A total newbie, pointers?

Okay, I have read the forums for help, but its all confused me a bit. Basicly, I am a bit overwhelmed by the whole game, though there are aspects of it that I really like the sound of. I loaded up the game about half a year ago, thinking it sounded perfect for me, but it went very very wrong. I compleated a tutorial of some kind, tought me how to fly ect, and how to pick up objects and create and things. It seemed very brief, and I didn't quite know what I was doing, but I seemed to be able to walk and change clothes, so I was easy with it.
Well from there it all just went wrong. Once I left the tutorial bit, I just didn't see anyone- and I really needed someone to lend me a hand, give me some pointers. I saw 1 person whilst I played the game (I played for a week) and she was here and gone in seconds. (pehaps I played it wrong). I wanted to meet someone who could teach me how to create, or show me the best places to shop, or help me get my character looking good. I wanted to get some kind of a job, and find a community that I liked. But there was just nobody around!

So, half a year later, I've re-instaled, but decided to post here for help first. If there is someone out there who would be kind enough to give me some tips on finding my way around, it would be much appreciated. And if anyone is willing to add me as a freind (if thats how it works) and walk me though the basics, it would be perfect. I hope I don't sound to demanding, I don't want people to just give me things or anything like that... just teach me how to do things for myself.

Sorry if this is the wrong place to post, but the forum is a little complicated...
hope to hear from someone soon!

I'll drop a landmark on you in world for NCI (New Citizens Inc) at Kuula. There are usually a lot of helpful people there. If you don;t yet know how to use the landmark, just click on it when it lands in your inventory. It's rather self explanatory and will teleport you to NCI Kuula.

And don't be discouraged if people won't talk at first. A lot of us a really very shy or preoccupied. I'm sure more people will come along here with other suggestions too.

i'll drop you my newbie notecard which has a bunch of resources from making things to where to shop, including lms, urls for sl related websites etc. hope it helps. it can take a little while to find your niche but there is something for everyone so good luck

One little thing: calling it a game tends to get some people pissed off. No big deal, but just a pointer.

Weston is right. NCI will help you figure out what to do, and then you can find a little club or place that you know people at and relationships form. Or go to Midian City, buy an RP HUD, and kill werewolves for fun with your clan/friends. Simple as that.

This is my standard reply for new folks; my main questions when I was new revolved around the differences between skins, shapes, animations, etc. Hope it helps. And welcome back!

An "avatar" is made up of a Shape, a Skin, any clothing layers it may wear, any attachments it may have, and any animations it may use.

The Shape is made up of a bunch of polygons that can be stretched and contorted using the slider values in Edit Appearance. You can make your own Shape, buy one, or use those in your Library.

The Skin goes over the Shape to give it color, shading, and definition. You can buy skins, or use the ones in the Library.

Like the Skin, clothes are layers that are stacked on the Shape. All these layers are then "baked" together by the client (your computer), sent to the Linden Lab server so that it can send this info out to everyone else, and then sent back to your client. That's why you see your avatar blurring, stabilizing, and blurring again before finally stabilizing.

Attachments are stuff like shields, swords, earrings, necklaces, tails, etc that are actual prims. These prims attach to different parts of the Shape. You'll see lots of furries with many attachments, especially heads, paws and tails.

Animations are short files that you can make your avatar run to do a specific action, like "sexy walk", "push-up", "fly", etc. To make your avatar run an animation, you can click on it from the Inventory and run it that way, or you can pack the animation into a prim, and attach the prim to your avatar. Lots of people have an entire set of animations that they use for their avatar to look and act a specific way; this is called an Animation Overrider and has a script that tells the avatar what animation to play when.

So to get a new look for your own avatar, you can change any or all of the above parameters. Some places, like Grendel's Children, sells ENTIRE avatars, usually non-human. I have a dragon avatar, a crow, a mechanical spider, a jellyfish, etc avatars from Grendel's Children. These avatars change virtually everything about the base avatar, from shape, to skin, to attachments, animations, clothing layers, etc.

Hi. Brave of you to give things another go.

You are welcome to IM me in world. I will show you around SL, depending what you like or want to do here. I will offer you my little parcel to hang out in if you want. It has a 24 hour free movie stream (old royalty free movies). There are things to 'eat' and 'drink' here. It is so much a work in progress! But it's a place to chill if you want.

I feel bad for people no one's helping. I try to offer help if I see someone in a 'newbie av' who is kind of just wandering around or if they ask for help I IM them. Once in a while someone tries my patience goofing off when I'm trying to teach them things - I think some figure people will help them all day long. So in a way it might be good when people run into a TINY bit of difficulty in the beginning. I know in my case it made me want to help other people later on and I learned I had to make my own fun in a way. Also for sure it made me grateful any time anyone helps - cos not all will!

It's still a challenge (finding things to do in SL). Right now I am pretty bored at my parcel in fact...sigh. But then finding fun in SL is part of the challenge I guess.

Btw I might also recommend the Forum Cartel hangout - it's often empty but there are things to do there and a lot of times there are people actually hanging out, too. Can be a rare thing in SL to find someone IN a sim. haha