After Orientation Island....

When I joined last June, I never hit Orientation Island. As soon as my account went active, my friend TP'd me to her location and that was the end of that.

At a club I formerly managed, and now at my own club, I've had new residents show up saying that they "flew" there, or were "dumped" there. I've also had people tell me that there was someone at OI passing out the LM (to the former club, haven't heard that about my club).

So, what happens when you leave OI? Are any of the above scenarios likely?

Not long ago I created an alt to use as a bot. As soon as it rezzed I was sent an LM and notecard from someone sitting right there. No doubt another bot.

I just tp'd my alt out right away.

When I started with my main, it was an older style OI, like the public version is now. I went to Help Island for a couple of days afterward, then tp'd to a random Welcome Area.

It's varied over time, as I understand.

At the time I joined in 2005, you started on OI, and on completing it, teleported to a random WA.

HI was then introduced. At first, it was optional, but could only be reached when OI was completed. HI was later made compulsory. As a result, lots of "mirror" HIs were added.

Two major changes were made later on. First of all, more WAs were added - several InfoHubs were converted into WAs and became destinations for new residents. Also, OI was switched to the new "castle" design. HI was then made optional again, and OIP and HIP were added.

Nowadays, OI sends you directly to a random WA, which can be one of the "old style" WAs like Ahern or Waterhead, or an ex-InfoHub. HI is optional, accessed by clicking on a billboard on OI, but this billboard can be clicked right from the start - so you can potentially skip OI completely and go to HI. However, this means that very few people go to HI, but there are still just as many "mirrors" of HI - so Mentors are often faced with a situation where there are 11 HIs and one or two newbies on each, which is very awkward since they can't be in two places at once and even teleporting between private HIs is awkward.

The thing that got my attention is that if you go now to one of the WA or HI you will see that there are used as social places. But not for new residents, people that's been for several months even a year!, And they are not mentoring, they are playing gestures all the time. Very annoying.

Trout landed in a sim just West of Ahern, but the alt I created landed at a dance club. It would have been a weird place to land if I hadn't already known what I was doing. Cartel Mumfuzz was tp'ed off of OI, so he missed that experience entirely. There was no WA anywhere near the place my alt landed. Just a weird mall and a generic, sort of crummy dance club.

No, it wasn't HoneyBear's club, either. Hers is not weird, generic or crummy.

It was probably one of the former InfoHubs. Many of them were converted to WAs and, as far as I know, the builders of the areas weren't given any requirements they had to meet. At one point, for example, newbies could teleport into the middle of Miramare plaza - an excellent shopping venue, certainly, but there was hardly any newbie-help related material there.

LOL..thanks for that, Trout

Interesting that one of your alts did land at a dance club. Mainland, or private island? My sim is a private island, and was a shopping mall in its former life.