Okay, does anyone have -any- experience with this game? I heard about it a while back, but brushed it off with a shrug. But after hearing about it from an friend, I became more interested.

Is it free? What does one do in it? Would it be a fun social experiment to try the game out?

Never tried it myself. I assume it's more of a 3D chatroom than some multiplayer game like World of Warcraft.

Some might say it has a reputation of creepy users, but I doubt it's any different from the Internet in general. Just stick with friends like you would with a multiplayer game and don't actively seek out weird shit just to complain about it later.

My friend was really addicted to it. IT's like the sims online, but you do have to pay money for "premium content" (whatever that is), and you can even design and sell objects by yourself.

I don't know why people ever played this game.

Wasn't this a huge thing five years ago. Like REALLY huge? Never understood the concept, but it was all over the "mainstream media" back then.

I didn't realise it still existed. There was a massive buzz about it around 5 years ago, then people exploited it to be what some referred to as "The world of flying penises", as they allowed so much freedom that some people created phallic shaped billboards and balloons etc.

If they're trying again, let us know what it's become. Ultimately I believe it was part of the big Virtual World bubble that blew a while ago. People were paying stupid money for land there, something like $5m for an island. If you think about it, the actual cost of creating that was about $5.

If I remember correctly players could also win money by selling personnalized created items..

Played it a long time ago, but it's not really a game, more like a paralel(How the fuck do you spell this?) 3D existence, where you can do anything you want. I suggest you give it a shot as it's free and all and can be an interesting experience.

I think mainstream media overreacted. It never was really that popular... Game like that is a great item for "sociology studies", i.e. studies that ignore actual trends and cherry pick the games that fit their thesis.

Parallel I think xD ?

Damn, now I'm sad I missed it ....

You walk around. You talk to people. You buy stuff. Then you get bored and never play it again.

Like... The Sims?

Just scroll down to the second part:
http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-7-biggest-dick-moves-in-history-online-gaming_p2/

Second Life is kind of the ultimate MMO Sandbox. Or rather the only one totally true to it. Its a really big mix of everything. It can in no way be compared to WoW. WoW is a game, SL is uh... an eviroment. A big visual chatroom with doors to all kind of themes (vampire porn; fantasy porn; SciFi porn and even some non porn related) connected to a real life economy. Stuff you want ot buy in game costs an ingame currency with you need to buy with € or $ or whatever.

But you can also create stuff you can sell/rent/whatever for this ingame currency and change it back to real money. A few ppl got quite rich that way. But I think this ship has sailed years ago.

Has it already been 5 years? Dang. I remember, in an episode of The Office (American version), the character Dwight had recently broken up with someone, and was so depressed he got "WoW"-ishly involved with the game to the point where his avatar programmed a whole other Second Life game within second life, and his avatar was playing as another avatar...

Well, you had to be there...