One Year Ago Today...

Happy Rez Day Atashi !
We are the same age.. I turn 1 year today also !
My experience was very much like yours. I just started flying and flew for quite a while. I also found out not to touch stuff..
I however fell into the giant SL Casino scene right away. I spent about a week logging in and basically meeting people and learning how to get a job..lol Is funny to remember that stuff. It is a special thing to have your 1st B- Day in SL.
I Now own 5 class 5 sims.
HAPPY SL B-DAY ATASHI!

Great thread and Happy RezDay!!

I created my first account around St. Patrick's Day '07 and logged in to find a world full of green floppy hats and green beer being passed out in boxes on help island. I must have looked like the noobiest noob ever in my green flexi freebie hat, no prim hair, no prim shoes, no AO. lol. There were tons of events and parties to celebrate the holiday though so it was fun to TP around and blend into the crowd (haha, or so I thought at the time). I had no idea what to do here, but I knew this was one of the most interesting "places" I had ever seen and I was hooked immediately.

A year ago...

... I had just turned down an invite to the SL Views feedback program - RL circumstances, I was just too busy. Very sad but that's just how it worked out. Maybe they will invite me back, but heh, I guess they know my views on everything already.

Caledon just had its 9th region and capital city, Victoria City, open to great celebration. Four voidsims and one new region, Mayfair - the first of the class five regions appeared sooner than I expected.

It was a mad, mad rush to get all that land ready, and Caledon fell under a blanket of wintry snow for the first time ever.

As for me - it was a busy but lonely time. I had just then come to the realisation that it was either my social life on the grid... or land barony. It boiled down to that classic divide: RL or SL.

I made the dread choice - a devil's bargain. It's possible to make an alt, but not possible to make a 25 hour day. I took a deep breath, some time off, and chose.

Caledon grew by 1.2 million square meters in 2007, and my dear friends grew ever distant, fast. 110% my fault.

But I was given one of the most touching gifts ever given last year: real forgiveness for my choice. For true loved ones and friends stand by what is right for you, even in their own sadness. I won't name names, they know who they are. These are the people I am referring to at the bottom of my first life profile, and without them, I would truly be lost.

Like Atashi and others have said,
I love reading the responses in this thread!


And HAPPY REZ DAY BLAKE!!!!

My first December in SL was two years ago. I was two months new in SL and was amazed when I logged in one morning to find that the sim owners had changed all the normally green terrain textures to snow, put prim ice in the streams and provided particle snow for us! I got a snowball thrower and a simple chirstmas tree and a Rudolph statue with a nose that glowed, and had a happy Holiday. At the time my Companion and I had just moved in to a custom home, built in one edge of some group land.

Last December in SL, My Companion, now officially my Partner, and I were living in that same pretty little home, which we had moved to a 4096 M2 parcel, completely surrounded by water and with an Openspaces water sim nearby to go boating in. I set up my tree in the front hall and put Christmas stockings up on the mantle of the fireplace in our skybox. No snow, there. It was like having Christmas in the tropics.

This year my Partner and I are surrounded by snow-capped peaks, with 10K M2 of land in a sim I helped to design and build. We have a castle on the hill that I built. That same little Christmas tree and some new stockings are set up by the fireplace in our new skybox. I'm debating setting up some clouds that I bought, to make it snow...

hmm... I remember my first day.. not very long ago. I met my frist friend, lost touch with him now though... And we walked the island together and figured things out together.. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be hooked, as an Unrealtournament player for years, I figured it would be something like it.. WOW was I wrong..

My daughter wanted me to install the program a couple years ago, but at the time our PC would not run it.. so we gave up.. I really don't know what prompted me to try it again..
It seems to me I left OI and went to a freebie shop because a sweet lady avatar told us we can get free clothes there... So, I got a nice new "free" skin and a new hairdo and some spiffy clothes... The I saw about 6 women avatars with the same outfit, hair and skin..
But oh well.. Someone told me about the smile attachment... OH WOW I can smile?!?!! So I found a freebe version and low abd behold I could smile.. WAIT, omg thats when I noticed my avatar needed to visit the dentist.. she had some black teeth! YIKES...

If it were not for the helpful people on SL, and there are so many, I would be wandering around SL and not going anywhere...

Actually, SL is fairly easy to learn with all the helpful hints and stuff.. I also found "sandboxes" wow! But, within a month I had my own island and began a love affair with building things and making clothes.....
Now I am a live music fan, and spend most of my time listening to wonderful people singing for L$..



I learn something everyday~and mostly learn because there are some pretty cool people on SL... Oh and I thank god everyday my friend gave me the radar HUD, people don;t scare me by suddenly being at my side anymore..

heheh

I came to SL in Sept 2006 after seeing a feature on BBC News. I felt I had a strong identity right from the start - I knew I was a free-spirited, independent avatar.

I came into SL as the 'girl-next-door' avatar with the purple pullover, and gave myself a makeover straight away. The resulting look is basically the 'me' you see today, with a few minor adjustments plus nicer hair and skin.

But my initial impression of the 'world' was not favourable. I was a bit confused. As I wandered laggily around Orientation Island, I thought to myself "Is this it? It's not very big."

Then I found Help Island, which was a bit more interesting - then the mainland.

Early on I discovered Sanctuary Rock, which blew me away - a surreal heavy metal open air dance club. At the time it was the most 'happening' place in SL and I thought I was in with the A-list celebs!

Learning to build, make clothes and textures are my proudest achievements in SL so far.

A year last September here... I remember stumbling along in the orientation area, playing with the physical beach ball, movement tutorials, flying. Saw a boat in the water nearby and flew out to it. Just a small boat, but was amused. Finally found the landmark to go to the Welcoming area. Wandered around there long enough to get a large banana avatar, tie-dyed clothing and the ever popular fuego attachment. I was finally wearing shorts, tie-dyed tank top, blue skin, long blonde noob hair and wings by the time I discovered the map. I scanned around the map and finally just chose a teleport location. It turned out to be a furry sim, and it was cool. My daughter, already well-established in SL, found out I was on and came to where I was. She took one look at me and mumbled something about OMG, and I could feel her laughing. :^/ She then proceeded to take me shopping for skin, hair, clothing and an AO. She must have dropped about L$10,000 on that trip, and I have looked the same ever since, with just a few clothing changes. A week later my daughter and a good friend of hers rented my wife and I an island parcel on an estate, and paid for it for the next 4 months, after which we took up the payments. But it was there I started building. I built my first house within a couple of weeks and made most of the textures to go on it. Started building outdoor beach furniture and stuff that eventually became my sales line. By December I was making and selling Christmas items. I was absolutely amazed with the building tools and the potential to create, and still am. :^)

Happy Rez Day!!!

I haven't been in SL long, i came in becuse I had seen a random article on SL completely by chance and i had look out of curiosity. I figured it couldn't be as bad as the article made out and what was the harm in seeing?
So I came in, and my first memory (after learning how to walk v. embarrassing) was of some guy offering me friendship out of the blue and chatting to my while I was trying to learn about prims. He was from Israel and I haven't spoken to him since.

And the first time I tried to go to the hangout, i ended up in the garden, got lost and had to be TPd by Sally lol. I still prefer to TP to the garden and walk/fly up to the building. Figure then if i end up with attchments up my bum then it will be marginally less embarrassing than in a room full of people

I arrived in SL in October 2006 after 5 years in irc, and ***wishing*** i had known about it sooner, and when I had more money ! oh boy what a difference that would have made.

my first Christmas was a blast. My greatest memory is of a small incident where the club I worked at as an escort decided to have a group photo for sending as a Christmas card. Can you imaging 15 or so escorts trying to pose in front of the Christmas tree, all of us trying to take pictures, turning around, standing up and sitting down, all trying to type "stop typing dammit!!!" so we could get the picture. It was like herding cats. I was wetting myself laughing and it was such fun.. Pearl Girls, if any of you are reading this, I miss you and those times so much.

I love SL with a passion i couldn't begin to describe to anyone who has never experienced it.

Happy Rezz day Atashi. Have a wonderful Happy Christmas Everyone

Imogen

This has to be one of the best reply i seen in a very long time. So sweet and cute

well I can keep my entry short, the only difference with the OP's entry is that I did do most of the tasks on Orientation Island, but it took days, when I first started I could only log on for 5 to 15 minutes at a time, I also started in February and I stood amazed for those few minutes watching new avs coming in one after another in quick succession.

I also flew, I'm sure i didn't TP either, I think I found a map reference and got the beam and arrow and it said something like 43000 meters or even maybe more, but i flew over a sea and remember flying down and under the sea and being truly amazed that i could see down there.

I visited a few places, saw many many camping chairs and many in small builds, little parks etc, much more than I see now. I eventually ended up at Odds & Ends, because then it had high traffic and it came to the top of popular places in search.

Nearly everyone I meet at Odds & Ends in those first 3 months are still on my friends list and quite a few I share the island with, I now call home.

My experience was a bit similar to the OP's. I started about eight months ago. I wasn't impressed with my first experience, which included a registration process that was hard to understand, followed by a vision of pretty rudimentary people moving in jerky animated fashion around a poorly rendered landscape.

I stumbled into a castle, and read about editing my appearance. I played with that for a while, and it was kinda fun, but overall I wasn't too impressed with this "SL" thing.

A few weeks later, I gave it another try. This time, I managed to teleport myself off OI and onto the main grid. I discovered the Search feature, and picked out an interesting place. I teleported there, and wandered around a pretty park. After a while, I found a big open air pavilion, with a few people.

One of them spoke to me. We struck up a conversation, and, taking pity on a poor noob, he took me to The Free Dove. I loaded up with all sorts of interesting looking things, and went off to unpack them.

Amazing...my appearance improved rapidly, and so did my attitude. By the end of the day I found that I'd spent 16 hours in world, nearly continuously, and couldn't wait to get back again.

The next day, I discovered the Map. Opening it up, I conducted a sort of high altitude survey. Finding what looked like it might be an interesting place a few sims away from where I was, I TP'd there. It was a lovely private residence, located on a beach. The time was just before dawn. I walked the beach and watched the sun rise and the dolphins play, and realized what a magical place I'd stumbled into.

Today is also the 1 year mark for me. It was snowing, and I saw mention of SL purely by accident. I was never interested in any online games, never knew any such thing as Virtual Worlds existed beyond a sci fi context. I took a look out of curiosity, saw the blurbs on the site and decided to take a look. I spent about an hour on the Old Orientation Island and quit to do something else, as to that point, sitting at the computer for more than an hour at home was unheard of if it wasn't work related. next morning, the snow was piled up, so a planned shopping expedition was off, so I went back to the site read some of the breathless hype about You Know Who, and signed back on. I spent another couple of hours on the Island, going through the tutorials a couple of times, but also playing with the sliders, seeing how the inventory works, and just getting a feel for the controls.

I went to a Welcome area, Balaut maybe, and was immediately offered a margarita and a joint by an Amazon in a micro mini and huge boobs. I then met Superman, who offered to show me Truth and Justice his way. I spent the rest of the day wandering, exploring and tinkering with my Avi.Somewhere I heard about Odds and Ends, and Spent the next day or so there getting freebies, and hitting the money trees.

I ventured into my first club, and discovered Sploders, and over the next few days I was able to parlay my money tree findings into about $1000 lindens. At that point I discovered shopping, rented an apartment a week later, a week after that went premium and bought a parcel of land. I almost gave up during the bad days in the spring where I couldn't get much to work, but thanls to a memory upgrade, and Nicholaz' viewer, Sl has been as stable as it can be for me. I never thought I'd be still with it a year later, but so far it still gives me good value for my entertainment money.

Happy Rez-Day Brenda!

-Atashi

And to you. You want to meet for a drink later?