Finding active places?

I have been in SL a little over a week and I have to confess that I am already getting bored. The trouble I have is that I am able to be online only around midnight to 3-4am or so, SL time, which I am told is the quiet time for both Americans and Europeans.

I have been advised to "type in what you're interested in" in Search, but the only places I find when I do that is shops, or places that are completely empty.

I have tried searching Events at times I'm available, but the ones that interest me are only happenning at times I cannot be online.

I have been advised to search the maps for places where there are lots of green dots, but all I find then, is shopping malls, sex places, and people camping. I am also rather reluctant to drop in on places like that because I do not know what the ettiquette is and I am afraid of landing in the middle of a private party.

I am learning to build, but building, like everything else I've found, is as boring as hell when I'm on my own.

I am definitely NOT interested in either shopping or sex. For the one, I have no money (I have made a vow NOT to spend any real-life money here until I am certain that there is enough to interest me to stay), and for the second I am just not interested in the drama. I am interested in art, music, education, psychology.

Does anyone know of any places that are regularly active (ie actually have people in them) at the early morning SL times (before 4am)? Please only places which are welcoming to new people, I don't want to arrive uninvited in the middle of a closed clique or a sex-party.

I think you are not alone ...

I am still technically a newbie, and being in the UK have similar timing problems, my hours tending from 12pm till 4 pm.

I spent most of my first week, mastering the details of moving around effectively, and searching etc. I found lots of empty places, but even some of the quieter pubs had people to chat to. Camping is a waste of time for social interaction in my opinion.

Stick at it, I am sure you will find niches that you enjoy.

yes Kalin, if you want it to work, it will do. I was lucky I started SL before 'camping' became a bad word and met most of my friends I have now doing that. I just wouldn't allow a avatar to come into sight without me saying hi and consistently chatting to anyone who would listen, eventually after minutes or hours or even days a avatar that went to the same places as me regularly would say hi, or shut up. The one's that said shut up are strangely my best friends here now.

An additional suggestion, which hopefully will at least get the ball rolling ...

I have created a folder of music venues and clubs, which I scroll down quickly either dropping in to a specific location, or just 'doing the rounds' if I am just looking for a bit of gentle company. As I discover new venues, I add them to the folder.

One place I enjoy letting my hair down is The Blarney Stone, an irish themed pub with a range of visitors. Sometimes live music, it always has a player running ... It is always occupied during my visiting hours, so I think there may be people there when you are online too. The landmarks display function or search in the Map is useful to see if anyone is there, ie the green dots you already mentioned. Otherwise just tp in.

edit - be prepared to visit a venue more than once, you may have just caught it in a lull ...

Best of Luck, if I happen to meet you, which may be unlikely, I will say hello !

I was about to reccommend the Blarney Stone too but I see I was beaten to it. There's also Fibber McGee's just around the corner, if one is empty the other likely isn't.

Hi Kalin, and welcome.

I second Derek's suggestion of the Blarney Stone. It's a great place to meet people. Lots of friendly folks and good music.

edit: I just saw Karl's comment about Fibber McGee's - wow! Didn't know it was there - I will have to check it out!

If you like Jazz and dancing visit Sweethearts and Franks Place. Often times they are so busy you can't move with the lag. But you are sure to meet some nice people there, then go visit a less populated area for low lag.

"CX"

Please forgive me for plugging my own place, but my cafe gets several visitors each night during that time frame you are talking about, 12-4 AM SLT. It's never jammed with people, but folks do pop in and out at at that time and if you hang out there for a while you might get to meet some of them. I rarely do as I myself am not on at that hour.

Barring that, other conversation-oriented hangouts like the Blarney Stone and Open Latte (the coffee house at Mill Pond) are also good places to look for people around the clock.

Finally, the Forum Cartel Hangout, the in-world gathering spot for any and all folks who use these forums, is another place where even if you're alone when you arrive, if you wait a few minutes someone else might turn up. I can't speak specifically to your time frame, but cartel folks are a pretty diverse bunch so you never know.

Good luck!

Funny how I missed that one, but I knew other suggestions would flood in !

I think it's more important to find something to DO rather than places to GO. If your only intention is to go around visiting places, you'll likely get bored with SL anyways, and eventually give up on it. Probably one of the easiest ways to find people who are on though is to simply open the map, make sure 'show people' is checked, and look for large groupings of green dots on the screen, then double click that spot. This works 24 hrs a day, as even at the slowest times there's generally well over 50,000 logins.



http://www.secondscripter.com/

Hi Kalin and welcome to SL.
One way to avoid some places is to look for the large gatherings of folks on the map and then put that region (sim) name in to search and see what is there. This is by no means foolfroof but if you see 25 in "Blinkyland" (just using my name as an exhample, i dont own a region) and when you search you see "big Johns bondage club", then its a fair bet where most the folks are, but if you see "big johns county dance club", it might be worth a visit.

Region name searches will normally also each plot in a region and items for sale etc, so while tedious you can often spot malls and eliminate a lot of unwanted travel.

As for your building, find a private owned sand box with folks building at the times your online, thats what i did and almost all my friends were met there, infact some days its hard to build anything with folks comming and going and all stopping to say hi, or see your latest build or show you thiers. Private sand boxes also have rules and "officials" that police them, so your less likely to get the disruptive idiots griefing.

Hope these ideas are some help and you find your nitch within SL.

/me thinks 'big Johns county dance bondage club' sounds even more fun

I would recommend going to see some of the more remarkable creations in SL like Svarga, Apollo, Damania and Dresden Gallery. The first three are imaginitive fantasy environments while Dresden is an amazing recreation of the real gallery.

As for building, it's not boring when you've mastered the tools, texturing etc. and have some ideas about what you want to build. I'm a sociable, party and clubbing type but building is one of the SL activities I PREFER to do alone.

For clubs, if you like heavy metal music but in a friendly environment visited by nicely turned out avatars, try Sanctuary Rock. It gets very busy so it's unlikely to be empty, even at a quiet time of day.

Maybe SL isn't for you, but if you think it might be, it probably will be once you get more immersed in it.

also: I am not sure if anyone has mentioned this yet, but...take a class! That's a great way to meet people. NCI, or New Citizens Incorporated, has a pretty extensive schedule of classes on animations, scripting, building, etc.

They have a website, and their class schedule is posted there:
http://nci-sl.org/Education/About_Edu_Dept.

Kalin, I think you're right. I've had a few insomniac nights, and in those early morning hours I've had a hard time finding stuff going on. Also, when I look at the events calendar, it drops off pretty quickly from around 9pm SL until about 6am SL or so.

Our club tried running events at 2am SL several months ago when we had a hostess available at that time, and we didn't have many folks show up. Maybe I should ask about trying earlier events again - but I am asleep during the times you're asking about specifically. (Usually)



This morning I was on around 4am SL (7am my time) and the number of logins was between 35-36,000. That seems to be the norm for that time and earlier, from what I can tell.



Oh, gosh, yes! I've had a couple of slow events lately and what invariably happens is that someone pops in, looks around and sees just the hostess, and leaves. A few minutes later, the next lone person pops in, looks around and sees just the hostess, and...

If everyone who popped in on a particular night hung around, they might find they're not as alone in SL as they thought! (But I've done this too, so I can't throw stones.)

I think the activity at that time would be in Asian or Australian sims. Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Aussie, etc.

You already have about all the methods I use to find something to do, except for one. When I log in, I can ask my friends what's fun to do, and get ideas there. At first, your friends list is going to be small, because obviously you have to find active places to meet new people to be your friends. But as you get lucky every now and then, and add a friend or two, eventually that list grows.

As to places I go sometimes that are busy at night, the bigger blues clubs and jazz clubs seem to keep something of a crowd at that time (Toby's Juke Joint Blues, Junkyard Blues, Jade's Jazz Club). There are still some insomniac Americans up at this time of night, and some early-bird Europeans. Midnight-to-4 am is something of the gap between the end of the American peak and the beginning of the Europeans peak, but there's still quite a bit of activity.

Just as a wild though... Thinking back to my newbie days oh, little more than a year ago... How active is the welcome area you landed at in your active times? Perhaps you will meet people sharing your interests there and make friends you can do things with? Even if you don't make friends and there is a group of decent people that hand out there at your online times and they go somewhere together, ask if you can go with them. Ultimately I finding groups of people that are on at the same time will be key.

I feel your pain. I'm interested in those things (well maybe not psychology), and I can scarcely find any events or discussion going on even at peak times. I have joined a classical music group which sometimes has events, but not often.

Do you have days off like a weekend you could log in at a different time?

Welcome to SL, the worlds most active dead place!