Here are a few more online worlds that people use for social purposes.

Second Life is about 15 years old, and I've been there about 10. There's a bit of a learning curve to get started, but it runs on both Mac and PC, and can be used for free. You can also have a paid account that lets you own* land and gives a few other benefits, but it's usable without that. It has proximity chat by text or by voice, friend lists, private messages, and if you have your own* land you can build your own* house, or anything else. It's a single world: here is the world map. Most of the content in Second Life is created by the members. Anyone can create a special interest group, with its own group chat and group announcements. It does not support VR headsets, and I doubt if that is on the roadmap. As with all these virtual worlds, it gets laggy when too many avatars are in one place, but it can handle a gathering of 40 easily.

People almost invariably do not use their real names there or make avatars that resemble themselves. As the name suggests, it's positioned as being a second life, rather than, like Facebook, just another part of one's everyday life. But you can use it as you wish. People do sometimes share real life information and meet up in meatspace.

[*] "Own" in the context of MMOs means, of course, "having a licence to use certain game assets in certain ways in accordance with the terms of service of the platform." Everyone knows this; a newbie pointing it out as if it was a piercing insight will be met with eye-rolling.

Sansar was created by the same company that makes Second Life, but it was recently hived off to another company. Unlike Second Life, it's not a unified single world. There is no world map, only a directory. Each user can create their own region and they don't join up, but you can visit anyone else's. It runs only on PC. It supports VR (Rift and Vive only) but does not require it. It may require a beefier graphics card than Second Life, even without VR. I'm in Sansar, but I haven't been very active there, so I can't say much about it beyond the technical aspects I described. Accounts are free. A paid account lets you create more worlds.

I recently came across Virbela, which is directed towards business uses. I've only made a free account there and explored a demo region. There is a large real estate company that conducts all its internal meetings there, and which I think provided the original funding to create Virbela to use for itself, but it's open to everyone either for free, or by paying for more features. It's suited more for meetings than informal social activity. Avatars are cartoony humans with only a few variations of appearance to choose from.

There is also ActiveWorlds. This has been around since 1995, and I remember having an account there back in the late 90s. But I haven't been there since and I don't know how active it is, or really, how it manages to keep going at all. It's the same sort of thing as Second Life, a single large world in which you can own a plot of land and mix with the other residents. But I don't know how (or whether) it's developed in the last 20 years.

ideepakmathur

ideepakmathur

ideepakmathur

ideepakmathur