One particular genre of gaming I've never really understood has to be the "Social" genre - something which presents to the player a world with no real story or plot unlike most other MMORPGS like World of Warcraft, yet even worse featuring no gameplay element whatsoever. SecondLife might be interesting to the budding programmer who is interested in setting up a business assuming they have the money and can guarantee someone is actually going to pay attention to whatever they've set up assuming it even properly loads by the time a player passes it but for the ordinary player like me who's just looking for a few fellow furries to talk to you'll be sorely disappointed. While it's quite an effective gimmick to play as a furry skunk like I was with a shotgun from gears of war (which cost me about $10 US all up) the thing that really gets me about SecondLife is just how unbelievably lonely it is. I remember spending about half an hour teleporting to different places that looked interesting and flying about looking for other players and I thought myself lucky when I finally found ONE and only ONE person to talk to. Also there's another thing, I was originally spurred to get into SecondLife because many of my favorite furry artists are on there but I was sorely disappointed when I discovered that most of them are only really willing to talk among close friends they already know either online or in real life. I may just be sensitive but I really think it's rather silly how someone plays a MMO and isn't willing to meet new people it totally defeats the purpose! In fact if it weren't for a kindly furry on my watch list named Ashton Chapman online I probably would've quit within the first hour of playing, I can't thank her enough for helping me around the interface (of which you are given no indication of how to use). Unfortunately when friends go offline it was so boring I was practically forcing myself from entering a state of rigor mortise while clinging on to the feeble hope that there had to be at least some kind of redeeming feature to this that makes people pay so much and spend so much time playing it. I guess there was Pure Combat which I was shown yesterday and enjoyed for awhile (which is essentially like an fps) but not only were there no players other than my friend who was showing me around the place, you might as well be on Xbox Live somewhere playing Halo 3 or Call of Duty 4 and imagine yourself as a skunk with a shotgun that looks like it's almost two meters long. If only there were more players like Ashton Chapman, she was kind enough to teach me the things the game wasn't prepared to teach me and for such a talented artist wasn't bigoted or ignorant in any way. Oh yeah, and I suppose there are night clubs which offer 'yiff' roleplaying and poledancing hermaphrodites and enormous dildos sticking out on the floor which might attract the attention of some players but in all seriousness your time would be better spent chatting with someone over MSN or AIM.

So that's my little rant for today about SecondLife, and the story of the $10US I'll never get back :cries:

P.S Ashton, you were a great friend and if there's anything of mine you want like the Gnasher shotgun I can give it to you if it allows transfers or if you can copy it.