how did you find out about sl?

and once you got here... what made you stay?

A banner link on the Onion AV Club's website. Oddly enough, that's how I discovered Donnie Darko, too.

I stayed because nearly every day there's the "oh damn, that's cool" factor. Sometimes its even as a result of something my lame ass did, and that feels ten times as good.

my boyfriend found out about sl somewhere online after getting bored of tso.

i got an account to check things out. i wasn't planning on sticking around because i thought sl might be tso-like, and i thought tso was dull from the getgo.

but i explored around sl, and i met my bf's friends, and i thought this was too cool.

the other thing that got me to stay was the fact that i wanted my bf to make something for me and he responded basically, "you do it yourself." and once i started making things i was hooked.

My ex and I were becoming bored with TSO. Her brother informed us of There and SL. We all intended to migrate to SL, but unfortunately their systems didn't meet the requirements so they stayed in TSO. Mine did, barely, and i fell in love.

A coworker mentioned it in a general email and I had to try it out.

A friend
One time pay!

I was doing a research paper and found an article on the slashdot website. After reading the article, I perused the website and found another article about SecondLife. It sounded like something fun so I checked it out and became hooked

Briana Dawson

My upstairs neighbor last June saw a CNET video article about SL linked in a Ziff-Davis newsletter. She bookmarked the SL website, forgot about it, and months later stumbled on the bookmark wondering "What the hell is this?"

I spent 5 weeks looking over her shoulder after she signed for an annual account, then signed up myself during a rum induced haze. Very lucky, I came out of Orientation already knowing a lot of what SL was about.

I stayed because everyone I met here, even the jerks, had a touch of brilliance to them.

I read an article in Technology Review (july 04) which mentioned THERE and SL. Tried out THERE first, looked at SL too, absolutely HATED it, stayed in THERE a couple of months, ca. 2 more SL trials and back to THERE every time, got bored, met a SL resident who convinced me to give SL another try.

Joined SL once more, met lots of nice and helpful people, never looked back.

I saw video of SL Beta in a show called Portal on a channel called G4 around May/June, I thought it looked like a better graphics version of Active Worlds, and I had just gotten out of Active Worlds for lack of Interest, so I didn't even bother checking it out. A few months later in October I was just getting bored of Everquest again, and started looking around for another MMORPG that I could betatest or get a week for free in. I couldn't find any immediately, but I remembered Portal and checked out the SL website, and got myself in for a free trial.

Ever since then, the sheer ability to make whatever you want has kept me interested even though I only thought i'd stay for 3 months tops like all the other MMORPGs I played. Which is why I didn't get a life subscription.... dammit.

Read an article on some website somewhere about SL, stayed because of slingo.

There was a mass exodus from THERE.com after one of the execs. wrote in the THERE forums depicting doom and gloom for THEREs future. One of my THERE buddies had been playing a bit in SL and suggested that a group of us try it. Myself and six of my THEREian pals joined at about the same time last May and I never looked back.

I remember a few of us discovering the 'toys' in the back room at THE EDGE. I haven't seen so much bouncing on balls since my last trip to McDonalds. I also recall getting fully undressed in the SL Welcome Area in order to change clothes. Heck, I didn't know you didn't have to remove everything before getting dressed again. I was all of a week old at the time and got off with a warning .

In any case, I've been in SL for a year and never looked back.

I believe I was on some site like either gamespot.com or gamespy.com, looking for a walkthrough on how to beat some game on PS2. I saw the banner and clicked on it, joined right away ...

My friend told me about it. I didn't really get to talk to her very often, so when she said this is where she was spending most of her time, explained a little about it and showed me a picture or two, I got all charged up and had to join. ^^

And I think it's obvious why I stayed. XD SL is awesome.

I was playing TSO and utterly sick of the boredom, but I didn't want to leave because of a guy. I was reading the TSO message boards one day and someone was trashing SL so I figured I'd learn more about it. (I'm weird that way) Read all about it and there were so many "Woah! It says they have THIS!" moments. I waited for the guy to get the day off so we could start our trials together... Made us both absolutely dizzy and sea sick so it was hard for me to get into. I don't think I played much that first month because he wasn't at all interested. He couldn't get past the dizzyness. Then he disappeared & I decided to give SL another go because I needed the escape.

Honestly I think I was hooked because of the forums. I'm an avid forum reader. The first time someone said "fuck" and didn't get a warning or removed I was utterly charmed. I tried the TSO forums and got so annoyed at the really strict mods.
So yeah...odd as it sounds the ability to cuss and be opinionated made me stay. LOL.

Oh, and one more thing. After wandering around the world and seeing all the different people I was looking at the SL web page and saw people in the pictures that I actually recognized from in world. That to me was just an "oh wow beyond cool" moment. It probably makes no sense to people who didn't play TSO, but when you came from a world where you were blonde head on page 7 that in an ad could be anyone...it's a cool thing.

Hurray for games with adults

-Sun

I was reading the EQ2 message boards, in a thread about character customization. (This was speculative, as it was before EQ2 was released.) Someone mentioned that SL had the best capacity for character customization... I tried it, and a year later i'm still here while I left EQ2 after 3 weeks

Mr. Wallace, the husband of the Sim Shadow Government Evil Overlord Mia Wallace, told me that I should try Second Life, that I could make a motel and a truck there and we could continue our battle of Light vs. Dark there in a different setting with more props and creative opportunities. I guess he and the other SSG operatives spent a little time here making vehicles and such but then got bored with no real ample griefing capacity so they migrated over to Star Wars Galaxy where they were given their own server.

I visited SL a view times but lagged out and got bored sitting in large group events where everybody's name tag was a huge alphabet soup and everything scrolled by so fast you couldn't separate the IMs from the chat history.

Some time later, we had the disaster of Dragon's Cove in TSO. This was a "hard-core" server where the game devs were finally going to shake loose all the corruption, simoleon-selling, gaming, lot-bots working the skill objects, and all the other junk and just have the "pure game" with hardship to make it more interesting.

We worked this for awhile, but then it not only got corrupt again, it become deadly dull. Log-in line-ups were the norm, too. A lot of the most creative people like Barnes who used to make new builds every week and take part in various themed events, etc. or make games on their lots began to leave TSO. I was one of those people always making new builds and themes and games, too, but the population so decreased, and there were so few friends and aquaintances left, that it became pointless to try to run plays, contests, etc. as we used to. A close friend I shared lots with abruptly quit TSO after getting mad that the game devs only innovation was going to be giving the option to make and give a milkshake, and we decided to come to SL.

I came here because you could chose your avatars and customize them which was important to me, i.e. it didn't have the usual game dreck of "magician" or "warrior". The first four months getting oriented and then running a club with events were extremely hard. In December I bought a whole sim and it got more interesting for me.

I vaguely remember a Time Magazine article that had a picture of the Governor's mansion in it, but also I was told by a friend in TSO about There and Second Life both, but I only applied for the There beta - at the time SL looked odd. My cousin Martin signed up for the SL beta and got into it, and hated it, so he gave me his account to play around with. I also hated it - I got stuck under a building for about a month and could not figure out how to talk to anyone. I was fascinated by Avatar Central though.

Once I bought a pimp hat, I was hooked. It wasn't really until I took a class from Candie Apple on making butterfly wings (and I had them made before she was halfway through teaching it) that I realized how cool SL was. From then on, I was bored with There and spent less and less time playing it and more time in SL, and the rest is history.

I was bored silly in TSO, and my ex-girlfriend had heard about There and Second Life from some other TSO players. We both went to sign up for both games and give them a test drive. Her PC couldn't run either game, and my old geforce card had crapped out - too much NHL 2003 - so I was waiting for it's replacement to ship. When my warranteed replacement card arrived, I tried There and really didn't enjoy it. I really liked the things I had read about SL, so i installed it and within 15 minutes of flying around the grid, I was hooked.

I saw an advert on the TerraNova blog. I stayed because of the incredible creative potential.

-Ghoti

Jarod Godel introduced me to SL. I was playing AC and trying to work with the Adellion crew at the time and would likely not have ever trialed if he hadn't invited me.

I joined coming from ActiveWorlds. There's been a few people who have done that now.

-Adam

I read the virtual real estate article on Slashdot at the beginning of June last year and it reminded me that I had seen the game on Portal. I am one of the many June 4 SL babies because of that article.

Stayed because I had finally come to the place I had dreamed of since I don't know when and it was a place my wife and I could both enjoy.