After 2+ years of SB I moved to SecondLife

Hi! :-) I've been with Shadowbane since almost the beginning, the 100th person in beta and have kept playing it until about 2 months ago.

It has been fun to build towns, to run a guild, engage in diplomacy and politics and do sieges. Before SB I played PvE games like Asherons Call, so doing PvP, GvG and enjoying all the freedom Shadowbane offers was a nice thing, something new to experience :-)

When things in SB slowed down for me after playing it for such a long time I tried out other new games, like SWG, FFXI, AO, Runescape. But all of those bored me, because it was just more of the same things and offering less freedom than I already was used to in Shadowbane.

The big surprise for me was when I tried out SecondLife. It is a social game like Sims Online or There, but it requires people to be 18 years or older and it gives players an incredible amount of freedom to shape the game world. I first only gave it a quick try because of the 7 day free trial and small size of client download. I expected it to be yet another curiosity, nice to get to know, but not good enough to really play. I also thought it might complement my playing Shadowbane, especially since there are no monthly fees in SL if you don't become land owner.

Well, after two months I am still there and having fun and I stopped playing SB altogether. I might be the only former Shadowbane player there though. I met people who were in SWG, There, Sims, DAoC, EQ and even WW2O, but nobody from SB. Funny is people in SL usually don't even know SB ;-)

What keeps me hooked is that people can use 3D tools and some programming language to make their own content in game. This is really really unique. In addition there are no kids, so there are not many rules as to what you are allowed to create and do and what you are not allowed. The community is quite unique, many creative people and no k3wl d00dz or boring braindead
grinders or cheaters like in some MMORPGs. I also find more other female players to connect to than in Shadowbane, where I maybe met at most 5 other women during 2 1/2 years.

What SL is missing is automatic goal assignment or prefabricated content. If you are a person who needs to be told what to do, such as "kill 1000 rats to get next level" or "go to place x, kill monster boss y and return loot to z" then you are quickly lost in SL because it is very open ended. There is also no combat action (pvp does exist, but very basic only). It is all about creation, exploration, social interaction, people, roleplay, adult things, nonsense things, art, trading... whatever ;-)

Get on my friends list by entering "Anshe Chung" as referal when you sign up to SecondLife :-)