More Confusion for Noobs

Whilst reserving a name for an alt under the new Resident naming scheme (see previous post) I found that the shopping mall and getting aquainted area previously available to new players after their orientation are gone. Now you click on a board with four graphics, one for shopping, one for meeting people, one for exploring, and one for getting help. I clicked the latter and was teleported to an empty private residential region at a spot well away from the intended coordinates. It seems my new alt's home spot is the corner of this sim, too. I hope the owners don't mind. Earlier experimentation showed that each click produced random selections. I highly recommend that all new players visit the Oxbridge University Gateway (SLurl below).

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Caledon%20Oxbridge/92/198/28

Re-Creation for Posterity

Do you have a wonderful first name in Second Life? One that is unique to you? I (and one of my alts) am well known by my first name so it occurred to me that with the new naming scheme anyone can create an account with just my name. The default last name of Resident is not automatically shown, even if you edit a new player's profile. Is your first name valuable enough to you that you should create an alt with that name to protect your identity? Think about it.

Back for Display Names!

I've been able to spend more time in Second Life again, though if I have 30 minutes to spare with nothing to do I'll probably head to Lego Universe (Web). But I'm back just in time for Display Names (Web). So far I rather like it and have actually found several long time supporters of the Viewer Formerly Known As Emerald using it. I'm simply Uccie in my tag, but if you check the right boxes in Preferences, my tag will also uccello.poultry and my active group tag (off by default). My alt is one of the many Spartacus-taggers in-world (see pic). Of course, Profiles always show the name.name User Name, the moniker under which someone created their account.

Have you spotted folks with the last name Resident yet since the change? I've seen a few. Lots of Noobies have been coming to Lesbos lately. According to Tateru Nino on her blog (Web), new registrants are automatically assigned that last name. No more scrolling through lists or hitting refresh again and again until you see a last name you like. On a similar note, if you see avies named something like 39873 Guest, then you've found someone trying the Web portal Beta (Web). I gave it a whirl today and it worked very well. I'll have to try it on my iPad soon.

With Display Names, though, I learned that if you set a name and don't like it you are not stuck with it for two weeks, as the various Second Life official Web sites indicate, but if you hit the Reset button on the name change pop-up your User Name is restored as the name everyone sees right away.

Addendum: I've seen some prize givers of late that use initials of last names as well as first names (the latter style invented by Shep Korvin of Lucky Designs). I wonder how the standard last name change is going affect those. Or how names will now appear on Contest Boards at events. I might have to make an alt to find out.

Still Here

Despite life's best efforts of late, I am still here and will hopefully post something of substance soon (insert joke about that being a first here).