Your modern MUSH has gone away from the open-ended Second Life show-up-as-whatever and build-whatever sort of thing and become more hybridized with more MUDdish elements: world-building is generally confined to a certain “theme”, and administrative powers are used to restrict modification-access to certain elements such as your hit points to regulate universal behavior, and “unthematic” elements are yanked out.

The thing that will really take off is when SL meets NWN2 – a real world-builder. Limiting player sizes to somewhere around Dunbar’s number keeps the hardware costs and the administrative overhead down to an attainable level; the major MUSHes of today do this sort of thing quite well. You also don’t need a sort of giant SL-ubercontinent to help people find their way to your little sub-world; really, the web as a whole does it much better and SL’s phonebooky implementation arguably sucks anyway.

Except that in this case the critics are not, y’know, actually playing the game. ”

That’s what all the MMOs say.

Scott, Damion and Raph’s sites doesn’t exist to say “ooh, neat, cool thing here;” their usual purpose is to identify problems and open up discussion about them. Doesn’t mean they never do that, it’s just not the usual purpose.

So no, with those two things in mind, I don’t think sexsexfurrysexanthrosexstrippersex discussion is unreasonable. You should be thankful, because as someone who appears to value good things in SL, realize that it’s only negative attention on all these barriers from people like Raph, Damion and Scott that are going to eventually force LL to fix the problems or croak.

I vote croak.

Part of the problem I have with SL is that it tends to splash. A lot. But that’s what critics are pointing out. That’s what critics are for.

And if you can’t find fun in 10 hours without someone holding your hand, then that’s worth pointing out to the world.

Hyperbole FTW. I don’t think anyone is asking for perfection. However, being able to understand the interface and finding the non-smut / non-crap in under 10 hours isn’t striving for perfection, it’s even way below the bare minimum expectation visitor lambda will have. 1 hour sounds about right.

Fortunately, what the whole media-love-and-backlash circus has made very obvious is getting SL’s trusted users come out and speak up. Reading them is enough of an education that this very user lambda here now knows for sure he won’t ever have to try the thing out. It’s not about the reputedly arcane user interface or the apparent heaps of smut or crap. It’s about that, no offense meants, I doubt I have enough values in common with SL’s advocates to stay in a virtual environment with them for any length of time.

Yeah, ten hours isn’t playing at all. And it might be useful to note that most critics CAN’T play, which is part of their criticism. I’ve had a SL account since early 2005 and I still mostly only see porn and whatnot in the search. Yes, there’s good content, but there’s also a ton of shit content. If people are only finding the shit, that’s not really their fault.

Except that in this case the critics are not, y’know, actually playing the game.

yeah you must be right. If it isn’t perfect then just forget it. It must not be worth any further exploration.