Blue Mars

If you have spent some time in second life you are familiar with the phrase"Your world,Your Imagination "The mantra for being a resident of second life and the reason Linden Labs is praying and hoping that you will at least pay 9.95 a month at min to play not counting if you are shopping freak or land owner. In the past 6 months within Second Life I have travelled all of the grid to witness some amazing things in regards to the creative aspect of sim designs and various items within.
Taken part in events that have real life social causes connected to them, ie( Relay for Life) Autism awareness to name a few. For the people have that have worked hard on the social causes of what they believe in personally I salute you for making a difference.
During my travels I have seen wonderful things such as panel discussions on various topics issues that are real world and others that a concern to the residents of second life, had the pleasure of coming across comedy shows and to my surprise the comics where actually funny.
On the other side of the coin I have seen things within second life that make you want to pause for second and ask yourself "What the *uck" just happened but I digress.
For me I have had the pleasure of meeting some truly wonderful people with each one with his or her gift that they can make a difference within the grid.
I have meet some really shitty people also, yet this is to expected just like within the grid of the other game as we know as real life. Each of us are residents of Second Life for his or own on reason some are creative types, some are great musicians and some comedians and a host of other things that they also bring to the grid. Some view second life as game, some view as a modern day chat room with graphics and a shot at pixel sex. Others are gifted and they make a difference within the fine arts community of second life.

Hands down Second Life is good platform it has its' plus and minuses depending who you speak with and the chosen topic to talk about. As a resident you get use to the myriad of tech problems that residents of second life deal with on a daily basis.. Its missing,asset server problems, sim rolling restarts.

Yet lets not forget the dark side of second life not talking about sex either but that will be addressed later on. You might encounter just totally nasty people because they chose to act in that manner. And countless numbers of kids or teens playing as so called adults and folks that seem to think that second life is a career for them and to that those select few, I wish to pose you a question: Does Second Life give you a 401K? (not that the markets are really worth a shit right about now" Ok soapbox is put away on that subject.

In a nutshell according to some Second Life is basically modern day" Wild West" basically anything goes and you can find it regardless of how creepy it is, how high it really floats your own personal boat or kinks if you chose to partake in that also good bad or ugly.

If you have spent anytime in virtual worlds you know that each brings a certain flair to the table that may work for you or not there are good features and bad with each one.. Picture a virtual world that is a pure 3d setting well folks there is a new kid on the block its called Blue Mars. First of all Blue Mars is currently in closed Beta... Its projected to green light in Jan 2010. After spending time in Blue Mars first of all the visual quality is unmatched in anything I have seen in any virtual world; beyond words the sounds, the lights, the shadows from the avis.. With closed beta running for a week on Blue Mars has a great potential to be wonderful.. on various levels.

Yet a world that is based on content true 3d.... the chance of being part of something that is great and being there from the beginning the shot at making a difference within platform.
First up, it is not going to be a “Second life killer” for the simple reason of: some people really do like the Wild West Sandbox. Some like creating for the sake of creating without learning some seriously intensive and rather daunting 3d programs. Some like the feeling you get finding something completely awesome that you never thought possible. We like the freedom it gives us to do pretty much anything if you dare to get it a run at it.

Blue Mars is not Second Life. It’s something different. More advanced. No matter what Linden Labs tries to force SL to be, it is and will forever be “your world, your imagination.” It’s a sandbox. You can make it into anything you want. However, there are some serious limitations that LL will never be able to fix like lots of people in one spot, Whereas BM sits more in the middle of being able to create whatever you want to and a perfect ideal world imagined by a group of professional 3d artists (ie video games). Sort of more like: people who can afford a city’s world you can play in, can bounce around to different worlds and also buy some stuff.

BM is for those of us who’d rather have more power to create things without having to overcompensate for SL’s quirks (the lot of daily problems in world). It’s for indie video game developers to make a game people don’t have to find and dl off of Steam. Or for fully immersed Role Play communities to have full control over their piece of the world, including the type of content you can bring in.

Granted they are touching on things that SL has tried to be or we’ve tried to make it, but many of those things SL just doesn’t do very well. However, the structure of BM and how it works makes it more viable for those types of things. Like crowds, RPG Sims, and much more detailed worlds.

Yet some folks will get bored with Blue Mars because there isnt really anything to do but walk around and look and you may come across the actual live person in world to chat and exchange ideas and opinions about Blue Mars.
Others may log out of Blue Mars and bitch its empty and nothing to do...Its not trying to be like second life at all..

By Taryn Gartner

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