You wouldn't believe how Help Islands in Second Life™ look these days. Once again, newspapers made a "breaking" story about a guy who cheated on his RL wife and SL partner with another avatar while the wife was chasing orcs in WoW.

Moral of the story was, as it seems, go to second life and get some sex. So the hundreds of same looking avatars fall from non-existence down on the Grid and make me think what is in their heads? (more…)

As I've learned recently, I need to go out and meet new people to end this adolescence of mine. I needed to interact to form my new personality. I need to talk to people, to develop my communication style, I need new experiences.  And I need a nice cybersex session. I'm a man in the world of phantasies. And sometimes, there are nights just like that. Hot and needy. (more…)

Now when Linden Lab is in search for new default avatars and Philip Rosedale is leaving CEO position of Linden Lab I feel like writing about more interesting things in second life. Like Philip Linden's hair. (more…)

I have promised months ago, in comments on my noobhood memories, to share with you a bit of "my short, quite unsuccesfull but enlinghtning dancer/escort career". So, to correct the title of this post, I wasn't teen but noob, and I wasn't a whore but an escort. Never mind that both are names for prostitutes, second life population feels lower level of guilt when having cybersex for money is called escorting. Somehow I feel it is more about guilt of the clients, but that's beside the point here. So… me…. just a couple of weeks old… in desperate need of money.

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Nick Wilson at Metaversed:

Virtual worlds are complicated. Prohibitively complicated. The initial learning curve is so great in Second Life for example, that most people don't stay. It's just too hard.

I don't want to sound like an elitist here, but the story of learning process too hard and long is plain wrong. I was wondering why I hear that over and over again before I became a mentor. Then, when I got back to the orientation and help islands I was amazed by the state of mind of some noobs. (more…)

There is more than nine millions registered users of second life but less than million and a half who logged-in in the last 60 days. We all know that the retention rate is somewhat low. Usually, that is considered as a consequence of steep learning curve and time needed to get a grip on the interface. Frankly, I don't believe in that. One, without previous gaming and virtual worlds experience, needs about an hour to get used to second life. That hour is covered by the thrill of discovering the new world. There is something else causing those numbers. (more…)

Over and over we hear people, from noobs to journalists, saying how second life is hard to start. It is hard to learn the interface, it is hard to get your way around, we don't know what to do, learning curve is steep… Large percent of those 8 million registered users never come back because they cannot handle the "game" and they lose the interest. I understand that if one doesn't learn the basics during the first session probability of coming back is terribly low. But, is it really that hard?

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