Mr. Goldberg's article is 100% correct.... If you feel the same as he does, then you too should "kill off" your avatar and go "drink a Tabasco milkshake through [your] nose...." Your absence from Second Life will not be noticed. Niko

You're a full-on idiot. It's no surprise you didn't find SecondLife anything but boring, as that's what your writing (and probably your 'real' life) is, as well. If you'd studied ANY of the other people writing about Second Life you'd see you're acting like an egocentric, dimwitted fool writing an article like this.

Outside companies coming into SL to advertise their RL existence are not "legitimate businesses", they're PR stunts. The AA shop is generally only visited by journalists now, who all say "oh wow there's nobody here". Why would anyone go more than once? The "concept behind SL" is not to sell ad space, you know. I am also not quite seeing why would it bother you to buy a few L$ to start off with when you're "accustomed... to paying for (your) game" before you even start. You don't get to do fancy things in WoW without either (a) spending a lot of time killing stuff or (b) going on eBay, and you have to pay up front for that too. And let's not even talk about There. It is laggy at the moment though.

It would be nice if you got some facts straight, or even bothered to really check: (1) Second Life is not a game. It is a virtual world who's primary use is entertainment, however, there are many businesses (such as my real-life company) that use it for Corporate Training. (2) Games don't have their content created by those who inhabit them. Just about everything in Second Life is created by it's residents, most of whom are not professionals. This is going to make it much more creative an imaginative, however, not being professional can also lead to performance issues. (3) Games store 99% of the content they use on the local hard drive of the player. Second Life streams just about everything. Transferring so much more across the Internet makes it a completely different animal. Of course it's going to be a bit slower. By the way, I hear Ultima II has a great framerate on modern hardware, if that's your only concern. Many of us are more concerned about meeting fun, smart people and seeing their incredibly imaginative creations instead of the frame rate of some predictable first person shooter. (4) The popular places list is a poor indicator of popularity. If you had done some research, you would have found plenty of forum posts, blogs, and articles about the gaming of the metric used to rank places called "traffic." Camping chairs and dance pads are in place to make places appear popular, when in fact, they're just zombie avatars. (4) You claim you entered the world naked, and without a dime. That is completely untrue; all avatars are born clothes with a male or female default. There's a full library of free content provided to start in inventory made by some of the best content creators within the world. There are also tons of places where you can get more free stuff: the GNUbie Store in Indigo, YadNi's Junkyard, and www.SLBoutique.com/free/ - did you even bother using any function of the FIND tool other than the popular places tab? Sheesh, way to dig deep. (5) The company that makes Second Life is LINDEN LAB, not LINDEN LABS! Please be more responsible in your journalism. It's hard to write something decent when your entire premise is incorrect. Regards, -FlipperPA

SL is boring in that way that playing the first level of any video game or reading the first chapter of a book over and over again is boring. If you never get beyond being a newbie you never find out what is really compelling about SL. You have to get past the alienness of a 3d virtual world that doesn't tell you what your purpose is. Then you start to realize that you make your own purpose. Also, I think if you aren't a creative person, you don't use photoshop, can get into scripting, or don't enjoy putting together 3 dimensional primitives to make your own whatever, then 90% of the fun is lost on you. Sure money counts, but c'mon you live in the US of A. What can you do anymore that doesn't cost you? I hear they are taxing air by the lung full next year. Once you get out of newbie stage, part of the fun of SL is also figuring out how to make money and that is a little more sophisticated than mining for gold and fending off monsters. Perhaps that first commentor wasn't entirely correct, Second Life, like first life, can be very much a game it all depends on how you tackle it. As I always say to people who protest that they are bored "maybe you're just boring."

You have no clue. There are so many factual inaccuracies in this report that I wonder if you made it some personal goal to see how many falsehoods you could fit in one article.

"Sponsored by Cdigix". So you are paid to trash anything that looks like competition to your masters!

I think it's hilarious the backlash you're getting for this piece. My experience was practically identical to yours. I think this community is better left to those with a lot of free time in their first life to really garner the enjoyment of it.

I am compelled to write after reading this poor article. It sounds like you were in for about 2 hours. The landscape is VAST, believe me. You would never get to see it all (and not that you would want to anyway) but the variety is amazing! This large landscape means people are spread around. Were you expecting them all in one place?? Check the map out, you can see little green dots showing where people are concentrated. Of course Linden Lab is out to make money, they don't claim that they are not. And many residents are as well. Good luck to them. It's all optional, you're never forced to buy. As someone said, you start off with clothes and a large library of other clothes, along with MANY ways of adjusting your appearance. And of course there are free places. When you register, you have the option of entering your credit card details, or not - it's up to you. If you DO enter them, they will give you a $250 start-up pot - cool. I have been a regular in SL since April 2006 and I have not spent once cent in there. This doesn't mean I will not in the future, of course, as you do need to spent money to own land. A cheaper alternative is to rent a house. I was lucky to register when they had a scheme where they gave me $50 every week (as long as I was in the world at least once in that week). They continue to honour that commitment and I have bought lot's of cool stuff with it. Unfortunately they don't do that for new users any more. You can go to dance clubs where owners sometimes randomly award money to people, just for coming, or providing entertaining conversation or dancing well (as judged by contestants). There are also money chairs, but they're rubbish as far as I am concerned - boring and a waste of time. Apparently there are money trees to find in some places but I have not bothered. I have made use of the above mentioned library and free things. I could build things but do not have time - the tools are all built in and free for anyone to use. There are also free classes you can attend at virtual universities to learn to build things. I have found that many people are very generous once you get to know them. Someone gave me a very nice looking replacement skin, and other nice clothes. I also hang out at friend's houses as if they are my own. Most people are friendly and helpful. There are mentors in the welcome areas quite often and this is where I recommend you hang out to start with. There is also Live Help where you can be connected with an in-world expert if you really get stuck. For me, it's all about meeting people and socialising. It is NEVER boring, now that I have established friends (who I would love to meet in RL one day). Whenever I go on-line, I find myself chatting with between 2 and 6 people simultaneously. Last night I was mud wrestling, then slow dancing with a nice friend. Then I went to a library and finally to my favourite place in SL, the Lost Garden's of Apollo. There are beaches and water parks, forests and amusement parks, you can go skiing, skydiving, ten pin bowling, movie cinemas showing RL current movies (ahem). You can even have a music jam with your friends in an Elven world. There are interesting mock-ups of real world places to visit and hang out at. Each place has its own music stream and there are video streams in many places too. There are lot's of multi-player quiz based games (where you can win money) and many other types too - even saw Russian Roulette (btw, you cannot die in SL). The list of interesting things to do in SL is endless. To find nice places, don't look in the Popular Places area in Find, look in people's 'Picks' within their personal profiles. Then Instant Message them and ask them to tell you about them - that'll get a friendly conversation going. SL does slow down some times and it certainly can be frustrating, but I balance this with the fact that I have paid nothing for all the fun I've had and the friends I've made - exceptional value as far as I'm concerned. Basically, your first impressions cannot count as a judgement of the world as a whole. You need to give it some time, to get over that awkard newbie period, that we have all faced.

If you want to be entertained, watch TV. If you want to play a game, then find a game to play. If you want to participate in something social and creative, then enter Second Life, but be prepared: you need to work at it - shock! just like real life :-)

Interesting article although I do kind of agree it is a touch shallow. Honestly, to enjoy second life you HAVE to get some money, without it you miss out on a lot of cool stuff. Buy a Dominus Shadow and you get a real taste of how cool the content in SL can be. Popular places are also to be avoided, you really have to explore to find the cool stuff, although a "seen it all" feeling sets in pretty quickly. Very true about the slowness, not even amazing gaming computers can run SL well. Worse is that the slowness is also present in other stuff, scripts run very slowly for example, thankfully that will be drastically improved in six months or so. There is still fun to be had, you just have to work and pay to find it.

I agree that Sl is just a Compensation for what people are missing out on in RL, although there are Profitable values in SL i believe that Sl is just bullshit. wow you can go skiing in SL, but do you feel the cold breeze in your face and the Adrenaline of going down slopes like in RL? NO!. omg you can FLY! Correction, a virtual pixelated render is what appears to be flying in a fake world. holy crap you can even make friends! but realy you are hiding behind a Computer screen, playing an avatar that probably doesnt look like you. the only benefits from SL i have seen so far, is the trade opportunities for people who arent properly trained, other than that its just compensation for what people are to scared, lazy or incapable to do!

Second Life is slow indeed. Maybe we need faster computers. Anyway, the graphics solicit my processor a lot. I guess that's why it moves in frames. I was surprised to see a Maytag Parts store in the game. I entered, browsed their products and a virtual seller told me I can buy anything I see and like online. Is this secure? What happens if I give my credit card info?