The first time I have seen SL (Second Life) I thought it was for kids and not a great game...but being the geek that I am i couldn't just pass on the opportunity to have an alter ego.

I have played MMO (Massively multiplayer online) before mainly World of warcraft that was a great game but too expensive to pay $20 a month for.
SL is different there are no "tasks" to complete and no clear direction you need to go to, it's free to join and has close to 6M residents. The real interesting part is the economics you can earn Linden Dollars (L$) by working or gambling or selling stuff you build, the other way is to buy L$ for real $ (right now it's 185 L$ for every US$) this creates a marketplace which I think is the true business model of the SL folks.

The really hard thing of course is to figure out what to do once you get into the game but then again most people have exactly the same problem in their 1st life.

http://secondlife.com/