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I just spent the last hour hanging out with Raph Koster and his crew and about 90 other keeners during the Metaplace developer’s chat and demo and all I can say is “Wow!”

During the chat, the gang a Metaplace answered burning questions like “When will MP reach beta phase?” Answer: “When it’s ready.” Nice dodge, but I’ll go out on a limb and guess that we’re talking spring or early summer at the latest.

There were plenty of coders in the chat asking dev questions that I won’t even pretend to understand. All I wanted was a glimpse inside the worlds of Metaplace. And I got it.

For about 5 minutes all 90 chatters were transported into cobble-stoned plaza surrounded by shops, with a large statue in the middle. We each controlled an avatar, in this case the girl as seen on the Metaplace website (on the forums page.) The graphics are not anything to jump up and down about, but that’s not the point. And it’s not what has got me excited about Metaplace. I’m excited because I (and many others) see potential. Lots of it.

Right now I hear you saying: “Liam, what the heck is Metaplace and why should I care?” I’ll let the Metaplace FAQ answer that:

Metaplace is a next-generation virtual worlds platform designed to work the way the Web does. Instead of giant custom clients and huge downloads, Metaplace lets you play the same game on any platform that reads our open client standard. We supply a suite of tools so you can make worlds, and we host servers for you so that anyone can connect and play. And the client could be anywhere on the Web.

It all remains to be seen if Metaplace lives up to its potential. But right now, from what I’ve seen, if those world building tools are easy enough for non-coding geeks like me to use, I’m am very eager to start playing with it and in it.

For more details on the dev chat check out the Virtual World News write up and the crew at Massively who liveblogged the whole thing.