So to not be repetitive with my classmates, but I also did not enjoy my secondlife experience as much as I thought I would. After seeing the Worlds of Warcraft presentation I was bummed that I didn't get to do that assignment but excited about my upcoming interactions with secondlife because it sounded just as cool.
As everyone else said after downloading the program I was given a name "Becca Jouvenat," who I chose to be blonde with a red sweater and skirt. I followed their tutorial which I must say was cool. It was a series of rooms you had to walk through that told you how to chat, move, fly, etc and you just walked through the room and saw big billboards with keyboard instructions. This made the original tedious instruction manual much more interesting.
After learning how to chat I got really excited to start meeting some people! There was another newby in the room with me his name was bobbie raxri (or some last name like that). I typed to him, "hi do you want to be my friend," and I was immediately shut down with a big "NO." Dissapointed, I decided to venture to a realm where I could meet different people and get some conversations going. I had a hard time figuring out the rules of the game and how to switch locations but eventually I kinda got it.
I have to say I did enjoy the graphics and wandering around, and flying, but I got bored real fast. Most of the time I didnt see anyone else in the areas I was in, and I spent most of my time trying to figure out what to actually do in the game. I dont know if this is because I wasn't in the right place or didnt really know how to play the game, but regardless I had a difficult time. After logging on a few more times, I found some people to talk to. As a follow up with Carly's post, I also found that the ones that knew how to play were rude. When I asked simple questions such as how to purchase land I got short obvious answers such as, "with money." They were not very helpful or willing to help me. I tried to develop relationships with people but failed.
I dont really understand how this game works as a community since I found people to be very unfriendly. At least in worlds of warcraft you go on missions together and kill animals together. Here it was just like an alternate reality and place you can pay money to build fake things. I was also so sad to find that I actually had to pay real money to purchase anything for the game. I thought this was extremely stupid to pay real money for a shirt for my avatar or to buy fake land. I dont really understand the appeal here. Does anyone think making these kinds of purchases with real money are worth it? I would much rather play a video game that I know is fake than try to pretend this second life is real and use real money to make a world for myself on the computer. I am all for trying to get communities together online, but dont think it is healthy for people to live their lives in a game on the computer.
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