What is Second Life?

Second Life - usually abbreviated SL - is a virtual world, launched in 2003 by the company Linden Lab.

Don't confuse SL with MMORPGs like World of Warcraft. Its actually not a game. Even if its user-inferface may look quite game-like.
If you define SL as a vast online 3D environment, where you can socialize, create, explore, use vehicles. role-play, attend online concerts, art exhibitions, go to clubs and certainly a number of things more I didnt think of, you are actually much closer to the truth.

Of course this degree of freedom comes with a quite steep initial learning curve. It actually may look like a wall even! I can only recommend you to take your time learning the basics.

Perhaps SL's strongest virtue is its freedom of creativity. You can literally make your SL the way you want it to.
Actually by far the most of the content you'll see in SL is made by its users: The spectrum goes from avatars, clothes and accessory up to full-sized landscapes, cities or other huge structures.^Its indeed a colourful wonderland.

Using SL is basically free. Ok, you can actually pay for a premium-account too, but its benefits aren't that exciting really.
If you like to customize your appearance (everyone wants to sooner or later really), there are also lots of outfits and other items available for free on the Marketplace. Inworld stores do often offer freebies as promos or group gifts too. And even the default outfits look quite decently now.

If you are looking for something specific you likely want to spend some money though. Not terribly much actually: the L$/US$ exhange rate is 255:1 and the average costs for a decent outfit is just a few US$. If you want to own some land, you will have to pay rent of course. The prices depend usually on the land-size.

Speaking of land: SL consists of a large number of "land-cells", usually called region or sim (for simulator). Each sim is independently running and has a size of 256x256 meters. Larger landmasses are created by aligning sims next to each other. Ideally, you don't really notice when you leave one region and enter the next.

By far the largest connected lands are hosted directly by LL and are called Mainland. It consists of several thousand individual regions and is divided into several continents. Many of them are connected with each other by "corridors". So despite the rather small size of an individual region, you can actually "physically" travel long distances in SL.


The Mainland continents of Second Life - actually just a small part of whats really there.


By far most sims in SL though are privately owned and often not connected with each other, but almost all are open for public-access.
Because of the separation of most regions - and because its really nice and time-saving to be lazy - teleporting is the common way of travelling in SL, even for surprisingly short distances ;-)

Socializing is a big part of SL and perhaps the reason why many users stay here for years. Its simply fascinating to be able to get into direct contact with people from all over the world so easy. Regular users of SL usually have long lasting friendships there, often leaping into their real-lifes too. There are partnerships and even marriages. And some couples even make the step and get married in real-life too.

Anyway - no matter what you are going to do in SL. If you are curious and take your time discovering this world, I'm sure you will enjoy it!

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