The future of virtual worlds?

Sparked off by a pub conversation with hairyears and purplecthulhu the other week.

Second Life, frequently hyped as the Precursor of the Snow Crash-style Multiverse, isn't it, despite having quite a lot of flying cars. It's sloooooow, tedious, and full of script geeks and giant flying furry penises. They hype their membership numbers, by allowing them to be reported as the total number of Residents - which counts everyone who's ever signed up for a name there, whether they play regularly, play once a month, played once a month ago, or never finished downloading the client. And their little alt, too. This is more or less the latest (at the time of writing) roundup of the Second Life user numbers fishy business that I know of.
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