Second Life Sketches - If By Sea
By Warren Ellis
The following is an independent opinion column, and is not connected with Reuters News. The opinions and views expressed herein are those of the author and are not endorsed by Reuters.
As an afterthought to last week: ever sailed a boat in Second Life? I used to do it all the time from one of my previous bases inworld, a bay on the mainland. The only drawback was that the bay was close to a four-sim junction, and so taking the wrong course off the harbour would lead you right to the point where all four sims met. Which is just disastrous, particularly on older parts of the mainland.
Take the crossing wrong, and you find yourself plummeting down through sea and bedrock and out the bottom into some peculiar underworld void, an uncontrollable voyage to the bottom of Second Life. Half the time, you have to log out of the world entirely to escape it. Upon returning, I’d often find my boat stuck nose-first in the sea bed and slowly spinning, impossible to free. Once, upon diving to retrieve my boat, I found that someone had been following me through the crossing, and that there was a broken avatar with their face stuck in the ground and their chest where their feet should have been.
Provided you can find a bay free of booby-traps like that, I do recommend obtaining a free boat, ideally a dinghy, and spending some time travelling the coastline. It’s not as simple as travelling the road system — your trip will inevitably be curtailed due to some idiot putting a banline across a waterway, and people’s houses should be freely nuked for that — but just as rewarding for an understanding of the real breadth and scale of Second Life. Teleporting makes the world seem small. Only driving or sailing it really brings home just how huge the place actually is.
Also, you should bear in mind that coastline land has long been the most cherished kind of parcel in Second Life. Even today, when the exploding island business has led to a situation where almost all rental parcels are coastline, oceanfront land remains the most expensive. Mainland coastal land, therefore, tends to be somewhat better taken care of than regular mainland parcels. Sailing the coast, you’re not going to see many free prefabs houses just plonked down, and you’ll find almost no ad-farm parcels (small pieces of land with a dozen floating advertisements filling it to the brim). Go on a southerly heading from the eastern coast of Lemon, just as a place to start, and you’ll soon find some of the more careful building you’ll ever see on the mainland. These parcels were never cheap. For many, they represent someone’s total investment in Second Life. And that tends to show in the building and caretaking.
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Missing Mile is yet another post-apocalyptic sim, a style which seems to be becoming the chief movement in Second Life (with steampunk a close second).
The link I followed said it was abandoned, but it certainly didn’t seem that way when I arrived, with half a dozen people hanging around in the landing zone alone. Very well designed, it’s intended as a role-playing zone, with combat operating on the DCS system. It’s free-form, so it’s not as rigid and structured as, say, Toxian City.
I suspect, however, that it’s the organisation of the Toxia game that appeals, and so perhaps Missing Mile doesn’t have as fanatical a player base. Though it does, of course, have inhabitants who believe their entire goal is to tell other people they’re Wrong. You should be tolerant of and kind to such people at all times, because they simply don’t know any better. Seriously. People on Second Life who immediately exhibit a complete lack of social skills should always be dealt with as politely and swiftly as possible, because arguing with them simply doesn’t work.
In any case, my visits to Missing Mile this week have seen no roleplaying occurring. It seems to be most people standing around or shopping. Probably not your first stop for a roleplaying experience. But, if you like the post-apoc aesthetic, Missing Mile is an essential visit. Make a point of finding the sewer system.
