These are my reviews of five different locations in second life, going around and exploring second life with others and on my own was great way to really get to know the environment and to further formulate my opinions on second life in general.
Dublin.
So working in chronological order, the first place I will review is Dublin, Dublin was the first place I ever went in second life, I was not officially a member of the class at this time I merely decided to check it out because I was being told about it by a friend of mine Sandra who was in class. My first impressions of second life were ones of amusement, I decided to make my avatar a dog, rather than make an avatar that resembled myself because I was sceptical of the online world and I wanted it to be clear to any strangers that I met online that I wasn’t taking myself too seriously . My Impressions of Dublin were positive to begin with, I recall seeing the virtual Brown Thomas on the virtual Grafton street, with its red brick tiles and the black pillars at the end of it just like the real Grafton street. I appreciated this attention to detail. I recall walking into buildings like coffee shops and bars and noting that everything had a an author, so everything was designed by users of second life which is quite cool in my opinion. What I didn’t like as much was the annoying streamed music that was constantly played through my computer while navigating around Dublin, I took way too long for me to learn how to turn this off, this is definitely most annoying thing for me in second life.
So after a while of roaming around on my own I communicated to Sandra over facebook to somehow get me in touch with her in second life, from the tutorial “level” that everybody has to do when they create a new second life profile I knew that I could get around by either walking, flying or teleporting. So Sandra informed me that the class was nearly over but that Acuppatae was looking for more people so she posted a link that was her current address within second life to facebook chat. For whatever reason this link did not work, so I looked at the address she gave me and seen that it was in Dublin 3 so I simply typed Dublin 3 into the address bar and teleported to there. Now, unfortunately I found that I was under water! I was under Dublin and roamed around trying to get back to the surface for a good 15 minutes, which seeing as second life doesn’t have the world’s best navigation tools was very agitating.
Eventually I gave up and just teleported the starting location in Dublin and flew around until seen the blarney stone pub where I found Sandra, the class had by this time ended but we had fun messing around in virtual Dublin, I my experience with Dublin and second life in general there has been no comparison between the enjoyment I get out it when I’m online with friends I know in real life and when I’m talking to virtual randomers online. Dublin I found was a good place to do this. I also managed to make a virtual faux pas in the Blarney stone, this was my first experience on second life and as I mentioned earlier in my blog I was weary of strange people online to say the least, so when I was asked by a (supposedly, you never know) female avatar “ do want a bone?” I replied “ not right now…” and walked off I then saw that so and so had just thrown me a treat which they then took back when they seen my comment I quickly left the pub.
So Dublin overall I found a fun place to be when with friends, part of the appeal of this is because there’s not really anyone there, so you and your friends have the place to yourself basically. When I have been on my own there I found that I can go for ages with out evening seeing another avatar, I kind of get the impression that Dublin in second life is a bit of virtual ghost town, like it used to be a lot busier then it is currently? This works in mostly in Dublin’s favour for me, a bit more randomness and life would be welcome although. My next location however has the exact opposite problem
London
I attended my first official class as a member the following week, which I enjoyed and I knew just over half the class in real life aswell. So naturally when our lecturer tae suggested that we go off and explore the different locations of second life after class we minced around Dublin for a while (me and Sandra even seen a jellyfish) before venturing further afield to the virtual London town. I went to London with Chris (puffydragon) and Sandra. London much like Dublin had an impressive attention to detail but in total contrast to Dublin there was hundreds of avatars there. After a bit of wandering around me and Chris settled in these giant doughnuts in picadilly square we sat and attempted to chat to randomers to get to know second life better. This however was not a very fruitful process because of the sheer amount of people there it was almost impossible to hold a conversation with anyone apart from Chris who I already knew anyway. There were a few scattered pieces of conversation between myself and others but nothing of note. So overall I found that the virtual London was not my scene.
New York
The next place that I went was New York, I travelled here on my own. New York was actually the most visually stunning place I had been so far compared to Dublin and London. It had the cool yellow taxi’s and even had an animation of newspapers blowing in the wind in the middle of the street. It had open car showrooms with amazing looking animations of souped up cars. New york also had a memorial to the victims of 9/11, curiously the memorial had rules to follow the main two being “ no weapons and keep your clothes on.” I was not aware that either of these things were possible in second life before seeing this sign, maybe its something that I will explore later.
New york however despite it’s design was actually my least favourite out of the three I had been so far because there was actually absolutely no one there. It was annoying the amount of people in London but it was fair enough compared to the ghost town that New York was.
New berlin
I visited new berlin and mainly hung around the ghq which was a hotspot for newcomers to second life, most of the people there were speaking german but there was also a fair few English speakers I seen two goth avatars hugging and dancing with each other which kinda creeped me out considering those two people could be anyone, ANYONE. This place was much like London only a lot less visually stunning. It was bland and boring and worse for holding conversations. Was not a fan of this place.
Triumph Island
The last place I visited for this review was Triumph Island, the only on Triumph Island is a club called “ crimson cabaret “ this seemed to be a twilight themed club that was under construction, like most places I’ve been in second life there was no one there and there was even less to do in this place. The only thing I actually like about Triumph was that there was this little train that drove around the island of it’s own free will that looked like a packet of refresher mints. I didn’t dig the whole vampire theme of the club and the gaudy interior. If you’re a fan of vampires and twilight and the like maybe this place would be interesting when it’s finished but I just found that it wasn’t for me.
So overall I found that Dublin was probably the place that I liked the most on second life. That’s not to say that I’m in love with it and that I would hang out there outside of class time or class assignments but I found it the most balanced place. As in there was people there but not too many and there wasn’t any overall weird theme that I was aware of.
No comments:
Post a Comment