Will Second Life turn into an endless series of closed, gated communities, divided up by niche or interest or clan or warring principality? Will the hordes of disenchanted Second Lifers fleeing to Ansheland or Nexusland to escape the Grief of the Grid wind up sequestered behind barriers of group-only bans, admit-only-these-avatars, or myriad other devices to Keep Out Undesirables? Remember how you couldn't get a TP to avalon for love nor money?
Now that I've seen an actual Gate in the Gate Community of Orion (I'm amazed I didn't disintegrate upon impact), I can see that the Grid is up for grabs...
...the old grid, yes, the fabled idyllic Lindenor, that One Grid, One Community notion is gone, circling the drain as we speak, with the giant sucking sound of private island sims drawing out people into their niches, their themed communities, their language-specific sims, their Gorean domains, their principalities, their feted zones, etc. etc.
What will be on the grid? Griefers, grabbers, and grotesqueries?
I'm trying to study this now.
I think there will probably be a few high-end expenso communities with nice homes where people "really, really own" and where they will try to be tonier than their old confreres who moved to the burbs in the Ansheland or GIGASland...and say "but I can terraform any time I want and sell off that extra 512 I don't need if I want nyah nyah" or whatever....LOL
All these new people coming in will be oblivious...then after awhile they realize they have to plot and scheme to sleep with the right people to get into the right gated communities where the cool people are ROFL.
Is that how it will be? Or will it be so chaotic still, so unplanned, that it will remain free?
Will the people in the sterile communities start to peck each other to death?
"Yes," says one denizen. "A boy can dream, can't he?"
