Linden Lab's Second Life isn't a traditional online game. There's no standard storyline, there's no set places, there's no finishing or winning. It's a virtual world, where the users create most of the content, which means Second Life can be anything. ANYTHING.
Do you want to actually play a game with other people? there's lots to choose from, or you can make your own. Do you want to hang out at a club, attend the theater, visit a virtual recreation of a famous city? We've got you. Do you want to create your own fantasy world, building by building, from the blades of grass to the butterflies in the sky? Jump right in. Perhaps you want to open up a 3D store? Some people make their real life living this way. If you don't find something you want, you can make it.
And there's one thing I can tell you for certain: THE GAME CHANGES. Don't let that scare you. I left for a few years, came back, and floundered a bit because some things were so different, but I was able to catch up, thanks to the generosity of many other players.
Overall, the changes are small improvements in technology and visuals, but sometimes there's something big. And, because I'm a very introverted player, and pretty oblivious in general, I don't always know about features, only partly because when I first learned how to do something, other options weren't available, and I just kept doing it that way because it worked. There are resources I don't know about, and I do hope you share the ones you know in the comments below. I am not an expert, and my posts are fallible. In a few years, they will probably also be irrelevant because . . . the game changes.
That's both the good and the bad of the virtual world. There's a huge, continuous learning curve, and the hardest part is figuring out where to go to learn more, because it probably won't be found in the game itself.
For starters, there isn't one program to download. You have multiple options, not just the standard one offered on Second Life's website. I use the Firestorm viewer, for example, but there's also one called Alchemy, and another called Black Dragon. These were approved by Linden Labs, but not made by them.
Finding places to go can be a frustrating experience, and usually you have to go outside the viewer itself to look for things. There's a search engine within the game, but places aren't automatically registered in that system - the users must pay a weekly fee to appear there, and a lot of them don't. So how do you find them? I usually go to Google and do a search starting with 'Second Life.'
There is an online marketplace, but again, sellers have to make their own shops and list their own items, and a lot of them don't. It's a poorly organized mess, and I spend entirely too much time daydreaming about how to fix it.
There are a lot of big, non-Linden-related communities you can turn to for help. Seraphim, Bellatech, and FabFree are great resources. There is Primfeed, a picture-focused social media site. Discord is full of Second Life related communities. There's are several active subs on Reddit, like this one, and a lot of groups on Facebook. Poke around your favorite sites and see what you can find.
There's treasure everywhere.
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