The April launch of Metaplace into Beta is, um, delayed, although perhaps Raph Koster’s move into MMOs for everyone, which got stalled on the rocks of trying to actually WORK on all clients (they ended up focusing mainly on Flash) is close to launch.
However, in the forums some dissent – and it strikes a familiar tone: “Give us information”.
In response to questions about the progress of selecting Beta applications, community manager Cuppycake (Cuppycake? Hmmm. I wonder if that’s better or worse than “M”) promises they’re working on it:
“We’re currently in the process of working our way quickly through that entire list of applicants from last Fall, so it shouldn’t be long. We’ll be opening up applications again shortly on a new revamped Metaplace.com =)”
To which a user replies:
“First you said something open would come during the summer, now your saying you still haven’t accepted applications from last fall, that’s unacceptable.”
…and is seconded by a plea for more insight:
“I am not upset when someone comes along and says “well, we hit a snag on THIS and we thought THIS would be done by now… but THIS and THIS are now the case.” hey, OK… That is fine. Happens with the auto mechanic all the time. Thought it was just a seal, but now I see your water pump is bad.
I guess what we want is for the metaplace folks to come here to the forums and complain to us that things are taking longer than you thought. That happens and we can all relate. Sure you have a TON of work that must be going on… but 3-4 lines that give SOME impression that Metaplace is alive and well is NOT a lot to ask. Just SOME kind of an idea.. a hint… even if you were to just talk about how the copier won’t quit jamming. That gives us a feeling that we are there and a part of something that is potentially big. We’re not asking for trade secrets.”
Familiar woes, although coming from a master of community and MMO management, a bit surprising.
Each month since the date of the Metaplace Beta has seen a new handful of competitors for “Web-embedded 3D environments with user-generated STUFF”. What felt like enthusiasm for me 6 or 7 months ago now feels like…well, it doesn’t feel like anything, actually, because the press momentum and excitement has decidedly fallen out of their favour.
Let me beta test it and maybe I’ll have a second opinion. 
As it happens, our August update is going up this week.
FWIW, the snags we hit had nothing to do with multiclient. Multiclient works fine, but we never planned to make all the clients ourselves. We have several, we have open source code libraries for several languages, and they’ll be released as part of the developer program for whoever is interested.
Rather, the challenges have more to do with usability of tools and polish. But we feel like we’re in a good place on that now. We committed a while ago to providing a monthly dev status update, did so last month (http://www.metaplace.com/blog/66.html), and will do so again this month in the next day or so.
Wonderful – looking forward to it Raph and sorry for misunderstanding the reason for the release date being pushed out.
* Puts sticky on Metaplace home page.
Psst, the August update is out. If you are on the mailing list, you may have gotten it in email. If not, it is on the website.
Thanks Raph – received.
You beat me to a follow-up post.
I’d still love to see a follow-up post with your reactions to the content of the newsletter.
[...] Someone Is Home Over on Metaplace the summer silence had started to rub the alpha community’s the wrong way, but a promised update was posted as the month winds down and we head into a long winter of tiling [...]