In my opinion the barrier to entry has never really been the interface, though I find viewer 2 to be actually more annoying than the previous versions (it’s ‘in my way’ a lot more).

When I first entered SL I had basic movement and communication down within the first 20 minutes or so and had my avatar somewhat customized before too long. Anyone in the least bit familiar with computer games or anything should be able to understand either arrow key or WASD+mouse movement and typing to talk. Before the end of my first night I had learned to teleport, had done some exploring and had met some people, one of which helped me start learning to build almost immmediately and showed me lots of cool stuff.

SL -does- require that you are a bit of a self-starter, so I guess what is required for the other percentage is some way to hold their hand and help them find whatever content they are looking for. The current iterations of Search don’t really do that very well. Something like Crap Mariner’s Click on the Clock idea or an event calendar would go a long way in that direction as well as finding ways to clean the drek out of event listings.

The highest barrier to entry in my opinion are the technical problems with performance. Failure of group chat (sometimes even room chat lags badly), crashes, lag, failure to rez, all the usual suspects, are what make SL ‘hard’ to use. Rod Humble’s focus, I think, needs to go to those issues with laser-like focus and get those most basic of performance complaints solved, post-haste. They are the top complaints I hear as a content creator and part owner of a roleplaying sim, and I think some visible progress on those issues would go a long way toward beginning to satisfy the customers and create more positive word of mouth.

Right now a noob is liable to be in chat with veterans for whom the conversation most often includes phrases such as “$%#%% chat lag… Just SL being it’s normal self again.” and discussing frustrating workarounds to ruthing and other performance issues, instead of talking about the experience/content. Get the technical glitches nailed down solidly and the conversation will move to the content and how neat that new build by so and so is. The interface is workable, but yes could use some polish, but it doesn’t matter how slick the interface is when chat doesn’t work right.

Basics.

Community does help to add spice, but when somebody becomes bored of the underlying game then the community becomes irrelevant.

I’ve seen many people leave Second Life. Where was the holding power of community for them?. How could they just abandon all their obscure friends who they had never actually met in the real world?.

How could they?

Obscurity..

Troy, another parable:

A musician lamented that only gigantic publishing companies were able to publish music, because the process of publishing was far too complex. Then software became cheaper and the Internet allowed musicians to connect with people directly, and suddenly the complexity to “breaking into the music business” had its barrier of entry greatly lowered.

Because the complex interface was replaced with a simpler, more affordable one.

Your metaphor is begging the question from the start. By comparing virtual worlds to a piano, you assert immediately that virtual worlds are designed as *only* artistic expression. Thus, your illustration that simplifying this leads to disaster follows logically, but the premise is not something I think is correct in the first place.

In the end, I think the community of people who are most deeply engaged in actually using virtual worlds will figure out the magic recipe that makes virtual worlds a more global phenomenon. I doubt it will depend on any a single company pushing things forward. Rather, success will come from collaboration between passionate users.

The following quote by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry comes to mind.

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”