JAMIE AND EXTROPIA VISIT SL19B

Second Life is nineteen years old and, as usually happens on its anniversaries, lots of sims have been handed over to this online world’s content creators. Joined as useful by my beloved, Jamie Marlin, we decided to check it out.

Lag can be an issue at big events like this. Indeed, sometimes it can be hard even to teleport to the sim and not get a ‘this sim is full, try again later’ message. But on this occasion we managed to get to a welcome area no problem. Other people were appearing soon after us, which gave the place a buzzing vibe. The welcoming committee was properly friendly, giving us friendly greetings as we arrived.

When Jamie arrived soon after me, she identified the theme of the welcome sim we first arrived at. It was a steampunk theme, with lots of brass everywhere and, of course, airships. No steampunk place is complete without those!

We wandered on until we came to a place where the Victorian sci fi tech of the steampunk town gave way to a sight Jamie and I are more familiar with from our time together in SL: woods and rivers. Crossing over the bridge, we noticed a domed building in the distance and made towards it.

Inside there was a nice feature, which was a gallery full of people’s snapshots. They had a way in which anyone could contribute a snapshot they had taken in SL, which I thought was a neat way to get everybody involved.

On the way out of the dome, Jamie noticed a balloon ride. I tried to get to it in time, but it took off without us. On the way out I noticed a huge statue of a cat which looked interesting. So we headed off in that direction.

The cat turned out to be a viewing platform from which you could survey the rest of the sim. I love to look around places like this, where SL’s best content creators all work together to make one enormous place of treats. You never know what you will be stumbling across next. On our brief visit we took a quick tour in floating pods, met a group who were about to take part in some church service or something, found this game where you had to collect as many crystals as you could, with prizes on offer if you succeeded in collecting more than fifty (best I managed was seven!). Jamie and I barely scratched the surface of what was on offer. Very well done to all who helped create all this content!