Archive for January, 2004

First Impressions

Click me with your clicking stick for our first report from FFXI

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Just a Hop Skip and a Jump

Hi, not many of you will even recognize me, but I along with Prof. Ludlow started this blog. We had an idea that it would be pretty neat to be on the front lines of VR evolution, chronicling the social growths and trends, examining the linchpin personalities that spark VR wide debate. It can certainly [...]

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Evangeline Mocks EA: You Can’t Stop my anti-n00b “Terror Network”

As reported in the Alphaville Herald, Maxis has recently moved against accounts associated with the newbie scamming Free Money for Newbies property, although predictably they have moved in a half-hearted and impotent way. They terminated some of the accounts associated with Evangeline, but not all (they left his Evangeline Merrill account), and two other accounts [...]

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Op Ed: Did EA Mislead the Electronic Software Rating Board?

by J A question that has been much discussed in the Alphaville Herald in recent weeks is how to deal with minors in the dynamic context of The Sims Online. More specifically, how on earth did TSO get a rating of “T” for teen (suitable for children aged 13) despite all the adult content, ranging [...]

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Evangeline Terminated: Maxis Moves Against Other Griefers at Free Money for Newbies

By Deep Max In a move that residents of Alphaville have been pleading for for several weeks, Maxis has moved against several accounts associated with The Free Money For Newbies property. Most of the terminated accounts will be familiar to the readers of the Alphaville Herald. Among the accounts terminated or suspended are two of [...]

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JC Soprano: Now the City is Mine!

JC Soprano speaks in detail about his mafia family operations, including his “executive games” in which minimum wager per bet is 100K simoleans and in which he has taken over 2 million simoleans in bets from a player (around $100 US in today’s market). He claims that his advertised cyber-brothels were just for show, and [...]

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Alphaville braces for mafia wars.

With the Sims Shadow Government currently non-operational in Alphaville, there is growing concern that sim “mafias” – essentially griefers that roleplay as Mafiosi — from other cities will come in to fill the power vacuum. Mafia presence in Alphaville is currently fairly limited (examples include JC Soprano’s family, the Sclafani family and a handful of [...]

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Adults Preying on Children for Cybersex in TSO? Stratics Board Discussion Heats Up

by The Phantom With a strongly worded and impassioned initial post, eyeseenoone has opened a topic on the stratics board entitled SENSITIVE AND SHAMEFUL which raises the uncomfortable yet pressing issue of adults engaging in cybersex with children in TSO. In the opening post, eyeseenoone offers a long thoughtful and tightly argued post on the [...]

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Interview with former SSG General, -Storm

In this Interview, -Storm discusses his departure from Calvin’s Creek because of mafia harassment of his #1 skill house, his arrival in Alphaville, and his eventual joining of the Sims Shadow Government (SSG) in April. He talks about his role in fighting the Alphaville mafias and the role of diplomacy in persuading some mafias to [...]

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Essay: Whoring in Alphaville

by The Pat Caliphia once wrote a paper called ‘Whoring in Utopia’, suggesting that a great number of virtues could be accrued for both john and prostitute if whoring were to become an acceptable practice. Caliphia reckoned that the openness in sexuality would result in net benefit; the whores would be safer and those in [...]

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