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"
Its already been 13 days since the Zune was released to the public and already it has been hacked. This hack enables the Zune to become like a standard USB mass storage device. What does this tell you? No matter how many times a protection scheme goes in place, there's always a hacker there to break it. But you cannot blame Microsoft, they just gave in to the RIAA. We all know Microsoft has the money and power to basically tell the RIAA to drop dead. If they ever did, they would gain the respect they deserve. This goes for Apple too.
From the Tech Netcasts group, we wish you a very special Thanksgiving holiday. Have fun and enjoy being with family and friends. Enjoy all the technological gadgets that we have for the 21st century (man, what a time!). If you have bought the Zune, PS3, XBOX360, or Wii, have fun with them on this (for most folks) four day weekend.
Images (from left to right): Microsoft's Zune[Black], XBOX360, Nintendo's Wii, Sony's PS3 To start as the first newest tech news, this brings me to Sony's PS3 and Microsoft's Zune (portable media player). The PS3 came out this week and the Zune came out last week (Nov 14, 2006). What makes the PS3 such a big story is that Sony purposely makes this system seem to be worth more than gold by releasing far too little for a large demand. That wasn't so responsible of Sony (but hey, look at their batteries blowing up in people's laptops). It is in this reporter's opinion that you just wait for the PS3. Its not even worth the rush. Some major problems with the initial release of the PS3 are 1) you have to do about an hour's worth of upgrading to finally play games, 2) the controller no longer has a rumble feature!!! 3) most of the people waiting in line to buy it were NOT gaming enthusiasts, but rather to resell the system for double or triple the costs. Now that is just not right!!
Do yourself a favor and buy an XBOX 360 or Nintendo Wii. You don't even have to wait in line. Microsoft and Nintendo were at least responsible enough in making more systems available in stores.
Now on to the Zune: This is an excellent piece of hardware. Huge color screen, video capabilities, as well as audio and radio functionalities. The only thing wrong is the DRM!! Say you wanted to save a couple of netcasts, for example TWiT or Security Now, so you can listen to them on the road. So you pop in your Zune to your computer and transfer it over. Now the Zune will add its own copy-protection onto those mp3's you put on it. Clearly this is in violation of TWiT's licensing. Netcasts must NOT be copy-protected as they are freely available for the general public. I sure hope Microsoft really removes this DRM from the Zune in its next firmware update. Because of this DRM, Microsoft will not get as many sales as it can if it didn't have it. (Tip to Microsoft: Remove DRM if you want to be the next iPod Killer.)
