SL HomePage

As of 1PM PST September 11, 2006, it appears Linden Lab has finally closed user posting to the following Official Forums:

• Bulletin Board
• General Topics
• The Sandbox
• Land and the Economy
• SL In-world Political Science

It remains to be seen the effectiveness of resident-to-company dialogue through The Official Blog of Linden Lab.

The current in-world Second Life experience does not allow for proper resident-to-resident communication, as it is lost to the ether once you have logged out. As for resident-to-company dialog, the only true communication comes at the behest of Live Help, which is always at the behest of a single resident.

Communication is one feature not taken seriously by What is Second Life? The only mention I have found requires three levels of drill-down:

Within this vibrant society of people, it’s easy to find people with similar interests to you. Once you meet people you like, you find it’s easy to communicate and stay in touch.

Notice the wording. You have to find people first, a function the Forums did not require. Stay in touch? With presence issues, no in-world mail and limited IM storage, it appears comminication isn’t much of a concern for a large world.

Ultimately many of us pay to create this world, and one common resource for customers is a Forum or similar system for dialogue between each other as well as the company. We are now asked to provide this service ourselves, adding additional cost and time and not reaching everyone.

The Forums may not have been used by everyone, but they were always there if you needed them. Existing residents now know of alternatives, and I’m sure they will provide a similarlu excellent resource for resident-to-resident support and community. As for new residents, only time will tell.

Another twist on in-game economy was released this week for the Xbox 360. Atari’s Test Drive Unlimited is a pseudo-MMOG driving/racing game. Over 1000 miles of of Hawaii’s Oahu island are available both in single-player and multi-player modes. You can race a variety of challenges against AI or against other players across the world.

In addition to customizable avatars, houses to own and creation of original race challenges, there isan in-world economy. As you buy and modify vehicles you have the option to sell to other players, using profits on additional clothing and vehicles.

While Microsoft has yet to implement their promised in-world customization (from the beginning of the 360 they have talked about custom content creators creating things like clothing for in-world use and purchase through the marketplace) it is an interesting step despite its limitations and of course no real-world monetary gain.

It will be interesting to see if additional titles take on these aspects of in-world creativity and economy on the road to additional worlds created and possibly owned by their users.

What to do about Popular Places? I’ve seen this question asked in-world and on the forums. The debate normally centers on how the list only shows the places that normally grab people through camping devices such as chairs and dance pads tht pay residents to park their avatars in a location for a few L$. The following proposal contains a major part (revision to the Popular Places tab of the “Search” dialog) and a minor part (discussion about how traffic is computed).

Read the rest of this entry »

Until I can get around to customizing this WordPress template, I’m sticking in the links to the other two features of the site that are currently active.

Topsites uses the Aardvark Topsites system to allow users to add links and banners to their Second Life websites. Feel free to use this section to advertise your blogs, shopping sites, review areas or whatnot (as we all love whatnot).

Forums hav been added using vBulletin 3.6, and I am in the process of duplicating the structire of the official Linden Lab Forums for ease of transition. Hopefully new and existing users will find a place here for everything from their general discussions to support and product announcements. I still hope to get the Products setcion of SLHandbook up soon enough as an alternative to Classifieds.

Next up: Events. How should they be handled? Should full-day events be supported? Should the system reside here or at SLHandbook? Let me know!

Well, we’ll go with SLHomePage for short (a less litigous reasons). As I announced in the soon-to-close General Forum of Second Life (http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=129305), I am no longer attending the SLCC, the Second Life Community Convention beginning this Friday, where I am a sponsor through my website SLHandbook. I had planned to deliver in print a guide to my research into user retention for Second Life along with recommendations, code fragments and screen mock-ups of a number of features I had hoped to discuss with Linden Lab personnel.

Instead I will be using the website to post those observations in a more haphazzard fashion over the coming weeks. I will also be adding a number of features that will hopefully allow people to use this site as a one-stop portal for forums, links and more. As always my intent was to help with user retention, in addition to showing potential new users the many wonders Second Life has to offer.