It’s the middle of the night and I’m standing in an empty, starlit field in the virtual world of Second Life. In the distance is a low-polygon-count shopping mall. But at my feet, there’s only pixelated grassland – a simple green texture that repeats to the edges of the computer screen.

Just hours ago, a lavish mansion stood here. It was a custom job built for a player known as BallerMoMo King, whose blinged-out avatar carries a diamond-studded cane and is never without his posse of bodyguards and harem of “MoMo hos.” Baller is one of Second Life’s most notorious gangsters, famous for hiring talented residents to script weapons that can bounce an avatar across the gamespace and bombs that produce enough smoke and fire to occasionally crash a server. It seems Linden Lab, the company that runs Second Life, has had enough. The MoMo mansion – and Baller’s account – has been erased.

Read the complete text at Wired.

Imagine relaxing in a tiny private cove, on a lava beach near the mists of a waterfall. The sun is shining, a tropical bird cries somewhere in the distance and the cares of the working world seem a million miles away.

It’s an idyllic vacation spot, but the best thing about it is that it takes less than five minutes to get there from anywhere in the world. In fact, you can reach it without ever leaving your home. That’s because it exists not in any physical location but in one of the many virtual worlds that millions of people now travel to every day with the help of nothing more than a decent computer graphics card and a broadband Internet connection.

Though most of these worlds take the form of multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft or Star Wars Galaxies, a few are simply open 3-D environments whose members can get away from it all in a place filled with colorful diversions and other cyberexplorers like themselves. Even in game worlds, many players log on not to slay orcs or blow up death stars but to spend time with friends, see the sights and take a small vacation without ever stepping foot outside their door.

More than 10 million people around the world travel to such imaginary destinations regularly. They get there via software that lets them guide their onscreen representatives, known as “avatars,” through places built entirely of pixels where they can interact with one another. Their destinations include virtual dance parties and nightclubs, auto races and yachting events, “Star Wars”-style cantinas, whimsical underwater jazz clubs and much more.

Read the complete text at The New York Times.