OIslanders Test Team

Test Team for OI 92 please keep this page updated

Activities

1. Giving out copies of Multi Language Welcome Notecard --Destiny Niles 08:45, 1 June 2007 (PDT)
2. Giving out Babblers, use of Babblers (each Volunteer on station picks up on one language for Babbling and focuses on giving out help on it when necessary, switching only when nobody requires tat language. --Patchouli Woollahra 13:24, 1 June 2007 (PDT)
3. Greeting new residents as a tiny (white tiger), was well received. The residents were more talkative than to my normal 6.11" male AV.--Destiny Niles 09:16, 5 June 2007 (PDT)

Ideals to try

1. Greet new residents as someone normal, but slightly more built up from prolonged time on grid --Patchouli Woollahra 13:03, 1 June 2007 (PDT)
2. Give out 25L seed money to new residents. --Destiny Niles 09:16, 5 June 2007 (PDT)
3. Give out redemable linden certificate that can be cashed in in-world on my parcel worth from 25L to 100L and must be redemmed by 6/9/07. --Destiny Niles 09:16, 5 June 2007 (PDT)
4. After a couple of days of collecting names spam the new residents with a group invite. --Destiny Niles 09:07, 6 June 2007 (PDT)

Diary of Events

05_June_07 - Gwynnie and I spent 4 to 5 hours resetting scripts on OI 92 testing the new Orientation Guide trying to determine why it repeatedly would not work on our island properly. We went to several other islands using fresh copies of the Orientation Guide as comparison benchmarks. Often the same area scripts would not work for us, but just as frequently the same areas worked perfectly on other islands. ~ Amber

Notes up to and including 6/7/07: I'm still noticing that most of the residents landing at 92, regardless of time of day, are non-US and speak little to no English. I always give out relevant notecards and LMs to their country/language areas when I have them, but it renders the HUD and tutorial areas useless to them bc they're all in English (except for the Chinese option on 2.0.) Having guides in many languages will be the single biggest factor in retention for these folks, which isn't news to any of us, but is still true. Most residents are confused about the HUD, which sometimes fails for no clear reason, and want to TP off of 92 (typical OI experience!) rather than do the tutorials. Again, the language barrier is most likely the cause of this, since anyone who can't go through the tutorials or understand the HUD will get bored to death pretty quickly on an OI! Otherwise, I find that greeting residents, repeatedly offering to answer questions, assisting with HUD issues, pointing out the HI LM sign, and just chatting with residents in a friendly manner seems to move things along. -- Gwynnie

Only a couple of residents where on the island, 2 have been in-world for a couple of days and where still trying to get off the island. One of them had lost her guide so I gave her a new one and she completed and was off in about 10 minutes. Another one said that the guide keep having her start over again from the beginning and the Help Island billboard did not give her a landmark. I gave her one and she was off. One resident was totally none responsive, underwater in the corner of the sim. No new residents landed during my stay.--Destiny Niles 18:59, 7 June 2007 (PDT)

Don Misfit's Humble Opinions

I do have a few thoughts on retention of newbies that I wanted to put into words... I've communicated a bit of this to some of you already, but this is probably a good place to put it for further discussion.

First, no offense to Destiny's "seed money" idea, but I have a bit of a different philosophy on that. I try to convey to newbies - particularly in response to the "how do I get money" question - that you don't *need* any money to enjoy Second Life. Most activities are completely free, plus they'll find thousands and thousands of freebies all over SL. Clothing, vehicles, houses, gadgets of all kinds... People can spend months here without ever spending a single L$ and still have a great time. Giving the impression that they will need money to buy stuff in order to enjoy SL just seems like "not quite the right approach" ...

Next, the new OI format is a big improvement. Unfortunately, the newbies go from a place with a cool castle, city-block, map-room, etc... to a very drab Help Island, and from there, often to a very drab Welcome Area. The very frequent questions I hear are:

1. What's there to do?
2. Where's the rest of the "game"?
3. Where's "the city"?

In other words, the typical newbie has learned *how* to use the software, but has no idea *why* to use Second Life.

I think, very early on, more emphasis needs to be placed on "What's to Come" – give them something to look forward to... a little motivation for sticking around and figuring this thing out.

I'd like to see – on OI – more information (and visuals) about what all is "out there" in the SL world. Slide shows and/or videos of cool, exciting places and activities, for example. Give them some destinations to pick from, as opposed to the current "just go find something" approach. I realize there may be an issue with directing traffic to specific areas... so the destinations would have to be non-commercial spots – but certainly there should be plenty of suitable locations.

A side note: I know there are a few videos already available on the OIs. However, it took me a few visits before I realized there was more than one video! All of the video screens use the same texture, so there is no indication that they play different clips. Particularly when you take into account the fact that, if you are standing in the pavilion area watching a video, and you look around, you see multiple screens playing the same clip. Really tough to guess that you will see a different video if you walk over and stand closer to one of the other screens.

I'm putting together a simple slide-show attachment (since we can't build on OI 92) that some of us may want to try using. If anyone has any snapshots / images they'd like to contribute (already got a few from Destiny), please send them my way. Cool builds, fun activities, people dancing, etc... (please keep 'em PG :) If you would, make them 512x512 and prefix the name with "AB - " to make it easy for me to know what it's for.

As soon as I have a decent sampling, I'll hand 'em out - assuming anyone else thinks it's a worthwhile idea to try :)

End of my ramblings for now --Don Misfit 22:35, 6 June 2007 (PDT)

When you get the slide-show together send me a copy. Also my ideal about the free lindens is that you are right Don about the freebies (really tens of thousands-my inventory is a testimony to that), but some things do cost a little, upload of snapshots for profiles (my next push is to get the newbies to put something in their profiles), and the 1L items for example. And it is crappy that we can't build on OI. --Destiny Niles 09:05, 7 June 2007 (PDT)