NOTE: The forums I established are located at http://forums.jscompass.org. Please read the following if you haven’t already:
I’m sitting here at 2:50AM on Wednesday, March 3rd. Quite often I’d be up late like this working on some new feature for jScompass, but that is no more. Thoughts have been scattered around my head all day but I haven’t really had a chance to collect them – to process everything. Even now I’m just starting to pull it all together. Please bear with me … this is going to be a little long, but I really hope you take the time to read it.
I joined my first virtual world, vMTV, in September of 2008. Many people who were members of vMTV for way longer then I will tell you that the place was pretty much on it’s way to shutting down at that time. Having suffered a pretty bad break-up in real-life, I immersed myself in that place, and I loved every minute of it. Then it all changed. In early February of last year, vMTV announced that they’d be closing. Anyone who went through that knows exactly how that went.
It was tough to move to There.com, and I didn’t like it at first. But it certainly grew on me… in a big way. I started working on jScompass as a way to bring some improvements to the compass replacements in There at the time. Ironically, the first version of jScompass was released on March 9, 2009 – exactly one year before There’s closing date.
Many of us will be moving on to other virtual worlds, and many may decide not to. Either way, the important thing is that we remember the good times we shared and to preserve the friendships we’ve all made. There’s closing cannot take away the friendships and relationships that the service helped create. Do not allow that to happen.
I have heard some things about people blaming michaelwilson for There’s closing. This is not true at all. I think it’s much more likely that Mr. Wilson actually kept There running longer then it should have, if it was treated as a normal business. His love for There is apparent, and I think he kept it open beyond when other business owners would have had to make the decision to pull the plug. No CEO wants their business to fail. You have to know that Michael Wilson would have done absolutely everything he could to prevent that from happening.
I would like to thank all of you for making the last year a great one. I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. I’ve especially enjoyed working with my fellow Island Guides, many of who gave so much more of themselves to the team then I’d ever be able to. The Greeters and other staff I’ve worked with I appreciate very much.
I have established a forum in a temporary site at http://forums.jscompass.org for people to come and talk. If there is interest, I will work to create a full website where those of us who love virtual worlds can gather. I will not make a website that is tied to any particular virtual world, however. I think that’s a bad idea. If you’d like, please bookmark and join those forums.
Many of you have written me to say “sorry” or that all the work I did on jScompass is all for nothing now. I don’t see it that way. While the compass itself cannot do much outside of the There service, the skills I’ve gained are something I plan on doing something with, and I am extremely thankful for the chance to have taken up interest in something like this.
I am extremely honored to have helped so many of you through jScompass, and am very proud of what it accomplished in it’s year in There. I am thankful that so many of you liked it as much as I enjoyed working on it. And I really hope you all stay in touch with me. Here’s my contact information:
jerseySteve87 – AIM
jerseySteve87 – Yahoo
jerseySteve87@live.com – MSN
jerseySteve87@gmail.com – Email
jerseySteve There – Facebook
I look forward to hearing from you. Please keep in touch, everyone. And yes, I do plan on being online when the service is closed for good next week. Join me if you can.
jerseySteve87
