Entropia Universe has hooked up with Global Gaming Factory X AB to use their "Smartlaunch Direct" technology. The distribution platform is used by internet cafés and gaming centers to set up pay-by-the-minute services for net usage, and Entropia is going to be the first virtual world.
I'm not really sure that Entropia's half-million strong user base warrants the need for such ubiquitous availability. The press release's claim that Entropia is "the world's most popular virtual world" is an interesting observation as well considering World of Warcraft currently has 8 million registered, paying accounts.
Still, going on the theory that people "work in Entropia" and might be really stuck for a connection one day, it might be nice to know that you can go down to an internet café and log in for a few minutes to make a vital trade or two.
Ok... that was a big stretch.
Why doesn't Entropia get the same 'it's a ponzi scam!' hype that Second Life does?
...It seems nothing other than a marketing scam, with lots of people 'making money' by being paid (or paying to). Has that guy who bought the $100K mall or the million dollar space station made any money back yet?
And what is with the internet cafe thing? Those cafes could have a copy of Second Life and World of Warcraft on each terminal, now, without special world-specific software.
bold and italic tags are no longer part of the (x)html spec. Though this site probably wont validate to standards for a number of reasons, i do beleive in keeping code as clean and compliant as possible...
strong and em tags make more semantic sense.
As for entropia, if you'd like to explore this subject and post an investigative piece here at Metaversed i'll be happy to publish it (within reason :)
The biggest problem with Entropia is that they wipe accounts after 6 months or so of inactivity.
I used to play a few years ago, logged back in a coupe of months ago and everything wiped. I searched my old email address and it appears they sent me warnings.
I didn't invest a penny, had a highly skilled Avatar with lots of good equipment.
That is a shame Andy. Still, I kinda respect their attitude there. They're not padding figures...