On the grid, off the grid
I’m only allowing myself an hour a day on Second Life. I know my obsessiveness too well. Let’s not wake up that monster.
After I got dressed, I was whisked away to a place called Orientation Island. Unfortunate name; I wondered if I was being sent to take gay lessons. But no, it’s a series of twelve basic skill tutorials. You get a star for completing each one, after which, the instructions say, you are given a passport and allowed to wander freely around the world.
I got eleven stars, but it wouldn’t give me the twelfth. Flying. Yes, you can fly…very cool. But I flew through that stupid tutorial six times and it wouldn’t give me my goddamn star. “Stuck,” I thought. These programs do get stuck. Maybe if I asked it to teleport me home — wherever that is — and back again, it would reset itself.
Uh-oh. When I got home (where is that, anyway?), I did a search for “Orientation Island” to teleport back. It returned, like, a hundred of them. And I was refused permission to enter every one I tried. Did I have to find the particular Orientation Island I started on?
Just for shits, I tried going someplace totally different, at random, and it let me. I found myself standing in some kind of public square, empty but for me and a person with breasts and an enormous set of male genitalia worn on the outside of its pants. Golly, Toto. I don’t think we’re in the tutorial any more.
I’m free!
But I don’t have a passport.
Swell. I’m an undocumented avatar.
Posted: March 8th, 2007 under games, internet, personal, second life.
Comments: 1
Comments
Comment from Sarah D.
Time: March 8, 2007, 3:11 pm
This is a new thing, apparently a half baked attempt to make sure that newbies can at least manage to change clothes without stipping down naked in a crowded PG area.
Once you have graduated from OI, you are not allowed back in. A good idea since there were plenty of scumbags preying on new people previously. Mentors are allowed in the newbie areas however.
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