As best I can tell people use either Second Life or IMVU. It may just be the circles I run in but, I never hear people saying they play in both. I suspect a few do. So, the Reddit threat on Second Life or IMVU? Caught my attention. For a rational discussion it would seem people would need to have experienced both.
There aren’t many people in the conversation so far. Those engaging so far have been in both. Yay!
The word for new people trying SL is to stay out of the Safe Hubs. I agree. If you have seen the video Hamlet pointed to in Reddit’s Griefer-Free /SecondLife Community you’ll probably agree it represents the mentality found in the Safe Hubs. Sadly pathetic.
The discussion about the video is getting pretty long. Hamlet labels it ‘special’. I suppose if one takes the video and discussion at face value it is pretty special. Otherwise it is a mash up of various people on about whatever is their thing.
It is hard to follow a discussion chain in SL chat when multiple conversations are mixing together. It is a learned skill. And no one ever get perfect at it. There is always that ‘was that meant for me?’ thing going on. It is even harder to follow the tone of conversation and emotional state when the serious people are mixed in with the role players clowning around.
An interesting question came up about Safe Hubs, what is so Safe about them? Ooooh… after years in SL I can’t answer that question.
There does seem to be a consensus that Second Life has more variety than IMVU. I haven’t spent much time in IMVU, but I agree.
A one-year IMVU veteran finds SL way more complicated and people friendly. Complicated… yeah. I am sure that is right. Last time anyone counted the viewer had over 3,000 controls. Sheeeee! And we are getting more.
People friendly… I could take this in any of several directions. I’ll go with suspecting that it is more a person’s personality than the personalities of all the other players/participants that creates a person perception of this.
Another says, they are very different. Yeah, I agree. IMVU is a glorified instant messenger app. It gets pointed out that official meaning of IMVU is Instant Messaging Virtual Universe. Makes hard to argue with that opinion.
Second Life is an open world with the ability to build well past anything in IMVU. SL avatars are more malleable and interesting.
One thing not mentioned is the ability to make money using Second Life.
Imvu has people on there trying to steal other people’s credits and such. The people doing that will send you a message to a link that steals your IMVU stuff. I have not had anything like that happen in Second Life since I joined Second Life. Imvu sends you messages about credit sales and other things on sale which you cannot opt-out of. Imvu puts Guest in front of your name and keeps it that way until you use real money to buy a name registration token which lets you get rid of Guest in front of your name. Imvu does not let you change your display name. In other words, the name you choose when you signed up for IMVU is the name you are stuck with unless you buy a name change token or a Premium Name. The stuff in Second Life looks better than what IMVU has.