The concept of virtual world is decisively exciting and has a potential which is hard to over-estimate, especially with the current trend of widespread adoption of virtual reality as inseparable part of everyday life. However, making the notion shine requires an outstanding execution, which is not, as it happens to be, the case with Second Life.
Having heard of Second Life for the first time I was initially quite skeptical - and, apparently, for quite a solid reason - for a remarkable project in it's supposed prime to have surfaced on such a late stage of its life cycle to someone whose social life is very closely intertwined with internet societies raises suspicions - either the person is not that well informed, or the project isn't that wonderful in the end. The introductory video has left me thoroughly unimpressed (as IMVU has been discovered and gotten tired of at that stage) and as I was running out of time to do the things that needed to be done in my First Life, I haven't even deigned the super-successful undertaking with a try.
Now, a few years later, Second Life proves itself to be as unimpressive as perceived on its heyday. Registering an account and installing the viewer is indeed effortless and intuitive. It seemed somewhat discouraging, though, that one has to pick a family name from the generated list as it does limit the overall customization which is marketed as practically boundless.
After the initial sing in the player gets taken to the introductory space which presents the bare minimum of training, which is not very encouraging as one finds him/herself wanting to do more than that and neither tips nor help menu offer the best user guidance imaginable. The overall menu was found to be counter-intuitive and finding the sections that actually allow one to modify facial and body traits, change clothes and hair was utterly frustrating. On the good side, allowing users the use of the sliders for sculpting the appearance is definitely impressive - the precision in some respect is even greater than the one provided in the most state-of-art RPG computer games - sure, facial generation is way better and smoother in Fallout 3, Dragon Age: The Origins and such, but the freedom one gets with such details as width of the hips, length of limbs and such is truly astonishing. Sadly enough, there seems to be little use of that.
On the first glance the user has a chance to assess the quality of the graphics and first impressions tend to be very true. The level of the graphics certainly failed to meet expectations, though it is somewhat understandable, but I'd rather the download file was bigger so that graphics would look more appealing and engaging - I found it hard to enjoy the experience largely due to the fact of lackluster look of the environment. It's 2010, not the dawn of the nineties - it is reasonable to expect a decent level of graphical representation.
Another source of frustration was the lag and eventual crash of the Second Life viewer - all three sessions ended this way and presumably PC and connection configurations are not to blame - for the graphics such as SL sports it is decisively unacceptable. Furthermore, the supposed immersion was further hindered by getting stuck in objects and buggy execution of using object's special features (which weren't that special after all). The level of interaction between the avatar and the world also leaves a lot to be desired. Had it been realized on the scale it's done in Fallout 3, it would have added much more to the virtual life emulation.
Furthermore, SL simply doesn't deliver in terms of the atmosphere - the design isn't thorough and artful enough to make one really experience the emotions it is supposed to evoke - Haloweenish corn field was not anywhere near scary and intimidating, Japanese romantic island nowhere near believably oriental and enchanted garden hasn't really created the Alice's Wonderland enticing feel it was aiming at.
From what has been seen, SL seems to be overly commercialized - arriving at a new location and seeing an impressive pretty building one could suspect socializing was going on at, you most definitely spotted a deserted store and with SL it looked like offer seriously exceeded the demand.
As far as interaction with other people goes, nothing out of the ordinary has been encountered, though nothing was deliberately sought, true enough. From the glimpses of other people's conversations that were caught, particularly intelligent communication is not a frequent occurrence in SL, if it is not, of course, an organized meeting, or a location that assumes to be attractive to specific audience. One surreal experience, though, was hearing the actual conversation of a group of USA natives - it struck as some background voice overs, while, in fact, that was a real-time over microphone chat.
It may, indeed, be true that using SL for educational purposes is fun and enriches the over-internet learning experience, but as with democracy - it's good for we have no better option known to us.
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