Malls

You can purchase houses all in one piece, or learn to build and spend your money on building supplies. Everything you can get in real life, you can pretty much find in Second Life – including gadgets. Most things like toilet paper on a roll (for bathrooms), you just get once – unless you are in some kind of production group like farming and use a Sims-like hud to keep track of the needs of your avatar.

There are stores you can go to as a new account avatar that give away free stuff to Newbies. Galaxy is one of those. When you first come inworld, one of the first areas you find is a place to pick up free stuff donated to newbies. (I’d advise you to stay away from anyone offering to sell you things or take you someplace. There are shady people that hang out in the newbie area oftentimes.) Palomma Plaza is another spot for free stuff.

Group memberships (most often free) will give you group gifts in stores you shop regularly. I have a particular shop I go to after Friday each week where I am a group member and they put up a $50L (fifty linden) house – a different one each week. I think I have about 25 to 50 of their homes, and other things like fancy outdoor showers (for beaches) and so forth.

Some sale groups will have deals for a certain price like $1L clothing for one hour. You get a notice in the group and you have to go to that shop within that hour to get the deal. Those are usually quite busy areas. Best to move off the teleporter (how we go from place to place) as quickly as possible or you slow down traffic.

Shopping in Opengrid is completely different. The larger portion of Opengrid areas promote free shopping and donations. You don’t have to buy currency, but you can if the vendor charges. There are different currencies in Opengrid and you can purchase them with Paypal. Some sellers even take Lindens. But most people do their shopping without spending any money. The stores are pretty much grab and go. You buy things either for $0, or they let you “take copy” of items at most stores. Some places like Kitely (another grid in Opengrid) do have a marketplace where you use some kind of currency. Most often it’s Globits. I haven’t really found much that is so much better that I’d be willing to spend Globits for. You will see many signs that say “Never pay money in Opensim” and so forth.

I have a small store on my island where I sell a few items – mostly standups and textures. (Standups are what I call flat decorative items that are simply for decoration. Much of it is steampunk animals.) I will never charge for my items there, though I do in Second Life. My reasoning is that land is much cheaper in Opensim/Opengrid, houses are free and since it costs so little, I don’t need to make a bundle there.

The two worlds are not interchangeable unless you make your own items. I can’t transfer my bought items to Opensim and normally I can’t port Opensim items to Second Life. My own creations I can use in both worlds and so it is helpful to learn how to do that.

You will not find crowded shopping areas in Opensim locations. Usually we find we are the only ones in a mall – unless the proprietor has an “alert” to tell them someone is in their shop. I avoid that as much as I do in real life. Unless I have a specific need, there’s no need to bother me inside a store. And I rarely have a specific need. Mostly I’m just browsing and picking up what attracts me in certain areas.

The consequence of all this shopping is that my inventory in Opensim is almost as big as my inventory in Second Life though I’ve been in SL around 11 years and Opensim only two and a half. I did venture in a few years back for a short time, but being short of money at the time I cut myself out of the virtual world for a while. It really isn’t expensive if you work it right. In Second Life, I have premium membership and I pay once a year and get $600L per week stipend, plus I don’t pay what’s called tier on my 2048m land. I/We do pay rent of about $60 month on our quarter region in Second Life to a vendor, with rights to terraform, naming it and etc. Worth it to us to have a place to call home there.

By contrast, for the same amount in Alternate Metaverse I have 50 Var regions, set up with various areas. I love making “environments” of various kinds. I spent years in Second Life trading one piece of land for another on mainland, making a home; then taking it all apart and trading for another piece of land and repeating the process. During that time, I never talked to hardly anyone, never worked on my avatar, never went to clubs, etc. I did go exploring occasionally – but that was about it. It wasn’t until I partnered with a builder (out of the blue) that I ever did much to get out of that pattern. That has changed, but putting up an environment is still my favorite thing even though now I can work on my avatar body, skin, hair and clothing.

W and I like to go shopping together, even though I have a bad habit of “camming” while I shop; that is, looking at stuff without “walking” where I’m looking. You can move the camera to look at things without moving your avatar body. Thus, I will mention something and he has no idea where I’m looking and it might be a virtual block away! So I’m trying to stop that habit as I am sure it must be annoying.

Nearly every mall in opensim and in Second Life has clothing. Second life has more kinds of furniture and stuff, but it still feels to me like both have way more clothing than I could ever use. And most of the “guy” clothes are so much alike, it is hard to find anything different in men’s things. W looks good in a suit yet it is rare to find something that is different enough that he wants it. Plus there are (as he was just mentioning) too few kinds of men’s shoes in the virtual world. As long as a guy has a good pair of dress shoes, a pair of sneakers, and a pair of sandals; he can be set for most any outfit. But that misses some of the fun of design in the dressing process.

What I don’t like in virtual clothing: Underboob and underbutt clothing. I think it devolves the outfit. If you’re going that far, why don’t we all just go naked inworld? But then the designers wouldn’t have the fun of maximizing their creativity with textures and fabrics. So I rarely wear anything skimpy in the virtual world, just as I don’t in the real world. I did once wear a “strap” outfit in a club, but I was trying to make a point at the time. Female avatars were walking in practically naked, even though there were rules about what you could show. So I went in with as much showing as I could dare. It was a rare event and I never did it again. It gives the wrong impression, I believe.

W and I dress up when we go to the club. More so when we go to Frank’s Elite in Second Life, because gowns and suits are required there. You don’t see the skimpy outfits there. It’s a “Ladies and Gentlemen” area.

So shopping is rather fun in both worlds and I often use shopping in the virtual world as an incentive for real world work. I’m at a point in life where I don’t need or want more “stuff”; nor do I have room. So I pile it up in my virtual inventory where it stays until I require some object, or item. I do have to cull the duplicates (more often in Opensim) and arrange folders in a way that makes sense to me.

We tried a new shopping area today and again I was disappointed that all they had was clothing, even though it was some lovely stuff.