or less legitimized selling gold in WoW which was once frowned upon by the majority of the player base.  

When I last played it, there were quite a few people who played for free using them.  The entire financial system was pretty wonky there, getting gold was incredibly easy for me when I made a new character and purchasing in game items was no longer a challenge, such as purchasing mounts used to be quite an accomplishment.  Now I'm just rambling on like an 'ol timer 🤣

Edited March 3, 2023 by Istelathis

[Love Zhaoying]

Is RoBlox considered an MMO? If so, guess it didn't make the cut.

[Ayashe Ninetails]

10 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Is RoBlox considered an MMO? If so, guess it didn't make the cut.

MMO, yeah, but compared to the rest of the RPGs on the list (minus SL)? No. Those all have roleplaying, leveling, skills, built-in stories, dungeons, questing, character progression, guilds, raids, yada yada.

It's closer to an MMO than an MMORPG, though I'm sure people build RPGs inside of it. Just to make it more confusing.

It's probably better described as a gaming engine/creation platform. You can go into Roblox and play games others have made, and make your own, but it's not exactly a game with its own established stories and questlines.

[Silent Mistwalker]

On 3/2/2023 at 11:13 AM, Paul Hexem said:

So, this should be a fun article for the "it's not a game" crowd.

10 Best Subscription Based MMOs Of All Time (gamerant.com)

Browser freaked out and didn't let me put anything into the text box so see post below.

Edited March 4, 2023 by Silent Mistwalker