While waiting in vain for my alpha testing account to be approved I read this post describing how Metaplace works. If Raph Koster and his team pull this off as well as I suspect they will I think it’s likely that Metaplace will spawn uncountable new MMOs, authored by everyone from kids to media agencies to seniors, for everything from pure fun to pure marketing to pure us-versus-them propaganda.

Like every technology that’s been democratized before this - film, video and music production, desktop publishing and graphics, animation and web development, open source software - there’s going to be flood of new content and a huge range of quality at first, and not a few “I told you so’s” about misguided efforts. But like the other technology that’s been opened to the public before, the move to user-built MMO is sure to reveal new artists and some wild rides. I can hardly wait.