Noobie News

Happy (late) St. Patrick's Day! I didn't spend much time in-world yesterday as I was out of the house far too long, but at least I had a nice Guinness (and then some) at a local pub to celebrate the day. I helped a noobie get acquainted with Second Life and tried the new Resident experience myself afterward and after reading Daniel Voyager's account of the new Destination Islands (click here for the post and my comment thereon). Here's hoping The Lab isn't intentionally screwing the pooch to kill off Second Life because I'm afraid that the new introduction to Our World is just that bad.

My view upon landing, using the Beta viewer.
Yclept Resident is a throw-away account to be deleted soon, btw. I tried well over a dozen names before
grabbing a random one from the dictionary. The lack of surnames forces folks into really strange
names and makes signing up a frustrating process, but that is another issue.

The infrastructure was created primarily by Damian Fate (no mention on his blog that he is involved in this project), Kwoo Oddson (the rock monster maker at Linden Realms, apparently). and Crazy Mole with a sim surround by Sominel Edelman. Of course, everything I could find is owned by Governor Linden.

Damian's build is very attractive. I've long thought of him as a wonderful designer.
Note the "Away" person to the right and the other Resident that figured out how to Edit Appearance, the two most common noobie experiences before asking for money or sex.

Very few people were chatty and no one I met seemed to know what do to at all. The How to pop up (see pic above) should be the first window to appear, I think to welcome new Residents. I understand that an international audience requires grapho-icon signage, but the setting was still too spartan to be noobie-friendly.

Simply walk into a portal and you are god-teleported to a random location from the Destination Guide based on the theme you pick. If you try to fly off the island too many times you are just booted to a random location.

I have to confess this is my second time through the new Destination Island. Yesterday I entirely forgot to take pictures. As part of the informal Resident Greeter group run by Daniel I'm tempted to leave Yclept on Destination Island, sending her new clothes, body parts, and good landmarks for noobs,  but likely she's be shuffled off to a new location upon logging in again.

Crazy Mole makes such pretty flowers that even vampires like them!
Right. Daylight vampires. *sigh* Even some in the fabulous Kim Harrison books are day-walkers, but she has
a pretty plausible explanation. I'll buy that for now, but I need to get Yclept into another avatar as soon as I can.

Like a day-walker Werewolf!!! Off to Adult World!!
Or not. As this account was not Age Verified, only the map opened to show an Adult Sandbox (SLurl) and a warning appeared telling me that I need to prove my age. I really went to the Art portal, landing at the SLACC (SLurl).

Maybe I did get to an adult area, as the following message showed up in Main Chat after I landmarked the SLACC:

You have been teleported by the object 'Destination HUD v1.1' on the parcel 'Norbo's Nipples, Leather Wear, Clothing, Animations and more'.

Hitting the Home button in the upper tool bar landed me at the Braunworth Infohub (SLurl), same as yesterday's test avie. It was very crowded so I turned on Always Run (Ctrl-R) and got out of there to relive my noobie experience.