Notes from Sweden

Second Life may be passé, Star Wars Galaxies may have deleted itself, but virtual worlds flourish, not least those from Scandinavia. From “The Guardian”:

…Any moment now Habbo Hotel, a space for teenagers, will overtake the all-conquering World of Warcraft by having 10 million active users a month. It actually has 100 million registered users, bigger than most countries, but the monthly total is a better indicator of activity. These are the two biggest virtual games. The third is RuneScape.com, which has grown from nowhere a few years ago to more than 6 million active players, of which 1 million are paying subscribers. At the weekend there were 138,000 players all on at once (well over twice Second Life’s concurrent users). Interestingly, all three companies are “European”. RuneScape is British, based in Cambridge; Habbo Hotel is Finnish and World of Warcraft, though a US game, is owned by the French group Vivendi. If the virtual revolution is all it is cracked up to be, will Europe breed the likes of Yahoo, eBay and Amazon? It hasn’t made a bad start.

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There is more to come. Entropia Universe of Sweden has 700,000 players, including entrepreneurs making small fortunes, even though its complex rules are a turn-off for some. Entropia is building the first stage of the awesome Beijing Recreation District which alone will be capable of hosting more than 15m avatars, making it the biggest virtual world on the planet. This is the first stage of a huge Chinese plan to dominate virtual worlds in the way that they have taken over manufacturing…

Virtual worlds take over the online world | Technology | The Guardian.