First let me say that I am not a representative of Second Life -- which is owned and operated by Linden Labs. I am a paying client of their services. If something goes wrong with your Second Life account, do not come to me with the problem: I can't fix it, and I am not responsible. That being said, Second Life has around a million purportedly satisfied "residents". They've been in business for years. There are people who make real money using their system.
Becoming a Second Life resident is easy -- and Free. You can have multiple free accounts. The only reason people upgrade to a premium account is to buy and hold land. If you want to do that later in your Second Life... life... Cool. That is not necessary for attending events at the AP Event Center or playing in the RBW Park, though. The same is true about adding money to your account to spend in Second Life on things like new avatars, clothes, um, genitlia, etc... It is not required in order for you to attend the events I will sponsor -- though we might have sexy pirate contests, or "make your version of my character" contests, etc., Competing in those would require making purchases inside the Second Life world -- or learning how to use Linden Labs software to create things inside the system. Those kinds of things will be totally optional and not required in order to enjoy the Park or Center.
To get a Second Life account, go to www.secondlife.com. It's a three step process. First you establish the account, then you confirm the account, then you download and install the software.
The account generation process will ask you to choose an initial avatar. Don't sweat this. Once you're in the system, all the available starting avatars will be in your Library file in your inventory. So if you don't like the one you choose, you can choose another -- still free. An account can have many different avatars. Most people have several. See the Avatars page.
Your account is your name in Second Life -- or vice versa. This will be the name you log in with on all aspects of the "game", and this will be the name floating over your avatar's head at all times. Choose wisely... For example, if you know you're going to want to have both male and female avatars -- on this one account -- choose a gender neutral name. If you want to engage in some of SL's racier activities, or you want to keep your identity secret for other reasons, then don't use a variation of your real name or known screen names. Conversely, if you want people to know who you are, the first name is case sensitive and you can use your entire real life name (if it's short enough) as the account first name. For example, I could be WAHoffman Doozledorf.
And remember, you can have multiple accounts. Some people have private accounts and public accounts. If you don't like you first choice after learning more about the game, you can always abandon it and start another one.
You pick the first name, and then the system generates a list of available last names. This list is generated anew each time you change the first name. So it can be very frustrating to type one name in; look at the last name list; think of a great new first name to go with a name on the list; enter that name; and then have the last name you wanted not show up on the new list. Hang in there. The names seem to cycle through. If you don't see a last name you want the first time, stop the sign up process and come back in a half hour or so and try again. You will need to completely leave the sign up screens, though.
Do not choose the option to show a list of community arrival places. If you don't check that, you arrive at the original starting tutorial zone. This is a good thing.
For the rest of the sign up process, use your real name, e-mail address, birth date, and gender. Linden Labs uses this to verify your account; and if you're going to spend money in the game later, you will need to match this stuff up with;a Paypal account or credit card. If you decide to have multiple accounts, make sure you use the same information for the new accounts. (Also, wait a day after the first before making a second and so on.) Linden Labs doesn't care if you have multiple accounts, they do care if they feel you are attempting to defraud them by pretending to be multiple people.
Once you establish the account, they will send a confirmation e-mail. Pretty standard. Once you confirm, then you can download the software. You will need space on a harddrive to download and install the software -- not oodles, but this is a big graphics intensive program. And your PC will be interacting with the main part of the program on a server via a highspeed Internet connection. Going into Second Life will take up some computing resources. You shouldn't be trying to do several programs at once unless you have a fast and powerful graphics-oriented machine.
If you do start experiencing a great deal of lag -- in un-populated areas -- you probably need to log out and restart your machine. Be advised, you will experience lag in highly populated areas no matter how fast your PC is. This is because a Linden regional server can only process so much data and spit it out to your machine -- and everyone else's in the same region. (That's region in game terms, not real geography.) When you are in a laggy area, it's best to stay still (including your camera controls) and wait until everything draws in before attempting to move.
Once you're in the game, do all the steps in the tutorial area. This will teach you how to move around and access things. Familiarize yourself with your inventory, landmarks (teleport points), and notecards. Keep notecards that things give you. Sometimes they might be really important later -- like the instructions for how to use the in-system audio chat features.
Once you feel you have a handle on how to maneuver and what the user interface does, you can teleport to the Alien Perspective area by using the following SLURL (Second Life URL),
or by searching for Alien Perspective in the places tab of the search feature. (It will be a little button in the upper right hand corner. Make sure you select the "show mature" options once you have it open on the "Places" page.) Once you're in the AP area ("sim"), you should receive a landmark for the area. If not, go ahead and choose the option to "Create Landmark Here" from the pull down menu under "World". This will allow you to access the teleport point from the landmark folder in your inventory. So you can bop around all over SL and still find your way back to the AP area without having to use the SLURL or do a search. You want to make sure you create a landmark for every place you might want to go back to.
If you choose to move money into the account to exchange for the Linden Dollars that you use to buy things in system, be aware that Linden Labs has some stiff anti-fraud protections set up. You can only transfer a limited amount of money initially. You can't do anything the first day. You can only transfer transfer up to $100 US witi the first eight days. ($25 should be more than adequate to purchase a new avatar and clothes/accessories) You can't use Xstreet (the web-bsed vendor guide) to actually make a purchase for the first eight days. Poke around your account summary page and the related pages on the main Second Life web site for more info.
That's pretty much it. The main web site for Second Life has many tutorials and lots of useful info -- as does your account page on that site.
My main account is Venus Frequency. If you need to talk to me, or see something going wrong with the attractions, you can IM me in game even if I'm not on. I will receive the message the next time I log in. As acourtesy, please tell me who you are in the real world -- or who I know you as online -- when messaging me.
