Jamyskis

I’ve just had a proper go at playing around with Second Life. I did sign up for it some months ago but after using the Windows client, I found it was just too much of a resource hog to be worthwhile. As such, it got removed from my hard drive and never saw the light of day on my PC again until today.

I knew that Linden Labs had been offering an alpha version of their Linux client for a while now, but it was only today that I finally got around to downloading and trying it. Indeed, while the performance was far from perfect, it was clearly better than the Windows client I had tried a few months prior. The client did, being an alpha version, possess a few bugs, but they were nothing major as such.

No, the real problems with using Second Life come when trying to use the network itself. I have a 2 Megabit connection, which, while far from top of the line, should be adequate to run most online games. Even though I had nothing running except Evolution (Beryl was switched off for obvious reasons, as Second Life is an OpenGL and a resource-hungry one at that) there was a tremendous amount of lag.

Linden Labs makes its money from Second Life by means of Linden Dollars, which you can obtain (most easily at least) by means of buying them from the website with real currency. Since I don’t have a credit card and there is no visible way to pay by means of PayPal, this option was excluded to me. This wouldn’t have been a problem, as you can theoretically roam the landscapes of Second Life, chat and socialise without paying, but serious problems did pop up later on.

Your entry into the world of Second Life begins in a orientation course, which in my case, being in Germany, was in a German-style castle with all the signs and orientation guidelines in German. Nice touch. It only covers the basics but is enough to get you by in the big, bad, virtual world.

When you’ve finished the orientation course, you’re given the option to go to the main island, or to go to an area known as “Help Island”. Being a newbie in this, I decided to opt for Help Island. Click on the sign, click on teleport, and theoretically, I should have been there.

But no. I was informed by a rather blunt and mysterious message that I did not have permission to visit Help Island. I tried again, thinking this may have been a glitch in the system. Nope. I most definitely did not have access. Looking through the knowledge base, I found an article on Help Island which showed how to create a landmark so that I could teleport there at any time, so I gather I should have been able to visit it.

The download area of the Linux client invited me to report any bugs or issues I had with the software to the Linux development area of the forum. Although I wasn’t really convinced that this was a problem with the client, I decided to give it a shot. I come to the forum login screen, whereby I am again asked to enter my Second Life access details. Only this time, it blatantly refuses to accept them. At this point, I just gave up.

I was seriously considering spending out a bit of money on a virtual credit card so that I could use Second Life properly as it was intended. As it stands, I see no reason why I should, as I’m under the impression that it would be a tremendous waste of money. Others have told me that this is not the case, but from my experiences I remain unconvinced. If the simpler, free stuff doesn’t work properly, I dread to think what happens with the more complicated aspects of Second Life.

The sparse nature of the orientation area in comparison to several months ago suggests to me that I am not alone in this matter and that the appeal of Second Life has since waned to the larger PC-using public.

If I’m wrong in any of this, or anyone is willing to offer a little help in this, please drop me a line and I’ll give it another shot. For now though, I cannot recommend this atrocious mess, alpha client or not.