What ultimately happened was that the gaming side of Home came and went first, before the new social features — LMOs, trophies, quests, loyalty programs, interactive multiplayer emotes, etc. — were deployed. At this stage, it appears that Home has retrenched itself solely to catering to its core user base, without much effort to attract new users — which, in terms of long-term viability, doesn’t necessarily bode well. (And that’s exactly why it was so important, years earlier, to *not* exclusively go down this road.)

Terra and I have been vilified by some of our more vocal opponents because we looked at Home from a business standpoint and understood the pragmatic necessity driving the business decisions at the time. I have no doubt that there are a lot of simmering resentments to this very day from various parties, and when the inevitable day comes that Home finally grinds to a halt, there will likely be no shortage of finger-pointing and “If only they’d listened to me” hyperbole. Ultimately, though, the only logical way a different course could have been chosen is if Home had a wholly different business plan and implementation up front.

Personally, I’m at the point now where I just don’t have much time left in my day to indulge in the old debate topics. Once you see behind the curtain of Home, and you really dive into it from the development side, a lot of the “Why aren’t things like THIS!?” questions are very quickly answered. The catch is that because of all the legal restrictions, you can’t really share any of that info. So it’s virtually impossible, when someone argues from a position that’s provably incorrect, to substantiate *why* it’s incorrect without giving out sensitive information. Which makes holding a classic Internet Argument(tm) even more of an exercise in futility.

Not that it much matters, anyway; at this point, after this many years, the major players are so hardened in their respective positions that I doubt stone tablets from God himself would change anything. I just hope everyone can enjoy Home for what it is — because what it is is still pretty darn magical.

The Hed kandi experience was really a space that went far beyond the Singstar space could ever provide in terms of socializing and quality music. The details and production that Veemee had done to that space was awesome and legit.

Speaking of Singstar, I found great friends at th VIP section of the said space when it was introduced. Fond memories at the time and when that generic music was cool to dance to at the time, so was talking to the many that were looking for mature, grown folks to converse with.

Fashion-wise, Diesel and Billabong was the defining moment of all-time for me. Especially during Christmas of 2011 when central Plaza was introduced to a holiday, festive decoration that had me staying there for long periods of time.