Tag: Second Life Mesh Heads

UPDATED FOR 2024: Second Life Releases Senra, a Line of Mesh Starter Avatars for New Users

Have you read? Editorial: Why Second Life Is the Perfect Model of a Mature, Fully Evolved Virtual World for Newer Social VR Platforms to Emulate (in case you were wondering why I still write about Second Life when there are so many other, newer metaverse platforms out there I could cover).

If you are are looking for free/cheap options for female mesh avatars, I have written up a comparison chart here: A New Comparison Chart of Seven Options for Free or Inexpensive Female Mesh Bodies (Including Senra Jamie). You do not need to spend thousands of Linden dollars to have a good-looking, fully mesh avatar!

I plan to return to regular blogging, on a wide variety of topics, soon, so please stay tuned! Thanks. ❤️

UPDATE January 11, 2024: On December 6th, Linden Lab announced version 1.0 of the Senra Blake and Jamie mesh avatars, taking user feedback into account to make adjustments to the beta version mesh heads and bodies which are pictured here. And I am happy to report that they have fixed what I saw as the biggest problem with the Senra mesh bodies: the sky-high eyebrows! Hooray!!

Be sure to watch the YouTube video linked below to learn how to get started.

One of the biggest problems Second Life has had to face in its now 20-year history is a high level of user turnover. Literally millions of people have signed up for an SL account over the years, and then most of them bailed soon afterwards because of the relatively steep learning curve (or for other reasons, like the fact that the platform is open-ended, as opposed to a game with a pre-set play structure).

As avatar technology has evolved over time, most veteran Second Life users opted to upgrade their default classic, system avatars with mesh heads and bodies, sold by any number of vendors seeking to capitalize on the universal desire to look as good as possible in the virtual world!

However, making the move from one of the default, classic starter avatars to a mesh head and body can often be a daunting undertaking. Two years ago, I helped a friend, who had much experience in many social VR platforms, get set up from scratch in Second Life, writing:

I thought for sure that it would take no time at all to upgrade his avatar from the classic, system options to a fully-mesh version. How wrong I was. And the experience was a real eye-opener to me, and illustrates what is still one of the biggest problems in Second Life: setting up a mesh avatar is an exercise fraught with confusion and frustration, and it’s just too steep a learning curve for people (even metaverse experts!).

In fact, Wagner James Au of the New World Notes blog compares this process to “leveling up” in an MMO game, which I think is a rather apt analogy. You can take a look at another user’s Second Life avatar in-world, and tell at a glance if they had “leveled up” or not (the hands and feet were a big giveaway), even leading in some cases to a sort of snobby “meshist” attitude towards those still rocking more dated-looking bodies.

So, in an ongoing effort to make things easier for new users, Linden Lab has provided what we call starter avatars: you can make a quick selection from a menu (either while creating your account on the Second Life website, or later on when in-world), which gave newcomers a choice of a variety of curated looks and outfits, to help them get started in their first few days of wandering and teleporting around the grid and meeting new people.

And yesterday, on August 1st, 2023, Linden Lab announced a new line of fully-customizable mesh starter avatars, called Senra. (Note that this is not he first time Linden Lab has released mesh avatars; there was a failed attempt back in 2014.* It would appear that the company has learned a few lessons from that failure in this new launch, such as including a decent-sized capsule wardrobe for these new mesh avatars, and expressing a desire to work with fashion designers to create apparel.)

First, before you do anything, please watch this well-crafted, ten-minute YouTube video by Boston Blaisdale, part of the Second Life University series, explaining how the new Senra line of starter avatars works, and how to easily get started. Please note that the instructions are different for people setting up a brand new account from scratch, as opposed to those who have already set up an account!

The Senra line consists of two completely mesh bodies: the masculine Blake, and the feminine Jamie. Both bodies, from head to toe, use Bakes on Mesh (BoM), which gets rid of the need to use Omega or another kind of applier system. Both Blake and Jamie come with six different skin tones (with matching short fingernails and toenails), 11 different colours of eyebrows (including a tintable version; these are found in the hair folder), plus your choice of 10 different eye colours.

Each body comes with a complete capsule wardrobe, consisting of a variety of tops, bottoms, dresses, footwear, and hairstyles to choose from. All apparel comes in multiple colours and/or textures, and each item comes with an alpha for your avatar to wear, to hide any part of your mesh body which might poke through the clothing.

I started with the Senra Jamie female mesh body, and I picked a somewhat curvier shape from the six included female shapes as my starting point, picking out some canvas shoes, skinny jeans, and a Senra-branded white T-shirt:

Here’s a closeup of the face. This is a definitely an improvement over the old classic, system avatar head! (I would probably fiddle a bit with the eyebrows, but for something straight out of the box, it’s beautiful.)

Here’s a dressier look with a different hairstyle (there are nine of them in total, with hairbases and/or mesh hair in nine styles, 10 colours each):

There’s a (tintable) bikini/underwear top and bottom in the skins folder, as shown below (I gave up on the included female animation override, which had too many poses with arms raised, replacing it with a less model-like AO from my inventory):

The hands, feet, and head are particularly lovely, and the six starter shapes give you a number of starting points in customizing the body to your liking; I find this body adjusts well to the body sliders, although I must confess I wish I could get a bit more arm fat/muscle on Jamie! I could take this starter avatar to any beach in Second Life, and she would fit in very well amongst all the other store-brand mesh bodies catching some virtual rays and waves!

Now on to the Blake body. Here’s what he looks like:

The male skins are serviceable. but still a little too unblemished and “pretty” for my tastes (there are no facial hair options, a surprising omission). I was also unhappy with the rather soft look to the default male head and face shape, so I spent a lot of time fiddling with the sliders to make it look less rounded and more angular, with some success:

Again, this starter avatar would fit in well in a crowd of brand-name mesh bodies at any SL event.

Now for the fun part: all of these outfits, plus many more options not shown here, plus all the footwear and all the hairstyles, are unisex! Yes, even the dresses. So, for fun, I had my test avatars switch outfits:

These starter mesh bodies let you express your gender in any way you want—especially since you can play around with the body sliders on both the male and female bodies to get just about any look you can imagine! Here’s the same two Jamie and Blake bodies as pictured above, but with completely different shapes and animation overrides (it is possible to set the sliders on Jamie’s breasts down to zero):

Now, keep in mind that the target audience for the Senra line of mesh starter avatars is Second Life newbies who are just getting started, not those of us who are more experienced users. Jamie and Blake are bodies intended to make new user set-up as painless as possible, while still giving them a modern, fully customizable mesh body with a capsule wardrobe. It is expected that most new users will eventually want to move on from Senra mesh bodies to other brands of mesh bodies on the marketplace, with much better feature sets and even more options. As an example, there are no HUDs that come with these bodies, like most name-brand ones have.

Also, all the footwear options for both Jamie and Blake are for flat feet. NO HIGH HEELS! If you want that right out of the gate, then Senra is not for you. Likewise, there are no facial hair options or tattoo options in the starter package. The starter AOs, particularly the feminine one for Jamie, are just okay, but nothing special. Again, please remember, these are intended for new users.

According to the official announcement from Linden Lab:

We’re excited to announce the launch of our new Starter Avatars! These avatars, called Senra, are a fresh mesh take on the classic Second Life avatar, with a customizable modern and stylish look. These avatars will give new residents the opportunity to get started with a mesh body and personalize their own unique look the very first time they log in to Second Life and get a taste for the endless possibilities of avatar customization available to SL Residents.

The Senra avatars come with a variety of body shapes, skins, and hair styles. We’ve also created a whole new wardrobe of clothes that are specifically designed for these avatars. There are more than a billion possible combinations, so you’re sure to find the perfect look.  The Senra avatars and clothing have been designed so that any avatar looks great with any clothing. Mix and match to your heart’s content!

We’re also pleased to announce that we’ll be providing dev kits for creators to make their own clothes for the Senra avatars. That way new and established residents alike will have plenty of ways to express themselves and create amazing new looks for the Senra avatars. 

If you’re new to Second Life, or if you’re just ready for a new look, we encourage you to check out the new Senra Avatars. We think you’ll love them!

As I said up top, I think that Linden Lab has learned from their previous mistakes in releasing a set of failed mesh starter avatars several years ago, and it looks as though they have put a lot more thought and effort into launching these new starter avatars, and creating an ecosystem so that content creators can make skins, clothing, shoes, etc. for them.

Best of all, they’re free! So try them out, and let me know what you think about them.

P.S. I forgot to mention that I have not yet had an opportunity to test out mixing and matching Senra heads and bodies with other brands of mesh heads, mesh bodies, skins, makeup, etc. My friend Dreamer Pixelmaid did report that she was able to pair a Lelutka head successfully with the Senra Jamie body, however, so it sounds promising! Here’s a picture she shared with me (see image, right):

*A little bit of SL history: the 2014 mesh starter avatars which Linden Lab launched were so bad, that many new resident welcome areas warned newbies not to use them! One glaring flaw was that you were pretty much stuck with the clothing they came with, as nobody else made anything that would fit these bodies! They died a slow, lingering death, and were eventually quietly dropped completely by Second Life, to live on in horror stories told by oldbies to newbies while roasting prim marshmallows around the pixel campfire … 😉

The ill-fated mesh starter avatars Linden Lab launched in 2014 (Be afraid…BE. VERY. AFRAID! I still have nightmares about the blonde woman in the blue dress!) Hopefully, Linden Lab has learned a few lessons this time around, to avoid having the new Senra mesh avatars meet the same fate as their doomed predecessors.

UPDATE 3:15 p.m.: In their official announcement, Linden Lab refers to the Senra mesh bodies as “beta,” which I assume means that there will probably still be some tweaks and adjustments made in response to user feedback. There has been much discussion about Senra on the Second Life community forums already, including a growing thread of images.

Speaking of images, Dreamer Pixelmaid has started a brand-new Flickr gallery for people to post pictures of avatars wearing the Senra Blake and Jamie bodies. You can visit it here.

UPDATE Aug. 4th, 2023: I have spent the evening playing around with some of the older skins in the inventory of my oldest male alt, and I gotta tellya, some of those old male Belleza skins look really good on the Senra Blake body! Here’ s one avatar look I was quite happy with, using the Belleza Ewan 0 tan skin with a black hairbase and some free hair I picked up years ago (click to see these images in full size):

There are only two problems: one, the fingertips will be a different colour (see image one below), so you will definitely need to use something like Sweet’s free tintable Quick Nail Cover Fix on the SL Marketplace (see image two below).

And the second problem? When he blinks, the eyebrows get slightly deeper, LOL! Something you can’t tell from my still photos… 😉 but overall, I am very happy with this final result!

Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: The LeLutka Holiday Special, Running Dec. 20th to 30th, 2022!

Looking for the 2023 edition? Click here.

Once again this year, the popular Bento head creator LeLutka has teamed up with over 50 other Second Life stores to offer you a bounty of Christmas gifts! This year, the Holiday Special runs from December 20th to 30th, 2022. However, please note that last year, all the freebies were unavailable on the final day listed on the poster advertising the event, so I strongly recommend that you do NOT wait until Dec. 30th to pick up these wonderful presents for your avatar!

Here’s a list of stores participating in the LeLutka Holiday Special. Click on the store name in the list to teleport to the store, and look for a sign saying “54 Designers”, or the Holiday Special Christmas ornaments logo shown in the picture above.

Yesterday evening, I visited all 54 stores, and I have written up a notecard with a description of each gift, along with an exact SLURL for the location of the gift in the participating store. Please note that in some cases, a sim will have a forced central spawn point, but just save the SLURL from the notecard to your SL inventory, find it in your Landmarks folder and right click on it, then select “Show on Map” from the menu which appears (see image, right). Then, all you have to do is follow the red arrow to find your present!

I also added a few notes to alert you to things like which stores do not need a group join to pick up the gift, and which stores also have other (previous) group gifts which you might want to snap up once you have joined the store group for free. For example, you can pick up the Avi-Glam presents (a nice unisex fatpack of eyes and a male skin) without a group, but did you know that if you join the Avi-Glam group for free, you can pick up eleven free group gifts?

Oh, and did I mention? ALL the stores participating in the LeLutka Holiday Special have removed their usual group join fees (if they had any). Yes, that’s right, you can join all of these groups for absolutely FREE between December 20th and 30th! So, for example, if you join Ives Beauty now, the group join is free, you can pick up the Holiday Special gift plus all the other group gifts of skins and makeup, and after the promotion ends, THEN STAY IN THE GROUP, because it will cost you L$99 to rejoin it later if there are other group gifts announced by Ives Beauty during 2023. This is the time of year to join many of those store groups which you’ve had your eye on, but couldn’t afford to join!

PRO TIP: Did you know that you can turn off the crowd of avatars around you, so all you can see on screen is you and your friends? Just select “Show Friends Only” from the World menu in the Firestorm viewer (see image, left). Poof!! They’re gone! I do this all the time, rather than have my computer get bogged down trying to render all the surrounding avatars at busy shopping events and sales in Second Life.

Anyway, getting back to the list I compiled yesterday… I am doing something a little different from what I usually do (I hope that you will indulge me!).

I went and posted that detailed list of stores, notes, and SLURLs to my own Second Life group, called the RyanSchultz.com Steals, Deals & Freebies group (just search for “ryanschultz”, all one word, under Groups in Search, and you will find it easily). More information on the RyanSchultz.com Steals, Deals & Freebies group can be found here. The group join fee is only L$50, and you will find it money well spent, as I often share many bargains and freebies throughout the year, which never make it to this blog!

Now let’s take a look at some of these generous gifts! The gifts from LeLutka and its sister skin store, LeLapeau, are available from one of four sims (please join the LeLutka group for free, and check the group notices for notecards with all the details). The gifts you can pick up here are:

  • the LeLutka Raven female head (version 3.1)
  • the LeLutka Quinn male head (version 3.1)
  • the LeLapeau Elsa women’s skin fatpack

Below, my SL supermodel, Moesha Heartsong, models the Raven LeLutka head, plus three of the Holiday Special gifts from other participating stores (please click on each image to see it in full size):

  • the Lacey head skin from Koonz, which comes in a full fatpack of skin tones which match Velour body skin (I chose Amber for these pictures);
  • the Venus muscular limited-edition body skin by Velour, also in Amber (which comes in both Meshbody Legacy and eBody Reborn versions; the Legacy version had some problems in the toes area on Moesha’s Maitreya Lara mesh body, but the Reborn version worked perfectly!);
  • the Gift hairstyle by Studio Exposure, which consists of a complete fatpack of hairbases, combined with a bun adorned with a large bow, which comes with a colour-change HUD.

And here, one of my male alts (who has the actual, honest-to-God, Second Life legacy name of That Guy 😉 ), is wearing the LeLutka Quinn head, plus two more Holiday Special gifts: the Andrej face skin and shape by Clef de Peau, and the Christian hairbase from Volkstone. (The body skin That Guy is wearing was a gift from last year’s LeLutka holiday event, the Eros Lite soft fit skin in the Moon skin tone, and I picked a version of the Andrej skin in the same Moon skin tone. Unfortunately, there is no male skin gift from Velour this year!) Again, please click on each image to view it in a larger size.

The final look is Lily Pond (yep, that’s her legacy name, too), who is modeling the LeLutka Raven head, plus the following :

  • The Raven shape from Holloway Beauty for the Raven LeLutka head and the Meshbody Legacy body (I used this shape as my starting point, tweaking the body sliders quite a bit, but the head shape is pretty much still the original from the Holloway Raven shape, I just made the eyes a little bigger);
  • the Raven head skin from Amara Beauty in the Chantilly skin tone (I used the matching Ipanema body skin from Velour, which was last year‘s LeLutka holiday event gift);
  • the beautiful Noel eyes from Amara Beauty (they come in a full fatpack);
  • the Christmas hairbase by Not Found, which goes with this long, long ponytail from Doux! Both are fatpacks, coming a variety of colours. You can pick up each part separately from the L’Etre/Doux and Not Found stores during the LeLutka Holiday Special event.

Please click on each picture int his gallery to see it in full size:

Happy holiday freebie shopping!

UPDATED! Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: Your Quick and Dirty Guide to the 2022 Black Friday Sales in Second Life (Plus a Few Tips)

Black Friday is one of the biggest shopping days in the American calendar, and, of course, it comes as no surprise that many Second Life stores also have sales running on or around the Black Friday to Cyber Monday weekend (November 25th to 28th, 2022). Many stores are having 50%-off sales on their merchandise, and a few are offering even bigger discounts!

The biggest list of Second Life Black Friday sales is probably the one compiled by Seraphim: The Seraphim Black Friday Sales List. But there are many other lists:

Please keep in mind that many stores do not use a list to advertise. One of these is Maitreya. For the past couple of years, they have had an (unadvertised) 50%-off sale on the ubiquitous Maitreya Lara female mesh body. Now, I don’t know if Maitreya is going to do it again this year, but I am willing to bet that they will (and, like in previous years, they will not announce it). UPDATE Nov. 25th: Yes, the Maitreya Lara mesh body is now on sale, for L$1,375. Best price of the year, get it now!!!

In fact, Black Friday sales are usually the one time in the year when most major mesh head and body creators offer significant discounts on their wares. (UPDATE 6:12 p.m.: The Second Life Syndicate spreadsheet I talked about earlier has a handy section right at the top, listing the major mesh head and body vendors and their sales!) So keep your eyes peeled for any announcements in any Second Life groups you belong to, and pay a visit to the stores themselves on Black Friday, to check out the action for yourself!

Here are some more details on a few specific stores, culled from this thread on the official Second Life community forums:

  • Nuve: As part of their Black Friday celebrations, the Nuve skin and cosmetics store has a free group join from Nov. 21st to Nov. 25th, 2022. If you do not already belong to this group, join it now, and you can pick up countless free group gifts of skins (head plus body skins included), eyebrows, eyeshadows, and lipsticks. Also, if you join the group, you can visit the Nuve store once every seven days to click the panel at the front desk and GET L$75 IN FREE STORE CREDIT! You can accumulate the store credit since it does not expire, and you can use it on anything in the store! I love this, and I wish more stores did stuff like this!
  • Dead Doll: you can join their VIP group for free on Thursday, Nov. 24th, and get 50% off main store products! The sim will be restricted to VIP group members only.
  • UPDATE Nov. 25th: Like so many other womenswear stores, Pink Cream Pie is throwing a 50%-off sale, until Nov. 28th. You can join the Pink Cream Pie store’s VIP group for free, and get a 50% store credit for any purchases you make with that group tag active! With that free group join, you can pick up dozens and dozens of free group gifts, located on the second floor of their store, next to the Lucky Boards.
Join the Pink Cream Pie group for free, and pick up almost 70 free group gifts!
  • UPDATE Nov. 25th: Dotty’s Secret makeup shop (which also specializes in drag queen makeup) has a free group join from November 21 to November 30! Join the group and wear the group tag to get a 50% discount on everything in the store. There’s also a group gift wall with 15 free group gifts of makeup fatpacks for people of all genders!
  • UPDATE Nov. 25th: Another store group that is free to join from Nov. 21st to 28th is Mishmash Fusion, which is offering 50%-off on everything in the store for group members, plus a couple of free group gifts, located up on the wall between the front counter and the stairs. Mishmash also sells clothing and furniture for dinkies (i.e. tiny avatars) up on the second floor!
  • UPDATE Nov. 25th: The VIP store group at the FAGA hair store is free to join right now, and they have over ten hair packs free for their group members (all in ombre tones, not solid colours). Just join the group, wander around the store, and click on the EXCLUSIVE GIFT signs below the hairstyle vendors. The store seems to have disappeared from the grid at the moment, but I’m sure they’ll get it all sorted out eventually…maybe the store owner forgot to pay her rent? 😜
  • Both LeLutka and Akeruka have a 50%-off sale on their Bento mesh heads (LeLutka’s starts tomorrow, Nov. 25th and runs until Nov. 28th; Akeruka’s is on now, also until Nov. 28th). Remember that Akeruka now has a line of ADVX heads, which work with LeLutka Evo X skins, as well as a line of baby/infant heads, called BABYX.
  • Velour’s body skins will on sale for 30% off, which is notable since so many SL head skin creators use the Velour skin tones. So this is your chance to stock up and save!
  • Moccino (skins, makeup, cosmetics) is having a 60%-off sale, Nov. 21st to Dec. 1st, 2022. Again, some SL head skins use Moccino skin tones, so stock up!
  • If you love being a fantasy avatar, Bespoke will be holding a 75% off sale on select fantasy heads and skins (please check for details in the store).
  • UPDATE Nov. 25th: Signature mesh heads and bodies (male and female) are 50% off.
  • UPDATE Nov. 27th: Loki (womenswear) has a free group join until tomorrow, November 28th, 2022. You can pick up quite a few nice group gifts in store!
  • Belleza is having a 50%-off sale storewide, but their new line of Gen X female bodies will be 20% off (Nov. 25th to 27th, 2022).

Again, my best advice to you is, if you have a favourite store, check to see if they are on any of the lists I posted at the top of this blogpost, but also check their store group, as well as in-store on Black Friday to see what other sales they might be having.

Happy Black Friday shopping!

Blogger’s Dozen: My Top Twelve Most Popular Blogposts from the Past 365 Days

An egg is always an adventure; the next one may be different.

— Oscar Wilde (source)
Photo by Kelly Neil on Unsplash

One of the things I love about hosting a blog on WordPress is that I can review my statistics over time, to see which posts are more popular and which ones aren’t. I have completely given up on my ability to predict which ones will fall into the first category, and which ones will fall into the second! A blogpost I dash off in a hurry without much thought can blow up on me, while a second one I slaved over and post in high expectations goes pffft! It just happens. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So, on a whim, and to get a better sense of what’s trending overall, I ran some stats today on my 12 most popular blogposts over the past 365 days (Feb. 16th, 2021 to Feb. 15th, 2022). I do hasten to assure you, gentle reader, that all links in this list are safe for work, so don’t be afraid to click on them 😉

  1. The Dirty Little Secret of VRChat: Hidden Adult Content – I am endlessly bemused by the fact that it is still, far and away, the most visited blogpost on my blog, with 72,351 visits over the past 365 days, which works out to almost 200 views per day, mostly because it is usually the top result when people search Google for “VRChat sex” or “VRChat adult”, or something similar…and I hate to break it to you, people, but you are not gonna find NSFW worlds in VRChat using the Google search engine!
  2. Welcome to the Metaverse: A Comprehensive List of Social VR/AR Platforms and Virtual Worlds – this popular, constantly-updated alphabetical listing has seen a surge in visits since Facebook rebranded to Meta in October 2021
  3. A Step-by-Step Guide on How to Get Started in Decentraland (and Some Caveats for New Users)
  4. Clip and Save: Ryan’s All-In-One Guide to Freebies in Second Life – this is a constantly-updated compilation of my best tips and tricks for finding fabulous fashion freebies and bargains in Second Life
  5. Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: The Meshbody Offers Free Versions of Their Classic Mesh Bodies for Men and Women
  6. 3DX Chat: A Brief Introduction (and the Biggest Problem with Most Adult Virtual Worlds)
  7. Second Life: Maitreya Releases Version 5.0 of the Maitreya Lara Female Mesh Avatar Body
  8. Second Life Steals, Deals and Freebies: Free and Inexpensive Mesh Heads and Bodies for Female Second Life Avatars
  9. LGBTQ Spaces in Social VR and Virtual Worlds
  10. Shopping for a New Penis in Second Life: Any Recommendations? – this link is safe for work
  11. List of Non-Combat, Open-World Exploration/Puzzle/Life Simulation Games
  12. How to Change Your Avatar Name in Second Life: A Step by Step Guide

So, what trends do we see in this list?

Trend 1: Sex (As Homer Simpson would say: D’OH!)

Well, it would appear that sexual/adult content and activities are perennially popular in virtual worlds and social VR, regardless of platform (#1, #6, perhaps #9, and most certainly #10 on this list).

There almost seems to be some sort of rule that if you can get two avatars together on a platform—any platform—they are going to try and have sex. In fact, to prove my point, the BBC reported today on sex “condos” in Roblox!

Strip joints in Roblox proves my point: if you can get two avatars together on a platform—any platform—there will be sex! There appear to be no exceptions to this rule, even on platforms intended for children’s games.

So I was not terribly surprised when Meta’s Horizon Worlds and Horizon Venues social VR platforms recently implemented a hard-coded, four-foot boundary between avatars, after several women reported being sexually harassed (even though the avatars literally have no lower body!).

Trend 2: Lists of Metaverse and “Metaverse-Adjacent” Platforms

Secondly, people seem to be looking for comprehensive lists of metaverse platforms (#2) and what I like to call “metaverse-adjacent” content, i.e. non-combat, open-world platforms like Fortnite Party Royale and The Sims (#11). Of course, the line between the two is becoming ever more blurred.

One of my major tasks over the next few months is to complete a thorough reorganization and recategorization of the well over 160 entries on my increasingly popular list of social VR, virtual worlds, and metaverse platforms. I also want to update my equally popular, but by now somewhat dated, spreadsheet of what I consider the “top” social VR platforms (and a shout-out to Dr. Fran Babcock for doing some updating of the latter over the past few months; it is much appreciated!).

It would appear that there is lots of interest in my big-picture look at the metaverse and all the companies busy building it, so I intend to make both of these tasks a top priority, once things die down a bit at my full-time paying job as a university librarian!

As I have said before, I never expected to become a prolific Second Life blogger, but it’s clear that my coverage (with a focus on Second Life steals, deals, and freebies) continues to be popular with my readers, and among the most-viewed content on my blog. While it may seem weird to write both about 18-year-old SL and then switch to writing about much newer platforms, I see everything as part of a seamless, whole history of the metaverse.

Of particular interest, I note a lot of traffic to my posts about both free and paid-for Second Life mesh heads and bodies (#4, #5, #7, #8, and of course, #10!). Therefore, I will continue to provide that coverage, and I may restructure my now-sprawling blogposts about free and inexpensive male and female mesh heads and bodies in SL, to make them easier for people to navigate…but only after I tackle the long-delayed reorganization of my metaverse list, mentioned under the previous trend!

Finally, people seem to value good, step-by-step instructions on how to do things in SL, like rename your avatar (#12), so I will be continuing to write up more blogposts in that vein.

I notice that my step-by-step instructions for getting started in Decentraland (DCL) is an increasingly popular blogpost, even though the instructions may already be a bit dated (#4). As I have mentioned recently, DCL and all the NFT metaverses are seeing a huge surge in interest (and in financial speculation!), ever since Facebook rebranded itself as Meta, and Mark Zuckerberg announced that they would become a metaverse company.

And, as promised, I will be writing about all these platforms in 2022:

Although I have mentioned and written about a number of virtual world/social VR platforms on this list which DO incorporate blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), please note that I have, up until now, tended to focus only on those projects which ALREADY have an actual working platform, where you can create an avatar to visit and explore NOW: NeosVR, Cryptovoxels, Decentraland, and Somnium Space. I have not really written much about projects which have yet to launch, because frankly so many of them are vapourware!

However, given the current burst of enthusiasm for all things blockchain/crypto/NFT and metaverse (particularly after Facebook/Meta’s repivot to become a metaverse company in October 2021), I will endeavour to expand my coverage of such platforms in 2022.

And I remain highly concerned about the number of poorly-thought-out NFT metaverse projects (and frankly, just flat out scams) that seem to be proliferating by the day. I will also be writing a lot about that topic in the next 365 days, I suspect.

Trend 5: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Queer Spaces in the Metaverse

My blogpost about LGBTQ spaces in virtual worlds and social VR (#9) is becoming more and more popular over time, an indication that queer people are actively looking for community in the metaverse. Therefore, I will write more articles about that, too!

white and multicolored love is love banner
Photo by 42 North on Pexels.com