August 18th, 2002
Adobe Atmosphere
#228
On scrapping the standalone
(The original message can be found at AtmoWorlds.)
According to a thread at the Atmosphere User-to-User Forum, mrk plans to scrap the standalone Player and HomeWorld. Rolu says that this move is to turn Atmosphere into “a platform for web content,” probably like Macromedia Flash is now. I don’t think I like this. I like the way Atmo is set up today, like a small, VR Internet. I like the sense of community that comes from being able to meet the same people regularly, at the same place, without having to find them using a stats page or a world directory to find them. If they’re desperate to minimize the importance of a HomeWorld, why doesn’t Adobe make HomeWorld like the really old Adobe HomeWorld 2001 AD? And will Adobe scrap the other Atmospherians worlds, like Community or Atmo Town Square?
[Update] Well, Rolu says, “None of the worlds will be removed; the homeworld will just not be used as single starting point anymore.” I guess that makes sense; I only ever went to HomeWorld because 1.) it was the default homeworld (with the lowercase letters), and 2.) the crowds were there. (I guess that’ll change.)