[AJ007]

I think its pertinent to note that the American successor to Habitat still exists and is live, some 17 years later. (vzones.com) They spun off from compuserve, went public as Avaterra, got delisted, and now are owned by some other company.

If you design your business right, the online life cycle can be very long. Unfortunately the current nature of startups, venture capital, and exits encourage go big or go broke instead of longevity.

From what I've seen, most avatar based passive online worlds have not done very well. Indeed, I think the MMORPG has effectively filled the slots where we imagined a Snow Crash-esque virtual world.

[guiambros]

Agree. To me the problem with most/all online worlds is exactly that they are all passive: Worlds Chat, The Palace, Second Life, now Glitch. They all stayed in their weird limbo between MMORPG and objective-less platform game. Some better than others, but all share the same (lack of) purpose.

Sadly, we still far from a true Snow Crash experience. A decade ago Second Life was our best bet, but they simply ignored all the Lessons from Habitat. Not dead, but not much different than vzones.

I guess it'll take a several more years for someone to put money and years of hard work to try their chances on something like this again.