Brilliancy (or Experiment on Orientation Island)

I think the responsibility should be for them to convince them to stay. How that is done, as long as it is morally done and doesn't tarnish or confuse the SL brand, should be up to the owner of the entry point.

One hopes that they do have have a space always reserved for 'new comer' entry points. It would be sad if they just decided to settle on 4 and not be willing to experiment.

I think that new comer entry point would go a long way to motivating people to try to create something cool for a shot at being an entry point.

People should also be allowed to create their own entry points and then seperately advertise them, as long as they convert at a level even with the regular ones.

Agreed..Especially in light of the many groups and countless hours people have devoted to working with newbies to make their first days in SL a quality experience.

So much for how non-profit service groups are viewed...

_/_/

So is LL actually trying to drive people away from SL by inviting them to The Edge? The idea of inviting new members (Who have absolutely no idea of what they are doing) into a dance club where they will not be helped sickens me. Can't they get enough dwell on their own or are they that desperate?

I don't have much of a problem with the Aerodome except for the fact that new users have NO concept of money yet (In SL) and will probably impulse buy a plane for an amount of lindens that means nothing to them yet. I bought a plane about a week into the game for 1,000L and I now realize what a horrible mistake that was.

Both ideas sound like nothing but a new user scam. I'd like to see the ingame Linden Lab office as one point and other non-private properties.

The Aerodrome has plenty of free stuff to do, like skydiving, airship tours, flying planes, dogfights, and... uh... sitting in a cafe. Ok, that last one's kind of lame. If a newbie arrives at the Aerodrome, I think they're actually unlikely to buy a plane because 1) they only have L$250 (most vehicles cost between 300 and 700), and 2) they probably don't know how to buy things yet anyway.

Is Abbotts a good sim to start in? Well, we'll see. I'm hoping they'll try some of the fun things, meet people, and get a small sampling of what's possible in SL. It's only a 1-week test, so we'll see how it goes.



(By the way, did you actually buy that plane in Abbotts, because I don't actually sell any for 1000, myself.)

I think the idea of providing a place for new players (and old ones too) to easily find places to find out cool and interesting places to go is a great idea.

However, I don't see where skipping the welcome area is the right way to do it. Why not provide places where people can pay L$, say L$100 a week, to advertise in Linden-provided kiosks (so they look nice) at the various welcome areas. I know there are similiar free advertising places at telehubs, but they are in the wrong places (i.e. not at the Welcome Areas, always at people's backside since they are flying AWAY from the telehubs) and expire very quickly, so you are forced to manually update them.

I think their point of providing a quick, easy to use, high-quality link to the great content in SL is great. But provide it in such a way that everyone in SL can use it (i.e. at the Welcome Areas) and that the average user can advertise there (not just the elite of SL). We want to encourage people to start their own projects. Right?

I agree that Abbotts is a quality sim and a good starting point with SL. It has a great appearance, plenty to do, and (Hopefully) some great and nice people who are willing to help. I refuse to say anything of the like for Da Boom.




No, and it's probably a bad example since it was implied it was one of yours. Don't get me wrong, your planes and sim are great. I'm more upset with The Edge.

Well, we'll see what Abbots has to offer. It might be that nobody wants to stay after Abbots simply because it's too confusing, no chicks or cybersex, not very social, and physics and vehicles suck in SL.

Or, it maybe it has awesome whizbang features, inspires everyone and it converts like a bugger.

Or, more likely, somewhere in between.

Who knows .. I think we shall all soon find out if all this appreciation for Abbots was well deserved or not.

If Abbots doesn't convert, I have to say, whoever in LindenLabs gets all hot and wet over it all the time has a lot of crow to eat for wasting everyone's time.

And that's the brilliance of this program - it takes the FIC out of FIC. It stops playing politics with the truth.

Let me say personally though, I take all new people I meet to Abbotts as I also think it is very interesting. But who knows, maybe I'm just a self-important moron who is projecting my choices on everyone else.

These four options, along with the Greeter program, seem like a pretty good range of entry points to me. A lot of you are approaching this like LL is replacing the WA w/ The Edge, which is not the case--they're channeling new users into environments to suit their interests. If their interests are finding and/or being prostitutes (pretty common interests in SL, whether you like it or not), then The Edge is just the place for them to go. If new users feel overwhelmed, then they will probably choose the WA as the safe option.

Having several choices off the bat helps get across the diversity of SL, as opposed to the newb rezzing in the WA and writing off the whole game as a "3D chat room." If SL has a future, we'll need more than one entry point, and this program looks like a good move in that direction. As for non-profit groups: build, submit.

I agree totally.

I was surprised that the Shelter was not in the list of places (an obvious choice), as well as interesting builds like numbakulla or even Neualtenburg. I like the Edge well enough and Cubeys planes are terrific, but this is wrong-headed to send newbies fresh off the tp to those places.

Linden Labs is always talking about creative content and higher ideals, but they send the newbies to a nightclub, and a place where you can "fly planes *really* fast!"???

This smells like one of those initiatives to reduce the dependency on manpower *much* more than any real attempt to figure out the best way to deal with newbies.

.

Yeah I asked my daughter this morning what she's interested in and she said - I wanna be a prostitute in SL!!

ANd the non-profit builds are built and have been active for 18+ months.

IT's not like they just fell off the pumpkin cart...

Exactly where in Abbotts do the n00bs appear?

In other words, where do I need to park my av while waiting for a n00b to appear?

I don't know that I've seen anyone point this out in the UI/HCI literature, so I'll call it "Malachi's Conjecture":I really hope the leftmost site, from the pictures that have been posted, can handle the inbound traffic given that it is one of the most constantly populated placed in-game.

Hmmm, yeah, that's true. Left most and top most get picked. Of course, in a virtual universe left most isn't always obviously.

They should randomize it every two hours. Wouldn't be too hard.

Lets hope they juice up the sims for the entry points. Maybe that's why abbots went down