World of Warcraft. Second Life. Two massive multi-user virtual reality platforms with millions of people who have tried them. But which holds more appeal to different population segments on the Internet? VillainTech’s Lionel Houde took a look at both platforms, SL for two years of ups and downs and WOW for 10 days of bliss.

Content: WOW’s graphic content and layout are consistently stunning. SL, while much less of an ad farm hodge-podge, still has ugly user-built spots like overstretched terraforming, half built noob prim piles and poorly zoned worlds that encourage neighbor infighting and pissing contests. Though there are picture-perfect user-created scenes and locales in SL, and the maturing of the user base is giving rise to structures and whole sims that remain largely unchanged for years, I have to give it to WOW for jam-packing its towns, castles and dungeons with the detail its users strive to appreciate. Edge: WOW.

User Revenue Potential:

I suppose if you kept buying a new WOW software package every time you got canned for gold farming, you could still make a decent living selling WOW’s virtual currency. But with Blizzard frowning on item sales for cash, eBay backing away from virtual goods sales, and a $25 character transfer fee, it’s far easier to go into Second Life, spend about 4 cents on a texture upload, make 25 cents on a sale, and send money back to your PayPal with only pennies taken out via Mass Pay. While leveling without bots in WOW is a possibility — one recent fanboy made level 80 in 27 hours with some help from friends — and the average profit per transaction is still higher than SL’s, I like the ability to sell and make pretty much everything and anything in SL and be able to transfer the loot without large amounts of time. Plus, I can resell the content I’ve created in SL. Edge: SL.

Importability: While WOW gives you tens of thousands of character optimization options, you can’t import one single aspect of it, except your name. In SL, you can sing live, upload a napkin doodle, design a goofy dance, make practical jokes… even design a surrealist chicken farm where all the birds have your face and your girlfriend supplies all the noises. Not that I have. Yet. Edge: SL.

Free accounts: SL’s accounts, once acquired, have been free for years, and the only restrictions have been on owning land, a small limitation when you can make it worth SL’s while by paying others for land tier fees via rentals. That, and some landowners may not like to see you around if you don’t have payment info on file (think of them as virtual bluebloods). With SL’s acquisition of XSL, cashing out and buying in have become a little easier for the free account owners in-world, and some of them are the driving forces behind SL commerce.

WOW, understandably, doesn’t let you rule the roost on a free membership, and you get it for 10 days. The only thing I didn’t like was being unable to trade, or talk on public channels (“You do not have permission to speak”), but the quality of my free trial has been excellent except that my Level 15 warlock is stuck in a living death on a perma-loading zeppelin ride (that’s mainly my computer’s fault).

System performance: I spent two years trying to get SL to run smoothly on my computer. I honestly figure I’ve lost a sixth of my productive time to lag, and between asset problems, downtime, cash flow shutdowns, and diminished universal use times, it’s been a nightmare. When SL runs great, it’s a wonderful thing, but from this 3.06 GhZ, 512 MB RAM computer, I have only praise for WOW in comparison, and I will be able to achieve my in-world goals with much greater ease. Edge: WOW.

Character customization: In terms of game balance and flavor, WOW has a ninth wonder of the world. But check out a Tooter Claxton avatar in Second Life and you’ll see that a talented outfit designer/animator/scripter can rival professionally designed content, and the variety