(In CrimeCraft) is there any sort of safe zones or does it facilitate role playing for your own story lines at all?
Yeah the lobby is like 5-10 whole cities with gang hideouts, all kinds of craft shops and trainers, and rapid transit between.
There is also an "immigration/customs" entry tutorial where you learn the ropes, choose a profession, earn some starter cash and play a graduated series of quests against NPCs that hone your game skills.
Oh yeah: and daily tournaments at several levels for prizes and prestige. And there is a good general/specialized text chat through which you can trade, form alliances for tourneys and missions, get instant help with game mechanics and have uncensored conversations worldwide. Also there's a system for voice/mike linkup, which makes for super-efficient group combat, but that didn't interest me, so I'm unsure of the particulars. Interestingly, male and female characters get treated as such, whatever that individually means, with no interest whatsoever in the player's xx/xy chromosome layout. Conversely, of course, the whole erotic sphere is sublimated to combat.
The character-creation options, from which you can run I think three separate individuals, and a lot of sub-specialties, seems pretty elaborate to me, but then it offers my kind of "comic book" graphics. Individual story lines might be hard to develop, as the emphasis is on combat virtuosity, and the game is about that and trading items that lend to it -- which incidentally leads to close friendships and raging enmities (e.g., lots of duels: nobody can emptily shoot their mouth off for long). I'm not that fast or aggressive, and I only just learned to touch-type but I still made loads of game money and enjoyed status as a craftsperson and organizer. You might be able to locate a gang or group who are into that. But Second Life, it ain't...
A look at the
forums reveals a lot about game sociology.
