what am I supposed to be doing

Trying to get the hang of this game. I am at the C&W's place but where is the town and where are all the people. My mentor seems to be gone. I asked a question in the chat and nobody answered.

What are the object messages that keep appearing.

What am I actually supposed to be doing.

Taking your time. SL isn't something one necessarily 'gets' in a day. All I can say is that it took me a few days to start enjoying what was available here and a few weeks to start actively doing things I enjoy doing now.

What you have asked is actually such a big question, and you will get many answers in this thread, which should all be helpful and give you a comphrensive guide to what you can and how you should go about it.

I hope you find what your looking for and enjoy SL.

Welcome to the forum Ford, it's a good place to ask

Firstly SL is not a game - there are no objectives as such - it's a place to hang out and be creative. You need to press the communicate/chat button bottom left - this brings up a window where you see chat history otherwise it's easy to miss things

Then click the "search" button and type something you are interested in. The rest is up to you...

Well the simple answer is: nothing.

You are not supposed to do anything, SL is a gigantic world where you can do whatever you want. Or, be whatever you want.

There are some good places to start out, like NCI, or the forum hangout, where people are newbie friendly. One thing you should pick up (or someone might drop on you) is the new resident kit. Full of tips and landmarks to places.

What I would advice you:

- Pick up the New Resident Kit (there is one at the Forum Hangout, I presume also at NCI or so).
- Take some time collecting the freebies to create your own unique avatar: shape, skin, decent hair and clothing. This can all be done without spending a dime. A few linden would be handy as some items are 1 linden items.
- As soon as you think you look as good as you want to look, go explore and see what people created. Visit some events to meet people. Find out what you like.

After that first period, you will find your way. Either you start expirimenting with building, or you become an explorer, a socializer, a live music event visitor, roleplayer, whatever you want.

One last advice: Things are way easier with a few linden on your account. Pull out either a credit card or paypal, and transfer for example US$ 10 to your account. Hardly much money, but in SL it can last pretty long if you shop careful!

Just exploring is a good start. Also getting your apearance how you want it is worthwhile. As you explore, remember that all of what you see has been built by residents like yourself. Some of what you see is beautiful and creative, other places are clumsy and amateur or even sometimes designed to look horrible! The Lindens are the people who run Second Life (employees of Linden Lab). Their avatars have the surname Linden. Anything built by Lindens is done exactly the same way as by the rest of us.

A good 'city' to have a look round is Bay City, which is under construction at the moment. There are usually quite a few people there.

As people are always saying, and it's a cliche, but it's true - Second Life is not a game in itself, with levels, prizes, scores etc, it's more a playground for residents to make their own fantasy second life in.

In my opinion, your best chance to get it is to stop thinking of it as a game.

*waits while "SL is/isn't a game arguments break out"*

Your question is like asking "What am I supposed to be doing on the internet". SL is incredibly open ended, and that's its charm and curse. It can be a chatroom, a designer's toy, a place to fight, to roleplay, to earn money or to hook up with a RL date. None of those appeal? Fine, hang out a bit, learn the tools and carve your own SL experience out of the grid. You never know, you might become the next SL millionaire doing it.

In more specific terms, I'd say dip into a bit of everything going on and get a feel for it:

* Blow a little real cash if you can afford it ($5 buys well over L$1000) and buy clothes, avatars and toys.

* Rent a small place and play house for a bit.

* Find a quiet sandbox and mess about with the build tools.

* Search for some cool places. Explore them and photograph them (hint: set your pictures to save to HD, rather than paying the L$10 upload fee for every photo you take).
Find some people and say hello.

* Do whatever makes you happy, as long as it doesn't mess up anyone else's fun (I try to live my RL by that one).

<<edit: while I was typing that, smarter and more eloquent people got in great answers of their own. So yeah, what they said.>>

Welcome to your SecondLife Ford!

To all the good advice above, I'd like to add that most of the places you'll see have rules - ie don't think you can go into an area and shoot things, or walk around with your family jewels hanging out. Many places are also private property, and some owners don't want visitors. If someone asks you to leave because it's their home/workshop/other private area, do so.

In general, you'll do fine if you approach SL not so much as a game but as if it were its own world. Treat others the way you want to be treated. Everything else is up to you.

First of all, welcome!

Secondly, you ask: "What am I supposed to be doing?" and the answer to that is: "Whatever you want" (as long as it doesn't hurt someone *g*)

Seconding (thirding? fourthing?) other replies, I will say that SL isn't a game; it's a world. There are no levels, no points/hits/health meters (unless you're interested in combat areas of various kinds), and no end bosses to beat.

Open up the search window and search for NCI (or New Citizens). Every NCI place has a freebie wall where you can get free items to customise your avatar. They also have sandboxes and info areas where you can play around with the 3D content creation toys, meet people, and find out about classes inworld (everything from newbie guides to scripting). The Shelter is another welcoming newbie-friendly place.

There is no singular 'city' in SL. There are many cities, many places, many builds. I think there are something like 20,000 sims inworld at the moment, and they're all different. Take a look at this photo gallery to get an idea of some of the places you could see:

http://www.massively.com/photos/second-life-core-gallery/

Search for the Forum Cartel Hangout (where a load of us spend way too much time) and head on over to say hi. If there's nobody around then you can always set a landmark there (kind of a bookmark to a place) so you can come back. Do that by clicking the World menu, then clicking Create landmark here. Look in the Landmarks folder of your inventory to find it again.

The main thing to remember, once you find everyone else, is that there are real people behind those pixellated avatars. If you see someone you want to talk to, you need to be fairly close to them (within 20m inworld) for them to hear you 'speak' when you type in the chat bar (that might be why you didn't get a reply before: you could have been too far away). If you're close enough and want to say hi, use their name as part of your greeting ("Hi, Fred!" because often residents don't realise someone is talking to *them*, especially when there are other people around.

I'm sure there'll be lots more people along with other tips and ideas, but just wanted to say hi and welcome.

ETA: You mentioned object messages. Can you be more specific? Are they like blue flags that drop down from the top-right of your viewer? Usually, those are there for the first time you do something inworld, kind of like an integrated help system. If they're anything else, then we'd need more info about them to tell you what they might be.

As for the question of where are all the people. SL is a huge place spread out over 1.5 billion square meters of virtual space and 24 time zones. Depending on where you live in real life your ideal time for play might be when many of SL residents are working or asleep (but there’s always tens of thousands of people here at any given time).
In the upper right of your screen is the SL Time which is also the Pacific Time Zone or GMT -8 (I think). I’ve found that SL is its busiest between around 3pm to 8pm SLT with the population on line hitting near the magic number of 60000. That number is relevant because things tend to get a little wonky the closer we get to 60k in world, but that’s a whole different discussion.
You may find most of the malls and clubs empty any time of day. That’s not uncommon at all and doesn’t mean that they’re unpopular just that there isn’t anything going on at that particular moment. Joining a clubs group or looking for an event calendar is a good way to know when things are happening. You can use the Search Events to find things to do. Also just pull up the Map and look for green dots. A stack of them in one place usually means a club or some type of event (or campers…also for another discussion at another time). Double click on the map to teleport in. you never know what you might end up in the middle of. If it’s not to your liking or you get the sense that you are not welcome….teleport out (ctrl+Shift+H takes you back to your Home location).
I like to go to the Welcome Areas or Help Island Public when I want to be around lots of people. Help Island Public always has a nice mixed crowed of people from all over the world at any time of day. Search Help Island Public and pop in. That’s also a good place to go and ask questions.

Welcome Ford

Take your time. Explore a lot. Learn all you can. Use the Search function to find whatever you are interested in - try joining a group that interests you, most of them are free.

Enjoy and have fun.

EDIT - Oh, I forgot - read the forum threads here - look at the sticky "Tips for the Newly Born".

Ok, everyone else is just giving you the standard stuff.

Here's what you are *supposed* to be doing...

As quickly as possible, right click on your av, select take off, clothing, remove all.

Notice anything missing? Yeah...so the first objective is to locate a freebie appendage. Once you have found that, you're supposed to type "free sex" into the search. Next step is to find the magical pink and blue balls...

/me smiles and whistles innocently

Sassy you are so bad. Hitting on noobs in the Forum like that.

one thing that confuses me still... if SL is supposed to be your world, your imagination, I truly believe if someone wants SL to be a game they should be allowed to do so and not being corrected that it isnt a game. To those insisting it isnt a game, thats your world, your imagination.

I stand corrected

It is, of course, whatever you want it to be.

The main "core" activities that you can do in Second Life are:

* Chatting and socialising with others. It can be tricky to find people sometimes - look at the Events page of Search to find events where people might be meeting up. DON'T use the "popular places" page, as its measurement isn't useful and is often abused.

* Playing in-world games. There are lots of those, from combat and strategy games to physics-based games or social ones. Gambling on games of chance isn't allowed, but other than that, there's plenty to choose from.

* Just exploring. There are all kinds of neat places that people have created and you can teleport around, or fly over the landscape, and find them. Some of them you can interact with, but some you can simply look at.

* Creating. This can range from creating your avatar by buying parts and putting them together to building a whole island for yourself from the primitive parts upwards. You can decide what level of creation you're comfortable with. There are plenty of tutorials for different parts of this process available in-world at places like NCI and The Shelter.

* Doing business. This isn't everyone's cup of tea, but you can try to run a business on SL if you want to, and make money from things that you've made or services you provide. Bear in mind that it's real business for real money in all ways except that the costs involved are lower - so there can be startup costs, you aren't guaranteed room in the market of your choice, and the competition don't play by any of your rules.

Most other things that people do in Second Life are done by combining these things together in different ways. For example, if you wanted to be a ninja, you could chat with other ninjas in a themed RP area; play ninja-themed games (like sword combat); explore areas to find places to hide; or create your own ninja-style items. (Due to the "real competition" angle you can't generally adopt a role in doing business. I mean, generally ninjas aren't known for customer service. )

You're right, that was bad of me, how about I take him shopping as part of my penance? First stop Woody Towers perhaps?

You get him all fixed up, Sassy.

But before you turn him loose at Neva Naughty's Free Sex Room, send him to my Sex and Relationships class (GQ Start, Fridays, 6 pm SL). The last thing the Grid needs is another "U give sexxies now?" avatar.

New sig alert.

Oooooh can I come and watch? I promise to be nice.

You've had the long answers.

The classic one-liner response used to be: "What do you want to do?"


I think that is still the best response.
Only you know why you are here.

I have witnessed that this is not always the case.

Ah but Grasshopper.....

If the person is faced with the question "Why do you want to do?", rather than the answer to "What am I supposed to do?", then perhaps they may be started on a process in which they discover why they are here.

I still don't know why I'm here, after all this time... I'm hoping someone else figures it out so they can let me know.

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