Can’t believe I stumbled on this page to find an image of when I first started and went to New Look. That shows an awesome memory, thanks

Seeing Metaplace Fall reminds me of another event I’ve been involved with…

I accidentally caused the downfall of another unique idea.
This was an open market for trading virtual world currencies and auctioning off in game gold to the needy.
gamingopenmarket.com
I was the one who suggested the late GOM add runescape to its portfolio leading to someone scamming them with a paypal/runescape combo for US$5000.

My bad.
…at least I warned them Linden would betray them. It did of course.

Closed due to lack of capital/starting money to buffer the inevitable blows a business must be prepared for.

Based on my understanding of venture capitalists/business. (which is as much as worm-tongue understood -what- he was holding the candle over in LOTR).

I will give you the reasons Metaplace did not succeed…

From most significant to least:

1. Starting Capital/money + low expectations
and a realistic contract with venture capitalists guaranteeing 3 years of reasonable freedom and no pressure to turn a profit with realistic milestones to be reached.
The same money needed to make a massive full 3d conventional MMO.
Which they will make to provide income while waiting for player made content.
Complete set of tools needed is a must before open beta. (Never got out of alpha, but said it did.The Beta is a lie).

2.*Exciting for Potential Developers*
Credibility/professionalism and ‘image’ crafting. Welcoming-Page gives the impression that 3d games & diablo2/starcraft clones can be made here. (not just ponylove-rpg)
This will attract the greatest quantity and quality of developer/artist breeding stock..
I commented on the look early on, (as some did) but hearts were set on cute n’ cuddly vs *Exciting for Potential Developers*.

“Their hearts were filled with too much love, and not enough gold.
When their creditors asked meta-team to find it in their hearts to pay them….they only had love to give…
and the hopes and dreams of many decent Internetites”

3.Starting content/Monetization.
Only release beta when we have enough value to offer in exchange for ‘real’ money.
*’Habbohotel’ dating world, fully functional
with micro-payments.

*Topdown realtime 2d shooter/slasher MMO.
Every time you pk someone you win 5 cents real money from them.

*Players buy Meta$ (subscription/deposit) which can be used in any game/world, and to buy land of their own.

*RealMoneyTrade marketplace for ingame currencies, they take a 5% cut of every sale.

I had a dream myself about building a teaching platform and that announcement shattered me and my dream .. I was paying and if they had kept to attracting adults and encouraging us to spend more cash then it might of grown while kids just bring grief and extra unpaid for bandwidth usage:(

About a month ago we got word that the RMT systems had been delayed once again and several of us had decided that it was time to start bypassing the system again using PayPal and other solutions. Before we had anything put together and on the market the closure announcement was given and with that we obviously stopped developing on the platform.

I stuck around to say my good byes, kept moderating so Central wouldn’t turn into a highschool cafeteria, but ultimately it was an extremely sad and depressing two weeks.

Did I save my assets? Yeah I did thanks to another user making a tool so we could get our content off our worlds. The methods provided by MP were not acceptable to many of the long time testers with dozens of worlds and luckily this user knew enough without the locked down wiki to create the tool.

The support died the minute the announcement was given and it was very apparent that instructions were given to do as little as possible to support the testers, some that had been actively testing the system for a little over 2 years. It was disappointing, but really I don’t think it would have mattered how it was handled, we lost a unique platform that doesn’t have any replacement on the market.

Most of all Raph lost his dream of bringing user created virtual worlds to the hands of the masses.

-chooseareality
Devoted Metaplace Tester and Content Creator: Nov. 2007 to Dec. 2009

So the problem was they didnt know what they were really doing. Provide the tools to create or generate content themselves. Thats why it failed, and very inelegantly btw, on Christmas holidays, with a ridiculous short notice and absolute hermetism on the future of the service. To the extent that some users still believe that the service is just temporarily closed and to reopen soon (have a look at metaplaceveterans.com ) and asking what happened and why it failed. Cuppycake has tweeted: Someday I’d like to post a “biggest misconceptions about Metaplace” post. Many great posts on MP right now, but so much inaccurate info. 12:43 PM Dec 25th, 2009

I say talk or don’t. And maybe by the time she does, NOBODY will care about it.

A few observations about the article: surely the external moderation team you speak of would have made no difference, I dont even think theres a point to that service. Only a few of the mods in metaplace were really content creators (3 of them, if top creators though) but Im sure they were not short of people interested in being mods, and with the right profile. No doubt that would have changed nothing. And KStarfire’s world was not the only one where you could exchange coins, and I think that saying he “refused” to update his world is a bit misleading, since we all had the option on each of our worlds to get or not automatic updates. His world must have been set to not update automatically and he then realized was a good idea to keep like that. But it wasn’t like we were being forced to update and I doubt that anyone from staff pressed him to do it. He simply chose not to update, as other people didn’t either.

I didn’t notice the kiddies too much. But most of my friends were part of the initial wave or SL friends already.

This wasn’t an “in world” currency system, obviously, but worked very well for live performers and for people like me who provided a Metaplace world with special features (mine provided a Metaplace location to listen to DJs on an Internet Radio Station).

Bottom line on Metaplace .. it was too simplistic… the 3D experience and avatar realism are both necessary components for any VM at this point, and MP just didn’t have those.