Phoebe Avro

I just made an alt, when i logged in i landed in a welcome area and was a smoke I logged back in did a character test and still i am smoke, now if i was new to sl i would prob just give up and leave!

That's why so many people create accounts then never come back!

LL need to get their shit in order or give up on the virtual world business!

Loraan Fierrens

It's certainly one reason. The first day experience is notoriously horrible and WTF. My personal theory is that the people who survive the experience are either:

A) masochists
B) stubborn (yours truly)
C) insane (ok... yours truly again)
D) incredibly bored.

Probably the only exceptions would be people who already know other SL users who will walk them through the process and lavish them with attention and gifts.

Phoebe Avro

Ok its been like 10 minutes and i am still smoke,i will try another relog^^

I logged in on firestorm and i did rezz but i did not have the av that i had picked during the signup process ^^

Wildefire Walcott

According to the Resident Signups to date chart at Grid Survey, between 10,000-20,000 new Second Life accounts are created every day, while mean daily concurrency is slowly declining. There are probably dozens of reasons residents don't stay in SL.

All that said, the New User Experience is definitely a huge barrier. That first logon needs to be flawless, and you need to be able to see what there is to do and how to get around right away. I haven't tried the latest attempt, but consensus appears to be that it's another misfire.

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Lexxi Gynoid

Last alt I made was involved a process similar to long ago, except I couldn't pick a last name. I then picked an "avatar" to represent me. I was testing the new signup system so I actually downloaded the viewer. Arrived in world as a cloud. Then crashed. Relogged. Crashed. relogged. Crashed. Relogged. Cloud. Rebake. Some avatar from the selection process a while back, not one of the newer possible choices.

I knew where the avatar I had picked was hiding in the library, though, so I put it on.

Looked around. A few people around. Just standing there. Really really fake looking trees if you pulled view out. Glowing portals.

No explanation. No idea what to do. Walked through a portal. Arrived in some huge Asian city. Nothing there to indicate what to do.

That was a couple weeks ago. I gave up on that alt.

Penny Patton

LL really needs to do something, several things actually, about the new user experience.

I covered the graphics side of things, basically they need to improve the starter avatars and the sims they dump new users into, but that's just one part of the problem.

The orientation is...nonexistent, really. A few passive signs that don't even cover all the basics new users need to know. There needs to be an engaging, interactive tutorial that walks new users through the basics they need to know to even be able to find the content in SL that they might enjoy.

They really need to improve reliability as far as the new user experience goes. Like Phoebe points out, a new user being stuck as a cloud on their very first log in is a serious problem.

Third, LL really needs to improve the social/search tools. There should be multiple ways to find content in SL. Search is just the obvious way of doing it, but by using profiles and events the right way, LL can bring a constant stream of relevant content to the attention of users old and new alike. It's just boggling that LL hasn't even attempted this yet. They were so close when they started revamping profiles but stopped just short of actually implementing anything useful.

Finally, there really isn't all that much to DO in SL. There's people to meet and things to see, but the tools just aren't there to create interactive content and that's just a huge failing for a virtual world. LL seems to be taking steps to bring us those tools, but we'll have to wait and see.

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The Digital Pasture - SL from a cow's point of view. When the cow is also a designer.

Ceka Cianci

in that area maybe if they left a lot of things as default off rather than on it might help..
audio and media for starters..
i'm not sure what it is now..but i remember it used to be around 80% leave rate within the first few hours..
the longer they stayed in the better the chances they would stay..

my first day i left because the controls were terrible..
the region lag used to be way worse..where now i think justin the basic viwer they could make a few adjustments in the default settings that would help some..
also when they are born now..if they are still going to an orientation island of some sorts to have things there a little cooler to keep them there longer..

i remember feeling like i was in the movie the island or logans run when i first got here..hearing some stream playing with people talking to you like you were human cattle lol

i can't remember helping setup my husbands account that was made just last summer..the part after he first rezzed and where he ended up at..
thats how boring of an impression it left on me..
maybe if they made it just a bit cooler they may have better luck hehehe

Oakleaf

I think part of it too,is that many new residents are dropped off in Waterhead or Ahern.A club i go to that helps newbies once got someone who was dropped in Waterhead and they remarked on how horrible the people were. I think one of the things LL could do is to change the drop off points to someplace like NCI that helps out newcomers.

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Ann Otoole

LL could get rid of the horrible people. for starters. Oh wait they don't ban themselves and family

Doesn't every complicated game like wow and eq2 have a series of starter levels to go through where they are instructed by NPCs on how to do things and the tasks have to be completed to move forward? Something like that is possible if LL gave a damn and invested in making their money maker more fruitful. But then the snakes that whisper in LL's ear and get LL to make poor decisions would say no that makes it too hard to make concurrency bots.

bladyblue

In 2006, when the first official greeter program started, newbies could make their avatar and choose a greeter that met their interests all at the same. When they logged in they were teleported directly to that greeter's area. I don't see why that can't be a current option for new players.

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Lordfly Digeridoo

Because 100 club owners would sign up and force-feed people into their club?

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Penny Patton

Look, LL, you've made me agree with Ann. I hope you're satisfied! ;___;

(I keed! I keed!)

This is exactly right. But I wanted to add, to preemptively quell concerns about the comparison to videogames. (Because they always come up.)

Game tutorials are a useful example because they engage the player and interact with them and their UI to explain even complex things in an easy to understand way.

LL could make use of these techniques without turning SL itself, or the new user experience, into a game.

The tools to do so could then be provided to use, the users, to create richer, more engaging experiences which itself would be a huge boost to increasing retention among new users.

Circle Widdershins

I remember when I started we had to go through a mini obstacle course which taught the basics of moving around and interacting. Hello parrot!

What would have been even better would be all that plus walk through tutorials on how to wear stuff, what sort of things can be worn, how to build things, how to change your preferences, what sort of places are available in SL etc. And do the tutorials sequentially so that a newbie can't move onto the next without completing the first. (Of course a non-newbie would be able to be tp'd out by a kindly friend.) The mild pain of being shown through the hoops is much less than the aggravation of landing in an area with one shoe on and unable to work out what/who/why you're supposed to do next.

And in addition to the sequential tutorials on starter island HAVE LIVE HELP THERE TO ANSWER QUESTIONS. Yes it is a pain in the arse to answer the same questions over and over. Yes it's a cost on the company to have a designated official at the portal. Yes all the questions will be answered by doing the tutorial. But the costs would be more than offset by the amount of newcomers retained simply because they had the experience of talking to another avatar WHO IS BEING HELPFUL AND HAS THE NAME LINDEN.

I remember thinking that I had to go to a library to find out stuff and searched library and luckily there were a few people at the (then) Uni library sim and most of them were incredibly helpful. But it was the act of actually interacting with another living person's avatar that really sealed the deal for me and made me stubborn about sticking with SL.

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Cristiano We need to make 'endless celestial sex' into a thing.

bladyblue

I'm not sure we had 100 club owners volunteering in 2006 LoL. I think it was mostly role players and those guys from the war in Jessie Sim.

My helper 'likes' were shopping and bling. So I got all the noobs that wanted to go to stores. We would shop for an hour and I would check in on them from time to time.

When I first rezzed, I logged in and out for a week at the info hub they dropped me in my first day. Then I accidentally held down the fly button too long and I got lost.

I never found that info hub again. But I ran across a bingo game and lived there for a month until I accidentally won $10,000L in one game (a fortune in 2005). That's when some realtor told me to right click and pay my money to the ground and I bought my first parcel. My parcel neighbor had rezzed in 2004, so I forced her to be my mentor. I also called San Francisco a lot to have Michael Linden log in and show me what to do with my new land.

Joshua Nightshade

Did Lias seriously just imply there weren't billions of clubs all over SL in 2006?

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Joshua Nightshade

And that any Linden was talking to her on the phone?

Menchor Barbosa

This is EXACTLY what Caledon Oxbridge does! Any time I meet a newbie who is needs help I send them there. Now if the Lindens could ever look at this model...............

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Youth and strength can almost always be overcome by old age and treachery

bladyblue

This was the standard SL model until someone at Linden Lab decided to discard 3,000 free workers from around the world instead of hiring a real volunteer director that knew how to utilize such a valuable resource.

Innula Zenovka

Based on my involvement with the Adult Hub, I think that LL may very well have looked at the Caledon Oxbridge, NCI and similar places, and come to the conclusion that Residents do a far better job (and for free, of course) of building and running welcome areas than LL can. So-- at least at the moment -- they're far more interested in working with residents to facilitate and promote resident-owned and run welcome centres than they are in setting up their own.

That is, at present, they'd much more receptive to "Caledon Oxbridge do a great job -- why not talk to Desmond and the people who run it about directing more new people there?" than they'd be to to "Caledon Oxbridge do a great job; why doesn't LL make something similar?"

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Lance Corrimal

What makes you think that they care?

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Penny Patton

I think the better question is, are they competent enough to realize how they could make more money and ensure the future viability of their product?

I'm not sure it's what you were implying here, but a lot of people do confuse the expectations that LL should improve the new user experience, should give us better tools, should make SL more fun as an expectation that LL should care about us, the users, on a fuzzy-wuzzy feel good happy level, but in fact the expectations are on a more realistic and practical "keep the customers happy or they stop giving you money" level.

Lance Corrimal

exactly.
seems that hardly anyone at LL realizes that we the users are the ones who keep their children fed & clothed.

Zaida Gearbox

I think one of the starter options should be a child avatar with an explanation of what that means - being a child avatar - and a list of child avatar friendly places. I'm really tired of times when I can't log in at my home point for some reason and SL rezzes me in an adult area. Seriously? WTF!

Aribeth Zelin

I remember vaguely that when I first started, there was a whole mess of tutorials. Then when I came back full time in 09, you got sent to places like Caledon or Fairy Crossing.... then they got rid of it, and recently, what little they had

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Phoebe Avro

I really did not like the the forcing in my face at the end of the sign up process trying to get me to go premium, I think this is a big put off!

I would wait a week and then email the new user telling them about premium and what it offers

LL need to keep new residents in SL firstly before trying to sell them something