so i'm playing this little mmo/community thing called Whirled by Three Rings Design (the guys that made puzzle pirates way back when) and its somethin different. basicly the bulk of the content is player made with flash. avatars, items, scenery, ect.
the basic idea is that you start with a single room. you can walk around by clicking inside your's and other's rooms. there's a bunch of rooms made by Three Rings staff just to get the ball rolling but alot of the most impressive things to see are animated by players.
you start out with a basic avatar which is a block of tofu (representing the possibilities to come). from there you can animate an avatar using their template or buy one from the shop (more on that later). the ups and down of making a avatar are that it is only limited by your animation skills and it seems to only work on flash CS3 (aka flash 9). theres no Action Script needed because its all provided by the website (you can copy and paste it or open the template file they provide).
now on to buying stuff. there are two kinds of spendible money in the game. one is gold bars, you buy those with your paypal and they are worth alot each (i think you get 40 bars for $5 or something like that). the second is coins. you get coins by playing games, making friends, selling items in the shop and a ton of other ways that im not gunna list.
when you sell an item in the shop (avatars, backdrops for new rooms, furniture, random items and stuff, ect.) buyers have the option to pay you in 2 ways. one is with coins and the other is with bars. now if a player buys something with bars you get whats called a "bling" (wtf more kinds of currency?) and a bling can be exchanged for real cash via paypal.
now heres a little number breakdown of how all the money works.
a bar = 4075 coins (which is a shit load)
a bling = $0.09 US and can only be collected if you have made over $500US on your account. so dont play thinking you'll get rich.
and a coin is worth... 1 coin. cant cash it in for bars or cash. it sucks, i know.
now i sell animated candles that can be lite and blown out by clicking on them, and they are top grade items on the site. i've been featured numerous times for them and i can only sell them at 150 - 300 coins a pop. in a week i've sold 1500+ of them but i cant get real cash off them. thankfully they build my popularity so people like to see what else i've got up for sell via bars. in the end if you aren't a good animator or artist people generally dont want to spend any money you :\ thats how it is.
the community currently is composed of mainly gaia kids and 13yo girls that pass out their phone numbers (or spam it on the f*&%in chat all the time) lookin for cute boys that are like Edward for goddam twilight (im feeling somewhat lightheaded from ranting all day about the book and how crappy it was. i may never read anything anyone suggests again)
the game is in beta right now so the community has some room to grow. i did notice there are alot of decent people on there from deviantArt and that's where i found the link to it. those people tend to be the most talented and make up the best part of the community, although its also one of the smallest it seems.
i donno, it seems like it could be something to keep with for a while. ya know, watch it grow into something beautiful... or a horrible e-monsterthat advertises on everything and has tweens cybering in every room like gaiazilla. like i said, i donno we'll see.

Nekoheehee

P.S.
if anyone couldn't figure out the website its whirled.com. my user name on there is Neos so feel free to drop by, drop me a line, or look up my stuff for sale (much more then candles for sale very soon... or when i get my main computer repaired. i've been running of a trial or flash CS3 for the past 2 weeks )