Your Questions Answered

Ok, I got a few comments today on a couple of my SL posts. Rather than reply on a week old post, I thought I’d talk about it here.

First, from MC Etcher:

“Is there a version of the Imperious Curse? You could send people's avatars out to earn cash for you. Or rent them as slaves. Are there any evil wizards that need subduing?

What about a detective agency? Is there anything to solve? Are there (volunteer or otherwise) police? Hmn, could I start a detective agency, then kidnap someone prominent to have a mystery to solve? For a sizable fee, of course, bwa ha ha!”

I really should not play this game.

If you want to pay for the land and build it, you can do pretty much anything you want. People have art galleries to showcase their RL paintings and use the gallery to sell prints. Other people have made museums making use of streaming video. Other people make clothing and in-game object stores

Of course, SL works mainly around the three S’s, Sex, Socializing and Shopping.

In other words, plenty of clubs, beaches, waterparks, malls and ‘adult video’ establishments.

As for a detective agency, it would be possible. Someone has a boyfriend or girlfriend on SL, and wants to know what their partner is getting up to when they’re not around to supervise.

As for bad wizards…

It depends entirely where you go. Most people on SL are just there to chat and have fun. They come on to go to a club or a beach, listen to the music and talk to people.

On the other hand, there are hardcore role-players. They create a character, and never break character while they’re playing. You get the Star-Trek guys, the Star Wars guys, the Lord of the Rings guys and the Harry Potter crowd. (There are hundreds more, but I think those are the main ones.)

Now, as Kato asked:

Anyway... with all this freedom in the world, what prevents people from massively griefing everyone through any manner of nasty thing (such as misusing the wand you purchased)?

Well, I can honestly say I was surprised at how little griefing went on in SL. Don’t get me wrong, there are assholes on SL, just like on any other MMO, but you have very few problems.

Here’s how it works. SL is divided up into ‘Sims’…in other words, smallish areas. Each sim is owned by a different person, and they set the rules for their Sim. Each owner has admin rights to their sim, and can grant admin rights to other players.

So, if I went into someone else’s sim, and started throwing players around, blasting them up into the air or out of the sim, it wouldn’t be five seconds before I got booted out myself.

If I returned and started doing the same thing, they’d just flat out ban me.

So, if you act like an asshole, you quickly find yourself not able to go anywhere.

But SL is a HUGE place and it would take you months to get banned from everywhere. This brings me to the rap sheet.

Basically, other players can lodge complaints against you for abusive behavior etc. You get enough complaints, you just get your whole account banned. You can just create a new account, but if you’re actually able to grief people, you’ve been in the game a fair amount of time and accumulated a lot of cash and possessions…which of course you’d lose.

The other big thing is you get to know the people who own the sims, because they’re players to. You get to know them and like them, so each sim becomes pretty much self policing.

So there it is. Download SL and start playing…now!