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One of the countless things to do in Second Life is a role-playing game, based on the Star Trek TV series. The name is United Federation Starfleet (UFS); the place is http://slurl.com/secondlife/Starfleet%20Sector002/3/245/24. Every fan of the Star Trek TV series should treat themselves to this experience. Let me tell you a little about it.
The best place to start is United Federation Starfleet, Starfleet Sector002. Leaving the transporter pad, you go through the gate to your right, which takes you to Sector001. There you’ll find the UF Starfleet Greeter that sits on the console to your left. Touch it, and you’ll get a selection of things you could receive.
The easiest choice you can make is ‘Get All’, but the only important thing is the ‘Free Item’. This is the United Federation Starfleet Welcome Kit, which is the beginning of the greatest adventure a Trekkie could hope to experience in Second Life.
If you are interested in space exploration you should set aside an afternoon to look around here. One brief visit will not be enough and it is impossible to describe it adequately in just a few words. Spaceport UK is located at http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Star%20Beach%20Island/64/192/2.
Inside the spaceport buildings you will find, among other things, lots of information about telescopes and rockets, a picture updated every minute of the sky over Cambridge, England (although I am afraid this did not work for me), a model of the exoplanet Gliese 581c that was discovered in 2007 and some wise words from Isaac Newton and Stephen Hawking (yes really!).
People ask me all the time what activities there are to do in Second Life (SL) and I always give the same generic list: exploring, making things to sell, go and socialize at clubs etc. This gets a bit boring after 4 years, so I decided to go on a mission to find what else I can find in SL.
I'd heard about hunts but never really got the time to see what they are all about. So these seemed the only natural place to start on my mission. The first sim I stumbled on was Inverness City (SLurl), modeled on the real Inverness, Scotland. For a sim that houses so much, it should be noted that I experienced very little lag on my wooden internet lines.
In all my 4 years I have never had as much fun as i did on this particular sim. The story of the Loch Ness monster is one, known to many in UK. Countless have tried and failed to prove or disprove the existence of the monster and now that RL hunt has entered SL.
There is a new game in town, a sploder aptly named Xsploder. You'll want to check it out whether you're a player or a business owner. Xsploder was developed by an innovative team led by twelve Gage, a resident of Second Life®.
For the player, Xsploder offers two ways to win, inworld and on xsploder.com. In fact, a player may join Xsploder pots inworld and on the website at the same time and may join multiple pots at once, which means there are more opportunities to win.
To join Xsploder, you can go to xsploder.com or inworld at http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/GAME%20WORLD/50/220/26. Either way, it's free to join. "Basic members on the website may join up to 5 Xsploder pots at once, but we also offer premiums for members who'd like to join 10 pots and up to unlimited pots at the same time," Mr. Gage explained. Another unique feature is that when a player joins an Xsploder pot inworld and the same pot on the website, the player's chances of winning are doubled, because that player is counted as two players. When the pot explodes, that player may win both inworld and on the website.
At this point in life, we are all very familiar with the concept of time, yet we fail to sustain this concept in Second Life®. Somehow the whole of SL seems to go quicker than your real life.
Take relationships as the first example. There is no set time limit a couple needs to be in a relationship before they get married or move in together, but if your best friend told you she were to marry a guy she had met merely months ago or if she told you her new guy was moving in after the second meeting, you'd have something to say. Yet, here if you are not married or living together after a few months people start to question your seriousness.
It is worth noting that when you do move in with your partner and you disagree with the furnishings, do you spend days trawling round stores looking for something you can both finally agree on only to spend a whole day waiting for delivery, and then another to put it where you like it? No, it takes minutes to nip to a decent mall, a quick minute or two in a build menu and TA-DAR!
Take rules as another example. It can take years for countries to change their laws, yet a sim owner can change the covenant in minutes. Either that, or, you can try to log on one day and be confronted with a box of terms and conditions of use...again!
Steam trains were hideously inefficient, slow, noisy and very dirty so it is undoubtedly a good thing that we no longer need them. And yet these ancient engines are fascinating and beautiful and there are societies in both Europe and America that preserve and run steam trains for railway enthusiasts. Riding on one is like stepping back to another age and experiencing a different way of travel, perhaps not the way we would normally choose to travel but fun for a day anyway.
Now anyone who feels nostalgia for the days of steam can visit a museum in Second Life® dedicated to steam locomotives (SLurl). It is housed in a brick building with a metal and glass roof that reminded me of so many railway stations. As soon as you go in you notice thick black smoke puffing from several engines on railway tracks below you. These include the Flying Scotsman, the first engine to pull a train non-stop from London to Edinburgh and the Stourbridge Lion, built in Stourbridge, England and the first locomotive to run on a railway in America.
An animated diagram of the internal workings of a steam engine can be seen on the wall of the museum and small models of famous engines, such as Stephenson’s Rocket, are in display cases above the tracks. I remember being told as a child that the Rocket, which was built in 1829, was the first engine to pull a train. That is not quite true but it was certainly the best of the first.
Information notecards about all the locomotives are available and both full size and model engines are for sale. Anyone who wants to ride on one of the trains can take a short trip from the train station by the museum up to a nearby castle.
Lions and Tigers and Bears…….oh my! But what about vampires? Yes, I said it……….vampires!
It all started when I was in Egypt. I was standing there minding my own business waiting for one of my friends to join me so that we could explore this unique sim together. As I was waiting, I engaged in some idle conversation with a wonderful individual whom we shall call Brave for the purposes of this article. It was just Brave and I standing there and no one else seemed to be in the vicinity, or at least I thought no one else was in the vicinity. I was about to be proven wrong.
Or is it? That is the question. I am only a month old on Second Life and already have several good stories to share with people. I had never heard of this virtual world before until a friend of mine told me about it and I decided to try it out for myself. What I have found and experienced here so far has been beyond all of my wildest expectations – including the wonderful friendships I have made. And as the days go by and I learn more and more with each passing moment, I find myself wondering if this is actually my escape or is it in fact my new reality?
My first day here on SL – or my birth date as they call it – was a very memorable one. First impressions are what make or break all people , places and things no matter what world you are in! And for me, my first impression of Second Life was amazing. I met another woman who happened to be born the same day as me in SL. Her name is Vena. We stuck together like glue that first day trying to help each other figure things out and find our way around. She was amazing and just as excited to be here as I was and discover all there was to know. Lucky for me, she happened to already know somebody here that has been a member for many years and who promised to help her find her way around and give her helpful tips that would have taken forever to have discovered on her own.
And since, I was now one of her new friends on here, I was lucky to have been given all this great advice and many fun and helpful tools to survive here as well. This matriarch of SL, who Vena was lucky enough to have known and who didn’t even know me before that day, graciously took the time to help me go shopping and patiently showed me how to do the most basic of things such as change my outfits and my hairdo as well as how to use many of the controls in my viewer and how to find and open things in my inventory. She also generously supplied me with various gifts such as beautiful skins and shapes she had acquired from all the years she had been here as well as some fun poses and gestures. She stayed with me until my avatar was transformed from a typical, run of the mill, mass produced version to a beautiful and unique avatar all of my own. She then showed Vena and me around SL a bit, introduced us to some of her fabulous friends that she has made over the years here and showed us some of the main hot spots people enjoy here. Later that night, we were invited to her amazing home she had built, along with a couple of other newbies to chat and dance the night away. As I logged off my computer for the night, I had a magnificent smile on my face and truly felt as if I had been transported from the little study I was sitting in to a completely new world, far, far away from my yellow two-story house in small town Nebraska. And I couldn’t wait to come back!
It has been a whirlwind of adventure since that first night in SL. I have learned to bowl and to ice skate. I also discovered I am quite good at dancing in this world compared to the real world. I have gone free falling in space and I can eat and drink whatever I want in this world and not even gain a single pound. I have traveled to Rome and Paris and had drinks in a little outside café and it didn’t cost me a single dime. I even won several large gift cards to go shopping with as well as a brand new sailboat of my very own to sail the high seas on! Now what girl wouldn’t be happy with that? As far as friends go, I have made many from all over the world! Vena and I have become the best of friends on here, sharing and doing everything together. We even rented our first place together a couple of weeks ago and have recently upgraded to an even bigger and better house. I have never had a sister in real life, but as Vena and I were born on the same day in SL, we affectionately refer to each other as “twin sissies.” I don’t think this whole SL experience would have been quite the same without her.
Along with the good moments, there are always the not so good moments as well. Like the time I was experimenting with my clothing inventory and forgot that people could actually see me changing. So, as I was taking my own, sweet time pondering over which outfits to try on first, over a half dozen unsuspecting people had the misfortune to witness me standing there naked until one kind soul took pity on me and ever so delicately, clued me in. Or the time that I was surrounded by blood-thirsty vampires who all wanted to make me their blood doll or at the very least take a bite of me. Thanks to a new friend, I now have a much needed garlic necklace to protect myself in the future. I have also taken many stumbles and tumbles and fallen in the water almost drowning myself on numerous occasions trying to get used to my controls. I seem to need rescuing of some sort almost every day thanks to my lack of grace!
The one thing I have learned in my short time on SL is that people come to this world for many reasons. Some are here because they are lonely and feel they aren’t accepted by others in their real lives. Others are here because of debilitating illnesses that prevent them from being and doing what they want in real life. Still others are here because they can’t have kids, they are seeking love, they are bored, or they are simply seeking escape from the monotony of their real worlds.
Whatever the reason that brings people to SL, one must never forget that behind the avatars are real people. The avatars in this surreal world aren’t simply programmed to say and do whatever you want them to. They are real people with real feelings and emotions. Some live their lives here in the virtual world just as they would in the real world. Some are married and have kids. Some have jobs here. And just as in the real world, men and women seem to compete over the same things such as close companions, who is the most fashionable and who has the best home and most gadgets.
Also similar to the real world, although there is much to be found for free on here, all of us are required to pay for the more trendy items we want as well as for rent or mortgage to stay in the homes we have. No matter how one chooses to live their life on SL, I don’t think anyone can argue the fact that there is quite a bit of crossover between reality and fantasy. So the question stands…. Is this truly my escape from reality or has it simply become my new reality?
- Mysterie-
