Wagner James Au / New World Notes

Here's a recent walkthrough of Dual Universe, the would-be metaverse from J.C. Baille and team that launched last September, from renowned virtual world explorer Luca (previously here and also here), mostly featuring its ship-building capabilities.

Luca's initial take on Dual Universe overall, with an interesting point on whether it plays like an online game or a full-fledged metaverse:

"Things are looking good so far, there are some bugs here and there but some of my main concerns are actually with how they are deciding to realize their vision, which at times might seem more like compromise judging from their actions, and decisions (their plan to keep the current safezone post-release, etc), and with how they manage or moderate the community.

"JC, while certainly a very intelligent person and visionary, also seem kind of clueless at times on whether or not he wants DU to be more like a traditional video game or a metaverse."

As an example of that, Luca points to this recent Easter Egg hunt.

"It seems at times as if JCs definition of what constitutes a metaverse is more surface level compared to people who have been a part of one for many years, judging from how he referenced Ready Player One a lot and even somewhat modeled his recent Easter Egg hunt from RPO, or at least inspired by it.  Which really didn't bode well with a lot of people from the community who see the hunt as a very divisive element of the game that caters mostly to the elitists or some top few percenters of the playerbase who have the resources and manpower to solve it, and it didn't really help either that the prize of the Easter Egg hunt has an actual function in the game which gives the owner an actual advantage instead of it just being a trophy like how most Easter Eggs are.

That said: "[O[ther than that things are looking pretty good and promising. They've also announced that they will balance PvP even more which would be great, and I think DU will really come to life when territory warfare finally comes."

More world exploring from Luca here.