A Visit to InWorldz

Written 26 July, 2010

A Visit to InWorldz

Sweetie and I are forever checking out other grids. Today she selected the OS Grid (i.e. Second Life like) InWorldz, and we created accounts with our same avatar names and logged in.

We were, of course, absolute Ruthed newbies when we arrived. In fact, to be Ruth, we had to wear bald bases in order to stop being Caspered. When I could see myself, I didn't even have eyeballs!

Photo: The reader might assume the unfortunate eyeballless avatar is InWorldz newbie Cheyenne Palisades. But no! that's Chey, in world only 30 minutes or so and already pimped, behind her, looking toward the camera.




There was fortunately a freebie store within sight. We took ourselves there to rid ourselves our noobishness.

If looked like any freebie depot in Second Life, loaded with textures that take their time rezzing and stuff that blings.


However, I was more than happy with the variety and quality of the goods-- not world class, but good enough to make me look halfway decent halfway fast. Within 30 minutes I was working an AO, had installed an avatar radar, and had made myself a facelight. I had a skin that looked not dissimilar to mine in Second Life, jewelry from EarthStones, and shoes with bling. I tried to create a deblinger script (it's quite easy to do in Second Life, just one line will do it), but scripts seemed a bit wonky. I'm sure they have their own scripting languages.

There were some of the sorts of problems I remember from earlier days in Second Life. My legs would shoot out from under me with some regularity, and when I resized my freebie hair, it would snap back to its original size, which was far too small to fit my elongated head (yes, I typed in my shape stats, which are saved on my hard drive. Later, I put on Sweetie's shape in Second Life and read the numbers to her in Skype so she could reclaim her shape in InWorldz.

And how did she look?

Fabulous, of course. How could she not?

I'm about to reveal to you, gentle reader, Sweetie's face. Until now it has not been shown on this blog. However since this is a different grid and her shape, skin, and hair are merely placeholders while she gets her InWorldz look together, here she is in all her glory:


I have NO IDEA whose newbie feet are hanging in front of my camera, spoiling the shot!!!

Here's a closeup:


And one of me, looking a bit rough in my freebie skin and won't resize hair, but not bad for a 30-minute old avatar!


By the time we logged off we had a fistful of landmarks, the start of a wardrobe, and tools enough to get by.

I have to say, this is my first out-of-Second-Life experience that made me think I could live someplace else.

It's not that I really want to-- a sim for only $65 USD a month, with no set up cost and 35,000 prims is sorely tempting! InWorldz does not yet measure up to Second Life standards, but it's nice to know that if it ever comes down to it, if some idiotic company acquires Linden Lab so they can grab its servers or the Lab's practices once again become draconian, I can jump to a place very much like Second Life. In many ways it would be like a time warp back to 2007, but it would be survivable. I now have a choice. Until now, I feel, I didn't.

The mentors at the entry area at InWorldz seemed really fond of saying "This isn't Second Life." But you know what? It very nearly is.