Monday, August 13, 2007

Second Life: the beginning...

After seeing all of your pics from Second Life, I was drawn by curiosity and, I admit it, a feeling of being left behind, to try it out for myself. In my head I envisioned a gentle place where you can hang out with friends and be silly and so on. (With that thing that is missing in Uru, FURNITURE. I do get tired of sitting on rocks or my poor foot...)

The first time you play you are dropped naked and blobby looking onto a place called "Help Island", which offers no help whatsoever and feels more like Hell Island. I spent an interminable amount of time trying to make my avatar look even remotely human. In the meantime other people who also have no clue what to do are walking into me and pushing me, and saying weird things to me. Finally I sent a Yahoo message to Granelda in despair, ready to give up.

Granelda came and rescued me from Hell Island to somewhere calmer that looked like a vacation house. She looked like a supermodel and I looked like Mrs. Beasley. She gave me some new clothes and shopping money (this part is still a mystery), and helped me figure out the basics a bit, then whisked me off to somewhere with music and people dancing around in thong bikinis, all looking inhumanly perfect.

I stood off to the side in my Mrs. Beasley outfit feeling very awkward and overwhelmed. I couldn't figure out how to move around properly or even LOOK around (the camera is very hard to control).

Turns out most of the girls there were from Uru, and soon they all were raining gifts on me of clothing, hairstyles, makeup, etc. Trying to figure out how to put said objects on my avatar was sometimes hilarious and sometimes frustrating. By the time they were finished I looked pretty much exactly like a Barbie doll. Complete with sparkly things in my hair. I still couldn't walk or look around, but at least my avatar looked HOT...

I am still not sure whether the entire experience was fun, or traumatic... but ya know, they say that curiosity killed the cat. I will probably go back for another look to see if I can find the mellow place I had imagined. Meow!

No comments:

Post a Comment