For the people with the inclination (and technical know-how) to help build the world, MOOs are where it’s at. The world in World of Warcraft is not malleable, unless you’re a Blizzard employee, so if your interest is in content creation, you’re out of luck.

But the builders are a relatively tiny number of people: most people want to go to the party, not help host it. And that’s where places like WoW have places like SL beat hands down: SL is a party where people go hang out and do… whatever. If it’s going to be anything more than an inconvenient form of chat, you either have to make your own fun, or find someone else who’s built something cool to play with (or an engaging environment, or event, or social group, whatever.) And since everyone’s engaged in different activities, the world tends towards fragmentation: you either wind up with a MOO where nobody ever leaves the lobby, or lots of little separate isolated islands of activity.

In game-based worlds, there’s already something cool to play with, and everyone you meet is engaged with it. There’s a reason to be in that world. Everyone you meet is in on that same reason. So you need a much smaller number of people overall for the world to feel populated and real. The backstory of the game helps too: when everything feeds into the same mythos it all feels much more solid and real.

And yet the social, “community” aspects are just as strong in the games as in the more respectable virtual worlds. People still throw parties and stage events; the difference is there’s a defined environment in which they can happen. So really, all that SL offers that the games don’t is the ability to create new objects for the world. But that activity, while fun for those who know how to do it, doesn’t actually happen inside the world. It’s just coding. (And I doubt it’ll be very long until the game worlds pick up that capability as well.)

In a way, I’m agreeing with ange: second life == real life. But I already have a real life. Personally if I’m going to have a second one online, I’d rather it not reproduce all the aggravating parts of actual real life, such as not knowing why I’m there, or what I’m supposed to do with it, or where the fun party is.

and there was i waiting in incredible passion (read: built up-passion for the past couple of months), longing to check out your avatar and hug you in second life.

BTW… second life isn’t a game.. and i know this might not mean much to skeptics.. but:

second life = real life

but then we agree to disagree …

though i have to congratulate Prof. Nesson with taking CyberOne into secondlife :P