Your invite to Metaplace Beta
Today is an exciting day for me.
It was in mid-2006 that I was sitting in my spare bedroom working on a prototype client for what would become Metaplace. My wife was running the server on her desktop Mac in another room. We managed to get some tags hardcoded into a text mud’s room description, and pretty soon we were two blue circles running around on a field – all streamed off the Internet. And even back then, I really wanted to show it to you guys here on the blog, because even though it didn’t look like much, it was really cool.
Well, today I do get to share it with you! Or rather, what it became. We’re a little ways past the blue circle thing at this point.
It’s an early look – we are most definitely still in testing, and closed testing at that. But it felt like it was time to let some more folks at it.
If you go to http://www.metaplace.com and enter the code EARLYLOOK in the text field where it says “Redeem invite key,” you’ll be given access to the testing. But you better hurry, because there are only 200 key uses available. If you don’t make it into the first 200, sign up for the waiting list – we’re letting in cohorts every week now.
Once you’re in, send me a friend request, send me a message, come visit the forums, and let me know what you think!
41 Responses to “Your invite to Metaplace Beta”
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PS, if you’re in the testing already, don’t burn the keys for other people. 🙂
Darn, someone had my username and once I got in it looks like the port issue is gonna catch me. Oh well, maybe next time 😛
PS: Feel free to revoke my key to give it to someone else
Oh no, you don’t escape that easy! 🙂 We have a fix coming for the port issue soon.
Damn, soon as I’m off work… 🙂
Woohoo! Got one! Btw, reading Theory of Fun now.
Got one! Thanks, Raph!
Sa-weeet! Thanks! 🙂
Heh, can’t say subscribing to your blog has never paid off for me. 😉
Thanks! I have an awful lot of stuff to get to testing now.
Neat. The social tools are the immediate stand-outs to me from what (little) I’ve done with Three Ring’s Whirled. The badges seem like they could get interesting. What’s the reasoning behind the meta-cred scores for them? The “gamerscore” of Microsoft’s achievements is something that is sometimes derided for being nearly meaningless, while also seen as something of the barrier to entry for having independent (ie, XNA Community) developers from creating their own (beyond basic spam concerns). Will Metaplace allow “builder badges” eventually? I could see having a meta-cred score for an arbitrary builder badge based on scarcity (how rare/”hard” is it to collect) and reputation (what do players think of it)…
Anyway, those are just a few small comments off the top of my head that I’d thought were interesting to discuss, I’ll see if I get a chance to try a bit more investigation/play with it…
Tried to find you as friend in Metaplace, but it wasn’t obvious how. You should list what your account name is there in your post.
My account name is Raph. 🙂
I’m not sure if I’m allowed to post these, but what the heck. If not, Raph, you can drive over to my house and personally deliver a beating. You can try, at least. 😉
Here are profile links for various folks you might know from this blog:
Raph Koster — http://alpha.metaplace.com/user/Raph
John Donham — http://alpha.metaplace.com/user/John
Tami Baribeau — http://alpha.metaplace.com/user/Cuppycake
Morgan Ramsay — http://alpha.metaplace.com/user/dubh
Eolirin — http://alpha.metaplace.com/user/Eolirin
Slyfeind — http://alpha.metaplace.com/user/Slyfeind
Prokofy Neva — http://alpha.metaplace.com/user/Prokofy
Amaranthar — http://alpha.metaplace.com/user/Amaranthar
Those are obviously not permanent links, but should be of use to anyone who gets in. I included myself, of course, in the remote chance that anyone wants to befriend me. ;p
Come on over. My account name is Rik.
Oy. I haven’t kept tabs on Metaplace in forever… Not sure I entirely approve of the site design. =P I’ll poke around when I have a bit of sleep in me.
cool! I’m in!
Nice! Now I just have to get past this “You shall not pass!”-portmonster. But it should work once I get back home.
Cool, I was able to grab one as well! First time I ever made it in one of these “Be quick, grab a key” online thingamajiggies.
Sadly, our corporate firewall blocks some ports – but I’ll check in as soon as I get home!
I haven’t been able to load metaplace.com at all. Been trying since yesterday. Anyone else having this problem? Pinging times out. A tracert shows it choking after hitting vl882.laeqnx3sw-2.sonyonline.net.
Didn’t make it in time. 🙁
But I’ve been on the waiting list for ages, so hopefully I’ll see it soon.
Didn’t make it in time either. 🙁
I’m having a similar problem as Evan Sims. I’ve been trying to get to the site since last night, and I just can’t seem to do it. Other people I know have been able to and I’ve been able to via a proxy server.
The only router I’m behind is one of the two I own, and when I’m going through them, the site is unaccessable. If I connect directly without the router, however, its fine. There’s no settings on either that should be blocking Metaplace.com.
I don’t have that tracert problem, though. I end up at ‘unknown.level3.net’ with an IP different from what it was showing up before as.
I was lucky enough to get to try this out lastnight and while I didn’t get to do alot, I did meet a couple of cool folks. One guy showed me around his future space game complete with poison and spell casting! Way cool.
He mentioned that someone had logged on from a phone so I had to try that out and indeed, I was able to connect using Skyfire on a WM6.1 BlackJack2. It seemed to have a decent framrate, but very small cache and I was unable to enter text/chat at all.
But still, playing Metaplace Alpha on a phone is quite cool!
All I can say is Awesome!, Thanks Raph.
Evan, Arrakiv,
We think we have isolated the problem — it is indeed routing, and it’s not us but a step away — and we are working to get it resolved.
Thanks for the update, Raph. I’ve been trying some stuff, figuring it was on my end and its certainly good to hear that it isn’t. 😉
Heh, I’ll stop turning your blog into a tech support forum now.
Sweet. 🙂 Glad you are digging it.
Hey Raph, will the alpha signup list be migrated over for the betas, or do those of us who signed up for the alpha have to apply again?
We have invited EVERYONE from the alpha list. I would suspect your spam filter. 🙁 Apply again?
Did the 200 spots fill up? The site wouldn’t load earlier. Now I’m getting the “Invite Key Not Valid Message”. Just confirming the bus is full.
Based on your own published counts at least 500 people regularly read this site. Seems like you should have provided at least one to two hundred more slots, even if you had to wait a bit longer. You’re locking out many of your best early evangelists.
Damn, yup, missed my chance. Got distracted yesterday, and they’re gone today. 🙁
Oh well. C’est soi. My fault entirely.
I was also waiting on my invite from the alpha time. I get the newsletters just fine, so I don’t think it’s spam filtering. Anyway, I’ll register again
Hmm, for those on the alpha list, can you confirm that the email address you signed up with was the email you use on this site (MIT for Ravi, Sympatico for Matt)? I can go check where you were on the alpha list and what happened.
We are doing cohort A/B testing, so there’s a reason why we give out fixed numbers of keys. Don’t worry, we’ll be doing far more key giveaways than this — it will not be long at all — and there will also be invites given to users to invite people in as well.
Hm, I also was on the alpha sign-up list, getting newsletters all along, and haven’t received an invite. Nothing in the spam folder either.
Frank & Ravi, I don’t have your emails (the ones you used here) in the alpha app database.
Matt, you got an invite ages ago. We can resend it to you now.
I feel foolish. All this time I thought I was signed up and waiting! OK, well, I’m in for the beta.
PS — alpha app database and newsletter signup are not the same thing… 🙂 We’ll let everyone on the newsletter list know that the beta app signup form is up now.
A resend of the invite be great, Raph – thanks. I don’t know how I missed it. I’ve had other Metaplace emails get through (the stress test notifications) so I’d be surprised if my spam filter ate it, but I archive every email I get and it’s not in there. I’ll see if I can add the metaplace domain to a list of safe sites or something.
Oh no. Too late!
it could have also been ravip(at)mit(dot)edu (with the ‘p’ on the end) or 4ravip(at)gmail(dot)com . Also was klopfer(at)mit(dot)edu in there?
It was definitely for the alpha a couple days after it closed, not just the mailing list 🙂
Checking, Ravi.