Online avatar diary - part 1

As you may have seen what was written yesterday, we were asked to explore an online environment with a 3D avatar, to interact and communicate with its residents and so on.


Now the primary choice given to us was second life. All I can say is that this program is visually displeasing, hard to get onto, and crashes endlessly! So I looked around for an alternative that didn’t require me to make some sort of a blocky human form. Looking round other student’s blogs on my course, I have come across seal online. Now, this game is quite animeish and cartoony, perfect for creating a wee little avatar.


I have to say it was so much easier to download and create an account, something that second life couldn’t get the hang of. But once online, I joined one of the 2 servers (yeah only 2, world of warcraft had something like 200+) and started to create my little me for the first time.



I chose from the multiple jobs that my character could have, to take the one called WARRIOR. I know, it sounds childish, haha but I couldn't not choose it when it came with a big sword the size of the avatar itself ^_^. So this guy has lots of strength, dodge and agility to help him battle evil. Something I am not in real life, but since this is an alter ego I can do whatever I wish, how fun. I named him spunky because that was the first thing that came to my head, not only that but people might have a little giggle over the name and possibly laugh with me and not at me.


On entering the world, I am confronted with a cartoony environment and funky style of shading on everything. I first find out I need to level my avatar in order to become stronger, learn new skills and to gain better armour & clothing. I talked to a few people with difficultly since the interface was all very new to me. But once I worked it out I was chatting to other avatars with glee. Many were new like me and we all ended up asking each other how stuff worked in the game. Contributing to each other’s knowledge until we all had a brief picture on how to do things.

Travelling through this new world, I discovered that I was named as a beginner, and it's not until lvl 10 that I’m allowed to be free in the world. So I travelled around my new beginner’s zone. Discovering that I can alter my avatar with new items from the store, or if I’m lucky items can drop off creatures I have defeated. I started to lvl up to my goal of 10! I did many things, I fished, I fought, I found. However no luck in actually catching any fish (I was using tree sap as bait. Didn't go too well :S). Gathering quest items and random gems to sell to the store vendor for hard earned cash. I then could buy some of the more interesting items. ^_^ oo exciting.










Once I had levelled to my new found glory of the level that is 10! I was starting to get some new items to customise my avatar and have a choice in what he looked like. So I put some earmuffs on him, gave him some nice new armour and also gave him some nice mean metal gloves that makes him look like a real warrior ^_^.