Vengeance

Saw an ad for this today... seems pretty bizarre. Second Life (http://www.secondlife.com) appears to be like a SimCity kind of deal that allows you to build a variety of in-game constructs like malls, housing, whatever.

The weird part is they charge monthly fees based on how much land you want to rent -- at the top end, the islands they sell for $1000 up front and $195 a month. Who the hell is playing this game, the Hilton sisters?

They also have some weird cash-out deal where you can turn your in-game dollars into actualy money, and vice versa. Taking the middle man out of the equation... just buy as much plat as you want!

The whole idea seems really bizarre to me. I wonder what the people playing that game are like?

I could be wrong, but isn't this a form of online gambling which would make it illegal?

I guess you could make that case... but just as much as you could with Mythic or Sony for EQ. You could argue that killing a monster for a random drop is like rolling the dice, and after 1000 pulls of the level you get an item that you sell on ebay for real dollars.

They have this monetary exchange set up through a third party, but they have a "Second Life" exchange with a ticker symbol and full block trading history for you to review... the weird part is this third party has in-game ATM's you can go to, paypal them some green and you can withdraw game dollars from the bank.

Saw this some time last year. I saw some photo albums of players who had taken screenshots of their characters in sexy poses and different clothes. Weird.