(continued from yesterday)

Other Lifers turned the Linden building tools against these occupiers -- even against the many WWIIOLers who were interested in peacefully contributing to the larger community. This seems to be the case with Davada Gallant, whose impressive bunker/weapons shop/WWII memorabilia gallery was featured in the May 20th entry of Notes.

As he was building the place, he was confronted by Alexis Fairchild (see May 28-30 entries), a neighbor of his in the Stanford simulator. Though she later apologized, Alexis says at the time, "I think I referred to Davada out of anger as a certain dictator in Iraq because of building a military installation in what was obviously a civilian area." Alexis was soon joined by Catherine Omega, whose mansion and tram system (May 9th entry) was located just over the ridge from Davada's bunker.

"Catherine Omega demanded that I leave," says Gallant, "or she would show me 'the true meaning of shock and awe.' This struck me as rather corny, so I told her to bring it on."

Omega denies ever saying that -- in fact, as a Canadian anti-war activist in her real life, she says, "I think it pretty unlikely [I'd] use many Pentagon/White House media buzzwords or catch phrases in such an approving manner."

Whatever was said, both sides agree on what happened next. Even though Davada Gallant had never shot at either of them, Catherine Omega began erecting a 50 meter high wall around his bunker, to isolate it from the rest of the neighborhood.

I almost lost it there," says Davada, "but one of my friends from WWIIOL (Avondell, great guy) talked me down and told me about Jessie. I tore down my bunker and moved there."

But this and other griefing incidents led most WWIIOLers to conclude that they weren't welcome anywhere except in the Outlands, and there only on extreme sufferance. And by that time, another group was already gunning for them.

ENTER THE NOISE TANKS

This rivalry was by turns a friendly, clan-style competition, by turns, a genuine conflict fringed with real jealousy, and grudge-making. The Noise Tanks were the largest group in Second Life, but within a week or so, the number of WWIIOLers was near 130. At some point, according to a couple Noise Tanks, one of their leaders essentially called for all-out war against their size rival, in group chat.

This conflict was exacerbated on the other side by a Noise Tank who claimed to be a former Army sniper in real life, and as the battle in Iraq wound down, he'd harangue the WWIIOLers with anti-war messages. (Almost all of them supported military action there.).

"I believe [the rivalry] started when a [Noise Tank] was spewing some crap about being a sniper in the Army," says WWIIOLer Eukeyant Skidoo.

"We couldn't have cared any less about the [Noise Tanks] up to that point," he says, "but he decided we had insulted his entire group by refuting his claims at being a sniper…We have several ex-military [in our group], and a lot of us were Army brats, including myself." So when this particular Noise Tank admitted he's "never been to Benning, when the only Army sniper school is in Ft. Benning," they believe they'd pegged him for a liar.

"Did that offend you guys?" I ask Eukeyant.

"Nah, we've said worse. But lying about his military service did bring us to a boil."

I ask him if the actual war going on in the Middle East at the time caused even more offense, since (according to Skidoo) some WWIIOLers have friends and relatives stationed there now.

"Politically, perhaps," Eukeyant answers. "Had there not been any military action going on, I still would've been angry…[but] he kept repeating, 'at least I know what war is enough not to play it, toy soldier man', as well as varying other left-isms. Then he admitted he was not actually in the Army." (Eukeyant himself plans to enlist in the Army soon, since it's a "family tradition since '47.")

(next week: an arms race begins in Jessie)

(continued from yesterday)

WWIIOLERS: THE SECOND WAVE

The article in IGN attracted a second flood of WWII Online emigres into SL. By all accounts, though, this wave was far more aggressive, and much less inclined to assimilate into the community as a whole.

"I went to the welcome area one day," says James Miller (May 15th entry), and there were forty WWIIOLer's fresh from Prelude [the newcomer orientation zone] shouting 'WHICH WAY TO BUNKER??' The WWIIOLers had sent their OWN liaisons to pick up their people and transport them to Outlands to help fight off the original residents."

"When they came in," Malaer Sunchaser reflects, as he fingers his own M-4 carbine. "It was a huge arms rush. Yuniq Epoch had a gun store -- she made literally tens of thousands of dollars that first week."

The Outlands was their playground, they decided, and the game of the day was full scale, no-quarter carnage. Some locals welcomed the anarchy: "It was like we were invaded," says Lyra Muse, "it was GREAT."

But it didn't sit well with many other Lifers. Particularly those who were already homesteading in the Outlands, and would rather just be left in peace.

"Due to [a] land crisis," as Bel Muse tells it, "many people had built homes in the Outlands. So when the WWIIOLers came in with the very correct assumption that combat was OK [there], they conflicted with the existing homesteaders."

"Yeah," Lyra Muse chimes in, "those existing homesteaders had made it all into one big suburbia."

Nothing doing: WWIIOLers swooped down on the Outlands, loaded for bear; and used its longtime residents for live target practice, killing them again and again, and maybe yet again. Because lots of Lifers set their resurrection point on their home property, many Outland residents were stuck in an infinite cycle of violence, to be shot on their property then re-spawned and shot again, in perpetuity, until they logged off the game entirely, or their antagonist finally got bored with the killing.

"[A]t the time," WWIIOLer Eukeyant Skidoo says readily, "we cared for nothing but our own intentions: to 'own' the Outlands. [And] as far as we were concerned, being the most dangerous would be 'owning' [it]."

"They came into Second Life with the theory that they could take over with violence," says James Miller. "That is not what our community was about, and that is not what we will ever be about."

Some Outland natives fought back. Malaer gathered a sizable group of fellow Outlanders and confronted the WWIIOLers in the Hawthorne sim, where the newcomers were building a giant fortress. "Next to some guy's art gallery." WWIIOLer Eukeyant Skidoo notes.

Malaer's entreaty quickly backfired. "They started on a genial note," says Eukeyant, who was in the bunker at the time, "sort of 'we don't appreciate that eyesore here'. Then we told them to suck it up, or thereabouts, and they didn't like that either."

"So you guys show up," I ask Malaer, "this ten-fifteen member coalition of the willing, and try and talk with them, and they open fire and it's a huge battle?"

"Ya, pretty much," he says, " 'til [the server] crashed, over and over and over that night."

The firefight lasted the entire evening.

(tomorrow: threatening to show "the true meaning of shock and awe")

(continued from yesterday)

WWIIOLERS: THE FIRST WAVE

In the first weeks of April, a group of World War II Online players trickled into Second Life, attracted by the free-fire anarchy promised by the Outlands, and the ability to make their own WWII-era weapons and buildings. WWII Online is a complex, massively multiplayer simulation game, which makes the whole European theater its playground. The people who play it tend to be older history buffs, and experts on the weapons and tactics of the era; many of them are veterans, active-duty military, or in the words of one, "military brats". And according to a brief article in IGN, a major gamer website, these first settlers used Second Life as a kind of online CENTCOM, from where they could plan their combat strategies for their main game. (Hat tip: Hikaru Yamamoto.)

This group apparently represents "The First Wave" of WWII Online fans, who then created their own Second Life group, WWIIOLers. And for the most part, it seems, they were welcomed by SL veterans, providing as they did a fresh new element to the world. While combat is not at all uncommon in Second Life (the Lindens even host a kind of online laser tag, on occasion), the WWIIOLers' focus on historically accurate military hardware and tactics would be a unique addition to this already burgeoning community of eccentric creators and online socializers.

"Most of them are late 20s, early 30s, some in [their] 40s" says Lyra Muse, when I asked her and Bel Muse (May 12th entry) to speak on the subject. (Both the Muses are longtime citizens in SL.)

"So they are a group of players that were ideal in some ways," adds Bel. "These were the folks that lasted through initial bugs, and were able to appreciate a game that didn't rely only on FPS effects."

Meanwhile, in the world outside, the war in Iraq was reaching its apex. A day after IGN published its piece about WWII Online fans in Second Life, US armor rumbled into Firdous Square, in Baghdad. The statue of Saddam was ripped from its pedestal, and hundreds of Iraqis poured in, with shoes to pound the toppled sculpture, and kisses to welcome the American troops. But the debate surrounding the war did not end; it actually seemed to grow even more bitter between the most vehement pro- and anti- war opponents; only now, they were divided into teams of We Told You So versus This Proves Nothing.

Ironically, according to Eukeyant Skidoo, his World War II Online group originally hoped Second Life would be a respite from the politically heated, Iraq-related talk that had scorched the game's off-topic discussion board.

"It was a low, rolling boil," says Skidoo, "up until March 20th, when it got REAL quiet." (But it wasn't quiet in Baghdad: the 20th was the day of the "decapitation strike", and the start of the shooting war.)

A few days after that, they learned about Second Life, just as their own boards were lighting up with extremist anti-war posts. "Lots of crazy 'trolling' from free-trial account users," Skidoo says, "wishing death on the troops, etc." This new MMOG would be just the thing, many of them decided, to take a breather from all that.

But inside Second Life, debates like that can take on solid form. And as the war came to a close, a conflict very much related to the larger one in Iraq was about to rage to its surface.

(tomorrow: resistance to the "invasion" begins)

(continued from yesterday)

The thing is, death isn't so horrible a fate in Second Life -- when it happens, you just get transported back to the last "home" point you set. It can still be irksome, though, because it means you have to spend time and money traveling back to whatever you were doing before you got dead.

It's even more obnoxious if you're not the kind of person who is in the game to shoot or get shot at it -- and so far, at least, a lot of people in the game are decidedly not in that category. This includes the many SL players who are not "gamers", and are thus unaccustomed to shoot-em-up elements; or perhaps just as often, are simply not comfortable with weapons in general.

"The way I see it," Yuki Sunshine tells me, "guns and damage in Second Life is [treated] very much like gun control regulation in the US as a whole." Yuki is a player based in British Columbia, and after an unpleasantly bullet-ridden experience in the Outlands, she moved herself to a simulator where gunfights were forbidden. Reflecting back, she wonders if the ensuing anarchy and the debates that raged around them is something unique to Second Life's American provenance, which seems alien to folks like her.

"The difference being [in Canada] is we don't have it written into our Constitution that every person has the right to bear arms…I think some people may take the right to bear arms in their first lives, as a right to bear them and play shoot 'em ups in their second. I think most of us don't really understand the gun-ownership thing. I think that may be one of the biggest cultural differences between us."

In any case, a lot happened, leading up to the war over the Jessie wall, and at this point, maybe it's worth a little historical summary. Trouble is, that requires wading ankle-deep into the welter of he said-she said, and contradictory timelines and counterclaims that accompany all that. Many of the participants are no longer with the game, or alternately, preferred not to respond to repeated interview requests. So what follows should only be regarded, at best, as a rough, first draft of that history.

(tomorrow: the war in Iraq and the WWIIOLers)

I asked the red man with the devil horns to tell me what happened at the Jessie wall, but he just shot me dead.

Getting gunned down is actually the kind of response you should expect in the Jessie simulator, also known as "the Outlands", where wanton violence is expected, even encouraged. The Outlands used to range over four sims, but now it's confined to Jessie, demarcated from neighboring simulators, where non-aggressive interaction is preferred, by a high, intimidating wall.

Nowadays, it's already crumbling away into obscurity. But in its prime, it resembled a cross between the Cold War's Berlin Wall and a giant dam, to hold back the kind of trouble you come into Jessie to look for.

The Lindens intended the Outlands to be the place where Lifers could let their id rage, and on that standard, they've really succeeded. Because in April and May -- right after the war in Iraq, which is an important factor to this story, as it turns out -- the Outlands became a free speech fire zone, where political debate raged in three dimensions, accompanied by property destruction, robot turrets, and close-quarter combat.

After the authorities stepped in, at the end of May, the final parting shot was a jumble of giant cubes floating above the Jessie wall, left there by an angry player. On some was the flag of Communist China, inset with the Linden game logo. On other cubes was a message in a similar vein, but slightly less subtle:

"For all you Liberal Pinkos out there in Second Life, this is an official

[Word prohibited by Community Standards] YOU!

From yours truly

Eukeyant

P.S. Syank gives me the pleasure of unveiling your flag

Enjoy living in the USSSL (United Soviet States of Second Life)!"

I remember when the war over the wall had become white hot; but for some reason, I decided not to write about it then. Probably because at the time, I was myself still edgy over the war and its aftermath, and the arguments I was having over both, with friends and acquaintances offline. To be honest, still edgy: when I conducted one in-game interview with a Lifer for this article, to get their view on the Jessie incident, it was all I could do not to toss off my journalist hat, and argue the politics of it with them. (I partly refrained from doing so, oddly enough, because I was sitting in this person's Second Life house, and it felt, well, rude, to start an argument in their virtual home.)

A lot of Lifers I talked to for this story preferred to think of all this as "ancient history" -- but there, I'd have to disagree. What happened at the Jessie wall -- everything leading up to it, and everything after -- strikes me as a microcosm. It's about what happens when cultures clash and territories are disputed; when people misinterpret rules, or misapply them. It's about political debate, and what we believe to be political at all, depending on where we're from, and what assumptions we take with us, when we come here. And because you often learn the most about yourself when you come into conflict and maybe make peace with someone else, it's also about the Second Life community's first challenge, to define what they were. And in all this, there's a lot to be concerned over -- but a lot to be hopeful about, too.

But first, maybe it's important to describe what it's like to die.

(tomorrow: is this an only-in-America thing?)