Advice for Second Life Newbies

Strawberry Singh's Monday meme challenge this week (see here) is near and dear to me because it is something I think about often: What advice would you give a new Resident in Second Life? I meet quite a few newbies during the week and I can't resist giving out advice. Clearly I'm practicing for the time when I'm a little old lady that just can't keep her opinions to herself.

From Noob to Boat Owner in 7 Short Years

Meme Instructions: List 5 pieces of advice you would give to a newcomer that has just joined Second Life. Don’t forget to leave a link to your post or advice in the comments.

"Remember That There is a Person Behind Every Avatar and Like in Real Life They Are Often a Total Ass." But how do you know? Talk to people. Read Profiles. Don't just assume something about a person because of they way they present themselves in-world. Sure, an avatar's appearance was probably chosen as a representation of some aspect of that person, but go deeper. If they remain enigmatic or the Real Life portion of their Profile is blank/cryptic, your job may be harder but not impossible.

With that in mind, my second nugget of wisdom is "Keep an Open Mind About 'Who' You Are." At least for a while. I've known quite a few people that after investing a fair sum of Space Bux on a realistic human avatar went on to discover their inner Furry or even changed gender. Second Life is akin to a second chance to be someone that is hard for you to be in Real Life. I started in Our World as part of a therapist-guided program to learn socialization skills and to overcome some phobias. I've met post-op Transgender women who have used Second Life to practice the outward manifestations of their inner selves and thus have a smoother transition in Real Life.

This process could lead to an Inventory disaster – things all over the place, hundreds (or even thousands) of items named Object, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria! "Start Organizing your Inventory Now." I wrote about this in an earlier meme (see here) but let's go over some of it again.

• Create special folders inside the Objects folder (Vehicles, Pets, Furniture - Home, Furniture - Outdoor, etc.)
• Created special folders inside your Clothing folder (Swimwear, Tops, Accessories, Trampwear, etc.)
• I have folders for Animations, Avatars, Body Parts, and the like plus folders for activities and places (all my Bay City stuff is in Place: Bay City with subfolders as needed).
• Create a folder called Objects: Storage for the next step.
• Make a cube (or other shape) and call it Storage:. Take it into your Inventory then put it inside your Objects: Storage folder. Drag it to the ground and fill it with up to 100 items you want to backup in case of disaster (for example, when you unpack a new outfit, take the original box back into your Inventory and then put it in a Storage: box and add a description after the colon). If you don't have the original box or the items weren't delivered to you as such. put them in a cube (or other shape) called Box: (then add a description after the colon) and put that in the Storage: cube.
• Organize your Landmarks, into descriptive folders, as well, but don't save too many. I tend to not save a Landmark unless I visit a place often or I want to tell there about it.
• Get into the habit and stick with it ... you play the way you practice, athletes always say.

You'll need a place to do this so find a good sandbox (try Search or check this list) and take the time to "Explore the The Library Folder of Your Inventory" while you are there. It is loaded with a bunch of crap but there are quite a few gems, too, especially in the Clothing folder. With what you find here and the masses of free items easily found in-world you don't really need money to live in Second Life. At least not right away. You'll get cravings to buy stuff and buy more stuff and find more freebies. Aren't you glad you started organizing your Inventory right away?

More about money. "Really, You Don't Need Money or Land to Live in Second Life." I've always had friends that let me park my avatar on their land to log out or even let me treat their home as my own when I did not have a place of my own. My wife in SL hasn't owned land in ... ever? I've always given her a home (when I had land) or we've lived with my brother. Or you can use any of the fabulous public properties around Second Life as "yours" if you want (like the Coastal Waterways). Belong to a group? You can probably use one of their locations as a home.

Groups are also handy for finding free things, too. Just use Search to find "Lucky" groups or ones with "Freebie" in the name. Ask people, too. Not for money. That is very tacky. Ask if someone knows where you can get nice items for free.

Much of this advice is all related, if you think about it ... explore people, your surroundings, and your Inventory. That's what Second Life is all about, isn't it? Exploring. If I had to give just one nugget of advice it would be "Explore Everything!"

Learning Island

While looking at the new Social Islands on the map (SLurl) I saw new set of Learning Islands, too, so I quickly whipped up a test account and logged in hoping to find one. I certainly did and here's an annotated photo essay about my experience.

When you first arrive, you are on a beach.
By looking in the address bar, you'll know you are on a learning path.

There is no tutorial about camming around, but if one did know how to do this they'd see that the region is beautiful. Later they'll see that it greatly resembles the new Social Island, too, in form and style. More about Social Island in a subsequent post, but the rocky terrain, the beach, and the coliseum structure are the primary similarities.

If you take the time to look around, you'll see rocky (mesh) Islands, and a recently stranded Linden Premium Boat. Yes, it is supposed to be there. Very scenic but perhaps not a good portent of success.

If you wander off the beach, there are plenty of multi-lingual clues pointing you where to go. To be serious, though, I saw absolutely no signs of any nature – instructional, directional, informational, non-sensical – save for some arrows.

Follow the numerous arrows and the rather obvious path and you'll find more arrows. Experienced users might get a sense of Déjà Vu – look at the steps and arch.

The path continues. If you fall off the bridge or simply jump off the cliff edge, you can climb out over a series of stepped rocks on the far side but you'd have to fly to get out on the initial side. By this point, you might have expected some instruction on how to talk or move or ... well.

Déjà Vu again. Like the aforementioned arch and steps, these "ruins" are not custom-created items for this build, but are pre-fabs anyone can buy in-world or on the Marketplace. Some might say that's cheating, but it is nice to see The Lab supporting in-world creators.

Past those ruins is another cliff one can fall off or a bridge that serves the same function. Yes, you can climb out, but if there had been any sort of How-to-Fly or How-to-Jump tutorial beforehand, then one would not need to climb. Generally speaking,  I got the distinct impression that Learning Island is a work in progress. With any luck, some sort of signage will show up soon.

Round the corner after your death defying escape from a fall that should have broken one or more of your bones and there's a lovely waterfall to cross under. Again, if one had been taught how to cam out, then they'd see a view like this.

Some residents and readers of this blog might recognize the coliseum here from an earlier New Resident Experience (as detailed in a post here). The structure is another non-Linden piece, this time by creator Damien Fate with the arched portal beyond the robot (another new resident) created by someone whose name I totally lost. Again, no instructions here, but it's reasonably clear that if you walk into the vortex, something will happen. In this instance, you are transported to Social Island.

Big kudos to The Lab and all the creators involved. This is much, much nicer than my last New Resident experience (blogged about here) and possibly even the one before that. All-in-all my best experiences were when my new characters went through privately run introductions like the excellent one in Caledon's Oxbridge University (SLurl). If the very simple official experience could be blended with the sometimes-too-detailed Caledon experience, I think that a wonderful introduction to Second Life could be had by new residents.

After a hard 45 minutes of combing Learning Island, my new character (with a really cool name so she might stick around) enjoys a G-rated beverage at the Tiki Beach on Social Island (SLurl).

A New Resident Experience [EDIT]

EDIT [01/09/14]: Two names have been removed by request of a person named in an IM below. Note, that Second Life ToS does permit the transcript of Instant Messages on forums outside Second Life but not within the service itself. I'm doing this as a courtesy per my posted Disclaimers.

Not too long ago, I saw what looked like a new Welcome Area for new Residents on the My Second Life feeds so I thought I'd check it out since the last version I tried was horrible (see here). Much to my surprise, a brand new alt found something even worse.

Upon logging in, I found myself at a shopping area (SLurl) and learned that this spot was also my Home. What was interesting, is that Uccie logged out from that very spot while using another viewer earlier in the day. No "new Resident experience" for me.

At this point, The Lab seemed to think I'd been fully oriented because if I tried to access any of the previous Destination Islands for orientation, I was banned. Of course, a noobie wouldn't know to even look for those. They'd be lucky to find the Orientation Island Public landmark in their inventory then try to figure out what to do with it. At least the How to button was in the bottom tool bar, though as usual the only window to pop up automatically was Destinations.

For giggles, I headed to Orientation Island Public.

Immediately I was greeted by an IM from someone not even on the People Nearby list ...

[10:46] NAME REDACTED: Welcome to secondlife Sorry about my spelling. I have reported paedophiles hanging around help Island public that are stalker like commando kid, and racist that uses the island. I’m call nigger and boy for helping people, who cannot speak English, at help island public. One of the racist is NAME REMOVED and her friend Another NAME REMOVED all reported, but Linden Lab allow this kind of hate crime in SL. Its believe you cannot be physically hurt in game. But there are troll here in second life, they call there self, helpers or mentors, they are not, they will tell you to mute people, and will control your game if you let them. Do not tell them about your self, or give them information about where you live. They will put the information on the internet for there friends, all around the world to see. Perverts--man using female avatars and woman using male avatar, wait to meet young kids, That logon and arrive at the PG sims on there first day, so be careful. Oh if you need help Ask but not at help island public. 

[10:46] NAME REDACTED: If you need help badly..F1 pick Support portal And there is a Q&A box you can use. Or I have a help pack if you like to read that, it full of tips and land marks.

No help other than that. If I were truly a new Resident, I'd have no guidance whatsoever to tell me about the "IM ding" and the flashing Chat button. Someone was talking near me, but I wouldn't have known that. So I walked the route I remembered from seven years ago and got to the exit where I found four signs.

From right to left:

The Resident Help Network sign asked to open the Second Life Pic of the Day page from the public blog. Very little help there.

Governor Linden's 'OI-Help-Kiosk' offered to let me stay or to leave to some random spot on The Grid.

The rotating medallion thing gave me a note card about the Resident's Choice Awards. It was just a Web URL for the same and an embedded Landmark for the Winner's Circle. A new Resident wouldn't know about embedded Landmarks.

Another 'OI-Help-Kiosk' (far left) offered a landmark to Help Island Public.

I took the random landmark offer from the sign second from the right. It turns out that that I was to visit the Luna Oaks Gallery (SLurl), the Linden-owned shopping area for Resident lottery winners to have a free retail space. The program ended a long time ago but the last winners were not kicked out. Some actually maintain their shop, but most spaces are ancient by SL standards.

A second click earned me a landmark for Miramare, "The heard of Second Life" (SLurl). Both landmarks were made by the former Jeska Linden (now Jeska Dzwigalski). I opted instead to visit her now missing office in Ambleside (SLurl), part the Linden Bungalows, since it was listed in her profile.

All-in-all, I'd have to say that if I was a new Resident, then I'd have given Second Life about 30 minutes before logging off and looking for another diversion. Really, in a world with interactive on-demand television, iPads and Kindles, and then some, why would someone be interested in SL if this was their introduction?

Vick's Wish List

Too often end-of-the-year retrospectives are planned and published well before the end of the year. For example, I was watching a television news piece about celebrities and notables who died in 2012 when news hit that another famous person died just that day. And then each subsequent day saw a notable death. Why can't reviews created when the year is over? Instead, I like previews and wish lists and resolutions. Quite a few bloggers from Second Life have published these but the wish list from Vick Forcella stuck out (see the original here). Here's my annotated look at what Vick would like to see in 2013:

This spot needed a pic and has
nothing to do with the post.

80 people in a mainland sim
No. Sorry, Vick, but avatars cause lag. I don't want to see more avatars on Mainland, especially in areas with roads. Someone who needs to have a high avatar account should consider owning parcels on sim lines and spreading the content/avatar load like they do for big official Linden events. Long ago when my brother and I owned about 3/4 of Nangrim a Brazillian casino opened on much of the remaining land and kept the "agent limit" maxed most of the time. On the rare instances when we could enter our property, the lag was so bad from well across the region, we could barely function. Raising the limit may have seemed like a good idea, but from a functionality standpoint, it would not have worked.

Distribution quota so that each parcel (>255sqm >2) on the mainland is always accessible.
This would work, especially for the situation mentioned above. There is a club in part of Bay City that often uses the full agent limit of the region but they have only 1024 sqm of land. That is an abuse of region resources, but it not a ToS offense (many have tried filing and failed).

Tier reduction
This might work. The Lab certainly has quite a bit of unused land laying about in unsold and abandoned spaces so I see that if tier fees are reduced, folks might buy up more land.

my.secondlife.com moderation tools
Yes,  please. A lawyer would be needed, though, to decide if this would be legal or not. An abusive comment is free speech, at least to a point. MySL is public to view, like comments on news/blog posts and can be moderated by the thread originator by deleting comments (again, just like other public forums). MySL might have to be taken private to enable a more expansive tool selection.

my.secondlife.com moderation based on TOS
Again ... Yes, please! I further suggest that MySL users be required to take a mini-tutorial and comprehension quiz to be able to access the microblogging service. Come to think of it, the same should be true for access to any part of Second Life. Violators should be required to retake the course after a to-be-determined number of offenses, too.

Linden Lab unmuted
No idea what Vick means here. Really, Vick? Did the whole Lab mute you?

Linden Lab finding a single platform for communicating with residents
Excellent suggestion. Several different blogs, status report pages, Dashboards, and in-world announcements that lag (I'll change viewers, for example, and see notifications in the second viewer that never showed in the first one).

Pro-active griefer reduction by Linden Lab, policing
This would require more tools or better tools in the hands of the Residents because even with GOD powers, the Lindens can't be everywhere at all times. And when you do see a Linden, they are often "back office" staff that may not be as familiar with Governance as we'd think they would be.

What should be implemented is a form of limited access for "free" accounts, the types that are often used by griefers. For example, limited resource sandboxes or tiered-rights to resources as an account "ages" –– this assumes that many griefers are just noobs that don't understand now things work but also rewards learning and loyalty.

A Jira that gathers errors instead of covering them up
My opinion of the JIRA is well known. I almost believe it should be suspended until it can actually become useful. C'mon, now ... why should ANY Resident be able to close my JIRA without Lab review just because they think they are smarter than me? And JIRAs can go years without being looked at ... ask my brother.

A Jira that welcomes improvement suggestions
Not gonna happen. JIRA is too broken.

A new policy for the Linden Memorial Park and re-opening
Hear, hear. I whole-heartedly agree. What the LMP needs is a caretaker. Make it a fee to place a memorial if you have to, but please open the LMP.

Clean up of micro parcels
This would require a complete rethink of how land is marketed and sold. Then thousands of parcels would need to be claimed under Eminent Domain for redistribution.

Clean up of abandoned parcels
I agree, but The Lab doesn't see an economic issue here otherwise they would have done it by now. If a Resident wants to buy an abandoned parcel, there are tools available here.

Clean up of parcels owned by inactive residents, plenty of oceans
Same as above ... not seen as an economic imperative.

De-activation of new (*) accounts that do not enter world in two days
Yes and no. If The Lab wasn't trying as half-hard as it was to be a social network, I can see this being viable. As it is, people are encouraged to have accounts whether they come in-world or not because they can still use MySL.

From the game Lili, available for iOS devices here.

Noob micro learning continent where noobs are forced to remain for one week 
The current new Resident experience is bloody awful. I had more of a tutorial from an iPad game I downloaded the other day than new Residents get now. The tutorial in Lili (see a a review here) is not only more intensive, but it is brilliantly implemented. The lessons are progressive in that they "pop up" as a skill is needed. If The Lab wants Second Life to be a gaming platform, it could create a day-long game each new Resident would be required to complete before accessing the full world and during which they would learn all the skills and conventions of Second Life.

A forum that is no longer Béta
What? The forums are still relevant? Any time I look the are filled with trolls and 'experts' that never seem to be in-world. Rather they seem to enjoy being big fish in the little pond of forum-life.

my.secondlife.com that is out of Béta 
My Second Life (MySL) is a wonderful tool that has been officially abandoned. I've been told that except for basic maintenance, no more development will be done.

Webcontent more tablet friendly 
Amen. Flash is dead but some of the world just doesn't know it. Heck, my iPad has a faster, more powerful processor and more RAM than did the first computer I used to access the Web on "back in the day." There is NO reason Second Life itself couldn't run on a tablet or even a more mobile device. Scalability is the key. Oh, and effort. And caring.

Scalable sims: Optional more/less residents/prims = higher/lower price
But this would require work on the part of someone. The Lab no longer has a focus on developing the Second Life infrastructure.

Linden Lab Gaming Viewer (LLGV)
Huh? Sounds like it would be a second world. Third Life?

Resident created games for LLGV
The Moles are very clever and have a ton of game/experience content in Second Life even as I write this but it isn't promoted. Let's get people using the world they have before luring them away to yet another world.

Second Life doesn't need to be a game. It is a way to have a life that isn't possible in Meatspace. No way in heck you'd catch me dressing like this iRL and laying on a boat. Not that I haven't, but you wouldn't see it. You should see what I've done on boats.

Linden Lab Communicator Client (IM/Voice/Groups without in-world avatar)
Sooooo .... like MySL? They could just buy Plurk and be done with it.

Pro-active copybot policing (used client, use of proxies)
I don't think that The Lab sees any economic advantage to this. At least none to them.

UDP(*) type implemented for SL (i.e. SLDP, blocking of SL ISP side)
Sound like a good idea, but I don't know enough about it to make a cogent observation.

Life membership reward if premium >5 years
This idea works for me and I can think of lots of rewards.

Tier-free 1024 sqm when Life Member
Like this one. This is a good idea. Or even double-prims on any land a Life Member owns.

LL attaches it’s hired developers with a life maintenance contract
Not sure I understand what this is. Could you explain more?

Easier ticket escalation towards Linden Lab
I've told you twice now .. JIRA IS DEAD. Take its wallet and walk away.

Return of the quarterly Linden Lab report, more in depth
Yes, please. Not gonna happen, but yes, please.

Linden Lab that treats it’s residents for what they are. Owners and creators
That is done, but selectively. Look around. There is a cadre of Residents that is regularly hired as "outside contractors" to do work for The Lab ... not to mention the beloved LDPW Moles.

Linden Lab that acts as a trusted provider
Again, I'm lost. Reason #9087 why folks just shouldn't listen to me at all.

A TOS that protects the residents
Ideally, the ToS does that now, but the way it is implemented is lacking.

World peace!
Still wraping my head around whirled peas. I'll have to get back to  you on this.

MORE RESIDENTS THAT STAY
Alas, therein lies the rub.

ETA: Flying over parcels that are Full
Allowance does need to be made for occupied vehicles to cross land that has reached its agent limit and its prim allotment. Too often I've crashed or had my vehicle returned or bot just because I'm travelling.

 * This is the Usenet Death Penalty (see here).

Interesting list, Vick. Thanks for sharing. I can't add anything, really, as I'm pretty happy with Second Life overall or I'm rather accepting of the status quo. If I had to pick one item, it would be Web/mobile access to Our World. It is possible and shouldn't be too much work. Maybe Google needs to buy The Lab. I've suggested it before.

Amazon & the Hoverboard

Today's news from The Lab (Web) that Second Life goods are available on the hugely popular shopping Web site Amazon (here) has so many ramifications and possibilities. Let's explore some:

You can sign up for a Second Life account via Amazon and download the client or you can use an existing account.

Residents who wish to take advantage of this partnership need to "link" their Second Life account to their Amazon account. What? You have one Amazon account for your household but several in your family with different Second Life accounts. Sorry, you'll have to have a separate Amazon account to take full advantage of the partnership. That could mean splitting your Kindle library, your AmazonCloud service, and so on.

Don't worry, folks outside the United States. This is not for you to worry about yet.

The free Vehicle Starter Pack (here) includes L$1000 dropped on your "linked" account and a hoverboard. With a new appearance, this is the same board you could have gotten at the Georgean Test Track (SLurl) before Halloween when the vendor was taken away. If you don't mind a the 2009 style, drop by CC's Pouloco Station (SLurl) and click the box under the snack bar for a free copy. You'll also get an LM for the Test Track, one of the best places to play with your board, on the track or off. Hopefully you'll buy a soda or frozen drink while you are there.

At this time, two other packages are available.

The Premium Vehicle Pack - Soar, Sail, and Drive for $24.95 USD (here) includes the same hoverboard, a sailboat that was the Premium account gift in December 2011, and the Dune Buggy that was the Premium account gift in September 2012.  How many $Lindens could that much RL currency buy? At the moment I write this, some L$6162 virtual cash. A "free" hoverboard and two vehicles you could otherwise buy very similar or better versions of elswhere in Our World.

The Deluxe Vehicle Pack has the hoverboard (again) and the sailboat, nothing else, here for $14.95 USD. Based on a peek at purchasing $Lindens at the moment I write this, that amount of Real Life currency is worth about L$3692 ... they value that boat rather darned highly. As good as it is, I don't think it is as nice as my MLCC Loonetta (see this blog post) or other boats from that maker.

No word about the Rail Handcar gift that you can still grab free in the Premium Rez Zone in Saminekim (SLurl) or the currently available airplane or even the first gift, some nice furniture (read about them all on my blog here.

And  lastly (for now), more questions: Will the other two Premium gifts be bundled into packages? Will future Premium gifts get bundled up? Will Lassie get help for little Timmy laying with a broken leg at the bottom of the well before it is too late or the episode ends?

Certainly, the value here can be questioned, but I think that The Lab is taking a positive step in growing Our World. Prices can always be adjusted and packages can always be jiggered for different content. That's retail for you. It is just nice to see that they haven't forgotten about their core constituency, Second Life Residents. I hope to see what they do next. Until then, check out Tateru Nino's opinion on this development (here).

And the next Premium Gift is ....

Since September of 2011, The Lab has been giving gifts to it's Premium account Residents. Intially, the gifts were to be doled out monthly but that quickly went from plan to poo right away. Eventually, several gifts were given out, including what I consider to be a gift, the opening of some Premium-only sims: The Wilderness Area (Web) and very quiet Sandboxes (Web). Here's a quick review of the physical gifts, though (in no particular order).

The most recent Premium gift was a very nice biplane. I wrote about it here. Also introduced at this time was a Premium Resident-access airport in Orville (SLurl)

The second Premium gift was a pretty nice sailboat. I know a few Residents that snoozed and missed out on getting their copy and now they can't have one. I first wrote about this gift here.

The first Premium gift was a very nice furniture set. While folks eagerly awaited to see what the October gift would be many argued about free advertising being given to the non-employee creators of the gifts. Since then all the gifts have been made by the very, very talented LDPW Moles. My first post on this gift is here. Most of the free avatars and clothes you'll find in your default Inventory were made by non-Lab employees, by the way, and are very good.

An extremely popular Premium gift was the Dune Buggy. I very briefly wrote about it here. This gift also came with the introduction of new Premium regions like Salt Gulch (SLurl) so owners could race their new vehicles. Interestingly, the gift kiosks in the themed regions distribute the most current gift, not the one associated with the region. If you want the Dune Buggy now, you are out of luck but you can rez anything here. I see lots of folks riding horses at times.

One of my favorite Premium gifts is the Railroad Handcar. As with some of the other gifts, special Premium access regions were introduced so Residents could play. Visit Saminekim (SLurl) for some fun if you have any train. I wrote about this gift here and here.

I suppose that you could also consider having a Linden Home as a gift. I mean, you can have up to 512m² of land without paying tier costs or you can have the land with a home on it. That conserves the land's prim count for your furniture and whatnot. And having a cash stipend is something of a gift, too, plus Premium accounts have more support options and have a bit more pull if someone tries to remove you from Second Life.

But this post is about the physical gifts. Four of five have been about transportation. Do you think the next gift will be an automobile for the many Second Life roads? Maybe it will be a special mesh house for small plots of land. What do you think the next gift will be or what do you want to see? Feel free to leave a comment below and if I get enough, I might drop a line to some Moles I know.

Not a Second Life Resident? Click here to join. If anyone asks who referred you, tell 'em Uccello Poultry.

The Sad Emptiness

Last night my wife and I sat for an interview with Ever Dreamscape, editor of the Bay City Post, and one of the topics prompted me to mention that the Premium Wilderness sims (Web) are at most any given time devoid of people. This holds true for wide swaths of Our World but it is especially sad that the Wilderness is empty since it is so beautifully executed.

The Linden Department of Public Works (LDPW) provides many wonderful spaces (Web) for Residents to  use, free, and yet they are seldom used. I guess it is true that you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. Unless it is an Infohub, those places that new Residents are often dropped at when leaving what now passes for orientation after sign-up. Those locations are often filled with bots hawking groups and venues and with trolls who like to simply mess with new Residents. Essentially, the Infohubs have become 3-D "AOL chatrooms" instead of being truly useful. A shame as many are actually entertaining. There is only a modest effort by The Lab to direct those leaving Infohubs to better experiences or to help them answer the most frequent question: "How do I play this game?"

Maybe the release of temporarily attached HUDs/objects (Web) could help, should The Lab choose. A simple tutorial and and guide attaching to each new Resident could help answer that question. At least better than the pop-up Avatar Picker that is now the first thing to appear (you'd think that the How-to pane would be the first pop-up). And the coming addition of Pathfinding tools to create more lifelike animals and maybe Non-Player Characters (NPCs) across The Grid could make life more interesting. I say "could" because The Lab is simply releasing the tools. It is up to the Residents to use them.

What Second Life's 9th Birthday party (Web) taught us, is that Community is the heart of the Second Life experience. That's what makes Bay City (Web) successful. These loosely-themed regions have a loyal following of dedicated Residents and if the Role Play plans currently being discussed by the most active residents happens, then I suspect that the Bay City regions will become even more popular.

This is the sort of thing that The Lab needs to implement if they want Second Life is to grow and thus increase corporate revenue – a focused activity. A "game," if you will. The Premium Wilderness was a good effort at being that, but once folks wandered around a bit and caught some fish, pretty much they didn't think that there anything else to do despite the area being ripe with possibility.

Second Life Residents, in my experience after some six-years on the Main Grid, like to be led. They come from games with a defined set of objectives that lead to a goal, whether that be like Skyrim (a game that made many of my friends spend less time in SL when it debuted) with it's 3-D world of activities or even something like Farmville. Just look at breedable pets in Second Life. The associated community is so huge that The Lab has even featured it on the log-in pages and other "soft promotion" spots. It is a game.

There will always be a core community of Residents that don't need to be led. Indeed, many are leaders – unpaid by The Lab – to make areas like Bay City and many "private" communities thrive. What we need to reduce the problem of the sad emptiness that the Premium Wildnerness has become is such leadership from The Lab.

New Premium Gift [Update]

Premium account Residents check your emails! There's a new gift for you and it looks pretty cool! Or skip your mail and head right to a gift kiosk (list here) and get started right away at a railroad near you (here or here or here).

[Update May 9, 2012 - Added a pic of my customized handcar below and more info.]

Zipping through the yards in Calleta (SLurl).

The handcar is customizable via a menu system. I made the body of mine a shade of purple, changed the wheels to red-centered, and plastered it with rainbow stuff all over then took a copy back into my inventory after renaming it. With full Mod/Copy perms (No Trans) you can make "manual" tweaks, but the textures on the mesh prims are very, very shape specific. There's no way you would be able to match the baked in shading, for example, so your edits would be rather cartoonish. Maybe not even as good as cartoonish.

Any rider can help you drive — using the Up arrow key repeatedly and endlessly, otherwise you stop — but only the owner can apply the brakes. Three friends can join you and each position is animated. If you rez the handcar away from approved railroad tracks you are tossed off and the car suggests in chat that you visit the train station in Tuliptree (SLurl). An included note card lists other suggested starting points (no pun intended, I tell the English railroaders who read this) and explains all the options for customizing and driving. This really is a pretty cool gift. I've seen over half-a-dozen folks out on the rails having fun already and I've been out for no more than a couple hours total.

New Premium Gift! [Updated]

Months after announcing a monthly gift for Premium Residents in Second Life, The Lab has finally gotten around to putting out a second one out at the various kiosks (click here for a location list). It is a fine-looking sailing boat, as you can see in the pic below. Hopefully it will encourage Residents to try the rather nice vehicle sandboxes available to Premium Residents (click here for a list of Premium Sandboxes).

If you are a Premium Resident, you probably received an email about the new gift so you can click the "A Sailor's Guide" links for other places to sail. The gift also comes with several landmarks for sailing locations. I'll try to find the nice sailing tutorial my friend Dusty came up with and post it here so you can get the most fun out of your boat if the included instructions aren't enough (just leave a comment).

The boat is very, very nice. A HUD lets you customize some textures as well as gives you control of how the boat is operated (wind vs. motor, for example), and other aspects of your experience. It appears to be well made by the Linden Moles (of course ... the Moles rock!). One really cool bit is that after you sit, simply click the boat and your avie moves from pose to pose to pose, one of which is perfect if you get seasick. Is the boat worth the membership fee? Probably not, but if you are a Premium Resident, then you should certainly take advantage of this freebie.

[Update] My friend Dusty contacted me with more info:

• The Linden boat seats up to 11 avies at a time.
• The Wind mode is "dumbed down a bit" so you have no real control over how the sails interact with the wind. So it's sort of like an Auto Pilot.
• Sailing classes or tutorials aren't really needed, but they might be if you upgrade to another boat, like the FREE Nemo 2 at Dusty's place (and other locations). 

I've sailed the Nemo 2 that Dusty recommends and it is more fun because you have to read the winds and make decisions. If I just want to party with folks, then the Linden boat would be great.

Premium Content Update

Actually, there is no update. The nice furniture that The Lab set out for Premium Account members to grab for free in several places (such as Sandbox Mirificatio; SLurl) is still available, well past the 30 day mark that I expected the content to change.

The original announcement was made September 1st so I was rather hoping there would be something new to grab a couple weeks ago. Stopping by one gift site today, however, I found the first items offered still in the giver. I guess if you still want them, you can get them. Before I (unilaterally) declare (as is my won't, at times) that this benefit is dead ("bereft of life," to quote the usually inimitable Mr Praline), I'd like to hear from some official (preferably Linden) source. Got one?

"It's good to be the King"

Well, I'm not a king and I'm not Mel Brooks from "History of the World, Part I" but I am a premium account member with Second Life. That doesn't get me anywhere with Live Chat or the JIRA or any issues that I have with Our World, but I can get a really nice Linden Home to go with my L$cash stipend and now I have access to Premium Sandboxes and Premium Gifts! Since I logged in my alt first today after getting the email about the new goodies I can't visit the places one would go to see them, but I'll get  around to it, I'm sure.

All G-Rated sandboxes, some with amenities for vehicle testing.

Turns out it is just 8 locations with the same gift (lots of stuff for your living room) at each. In a move of questionable economic feasibility,  several of the locations use an entire region for just the gift giver.

Forty-Seven Prims of goodness (not all shown here) for what is labeled "Exclusive Premium Content, September 2011" so I'm guessing there will be something new every month. The couch seats two and has several poses. I checked only a few pieces, but it looks like they are all from Colleen Desmoulins of The Loft. Cabin not included.

I left a comment on the Official Blog announcement of these bonuses.

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

Officially Sanctioned Megaprim Use!

The new Welcome Islands and Discovery Islands for new Residents are nicely designed and executed. This fresh approach may also indicate a policy change recognizable to more experienced Residents, though: Officially sanctioned use of megaprims, those building blocks larger than users can normally create in-world. As you can see from this picture taken at Discovery Island Public 3 (SLurl), Governor Linden owns a 100x100x30 prim in the shell of the island's "shopping mall" section. It was created by Day Oh and last owned by Ryker Beck.

Miss Beck is part of the ILL Clan, the group that created the new regions (Web), and has been in-world for over three years so I imagine she has heard that The Lab doesn't permit the use of megaprims in their builds or in Resident-created builds for official Linden activities such as Burning Life and the Second Life Birthdays. Does her use of this huge prim here mark a sea change?

n00b Man

Many residents are familiar with the "n00b man" avatar that proliferated in Second Life ^® prior to the introduction of new avatar choices at sign up (Web) and the "cloud" avie for residents that haven't all all their appearance data moved with them (Web). Recently an excellent rendition in prims of this icon has been popping up all over the grid (including the offices of several Linden employees in Longfellow, like Prospero's land (SLurl). I was sad to learn, however, that the full-permissions copy I have is "stolen" (Web).

I have seen "him" made into a target for push weapons, a giant statue, ammunition for a different push weapon, a lollipop, and at least a half-dozen other things. In this picture he is an attachment with hover text stating "Lookin' for SEX with a Lesbian" over his head. Now he follows me on patrol at the Isle of Lesbos. He's a sad reminder of many men I have met in this virtual world that still display real world insensitivity. Maybe the medium makes it easy. Just as easy at it clouds the minds of some to intellectual property rights.