I tend to prefer solid (but not great) melee ability with some magic to back it up. Traditional D&D cleric/elf class style. The solid center. Not the best warrior, not the best spellcaster but with enough of both to be versatile. In Oblivion I did a custom class, Adventurer. I rely on sword, board, heavy armor and alteration spells. Though I always have a bow for long range sneak attacks. I play Skyrim similarly, though I can't use a shield and spell at the same time which annoys me. I played a cleric in EQOA, though I wished EQOA clerics had more traditional D&D style cleric melee ability. In FFXI, I think I enjoyed Red Mage (RDM) most of all, with a White Mage (WHM) subclass. I also enjoyed Beastmaster (BST) with the WHM subclass.

I didn't have trouble with the SL UI The UI was relatively easy to pick up, some of the terminology wasn't. The blogs helped though. ################# Penelope wrote: Oh and market SL to older women. Trust me - the chance to look hot in a bikini is priceless. ################## They are! Well, trying to with those "beachy ads" We both know 25 - 55 year old women (and those who identify as such) are one of LL's most loyal demographics.

Iggy wrote:Bukkake Bliss endures. How the mighty have fallen, to #39. ############# I know, right? ######### Iggy wrote: If only all this shite were enough to pay the bills, then the clever creatives could build a utopia! #################### Which shite do you mean? Because it IS paying the bills, directly, or indirectly. ################# Iggy wrote: We need to figure out a better way to milk the pervs ################### Why should you milk them? Wouldn't it be better to convince them to support you? As I've mentioned before, universities bring students in for those classes and whatnot...but don't actually "do" much for SL residents. If you want pervs (or fashionistas) to support education in SL...give them a reason. ############ Iggy wrote: and little bunny foo-foos so we can have what we want. Ideas? #################### Little bunny foo-foos? ##################### Pussycat wrote:The Destination Guide is handy for trying to get people already here to expand their interests. ###################### Oh indeed. And most likely some of those "pervs" DO have other interests. After all, I'm one of those Fashoin-types and as I say: "In this world, I go and and do what I will, and I'm a Fashionista, we have a lot of will, it's what keeps us shopping." ####################### Pussycat wrote: They're appealing to the side of the 'date' scene that is 'publicly safe' - taking the viable advertising ground, and making it easy for people to figure out the other angle is there. ######################## Yep. Easier to advertise model-y hottie besties on a beach than "u-love-me-long-time-200L$? ######################## Pussycat wrote: but they've finally figured out they just can't get the customers they want... and have to hope a small but big enough number of the ones they get will in time become the ones they want by seeing what else is around after being lured in. ######################## Yep. And as I said, you don't know if that famous land baron or bloggy fashionista has an alt that spends time on Bukkake Bliss Island. Or if that newcomer to the art scene didn't come into SL for the sexytime and then discovered the art. Me? I'm all about the shooooes. (which is a lie, its only all about the shooes some of the time, considering how often I'm not buying shoes in SL)

Now this pricing scheme is more like it.

@ Jo Yardley who wrote: She looks like I do in Rl, not like some catwalk model or Barbie. This is when, in a western themed SL region, when the heroine would make a subtle adjustment to her duster, show off her Madame Malaprops Blissetesque pistol and says: "Smile when you say that, pardner." Nothing wrong with having an avatar that looks like ones RL self and I know that some have an aversion to things "pink and girly". However it's also not wrong to have one that looks like a catwalk modle or Barbie, and personally I'm not overly fond of those that imply or insinuate that the latter is something lesser or something that shouldn't be done. Nothing wrong with doll-play either, as long as it's by choice and temperament. After all, I once worked for the Linden Lifestyles fashion blog (as did Iris) who's tagline was: "Our Wardrobe is Better than Barbie's" And it is, more akin to Tyler Wentworth's or Gene's. Also: http://salomesays.com/blog/2010/08/hello-my-name-is-salome-and-im-a-girloholic http://ccslfashionista.blogspot.com/2010/08/my-name-is-cc-and-im-girloholic-with.html http://ccslfashionista.blogspot.com/2007/03/im-barbie-girl.html

I don't know Adeon, I would classify your furry as cute. As for moi. For one thing one would have to #define sexy. I would add "classic", though some might say that's a cross between beautiful and sexy: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cronocloudcreeggan/

Thanks for your common sense, Pussycat. Look, I know a bunch of oldbie cranks are upset about these kinds of ads. Jo would rather they pimp "artistic" places like her Berlin Iggy would rather they pimp educational uses. But as was said many many years ago here on NWN by Tateru Nino...oldbies aren't SL...the masses are. http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2006/10/new_world_numbe.html You may not like those people on Bukkake Bliss Island, but there is one thing that has, that Berlin (or Caledon/Steelhead/Babbage) doesn't. LOTS of dots. Lots of Dots matters. @Tracy who said: Sex, debauchery, and romance can only be interesting for a short while before people get bored and move on. Really? Head to some place like "The Chamber" and notice the oldbie names. Heck, there are people who have alts just for debauchery.

Look...I realize a bunch of you want your snowcrash/singularity/holodeck fantasies to come true and think Oculus is it, but it isn't. Think about that line Hamlet wrote: "But yes, Facebook is doing so as part of its mobile strategy (because Oculus will integrate with Android phones):" That almost sounds like some PR flacks at Facebook reaching for "cool" by throwing a bunch of buzzwords against a wall and hoping some of it rubs off. Oculus is the antithesis of mobile. It is very NOT-MOBILE. People are supposed to carry bags with Oculus in them, sit down at the hipster coffee place, hook them up to their phones and do what exactly? And how will they power the Oculus? And if the phone is running a 3D app, how fast will the phone's battery run down. And do people really want to walk around carrying a VR headset. Theoretically yes, people want VR, but the VR they want is "Holodeck VR" they don't want to have to wear a feedback suit with motion capture balls on it and a heavy headset. They don't even want to wear a headset while the manipulate a game or whatever with a mouse and keyboard. Oculus and other VR tech is a playtoy for rich nerds on par with the Segway that some VR obsessed nerds are wanting to be cool and mainstream. It's not going to happen, not until we have holodeck level VR. Quit trying to make "fetch", I mean VR, happen.

Sighs. All this fuss over the Oculus is just a bunch of Technorati falling for Valleywag hype over the VR they've been dreaming about. They really really want it, so are willing to ignore the practicalities. The thing being that the Oculus doesn't work well with standard UI paradigms and thusly is an extra expense..alongside a monitor. Do you think all those Facebooking moms are going to run out and get one? Do you think I want to wear a heavy head mounted display for marathon gaming sessions, let alone the fact that many people can't tolerate the thing for more than a half hour. After all the already existing 3D blu-ray/games via LCD glasses hasn't exactly taken off.

I've been seeing those ads all over for weeks now, alongside the usual barrage of fashion-related ads I get. Which is a bit silly for me because I'm already IN SL, but they're giving these SL ads to others who get these kinds of fashion ads...that's a good thing. I think they're trying to market themselves to 25-45 year old women (one of SL's most loyal and most L$ spending of SL's demographics), but haven't quite figured out how to so very effectively yet, though they are trying. I'm surprised they haven't tried "50 shades" style ads yet. Also, the ladies in the first ad look like what I think of as "generic fashionista beach look". And yes, a lot of people flirt and do "whatever" in SL, probably more people are doing that at one time that visiting Jo Yardley's Berlin, nothing wrong with that. For every person that builds a 1920's Berlin or did educational work...there are many many more who use SL as Barbie Fashion Flirt House XTREME. That's not to say that the Barbie Girls might not visit Berlin or have other interests.... after all "Fashionistas go where they will, and Fashionistas have a LOT of Will. It's what keeps them shopping."

Oh, nice site. Their start page: http://www.pixelkin.org/start Is a great resource to point non-gamers to.

@Pussycat: Bukkake Bliss Island is still online, it doesn't seem to have quite as many green dots as it used to.

What I want to know is what kind of hardware they're running the SL client on...dual Nvidia Titans or something? While I feel for SL users on low end machines, OnLive isn't a long term solution to their problems (unless OnLive drops the price). They'd be better off taking that money and picking up a nice video card/doing system upgrades Though perhaps it is time that LL raise the system requirements...again The minimum for Linux is a NVidia 6600 (which should run SL "ok" at Medium settings, but you aren't going to want to turn on DoF/Shadows) The minimum for windows is an i945! That's a recipe for a slideshow I think. I run a GT220 (had to RMA my recent purchase of a GT640 rev2 it never ran properly/had issues). I can and do run Ultra on that GT220 with draw at 256, AA at 4x, Anisotropic filtering on, shadows/DOF off, framerates in the teens to low 20's, depending. Turning on shadows will drop the frame rate to 6 -12, which is okay for still photos, but I'm not going to run like that all the time. My loading performance is usually better than most of my friends, having a greater than 15Mbps download can do that.

@Pussycat Actually this WILL run on low-end tablets. All it needs is Honeycomb. Even my old Dell Streak 7 will run it, because what it's doing behind the scenes is basically running a RDP/VNC session with OnLive's servers. Which brings up a couple of benefits. Really there are benefits even if the pricing scheme is no go. 1. There's a OnLive Viewer for Windows and OSX so you can actually use this on the desktop. That will probably run in Wine on Linux too. 2. There's an OnLive gizmo that attaches to the TV, you can also use SL Go via that. There are a few other notes, OnLive DOES have a monthly pricing scheme for at least some of their content but SLGo isn't a part of that. I wasn't able to try it out because it wants credit card info for even the 20 minute trial. Bad OnLive!

It didn't work with my Blogger account, created a typepad one.

@Hairy: Garry's Mod doesn't run on the PS3 or PS4 I don't know where you're getting that idea. Garry's Mod also isn't a virtual world, the majority of it's use is as a machinima tool. Yes you can place stuff in it, but it's not like SL, where you can just go get stuff WITHIN SL. It's also not an interconnected world. @Iris: Was a bit surprised by Guild Wars being #3...was expecting Mass Effect in that slot. Was not surprised to see Skyrim at #1.

Opening up the JIRA again is a start. As an aside, I've not had much trouble with SL audio including voice On Linux the hard part is making sure one has the right i686 libraries installed, if you do then it works out of the box. In fact, I had voice working sooner than I had streaming audio the first time I installed SL on Linux. Until recently SL's default audio system, fmod didn't play nice with Linux, so you had to disable it and force ALSA, but it does now. And Hairy, Garry's Mod is NOT and SL competitor...well except perhaps amongst the "geeky sandboxer" crowd, but they're not even in the same market.

Perhaps instead of workarounds like this, we as obsessed fashionistas should be rethinking the feasibility and suitability of overly-crowded and laggy location based events in SL...rather than trying to figure out some better way of marketing the things we need.

What happened to Bukkake Bliss Island for it to drop out of the top 25? Have to start making Skinny Dip Inn jokes now.

$3 an hour is a non starter for anyone who uses SL for any length of time. Yes it's effectively running on a high end system, and sure it might be okay for some mobile-obsessed casual user who doesn't really use SL that much...but for anyone else..no. Can't really use this for serious socializing or fashionista picture taking. There's always Lumiya or if you need the full client, remote desktop/VNC into your home machine with your mobile device. After all what is online other than you essentially paying for RDP/VNC access to somebody elses machine. Besides SL users aren't usually the kinds of people who would want to "share" their private SL experience directly, indirectly via Flickr, video or blogs is another matter.