When word of the Second Life auction exploit/scam first surfaced at the end of April (most recently reported over on Clickable Culture), the first thing I did was log into “The Land Store” portion of the Linden Lab website. I’d not visited since it was first announced and what struck me most wasn’t the exploit, it was what I saw on the sim reservation map (image above). I didn’t have to check who was perhaps building their own continent near the large “all your sim are belong to me” red area below the “main grid” (the large red area in the center) – I was relatively certain it was well-known virtual world land baron Anshe Chung.

A couple of days ago I went to see if the sub-continent might be part of Anshe’s growing virtual empire. Sure enough, the familiar land sale primboards littered the virtual landscape. I even used a teleporter on the land which took me to a central real estate office with a well-organized, theme-sim teleport system. Not to say the new block will necessarily tie into the new continent, but the placement seems strategic.

Now why is this of interest? Well, after the Metaverse Roadmap summit this past weekend the buzz on Croquet, the open source “post-browser” virtual interface, has been astounding. I’ve blogged about it frequently, but apparently it’s gone mostly unnoticed by a lot of people that blog about videogames and virtual spaces. And of course now everyone is out downloading the software thinking they’ll create their own version of Second Life. What they appear to be forgetting is that creating a virtual world is more than just hardware and software; there are people involved and some of them aren’t very nice.

So this morning, while browsing the Second Life forum I caught that someone else noticed that Anshe was reserving sims left and right. Here’s my comment:

I noticed that as well. Has me thinking AC intends to create a separate virtual world. After all, even if people use open source systems like Croquet, it’s glaringly apparent that hosting it and defending it against griefers is a significant issue. Griefers apparently don’t have the sense to see that their actions largely reinforce a hierarchical structure and send independents into the arms of corporations capable of ensuring some level of security (even if it’s only a perception).

It might be an interesting thread to follow (Link). I suspect others share my thoughts. I don’t doubt Linden Lab is thinking the same thing. From their “reservation” FAQ:

So, how do we allow people to order islands or build continents at their own pace, without Linden standing in the way and how do we allow people to choose where *they* want to build these continents? The Land Store was conceived to address these needs.

In the end, attacks on Second Life will probably help the company. They may even spawn the first independent, hosted virtual world. Reservation required.