Web-based MMORPG's -- Worthy or Waste of Time?

Welcome back to the Netcast arena. Tonight's entry brings us to MMORPG's on the web. Are they worth it or just plain wastes of time?

The MMORPG we're talking about is called SecondLife. Two of our reps who actually tried out this MMORPG sims-like environment, tested all technical and social aspects of this service. If you think this is like your favorite social-networking service like MySpace or FaceBook, or your favorite chat client like AIM, Yahoo, or MSN, think again! It's not!

SecondLife comes in two flavors: FREE and PREMIUM. Both enable shared access amongst other users of the service. The only difference is that FREE membership is limited to chatting, creating/modifying your character (otherwise known as an avatar), and basic navigation through the world. PREMIUM users do all that, except they are able to buy land, as well as buy anything through the use of Linden dollars. SecondLife is pretty much useless unless you shell out your hard-earned money to the SecondLife team, Linden Labs.

On a technical standpoint, Cable and Verizon FIOS were used in our tests, SecondLife has a terrible horrific UI which constantly refreshes itself, doesn't remember where you were which causes major lags in "loading" the terrain. SecondLife updates its client frequently, however, nothing gets fixed. Still the same lag and same low performance. Yes, we know that SecondLife is operated by a small team, but when you launch a world-wide service, it is imperative that you launch it correctly and have regional servers throughout the world to ease the latency issues. SecondLife is a poorly written Win32 application which connects to poorly connected servers with extremely high latency and bad response times.

On a social standpoint, SecondLife is way under par. Our reps, who are extremely friendly and respectful on the Internet, constantly have been harrassed, insulted, and even lagged out of particular areas of the SecondLife map. The report abuse system does nothing to fix problems in these cases as they state.

SecondLifie Rating: * (0.10/100%) rating. "very poor"

    Performance issues: * (0.05/100%) "Not acceptable for Win32 client"
    Social issues: * (0.02/100%) "Not acceptable for all ages"
    Concept idea: * (0.03/100%) "Pathetic attempt to a Sims Clone"