Saturday, April 5, 2008

Withdrawal

I've been away from the blogosphere for a couple of weeks. Although my typist brought her laptop along on a two-week vacation, being online has been limited to occasional forays into SL to stay in touch with friends or let my alt have a date. Really, it was a vacation, after all; the typist should be out snorkeling, not sitting in a hotel chair with her arms at an unnatural ergonomic angle trying to navigate the internet on a glare-riddled small screen.

So what do I find when I return? An even slower SL, rife with transaction problems and rezzing issues. Frustrating, since I have furniture to finish building, friends to chat with, a gallery to co-manage, and RFL events to put together. As of this writing, SL has been almost completely shut down for over 14 hours, with no sign of a pending fix. I have plenty of offline things to do, so in some ways not having access to SL for a while is a good thing; but one of my avis has plans in SL for later today, so it makes me a little nervous to have SL so seriously messed up.

I saw a blog or comment somewhere wondering where else an SL resident might go for a similar experience, should SL no longer be available. Since SL is my first foray into MMO worlds of any kind, I'm not familiar with the architecture of the Sims, There, or any others. My understanding is that other virtual worlds are not nearly as developed as SL, and I'd have to start there with a new avatar in any case. Others are truly RP games, where you're expected to develop a character and work to advance to higher levels.

I'm not in SL to play a typical game, but to express creativity and to connect with friends. The latter can be done through MSN and other IM clients, of course, although the text-only nature of those has its limitations after experiencing the sensation of 3-D contact possible in SL. I'm also more unlikely to make new friends on text-based IM clients than in SL, although it's a perfectly good way to stay in touch with my existing closest SL friends. As for creativity, there are other ways to express that too.

If SL disappeared, maybe for a month, maybe forever, what would be missing from your life? Where else would you go to find those outlets?

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