UPDATED! Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: Free Outfits from Roleplay Sims

Many roleplay sims in Second Life offer free outfits for men and women, to help newcomers dress to fit in with everybody else. Today, I will be showing you a selection of free women’s roleplay outfits from various sims.

Our first stop is Zerzura, a Gorean sim with an ancient Greek theme. Click on the yellow sign as shown here, and you will receive a folder of men’s and women’s outfits. (For four other Gorean sims offering free outfits, please check out this earlier blogpost.)

This is one of the women’s outfits, a flowing Greek dress which comes with a headscarf and even the hair to fit underneath it (I replaced the default black hair texture with a blonde one I already had in my inventory):

One of the Zerzura freebies is this full-permissons Greek mesh gown by Anni’s. You can tint and texture this as you desire! It’s the proper length to wear high heels with, and I could easily wear this at at a modern-day formal event. It would also make a lovely wedding dress!

Alte Siedlung is a German medieval roleplay sim, which offers you a couple of free Middle Ages gowns at the spawn point:

Teleport to Skorde Island, enter the tower at the spawn point, and you can pick up this free, full-permissions girdled fantasy outfit with hood, which even includes the hair! (UPDATE Jan. 30th, 2021: This roleplay sim has now closed, so I have removed the SLURL upon request from the new sim owner.)

But don’t leave just yet! Climb the tower stairs to the second floor, and there are another four free women’s outfits, such as this beautiful medieval gown:

And click on the purple drawer shown, and you will receive a surprise: this lovely Indian sari! (By the way, if you’re in the market for a sari, you can pick up another free sari at the spawn point of Habibi – The Middle Eastern Oasis sim, along with a few other men’s and women’s outfits.)

Our final stop of the day is Taufells, another German-speaking medieval roleplay sim. In the store off to the side are four free outfits, including this medieval gown, which comes in blue and red versions:

The tray with the golden goblets comes with an arms-only animation override, so you can use it with your regular AO. It is the latest free group gift from Antaya (the Antaya group costs L$40 to join). I am serving you up some medieval tavern wench with this outfit! Pun intended 😉

So, as you can see, if you are looking for fantasy or roleplay outfits, you don’t need to spend a penny! Happy freebie shopping!

Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: The Snow Queen Enchantment Event and Hunt

Each round of the Enchantment shopping event in Second Life is based on a theme from a fairy tale or fantasy, and this time around, the theme is the Snow Queen! There’s also a Snow Queen hunt with free hunt gifts.

In this picture I show you the Pearl Crystal ballgown by Petite Mort, one of the vendors participating in the Enchantment event (SLURL). In addition to the pearl colour shown, it comes in blush pink, periwinkle blue, and black, at only L$230 per colour:

In addition to this stunning ballgown, my Snow Queen avatar is wearing three free prizes from the Enchantment Snow Queen Hunt:

  • The Snow Coronet crown by Spyralle (with snowflake particle effects you can turn on and off by clicking on it);
  • Frostelle snowflake earrings by MOEKO (with a HUD to change them to one of six different colours, including the icy blue shown here);
  • The Ice Crystal Swirl surrounding her is the hunt prize from Attitude is an Artform

The rest of my Snow Queen outfit is described here and here.

Here are the Snow Queen Hunt hints, and pictures of the hunt prizes (at the bottom of the web page). Enchantment runs from November 9th to December 2nd, 2019, so hurry down!

Pictures taken at the New Horizon Winter Land.

Editorial: Now Is the Winter of Our Discontent

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If I could sum up in three words how I am feeling this weekend, they would be: disenchanted, disillusioned, and depressed.

Photo by Ethan Sykes on Unsplash

It’s not my own circumstances that leave me feeling this way. In my personal life, things are going well, both at work and in my life outside work. Between my truly wonderful Patreon patrons (thank you!) and my Google AdSense and WordPress WordAds blog advertising, I am covering the hosting costs of this blog, for which I am grateful.

I have a growing reputation as an commentator and expert on social VR. I was recently a guest on Draxtor Despres’ podcast. Kent Bye wants to interview me for his Voices of VR podcast about social VR (that is, if we can ever arrange to be in the same physical location on the planet at the same time!). Hell, I am even accepting my first-ever award for my services to virtual world journalism on December 1st! So, things seem to be going well for me.

But what is bothering me (and especially weighing on me this weekend) is the current state of social VR, virtual worlds, and the metaverse, and the many travails, upheavals, and setbacks it seems to be going through. I spent my lunch hour sitting in my local McDonalds, having a text chat with someone who had invested in MATERIA.ONE (formerly Staramba Spaces), who saw my mention of a possible lawsuit being launched against the company in a previous blogpost, and wanted to know more information. I feel for him; like so many of us, he saw the promise and potential of a particular metaverse platform, and wanted to get in on the ground floor, only to get burned. It can happen to any of us.

After seeing what happened this year to both High Fidelity and to Linden Lab’s Sansar, and how so many other projects are struggling to become profitable, I am feeling disenchanted about the future of social VR. I don’t know if this feeling is a temporary grey cloud in my sky, or an indication of something more pronounced and permanent: an omen of more bad news on the horizon, more bad tidings to come.

Having covered the metaverse so assiduously over the past three years, I used to feel that I had developed a sort of sixth sense for determining which platforms will succeed, and which will fail. That sixth sense has completely abandoned me (or, more likely, I never had it in the first place).

I am humbled that I did not forsee High Fidelity’s abrupt pivot earlier this year; nor did I predict Linden Lab’s wrenching staff changes to the team building Sansar. I believed that those companies would continue to build their platforms in anticipation of future crowds; those crowds never came, and it depresses me to admit that they might never come. Whatever HiFi, Sansar, and other social VR companies are offering, few people seem to want it, at least at the moment.

Someone on Twitter alerted me to a brand-new, 15-minute Sansar promotional video posted by Disrupt, featuring CEO Ebbe Altberg and Sansar’s new General Manager Sheri Bryant, along with other Linden Lab staff such as the hard-working Sansar Community Manager Galileo Linden (a.k.a Ryan Crowe):

It’s a well-produced video, and an excellent, upbeat introduction to Sansar to someone who is new to the platform. Ebbe and Sheri and company cheerfully and valiantly hit all the major selling points of Sansar: an opportunity to make a profit selling user-generated content, etc.

But I watched this video, as good as it is, with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I used to believe that Sansar was a sure thing, a can’t-miss bet. Now, I am just feeling disenchanted, disillusioned, and depressed. I’ve got a bad case of the social VR blues.

We’ve seen attempt after attempt after attempt to sell social VR to the masses, with very limited success so far. As Shakespeare once said, now is the winter of our discontent. The question is: when will we get our glorious summer?

The Mesh Project Launches a Huge Contest in Second Life to Promote Their Legacy Mesh Bodies, With Prizes Worth Over a Million Linden Dollars in Total!

The Mesh Project (a.k.a TMP) is pulling out all the stops in one of the biggest contests that Second Life has ever seen, in an effort to promote their Legacy mesh body, which I have written about before on this blog.

First, if you purchase their Legacy mesh body (male or female), you will save L$500 during the promotion period (Nov. 15th to Dec. 15th, 2019). Please keep in mind that this brings the price of the Legacy mesh body down to L$4,500, which is still significantly more expensive than competing male and female mesh bodies that have much better designer support, and which support Omega skin and makeup appliers (TMP bodies do not support Omega, although I do believe they now support Bakes on Mesh).

Also, there is a contest which you can enter for free just by entering your avatar name on this website. The rule is one vote per avatar, but if you choose to promote the contest using your Facebook, Instagram, and Flickr accounts, you can earn extra chances to enter this contest.

The contest prizes are as follows:

  • 100 First Place winners will each receive a Classic or Legacy mesh body from TMP, plus 4 gift cards and/or fatpacks randomly chosen from participating sponsors (sponsors are listed below); first place winners have the option to gift the winning body to a friend, or may receive a full refund if they purchased a body during the giveaway period (Nov. 15-Dec. 15);
  • 100 Runner Up winners will receive one gift card or fatpack from participating sponsors.

The sponsors are a veritable Who’s Who of Second Life brand names!