Who’s on Second?

Episode Seven - The Undead Librarian - Floria Hand

| January 2, 2007

Show Notes:

This time out, a 3D world smackdown between Second Life and World of Warcraft. Abbi Ball is a librarian with three lives, her real life one in Palo Alto, California, her role as as reference guide on Info Island and her most unusual one, as an Level 60 undead priest in World of Warcraft. Massively multiplayer online games, the generic name for 3D spaces like Second Life, neither began nor will end with the Linden Labs creation. There are nearly two dozen major MMOGs available today, most of them swords, scorcery and fantasy based. In the MMOG space, World of Warcraft is the undefeated champion, with about 60 per cent marketshare. And Second Life's recent, and problematic peak concurrent user level of 20,000 pales in comparison to World of Warcraft's 660,000 concurrent user numbers. But, despite their differences in popularity and audience, both Second Life and World of Warcraft have roots in text-only games that go back as far as the mainframes of the 1960s. Abbi's an expert on 3D worlds and their history. I met her, as Floria Hand in Second Life, on Info Island a short while ago and we got to comparing her adventures in World of Warcraft with her time spent in Second Life. I thought our chat deserved a podcast episode. You can visit Abbi's 3D world website at: http://www.web3d.net/. Contact me at wmacphail@gmail.com My company website is http://w8nc.com