My avatar has an apartment in Berlin, though I have not yet figured out how to open the front door. Another European world is Twinity of Germany - not yet public - which mashes virtual worlds with real cities, including New York. This is the first stage of a huge Chinese plan to dominate virtual worlds in the way that they have taken over manufacturing. Entropia is building the first stage of the awesome Beijing Recreation District which alone will be capable of hosting more than 15m avatars, making it the biggest virtual world on the planet. Entropia Universe of Sweden has 700,000 players, including entrepreneurs making small fortunes, even though its complex rules are a turn-off for some. If the virtual revolution is all it is cracked up to be, will Europe breed the likes of Yahoo, eBay and Amazon? It hasn't made a bad start. RuneScape is British, based in Cambridge Habbo Hotel is Finnish and World of Warcraft, though a US game, is owned by the French group Vivendi. Interestingly, all three companies are "European". At the weekend there were 138,000 players all on at once (well over twice Second Life's concurrent users). The third is, which has grown from nowhere a few years ago to more than 6 million active players, of which 1 million are paying subscribers. It actually has 100 million registered users, bigger than most countries, but the monthly total is a better indicator of activity. Any moment now Habbo Hotel, a space for teenagers, will overtake the all-conquering World of Warcraft by having 10 million active users a month. Since the hype around Second Life last year there has been a dearth of mainstream publicity, as if they had all gone from virtual to invisible. You could be forgiven for thinking that virtual worlds had disappeared.
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