second life is addicting as hell, for various reasons, but boring, too, and the game itself is lag-wriddled and uncomfortable to be in, but still you go, just to torture yourself so you can look like you want to and be with your friends in 'person' actually see them instead of just text on a muck.

At least, for me anyways, some people make real-world profit off the game :/

I'm on Second Life to chat with friends, and I also run a land rental business that is going pretty well for me. I've been registered since Jan 27, 2007, so its the only "game" I've never got burnt out on.

Spent $30 on a program to upgrade my graphics driver so that I could actually play Second Life on my laptop.

Spent a further $16-ish on stuff for my avatar.

Got bored after a week. It was laggy, had bad graphics, and it crashed a lot. Plus, people were kind of unfriendly, in my experience.

You must have gone to the wrong place to find unfriendly people. May I suggest Northstar to hang out at. The sim itself is slow and laggy and the server its on seems to have occasional hardware problems, but its still fun to hang out there.

Or too friendly. D:

That happened too. ;P

Oh, and yes, you can be a duck. You can pretty much be anything there.

Well, as for time - depends what you do on it and how you use it.
SL can be laggy and bit glitchy at times but is a lot of fun - you need decent graphics card to cope if you go to a popualr place, i tend to crash when i go xD Its very fun as you can make ANYTHING - from your form, clothes (i think) guestures, build stuff, items, make your own home

can cost if you want certain things and may have to pay to get some L$ in order to get your duck form sorted out exactly as you want it to me.

im a novice and can help a little x3

I've played SecondLife for about three years now. I really enjoy it as a social thing. Its not really a video game, you don't log on and go quest or anything, its a 3D chat system. With the current updates the scenery can be quite pretty! There are several furry clubs and furry sims to hang out in, live music and live DJs. If you find yourself getting bored artists enjoy a small privilege...you can draw characters (people love when you ask "can I draw your avatar?"). Also SecondLife makes a nice aid when you need to see a certain angle in 3D for a drawing or to work details out in drawings.

I got along for about six months with just spending some Linden on a furry avatar and hair, I got plenty of freebie clothes and that lasted me for awhile. I'm not sure about a duck avatar but I'm sure you can find something. One of the things I enjoy most about SecondLife if the variety in the characters you see. If you decide to try SecondLife I can help you out: Eve Bishop in game. Oh and most areas don't really lag but some high traffic places lag at times (when there are 50+ avatars running around in one area you can expect lag)

I dunno, it's fun until the annoying gestures wear off. <:D~

I don't like it too much. I guess it's because I'm too shy to talk to anyone, and i can't find any sims that aren't adult themed. And if I do go to an adult themed one, everyone keeps trying to pick me up and I have to remind them I do have a boyfriend. x3

I tried it, and found it thoroughly boring. Too much work to get my appearance the way I want it and find an interesting group of people to shoot the breeze with. Also, too many 'tards. I'll stick with FurryMUCK, thanks.

SL is more or less what you make of it, and what other people make of it for you. If you know people that are in it, or if you can find something to do that interests you, then it's great. Otherwise you'll likely be standing around or wandering around without much to do. As for lag and such, it depends on a couple things. Your connection and computer for one. Also if there's too many people around, which can bog the servers down. Some people think it's 'cool' to spam replicateing objects or such to cause lag or server crashes, but usualy these idiots get kicked and banned. As for what you can look like, depends on if you're willing to take the time to build the look yourself, or spend the money to buy from someone else. And yes, if you're creative enough you can make a bit of money from the game as well.

AVOID IT!!!

That game ate my friends!

Its a fun chat system.

You can pretty much be anything you want.. thoguh you'll need to get someone to make the avatar for you.

The thing is, as with any chat system, its boring if you just sit back and wait for things to happen to you.

You need to be pro-active, have fun, chat with friends, explore.. whatever. Its entirely user generated as a world, nd that includes you doing things in it.

You wont always be in the mood to do things.. its fun when you are. I mostly just hang out with friends.

Well something that I know, that you need found something to do there, of it will be bored. Time ago I left it because for that /:3

sl can be fun its your world ina way as you make it be what you wanna be do what you wanna do simple as that ofcorse you might bump into the occasional drama furs but not that often

It can be fun, I can try and get someone to make you a WD-ish avatar :D

How much would it cost to get WD made? Do you think?

I might be able to finagle it at no cost to you. :D

I am in discussion with them, but i'll gladly provide fundage if it means getting to see ya in SL.

You're so sweet! I should be able to fund my own adventures though. Especially is you can make monnies in there like I've been hearing. I'm kinda lookin' forward to runnin' into you.

Second Life is a game I've played for about 2 years now and I have to agree with almost all of the above comments. There are crashes that happen because of the database system it works with isn't ALWAYS running well but the Linden Labs company work hard in keeping the grid up. Live DJ's, live events are usually constant. The lag is dependent on the Sim or Island and on your graphics card. Let alone connection. The social aspect if you go to the places that spike your interest is no different from a normal chat room. There are Sims within that allow you to RolePlay. Depending on the sim depends on the theme of the Sim. Fantasy, Urban, BDSM its up to you what you like. Simply Second Life is like a Chat room system or Forum turned drastically over to 3-D images. Whatever you like SL (For short) more then likely has it. Furry clubs or Furry friendly clubs are far more abundant then you may know. But there is those that hate furs and make it clear by going to any club, or island like the FurNation Contienent and just wreck havoc. Namely lagging the sim so bad that it crashes causing everyone within to be logged out.

In terms of Avatars or AV's for short. Its up to what you can find if you can't you will have to learn to build it with the building controls within the game or use 10L$ per upload of Sculpted prims or objects from a program. The usual cost for a fur AV is usually ranging from 500-1000L$ depending on the quality.

Animations and gestures are actually up in that area as well though usually far cheeper ranging from 0-250L$. Depending on where you go and what you want the animation to do.

I'm known as Vince Kamenev in Second Life you can look me up if you want and I'll see what I can do for ya. But as you can probably see that I have a fairly good idea of what to expect and do in Second life. I have been running around long enough to get an idea of what you can do in it. Myself I have an audio program and an animation program that can help me make gestures and animations if or when I get the feeling, or idea of what to do next. I say this because most ideas have been taken and to try and make your own tends to make it hard to get it down.

But to really top it off there are Tutorials by Torley Linden about Second Life which you can find on YouTube. Telling you how to operate the Basic's of SL.

In agreement with Vince there.. I have been on SL about a Year and a half. I have actually made enough money on there dancing that I have paied my bills in real life with it. Everyone I know on there is wonderful and you can have a good time even if it is just hanging out at a club listening to the music that the DJ is playing. Or dancing where others are doing the same.

I am a DJ on SL, as well as a dancer. and it is really pretty fun there. If nothing else, you can always just give it a test shot and see how it suits you. You do not have to put any money into it to get started, just see how you like it before you work on investing anything to begin with. That is what I did, and I got hooked because of the people there.

If nothing else, look up me, RoseWolf Thorne, and Vince on there and we will help ya out as we can :)

SL is definitely a mixed bag. I've had fun there, been frustrated, and been bored out of my skull. My main character there is Marian, who's basically DONE as far as her AV and tweaking goes. I probably have 40 hours and maybe L$30k invested in her body and accessories, but she's a fairly complicated one. Rochndil, who also exists there, has been put together for about L$1000 (like $4US). I don't have a problem with adult content, since that's what I'm interested in in the first place. There is a lot of it, but it's not EVERYWHERE - point of fact, I have to cover Marian up to visit certain areas.

If you have the patience and the skills (and I know you have the talent), you can make, quite literally, ANYTHING. And there can be a viable market for these things, that can be translated into actual REAL WORLD money, to pay for stuff like...food!

The biggest challenge, for me, has been the graphics requirements. You're pretty much required to have a graphics card (most on-MB graphics resources are insufficient), and the better the card the easier a time you'll have. Be aware, also, that while some cards may not be supported, the LL-approved cards lists are NOT inclusive. I've used quite a few cards there successfully that were NOT listed. Right now I'm running an AGP 256MB card, and it's definitely a step up from what I had. But to really get your framerate up (mine frequently drops below 5 when the club gets busy) you'll need a powerful PCI-E card with the most and fastest RAM you can score. Just don't buy that $1,600 one I saw the other day - SL ain't worth that!

Rochndil, on SL as Marian Sittingbull and Rochndil Lovenkraft...

What programs do you use to make"stuff" for SL

I'll stick my neck out a bit here, with the caveat that *I* don't make anything for SL personally. So, everything I can say on the subject must be taken with a little judicious consideration on your part.

That said, there are a few general types of "thing" used on SL, each of which can be created in several ways.

1. Textures. Textures are, basically, just images. Any program that you can use to create an image should allow you to create a file to be used as a texture. Most folks probably use PhotoShop, but Paint Shop Pro, Gimp, or any other decent image program should work.

2. Prims. These are your basic polygonal building blocks, and can be created INSIDE of SL. The interface is a bit challenging, but it does work. Then you can apply your textures!

3. "Sculpties," or Sculpted prims: These are also shapes, but much more complex. They're very important if you want to create organic-looking items, like...body parts! You need a 3-d modeling program to create these, and I'm pretty sure that Blender works. I don't know much about this area, but there are plenty of resources online.

4. Animations: I have no idea what software is used to do this (maya?), but something that can do motion-capture would work. There is quite a market in-game for quality animations, so if you CAN provide this, you'll make money.

5. Sounds: Any windows system should allow you to record and edit sound files. Sound isn't used AS MUCH as the other things in SL, but it does have a niche.

Hope that's of some help, to get useful answers I'd talk to someone like Tinintri or TheDeinonychus that actually does this kind of work. I just hack stuff together and write...I'm no artist!

Rochndil, who will have Marian dancing on Monday for The Year of the Cow...

Thanks, we'll hang some time!

It's addictive. :3

You can be whatever people make, or you decide to make. ^_^ Depends on how much time you're willing to put into it.

personally I've had a lot of fun on Second Life but the question is, why do I play it?

SImple:

1: I use it as a means for exploring things that inspire my art and stories.
2: I enjoy meeting friends and fans as my character
3: I've met many other people, and made friendships with people I never thought I'd become friends with.
4: I enjoy sword fighting in it, even though it isn't really the most advanced combat system, hehe.

Overall, I've had a lot of fun on it, but it really depends on you. Some people just sit there, doing nothing for hours, bored out of their minds. *shrugs* I couldn't do that hehe.

1. Yes
2. That's up to you, it has the potential to be.
3. That's up to you, it has the potential to be.
4. YES
5. You can be anything, you can either make what you want to be or buy it from someone else for a small fee. The game is free to play, and has a lot of stuff to do if you want to. Join up and I'll show you some of my favorite places to hang out and do stuff.
6. You're most welcome my good duck.

Cool, what's the name?

Draco Amaterasu