How to make newbies stay?

You misunderstand. I'm not saying that WoW is social divorced from game, I'm saying that SL has a game separate from its social aspect. Both MMOs combine both aspects. Accumulation of Lindenbucks, skill with the UI/tools/scripting, and accumulation of goods in world are all applicable scales. People have always compared "growth" in SL to experience in MMOs - there are no experience points, but an avatar's evolving look and swelling inventory are equivalent gauges of advancement.

If people who are leaving complain that there is no room for advancement in SL, it's not that advancement does not exist. It might need to be more obvious (more obvious than MAKE BIG BUX?!), or it probably wouldn't appeal to them in the first place.

Also, social relationships motivate individuals to "do what people say"; the incentive is not cash or kink, but the sense of belonging to that social group. In SL, instead of fulfilling a game role, people spend money on shopping trips, or spend time on the dance floor, or apply their creative skills to make items or build for shared enjoyment of the peer group.

Social and game elements are separate and both applicable, whether we're talking about WoW or SL.


Enforce? Freebie khakis, LBDs, hair, or whatever are still freely available to everyone, and here comes the social game. Is that free hair? Oh, honey. Here's the landmark for a brilliant little shop I know, knock yourself out.

EDIT: Since this is deep game, it's likely off topic.

How about don't make them stay. I really don't think SL is for everyone.

After being around for a while I'm starting to wonder if I am just admitting I have a serious RL problem by continuing to invest my time and $ into SL. You get to that point where you are standing next to that boat (or whatever) in SL that you've always wanted in RL but you ask yourself... why... why would I buy this and what good is it going to do me. I was done playing with toys long ago... the mental requirements for me to really find value out of it now without feeling completely stupid for buying it just isn't there. I wonder if others don't feel the same after the newness of it all wears off and they realize how much real $ they have wasted on virtual goods.

For what I've spent in SL so far I could have bought myself a new flat screen TV or gone on a RL vacation. Nice for those trying to make a living in SL... bad for me.

I'm not giving up... yet... but my guess is its real easy to do without more than just a few simple changes is my point I guess.

That was perhaps how SL was designed, and it's how some people thought of SL in the past, but it isn't how SL works any more - because of the way the economy now works. Growth with the creative tools isn't supported well at the low levels any more - the reason for that is that there is plenty of high-quality content around, which is a good thing for most purposes, but not for growth of individuals. A beginner can work for eight hours to make something they could have gotten for L$50 or even for free, and that they won't be able to sell (because they'd have to buy land and spend even more on marketing, and still could only sell for L$50) - that's not very encouraging. Now, yes, very talented and dedicated people can break through that, but for retention we're thinking about numbers, not about quality!



I don't see that people are "doing what people say" when they are dancing at a club. What they are doing is "doing what everyone does" which isn't quite the same. There is no way for any individual to somehow work their way up and be able to make all those people do something other than dancing - they're dancing because they want to do.



That will never happen though, at least not unless there is a huge shift in the real world way people think about virtual worlds. Until that happens most people will not be comfortable saying to someone else, "you ought to spend more real money on virtual goods". Even Mentors only generally say that in response to being directly asked "How do I get L$?" and usually have an "..but you can enjoy SL without paying anything" escape route to fall back on!

That's the problem, you can't demand that the "social game" does what you want, especially among newbies who have nothing invested in SL and can just quit and go socialise on MSN. In the SL New Economy, the majority of people are likely to be "poor", so the social game is far more likely to revolve around avoiding spending money rather than doing it. In fact to a large extent, among newbies, it already has. I've met newbies who had created nice things but thought that charging for them would be "evil" because after all, they have no money and they know that nobody else in their peer group does either.

The two main reasons why oldbies leave - that I've seen - are:
1) They have nothing more to do in SL, typically because everything they wanted to do they've either done or established that they can't do because of technical or social limitations;
2) They are a content creator and are tired of having to work a "second job" in SL, but almost no other SL activity is as rewarding as content creation, so nothing else within SL appeals.

Now honestly, I don't think anyone is ever going to be able to make a virtual world or game that's so compelling people will play it for their entire lifetime. We can't make people stay forever and we can't remove SL's limits, we can just make sure that they stay in SL a bit longer, and hopefully put some money in too. That might sound dishonest to some people but it isn't - it's no different from upselling any other entertainment product. When a friend recommends you a DVD, you don't call them evil for encouraging you to spend money (that is gone forever) on a movie that you'll be tired of at some point before you die!

Remember the Beta or Early Times of SL ?

Back to roots.

1) close the grid (international) and move back to Ami Servers or raise VAT
2) Do not allow Free Basic Accounts , if you wanna play SL you pay for it - so we get rid of these no payment info on file noobs.
3) allow only serious business in SL, approch of RL Business License for the State you are self employed
4) get rid of these scamming Mentors since even none knows who it is or was get rid of em all.
5) get some Linden that know what they are doing. I don't need to deed a script to my group just to open it ( help from a linden as this bug appeared lol)
6) listen do your residents which means get live help back
7) remove the library - as we started we did not get all that stuff our new noobs get. Make em earn money getting a job
remove camping devices
9) accounts that constantly beg for money should be banned permanently, same for our new SL police.
10) make sure new residents read the readme, tos. I don't care if you lock em in a cage the next month, so long they read it lol. After that you should run a Test. 20 questions randomly picked , 10 wrong and you are out.

And I know I forgot something but this would get SL back to the roots and old Player enjoying it again. More important as keeping the new players.

A couple of important things:

1. It would be good to find a way for newbies to earn a little walking around money right from the start. Camping used to help out, but now there are few camping spots left and they are filled with campbots. For now the gap is filled, sort of, by filling out surveys and looking for money trees.

2. There are immature griefers who seek out areas where they can find newbies to harrass - because the newbies don't know how to cope with it and exhibit gratifying amounts of frustration and outrage. There are so-called "goons" who revel in getting chat logs where the victim admits to breaking into tears. More work on eliminating these parasites would probably do wonders for the retention rate.

Huh, good point. If everyone started as Female A or Male A, people might be more inclined to individualize, which involves talking to people, finding new places, exploring, etc. Hadn't thought of that...

Interestingly enough, my own brother tried SL for a short lived experience, and alas will not come back. I finally called him one day to ask him why I haven't seen him online in SL. He mentioned two things, lag, and being ruthed as a woman.

Orientation Island needs to be completely re-made and implemented. Get rid of the ridiculous obstacle course...the movement controls are hard enough to use, let alone maneuvering in a place where you can fall into a lava pit or into the deep blue sea, or even get stuck behind some ridiculous obstacle and a wall, or tight spaced walkways or doorways. Bring the resources being used in OI to a bare minimum necessary for the learning experience. Rather than put a 30 day limit on anyone in OI (face it, if it takes you 30 days to get through OI you might want to just un-install SL completely) Have a running meter that goes off after a certain period of time. I would imagine putting an hour meter on OI where once you have accumulated 15 hours, it automatically TP's you to Help Island, once you have accumulated 15 hours on help Island, it automatically TP's you to a waiting station, or a random Telehub. The only people who should have unlimited access to OI and Help Island would be the volunteers and mentors. I think I spent a total of 2 hours in OI as a new citizen (Yeah I hate the word NOOB) 2 hours was all I needed to 'get it'.
There are ways to prevent Griefers from re-entering OI and griefing new citizens and hogging the resources. An irreversible time meter may be the ticket.

The idea I read in a previous posting on this thread, of making it an automatic temporary ban if one receives 3 ARs, and a permanent ban once receiving 3 bans is...not a good idea... to make it 'autopilot'...griefers would then group together as they already do, and cause innocent citizens to be banned. I have only been witness to about 6 griefer attacks and was a victim of 3 of those in the 2 years (I was Graphicguru Glass a while back) I have been in SL...It might be because I hang out in places that are not popular to griefers.

Lastly, to go in and replace the basic 'shape' of a female for both male and female avatars, and give every new citizen a 'true' choice with and actual male base shape or an actual female base shape would put and end to ruthing completely and forever.

I miss my brother not being in SL, I really do...

two things wrong with the whole thread

#1. Dont call the 'newbies'
#2. you can cajole, intice or beg but you can not 'make' them stay.

Interesting thread.
Besides SL, I'm addicted to the EA Sims & Sims2 games. When I first signed up for SL, I posted about it at a Sims forum to see if anyone else there did SL too. I assumed there would be a lot of us, since there are a lot of similarities, but instead, I got a couple of dozen, "Tried it. Didn't like it." replies.

The major reasons were orientation island (several never even finished orientation), griefers, and bad starter avs.
I think including AO's or just improving the default walks would be a huge step forward.

Is there really so much stigma to the name "newbie" "noobie"? Even though I've been on long enough to have to join in on the oldbie events, I still hold my noobie status tightly. I already know people in-world that have been on half the time I have that have 10 times the experience I've ever gotten... And they're not alts! (>_<

I, myself, have gone out of my way to help new people I meet. In my two favorite hangouts, NCI and Hanja, I have a habit of being a know-it-all and I'm constantly offering answers to whatever questions come up. I'm very patient with people and seriously only eat the rude. If someone shows up and can only talk about how much SL s**ks, I tell them "Then go watch TV." (=_=)

For the rest. I do what I can to kill any rumors they've heard. I let them know that most of the things called "jobs" in search are not really the only ways to make L$. I try to steer them to NCI if they're not already visiting the place. I hand them my folder of freebie mall LMs. And I'll hang out with them as long as they have questions to ask that I can answer. If I get asked something I don't know, or have fogotten, I go to NCI group chat with the question. Now THAT'S a great rescource. (^_^)

Most of them are creeped out by my looks, but will tolerate me long enough to get what they need to start enjoying SL. To date, I still have NEVER been harassed for my looks. I have had a few people cling to me for up to a week at a time while I hold their virtual hand and give a 'walking tour' of the places I know and enjoy. I even wound up crashing a guy out after a long run of TPs one Saturday because he was having problems with the memory leak that I seem to have gotten over. (T_T)

I know I'm probably tooting my own horn and I haven't been in SL long enough to say I have any experience in anything. I'm aware that my association with lolicon is part of the dark underbelly of SL. But, I like to do what I do to help people when they don't know what they can do to enjoy SL.

Still, my favorite first answer to give to someone who just came off OI and asks, "What can I do here?" will always be, "Anything.... Everything." (^_^)y

I used to give that response a lot, but I'm not so sure about it now. It isn't really true (you can't, for example, grief other people - using "can't" here in the "you can't murder people" sense, of course) and it doesn't give them any direction - which is what they most need.

What I'll usually do is to ask them what their interests are, or what they'd want to do in a virtual world, and then give some idea of how that could be done on SL. If they like playing golf, for instance, they could do that, or even build a golf course. (And, dang, that'd be a fantastic idea! We have physics simulation and landscaping, why no golf courses?)

It's all in good fun. After saying that, I do follow up by asking "what do you like?". If they are willing to tell me, I'll break it down to keywords that would help them with using search.

How many regions would it take to make a believable golf course? (O_O)

Graph, I am surprised that being Ruthed was so upsetting to your brother - nothing against him, but if temporarily appearing in a female form was *that* traumatic to him, he may not be open-minded enough to enjoy SL anyhow.

Having said that, I do think one has to has a certain amount of patience with the technical imperfections to enjoy SL. My husband won't come in world because SL runs like crapola on his computer; he can't tolerate low frame rates and client-side lag. I get slightly better performance than he does but I also have better tolerance when it's bad; I even can tolerate 1 fps at the hangout sometimes if I am just sitting there chatting with people I like.

And the only way to inform people that they need to have that patience is that 1-to-1 experience that I was lucky enough to have when I started SL. My answer to the original post's question is just that: people are more likely to stay if they are paired up with someone helpful who can TP them out of OI to someplace quiet and interesting, walk them through the glitches, and show them the ropes.

I've no idea how to implement this. But I do know that I was spared hours of headache, and got fully immersed in SL much quicker, because I had my brother to help me when I first rezzed.

The other day I got IM from a newbie who said "I don't know how to work this game; sometimes I hit the arrow keys and don't move, and other times I just keep walking and walking after I stop hitting the arrow keys." Most everyone reading this post likely recognizes that as a symptom of an insufficient internet connection - I have those problems when I log in from a public wireless at a cafe, for example. But the person I was chatting with didn't know that and thought she was doing something wrong.

That's what I mean by 1-to-1 guidance of what to expect in terms of the technical performance of the game. That same 1-to-1 guidance can help quickly ascend the learning curve with respect to things like skins, AOs, prim hair versus mesh hair versus painted on hair, &c.

If We Have People Where The Start Up Is As Well As The Training Are It Will Help Ensure More People Continuing And Nit Getting So Pissed Off

I think Mentors are already able to do that. And the welcome areas are open to anyone as well. I hang out in Hanja and help out when I can. I have no plans on ever becoming a Mentor though. (^_^)

Mentors are able to do it. The problem is that right now it's a bit difficult - there are so many different OIs and HIs that often you'll see only one or two people on each, but you can only visit one at a time - and teleporting between them is a pain because of the "home reset" bug.

Go to the Holly Kai sim and there you will find the Holly Kai Golf Club If you like golf, I think you will like it.

Bennett

1..4 QFT

not sure about the last one, think keeping it free might be pretty important, if you really want to be a resident it costs already.
*a limitted number of simultanious connections per IP, would be a better sollution.

Yeah they really need to have Lindens parked at the Welcome Areas again to cut down on some of this. It's pretty bad.

I'm not sure what kind of welcome areas I would prefer to see. If they were policed at strictly as to even have a Linden on site, I'm afraid they would be dead silent, empty and give new people the idea that SL is abandoned. (>_<

When I was new, even though I wasn't chatting with anyone yet, it was fun to just hang out in Hanja and watch everyone take jabs at each other. It was one of the reasons I stayed in SL in the first place.

Good dumb fun. (^_^)

Perhaps when Lindens did police the WA's we didnt know we had no fun there!! See, your assuming we didnt but I loved the WA's then and they were popular

I understand... and agree.

It's just that I'm sure the welcome area cliques that are there now have their own flavor of fun, most of it probably AR fodder, and would abandon the place if it were ever watched. It would take time for people to start collecting there again. (^_^)

Really, hanging out in a welcome area these days is better (or worse) than watching Springer. (^_^)y

Have newbies read a 10 page breakdown, and take an online quiz at the end. If and when they pass, they are allowed to login to Oi to put it all into practice.

No but really.

I think Oi is set up reasonably well. However, there are still people that can't find their way out of a wet paper bag...so what's to do.

maybe they should spend some of those $$ USD they make and pay people to do it.