Social Gathering Towns (Area Servers)

This has been the most popular hobbyist built multi-user community. It is a geographic area with a collection of social gathering buildings, like dance halls, car races, and homes. Community built server extensions, aka mods, can give animation and options. There can be traffic on the streets, avatars waking around, and music played. People that are logged on can use their avatars to play games, dance, or just chat with friends' avatars. The seasons can change the look of the town, while holidays can make signs and flags appear for short periods of time.

Two social events that people attend with avatars are dances and performances. People can set up locations in town that can hold performances. The performance could be a band, a singer, a comedian, or something else. Performers get instant feedback from their audience, and it is a great way to promote albums. It could be a single instance or multiple instances. Most of the time the performance is live.

People in life gather for common themes and causes. Such a group can start and maintain a social gathering VR server, patrolled and moderated by its community while helping each other while introducing the group to others. A heart healthy group can make a VR town that promotes a good diet and healthy activities. As the group learns of what is effective, they can modify the town.

A group that has it's own server can let other groups take over responsibility for part of it for mutual interest and support. A catering company can have parties in a town's park with the agreement that the park be maintained by the catering company. A trolley can be running through town being operated by a trolley enthusiast club.

Even though Second Life did not start with cars, they have quickly evolved into common items. A new system can be roads and cars from the start. People can take a car and drive, or fly, between towns. Multiple people can ride in the cars, making for group travel. There can be car races, with car clubs and tournaments. Computer controlled cars can follow the roads to simulate a living town.

People would spend and make money with transactions of virtual goods and services. Back in the mid 90s in Cybertown people would earn or purchase, points and use them to purchase virtual items. There are stores where people can buy stuff, mostly things to populate their virtual homes. They could go to the open market where people put items on tables for sale, or sell items out of their back packs. Second Life has taken this to a new level, except that in SL you can't click on an avatar to see if they have items for sale in their backpack. People will open stores as long as they will get paid for their merchandise.

As soon as VR homes became possible in persistent online games they were a big hit. The more social a multi-player game is the more likely they will have private homes for their players. Having VR homes provides several challenges and possibilities. Having a house or apartment in a VR town has value and people are willing to pay for that. This provides more 'foot traffic' and gives people that contribute more reason to contribute more. A private home in can be where somebody gathers with yo's friends. Some challenges would be high expectation of too many services, people that don't act correctly for the theme, and miss-directed criticism.

Who would build and why:

People have proven to want to immerse themselves in online global communities. The gather to meet new friends, play games, solve life problems, share culture, or make money.

Possible Mods:

Instance Manager