Anyone here play Second Life? If so...what's up with the drama

The Game Room
21

In a sense it is true. They had to put in a tutorial section because every other MMORPG leads you around by the nose. You spawn in a newbie section, there are a set number of baby quests to get you starting gear, and then they pat you on the ass, wipe your nose and send you off to the next area to lather rinse and repeat, just a few levels more advanced.

Old school original EVE you generated your character and you popped awake in a station with like 5000 ISK to your name and a newbie frigate …

Now you generate your character, you pop out in a training school in a newbie frigate with 5000 isk, and an agent who will talk to you and give you missions to teach you how to do the basics, and while doing the basics you learn how to do most functions that are possible after training but with ‘civilian’ versions of the equipment that only work in the training areas. As rewards for the missions you get skill books, and modules to fit on ships, and a few ships, and by the time you are done you are at least aware of the different things you can try in game. They auto log you into a newbie chat group, your corp chat, and local chat. The corp is a newbie corp, nobody can declare war on it so you don’t have to worry about dying in a war, and as long as you stay in empire space you normally won’t get ganked as you are in a cheap ship compared with people who gank with more expensive ships [I suppose there has been a gank fleet of newbie frigates]

And the fun thing with newbie frigates is they are free ) you pod into a station that you have no ship in, they generate a newb frigate for you. I have an alt that I deleted to make a playing alt that I just podded into every station to see how many systems I could get newbie frigs in =) She had over 350 newbie frigates scattered around before I got bored of it:D I did a bet with someone using Aruvqan, I podded into a station in Nakugard, and started with a newbie frigate and through mining and missions earned my way back into a rigged and fitted hulk in about a month, flying 8 hours a day 5 days a week. 0 to about 750 mil ISK in a work-month with the only advantage being that I didn’t need to pay for skillbooks or take time training =)

22

I had the same experience as Paul: lots of people online, but… where the heck are they? And I came out with the impression that it is what you basically call it in the OP: a chatroom which takes up a lot of graphic resources.
To multiquote: click on the “+” button in one of the posts you want to quote. Then “+” the next one, and the next… “Quote” for the last one. Tadaaaaaa!

23

1.) For a lot of people Second Life is their Only Life.
2.) A lot of people are drama whores.

Occasionally (read: all the fucking time) you get people who are a little of column 1 and a little of column 2. When that happens you’ve got a recipe for disaster.

24

The internet, among other things, is for drama. Many people get easily emotionally invested in things, and the context of the internet removes the subconscious shame feedbacks that might keep them from overreacting to trivial disagreements.

25

I used to play in one of the bigger not-Gor MMOs-within-an-MMO in Second Life. And. . .yeah, there was a ton of drama. I think that happens, though, whenever you have a bunch of people interacting in a realm that A.) is based entirely around interpersonal interactions (instead of killing internet dragons) and B.) allows for muting of personal accountability (because, hey, you’re an avatar! It’s not like they’re going to punch you in the face).

Eventually, the drama got to be too much, and I drifted off to World of Warcraft. The people who did most of the drama, though, were people who had nothing better to do than spend all. Freaking. Day. In Second Life. That was their social life, their escape, their high school. They had a ton invested in it, and in the people in it, and so it was like their real life. I think that was a part of it, to be honest.

That being said, I miss parts of Second Life; I love the avatar customization and the environment creation; I had a bunch of land that I’d gotten to do some pretty awesome builds on (well, more like arranging shit, but still). The people, though. . .there are maybe three or four I still stay in touch with outside of the game, but the community as a whole is pretty toxic. Even otherwise reasonable people start acting like hormone-addled fifteen year-olds.

26

Point of clarification: The game made Chung a real life millionaire, not a strictly in-game millionaire, and others do make a living in Second Life. For my money (I spend virtually nothing in SL, if you are patient you can do just fine in SL for very little money, as freebies abound). For my money, it’s the most fascinating place on the Interwebs.

27

Is that a SL thing? One of my friends in WoW is also a big SL player, and whenever I’m describing something to him or telling him about something that happened (in chat/whispers, I break long descriptions/stories into short 1-2 sentence fragments rather than leave the other person waiting for me to type full paragraphs), he continually intersperses “nodnod” between my sentences.

28

[quote=“Nava, post:22, topic:569155”]

I had the same experience as Paul: lots of people online, but… where the heck are they? And I came out with the impression that it is what you basically call it in the OP: a chatroom which takes up a lot of graphic resources.QUOTE]

OK. Well, this means its option 3 for me. I’m in a rut and need to go out more.

Being unemployed doesn’t mean scum. It means unlucky. I downloaded Eve today. I started the the tutorial and quickly realized that its not something I should try to learn while I’m chemically enhanced. I also recognized it as the game one of my rl friends wanted to get me interested in. He’s a long distance trucker, who uses sl to play with his wife.

College students let loose in second life. I’ll bet that lasted about a day.

EEEK!!! I read something about that, but the case was in Japan and the couple were married in real life.

breaks the post in half because its getting too long

29

My question has now been answered!

This is something I’ve never understood either. When I’m online, I’m interacting with other people. I don’t think I’ve ever said anything in anger that I wouldn’t say to someone’s face. Its actually helpful that I’m typing, because I have time to think before hitting send.

Looks at your name…isn’t surprised that you like Gor :cool: I do too, but the problem is that I don’t play enough. Things happen so fast. Drama happens and the stucture changes overnight. I was a panther for a while, but everytime I logged in, most of my pack were happy slaves and I was left in an empty camp.

[QUOTE=Angel of the Lord;13404655 The people who did most of the drama, though, were people who had nothing better to do than spend all. Freaking. Day. In Second Life.

but the community as a whole is pretty toxic. Even otherwise reasonable people start acting like hormone-addled fifteen year-olds.[/QUOTE]

I agree with the first part. I’ve started paying attention since I opened this thread, and its the ones who live there who are the drama queens.

As to the second part, I have to disagree. I’ve met a lot of balanced and reasonable people there. It could be because I shrug off the drama queens and then pay attention to the interesting ones, I don’t know.

When someone is sending shotgun posts at me, I nod to let him/her know that I’m still paying attention or is in agreement but doesn’t want to invalidate his next short post. In Second Life, you can usually tell when someone is typing, so there is no reason for shotgun messages. Personally, I like the full message at once. If you are worth paying attention to, you are worth waiting for.

When I was nodnodnod at Aruvqan, I was trying to let him know that I was in full agreement.

30

The main reason I break it up is WoW’s fairly small per-message character limit. I hate hitting that limit in the middle of a sentence, so I find it’s easier to stop at the end of a sentence before I get to that point and hit <Return>, then continue typing the next segment. Because deleting the partial sentence and then typing it over again for the next part just makes things take even longer.

31

So now I see that I owe a friend an apology. He is a dedicated WOW player and constantly shotguns posts at me. Its OK when he’s just chatting with me, but really invalidates rl to the point that I’ve stopped rping with him. I’ve asked him to stop, but from what you said, its a habit that will be hard for him to break.

He really is an interesting person and I do value his friendship. Now that you have explained that to me, I can adjust. Thank you.

32

Roleplay can be quite a time sink, but some groups are more stable than others. With more than 300 Gorean sims to pick and choose from, it’s no surprise a lot of people feel free to vote with their feet when they don’t like the way things are going. And it’s hard to blame them when the people who are paying for the sim pretty much have dictatorial powers as to what goes and what does not. Here’s a resource where you can ask around and maybe find a Gorean or even non-Gorean group that meets your needs/interests, if you are not already aware of it:

http://www.goreanforums.net/

I would strongly advise using a ficititious name … not even your SL name … to post there should you choose to do so, as drama queens have been known to use stuff posted there to fuck up people’s RP. The regular posters are mostly BtB folks but there are some Evolved Goreans and in general the posters there are the more mature type of RPer and will give you a fair shake.

33

word.

Thank you for the link, I’ll look there. Gor isn’t really a good match for me right now. I was a very happy kijara for a while, had sisters and all. He collared a drama queen who blew everything up and then left. There were lots of bad feelings all around.

I liked being a panther. If we were dumb enough to attack without sufficent numbers, we would be collared for a specific period of time. If we planned it right, we could usually raid and run off with collared males. It was the drama after the celebration party that turned me off. Just because I was leashed for 24 hours doesn’t mean I’ll stay a the leash held by an abusive Master when the agreed time expires. I had to mute so many idiots.

I always treated my captives how I’d want to be treated. Wounds bound, food and wine offered and wonderful fur time. Then release them with honor.

Its just a game. I’ll play by the rules. I treat everyone with respect until they give me reason to stop doing that. Its the ones who don’t act with honor and respect that confuse me.

34

Haha, would you believe it was actually the Department Head’s project?

35

And last I checked I was still a girl =)

And I use unemployed scum as a joke =) But then I also self refer as a gimp because I refuse to consider myself differently able :rolleyes:

And now that I am back from my Mom’s [husband and I go one weekend a month to give my brother a break from taking care of her] I will be logging in and playing again pretty much every day for many hours of the day =) so if I am in game, you can chat with me and I can help you out. I have a baby pilot that I am training up to fly a fighter bomber [or maybe a drone carrier, haven’t decided yet] so I am still running level 1 missions while training her up. Depending on what racial you made, I may have spare frigates I can pass along - I have mostly settled on a merlin for now, and will be training cruiser and destroyer when I have the training slots available.

36

I don’t think it is, or at least not exclusively. According to some “cultural training” I had years ago, there are cultures where it is very common to interject “aha” noises to indicate “I hear you / you have my attention / I see”, and others where that is viewed as an interruption… the teacher pointed out that I, being from Spain, would probably be used to a greater amount of “aha” noises than your average American expects, and to more complex noises (“oh, I see” in Spain, “aha” in the US). As usual, individual behavior will also vary.

My experience is that women tend to make and expect more of these noises and also that there is an inverse correlation between them and eye contact: if I’m talking to someone who’s got his back turned because he’s looking at the computer screen or taking his coffee from the dispenser, he’ll be more likely to make a noise than if he’s able to look at me and nod.

37

Heh. I’ve had a consistent problem doing this for years. My standard “aha” noise when somebody is telling me something is, “oh yeah?” I mean it as, “Is that right? Interesting. Please continue.” But for some reason, almost everybody seems to hear it as, “Huh?” or “What’s that?” or something, because when I say, “Oh yeah?” they invariably repeat what they just said. I don’t know why. I enunciate the words clearly.

38

Yeah, it is definitely cultural to a degree. Japan gets it to the point where people are pretty much talking over each other, even though if you actually listen to the conversation you realize only one person is actually saying anything and the other is going “mmhmm.”

Either way, I’ve never touched Second Life and I do the nods thing, mostly if people start typing something really long so they know they haven’t lost me, otherwise it sometimes leads to "you there?"s.

39

Huh. I guess what I do–never closing a chat until we’ve said goodbye or I’ve verified the person isn’t there–is not normal. The rare times when people have just stopped talking, I assumed they’d lost their connection or something.

I also have to point out that this Second Life game sounds really confusing. I can usualy follow what people are talking about in other gaming threads, even if I’m not playing.

But I will say this about the OP’s question: I think it has less to do with people having mental disorders, and more to do with people taking the game more seriously. Their life in the game is better than their outside life, so they choose to care more about the game life. And when you care about something, even the small things seem big.

40

It’s not really a game, more like a version of The Sims Online in which all content is made by the users. IMHO, the target audience is Martha Stewart.