Brenda Archer

Today I came across a sad story about a virtual world closure and I hope something can be done to save the community itself. I heard about it at Raph Kostner's blog at Raph's Website » Disney decides to close VMK .

Like SL, they have a lot of chronically ill and disabled people using the world to develop friendships and support. Unlike SL, they are mostly children and not permitted to contact each other outside of the world. But if their parents were allowed to stand in for them and contact each other, or if they could get migrated to a different world, their community could survive.

BEARintheMorning

I'm stumped for ideas on how to help other than pointing them to SL's teen grid but I'm sure that idea has already come up.

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Aimee Weber

Sad news. Thanks for sharing that, Brenda.

Cristiano

This is really sad - I hope the attention will cause Disney to rethink the move, or find some way to accommodate them. The best part of any virtual world is the friends you make. The comment from the 11 year old was heartbreaking.

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* slu stuff *

Brenda Archer

Some of them are younger than that... but an open sim wouldn't have that restriction... if only Disney would be willing to share/migrate the friendship list database.

BEARintheMorning

Do we really need any more reasons to dislike Disney Corp.?

Tati

That story about the SWG mom in the comments section was heart-breaking.

I knew a few people like that in SL too, but the good thing is that they're still around and we occasionally update each other about what's going on in our lives, Real and second.

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Kit Lacy

This story brings up one of my fears about getting into 2nd life. I've only been here three weeks and it seems so much a part of my life.

And while I've suffered in terms of lost sleep, some lost money (upgraded purely for 2nd life) I feel that expressing this shard of my personality is actually helping me in the real world.

I feel more confident, more...me.

If LL were to shut SL tomorrow it shouldn't make much of a difference to me. But it would.

All those new friendships rescattered and thrown to the virtual winds.

It must be 1000 times worse to be a kid and ill and lose a world.

Envoy Costagravas

I'm about at the 1.3 year mark in SL. After just a short time, I had formed a few very good connections, the kind I didn't want to lose. But I also valued both my privacy and theirs.

I set up a free email account based on my AV name, and shared it with them. This gave us a buffer to communicate off-world (and off-forum) in case of ripples in the net, or worse. The final step has been with just a very, very small number who have become close enough friends that we have shared our actual email and RL identities.

Now, if SL goes away, or if SLU or other forums go away (it happens!), I still can reach out to these fine people in a couple different ways.

Pixels, scripts, sims, all of the wonder of SL... it can evaporate overnight, but the true gold of the environment is the people you meet and form bonds with. THAT is the thing I choose to preserve. The rest is ephemeral.

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Beebo Brink

My fears for losing my 2nd life due to LL's incompetence began to ease with the appearance of other virtual grids. They may still be beta, but they work well enough for me to log on and see friends. In time, they will (hopefully) develop into full-fledged platforms, then we can all worry about the inevitable diaspora.

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Kristian

The bit about the child is really heartbreaking, but this was a beta product and Disney has the right to discontinue it. What is really telling is that it was able to touch even one life like this. It says a lot about the power of Virtual Worlds leveling the playing field at all age brackets, making us all equal at least for a little while.

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Ewan Took

That's a really tragic story. Disney should have been very upfront about this only being available for limited time. Disney should do it officially, but since they won't maybe someone else will try and organise a message board or something that players can tell each other where they've moved to.

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Brenda Archer

More info.

A site has been organized to ask that VMK be kept open. The press release link goes to an article linking to a petition that you can sign. Currently there are 9035 signatures.

Virtual Worlds News: Disney's Virtual Magic Kingdom to Close Doors