Comparison of SL and There.

I've been spending sometime in There and Second Life. Both are popular virtual worlds and the regular outsider would think that all virtual worlds are alike. And the people who are interested in virtual life would wonder which is a better world. I've come to the conclusion that there is no better world, but these two places are far from being alike.

How can they be different, but neither is better than the other? Well, its because its a matter of personal preference. Much like in real life, we face personal preferences that lead us from either having a zune or an ipod. It isn't that one player is better than the other, its that some people like one method of attaining music versus the other.

That being said, bring on the comparison! The difference between There and SL is like Todd Oldman furniture vs. Ikea furniture. There is a full completed package of a virtual world. SL is an incomplete buildable world.

SL is not for the faint of heart. You absolutely need to spend time in orientation island because its difficult to know what you can do in SL without it. SL also features a completely customizable avatar from the begining. Suprisingly, customizing plays a very big part in SL. Most of the time spent in SL was re-doing my avatar and creating new things for my avatar. Even though socializing is apart of SL, I found myself going back to customizing things.

On the other spectrum, in There your avatar is customizable, but not as much as in SL. Much of the time spent in There is exploring the world. Unlike SL where everyone can make their own (unfortunetly a lot of the stuff they make looks like crap), There is made mostly of pre-fabricated objects. But I love when I go to the map, pick a spot and search for stuff. I found a graveyard and hoverboard. Unfortunetly, since its so open of a world, I haven't been spending enough time trying to customize my avatar. I've pretty much given up on that.


Friends what is a virtual life without friends? In There, its pretty hard to keep track of where your friends are, but its still pretty fun to interact with people. I prefer the speach bubbles to SL's standard MMO-esque messenging.

SL has some really interesting elements, flying for instance. Its nice that a big strech of land can be covered in a shorter period of time. The graphics are also much cleaner in SL.

In conclusion, I think There was made much like Toontown was, to create an accessible virtual world for a the average person. Where There lacks in it's customization, it makes up with an easy to use interface and large easy to naviate world. However, this does not make There better or worse than SL. Second Life features all customizable big world, its satisfying to be able to change and build things.