Happy New Year to everyone around the virtual worlds! I wanted to write a fast post on some of the special events in Second Life that I think would be fun to attend. There are many events happening today. I’ve found some of the best talent that I know of. There are lot of parties with DJ’s too but I’m looking for the live musicians mostly. Having someone play a live electric guitar or a piano just gives a virtual party that something special. So to anyone who isn’t attending a party in real life you can check out SL for some fun!

• [Tahoma at 110, 182, 298 (slurl)] – 12pm to 5pm SLT live music with a big ball drop at the end.
• [KaChing at 149, 131, 22 (slurl)] – open mic event starting at 1pm SLT. You can catch some great musicians playing sometimes here.
• [Noxious at 151, 30, 22 (slurl)] – A 10 hour party with live DJ’s starting at 2pm SLT with contests too.
• [Fire Island at 81, 221, 24 (slurl)] – Hollywood Glam New years eve party all day.
• [Clyde at 124, 165, 32 (slurl)] – Big event with live music starting at 6:30pm SLT.
• [Eclectic Dream at 224, 60, 21 (slurl)] – live music starting at 7pm SLT with some great musicians playing with a ball drop too.
• [Gannet Island at 72, 220, 651 (slurl)] – A magic and special effects show in SL. Something new I’ll probably try to attend starting at 8:30pm SLT.
• [Del Agua at 123, 66, 28 (slurl)] – “This Device” band plays at winterland at 10pm SLT with a live performer from japan after.

It’s that time of year where we decorate our places for holidays. We also get in the spirit with new clothes for our avatar. This year I did some searches for Christmas places to go in SL. The interesting thing is the regular search for places didn’t give me the results I expected. Most of the places at the top were not about Christmas and even some had mature content. I even made sure it didn’t include mature content in the search and it still gave me them. Then I used the new search under the all tab and searched for Christmas stuff again. I was happy to see exactly the places I was looking for.

Merry Christmas from all of us at VTOR and have a great virtual holiday experience wherever you may go!

Here are some of the interesting places I found:

• [Island of BF at 124, 204, 23 (slurl)] – Christmas village with lots of Xmas stuff and ice skating.
• [Antiqua Paradise at 140, 87, 27 (slurl)] – A Christmas parade you must check out.
• [Krypto at 12, 232, 421 (slurl)] – A fun place for Christmas with ice skating. I got my Xmas hat here for free.
• [sammamish at 245, 98, 152 (slurl)] – Great Christmas place with a train to ride.
• [French Town at 215, 226, 28 (slurl)] – great place for your holiday items.
• [FloMaramia at 99, 183, 22 (slurl)] – Another place for Christmas decorations.
• [Total Bliss at 185, 126, 52 (slurl)] – Trees and other decorations.

Using the new search function I found these:

• [Spring City at 211, 151, 24] – Really good place with plenty of Christmas items
• [Fortimus at 80, 58, 21] – Plenty of trees to get for your place
• [Buyeo at 187, 164, 23] – Another place with great Christmas stuff

Here are some Christmas live events for you to enjoy on Xmas eve day and Christmas day:

• [Experience Island at 118, 22, 27 (slurl)] – religious experience event in Second life with video of a real life special event. All day (Dec 24th)
• [Kona dAlliez at 66, 202, 266 (slurl)] – Johnny99 Gumshoe plays live at 1:00pm. (Dec 24th)
• [Kona dAlliez at 66, 202, 266 (slurl)] – Andy Glasgow plays a rock show live 2:00pm. (Dec 24th)
• [Edloe at 128, 114, 68 (slurl)] – Cylindrian Rutabaga sings at 5:00pm with great vocals. (Dec 24th)
• [Tryggvason at 132, 88, 59 (slurl)] – Scarlett LaRoux performs some holiday songs at 7:00pm. (Dec 24th)
• [Marimon at 17, 11, 22 (slurl)] – A Christmas party in SL at 8:00pm. (Dec 25th)

Activision and Blizzard are merging into one company called, Activision Blizzard. From reading the press release it looks like a big deal in the gaming world. I haven’t played WOW but I have played Diablo and many activision games. I have read some concerns over the merger but mostly I haven’t seen anything that would cause me to worry. It seems like nothing major will change with the current games or with the franchises. I am still waiting for the next Diablo but it seems this will have to wait.

For new and previous players of the Lord of The Rings Online, they now have a special pricing for the holidays. If you sign up to the new holiday special you can get LOTRO for $9.99 a month. You have to sign up for 3 months at the $29.97 deal. You will then get billed every 3 months for that price unless you cancel. A nice deal for the holidays! This offer ends January 31, 2008. The next update to this game is coming in January and I’m still having fun!

Static Multimedia has a nice roundup of some MMORPG that are showing holiday spirit by adding holiday-themed attractions:

What better way to have people log on than to have seasonal events and items? Many MMOs incorporate different holiday elements.

Among the list: World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, Ragnarok Online and FFXI. If you are wondering about Christmas in Second Life in 2006 JohnnyRS had a nice write-up last year.

Have you got a favorite holiday-oriented virtual world happening? Tell us about it in the comments.

If you aren’t out shopping today, does that mean you support Buy Nothing Day?

Buy Nothing Christmas is not really about refusing to spend a dime over the holiday season. It’s about taking a deep breath and deciding to opt out of the hype‚ the overcrowded malls‚ and the stressful to–do lists. It’s about reminding ourselves to really think about what we are buying‚ why we are buying it‚ and whether we really need it at all.

… Or are you being rebels like us? We were out earlier in RL taking advantage of deals like Fred Meyer offering 20% off all their games. We got Dungeon Siege II Deluxe Edition for a little over $30.

As mentioned yesterday, I’ve been checking out the Dungeon Siege box for awhile in the store and thinking about buying. Will have to report back later or by separate post if the game was worth it.

So how did you spend your Black Friday in RL and virtual?

I personally liked Autumn Hollow [Opelessence at 223, 183, 40 (slurl)] and Octoberville [PixelTrix at 161, 107, 22 (slurl)] which have the best mystery type games. The story from both of those places are fantastic and really gets you into the mystery finding objects around the sim. If you can’t go to all the haunted places in SL you really should try these out! You can also win prizes. The maze for Autumn Hollow is better this year too! I’ll probably write my own reviews later after I visited all these places.

Here are some places which have great Halloween costumes and avatars for you to try! I’ll be adding more if I find some good places.

1. SiniStyle [SiniStyle at 56, 240, 24 (slurl)] – I love the different costumes at this store. Very gory and scary which will scare anybody I am sure! This store is even better this year now with lot of fun areas to fit in with Halloween!
2. [Costume Depo at 31, 114, 131 (slurl)] – Plenty of costumes for you try and wear for your Halloween parties!
3. [B dazzled Island at 116, 129, 24 (slurl)] – Nice costumes for the ladies and some extra Halloween items to buy for your own sim!
4. Liquid Heat Halloween Sim [Tahiti at 206, 241, 52 (slurl)] – This place has a great Halloween ride but also has a store with some great stuff to buy. A must visit for costumes and for objects you want for your own sim!

Holidays are always a fun time in the game, runescape. They just started their Easter event and will be running it for two weeks. The only other holiday event that I tried was during Christmas time and I got some antlers plus a Christmas tree for members. The holiday events can be done by a member or a free player but sometimes they will have a special item for members. The makers of this game like to have fun with these events and they do a good job making it silly and fun for the players.

I started out in Falador and went south to find the easter bunny. He was waiting in front of this hole so I started to talk with him. He had this strange idea that he could deliver all his chocolate bunny candies by animating them. I guess so the candies could walk to the children. Crazy ideas have crazy consequences. The person he asked to make these chocolate bunnies made chocolate kebbits instead! No child wants a chocolate kebbit to eat.

So it is now my job to help him out by collecting 10 kebbits and placing them in a chute. Once I did that I entered a door where I would need to get some colored eggs. This is where the strange part happened if it wasn’t strange already. I had to bowl with these eggs and hope to hit one of the chocolate kebbits walking around. If I hit one they turn into chocolate dust. Had to get 10 chocolate dust and take it back to the Easter bunny. He was very pleased and gave me a chicken leg and feet costume for helping out.

But it wasn’t over because I was given a magical egg so I can turn into a bunny. I needed to be a bunny to fit in a smaller hole where I could find a needed item. I got to a place with a lot of holes and had to try each one until I found the right one. The holes took me up to a farm where the farmer wasn’t pleased to see a bunny. Once I found the right hole and took back the item to the Easter bunny he gave me a chicken head and wings costume. Now I have a complete chicken costume and I can hop around with a new action button on the emote list. Weird and wacky but this was fun and entertaining before I had to go kill more monsters. Work is never done in runescape even on holidays!

Today is St. Patrick’s day and it will be celebrated in Second Life as well as first life. I already went shopping and got a big green hat to wear from Winyah Forest Shoppe [SLURL]. A shirt with “It’s a green thing, you wouldn’t understand” written on it from Sanctuary Shops & Lofts [SLURL]. I am all ready to party with my avatar! There are other places who are selling stuff for this day but most of the wearable stuff are for women of course. If I find any more I’ll add on to this post.

• Fairplay Designs & Art [SLURL] – Great Decorations and clothes here!
• BabyDoll’s [SLURL] – Great clothes for the women
• Lapointe Designs [SLURL] – More green clothes but mostly for women

The next thing I have to do is find the fun events so I can have some fun! There are some parties with live singing and dj’s playing irish music. I might attend some of these if I have a chance. If you do a search there are plenty to choose from so I picked some that I will be attending or the ones that look interesting. I am planning on listening and checking out the blarney stone party mostly.

• 2 day party events in The Blarney Stone Irish Bar [SLURL] starting at 11am SLT. This event has a website at dublinsl.com and can be listened to by pointing your music player to: 66.34.54.162:8000
• Rave Party in The Munitions [SLURL] at 12pm SLT.
• Another party in Love Harbor [SLURL] at 12pm SLT.
• Another party in Sensual Excitement [SLURL] at 1pm SLT.
• Irish bands in Bubblegum Music Factory [SLURL] at 4pm SLT.

If I find any other good places I will add more later today!

I was intrigued by the Mystery Isle event description (could have done without the all caps):

COME OUT TO MYSTERY ISLE AND SEARCH FOR ALL THE LITTLE LOST HEARTS! EACH OF THE 50 HEARTS HAS A SPECIAL GREAT GIFT INSIDE PLUS 25 UNIQUE GIFTS WILL BE HANDED OUT RANDOMLY.

Upon arriving at Unicorn Woods dAlliez 142, 161, 28 (SLurl) I learned that the event tickets cost L$300.

I didn’t really have time to go on the treasure hunt but maybe some other VTOR readers or authors will today. If I wasn’t taking my sweetheart out in RL this afternoon I probably would have thrown down the L$300 and gone exploring for a few.

Searching classifieds
Next, I searched in the classified section for “Valentine’s Day” and learned about The Gift – World Class Gift Boxes at Plush Pi 93, 89, 22 (SLurl). They have an impressive looking sign:

Inside the store a couple tables neatly aligned in a U shape displayed the different gift boxes available for purchase.

A bouquet of roses cost L$50 and most of the boxes I clicked on, true to the advertising on the notecard, cost less than L$100. A single red rose in vase cost L$20.

I remember buying my wife a dozen long stemmed roses and paying $75 USD one year. That would buy a lot of virtual red roses but, since she’s not a big fan of virtual worlds, probably wouldn’t carry near the sentimental thought.

This morning on the Howard Stern Show, Howard announced his engagement to his girlfriend of seven years, Beth. This got me thinking about asking my wife if she wanted to be my partner in Second Life. We talked about it in the past and she wasn’t totally against the idea but I never made the move.

No offense intended to others who already have partners, but the whole partner thing still seems a little cheesy to me (and more cheesy to her, I think). Perhaps on our car ride later today I’ll approach the subject again. I guess if I’m serious, I need to investigate what the actual process of partnership is in SL. I remember fellow VTOR author and our group Romeo Weirdharold writing about it in day’s past, but I don’t think any tutorial has been posted here yet detailing the process.

(might be a good idea for a future post)

On this day of roses, I’m looking for different and/or original ways to say “I love you.” We’ve been together almost 20 years now and I like coming up with new ways to surprise her. She seemed a little miffed that she sent me this test last night about her and I failed it.

I found a dozen long stem roses with customizable notecard system so you can write some personal thoughts to your sweetheart when they open them at the The Red Room Jazz Lounge first floor (take the teleporter if you don’t go there directly). Location: Coral Reef 22, 151, 23 (SLurl).

Now time to ponder something good to write in there before sending these to her avatar later. The gift won’t be spoiled, she doesn’t read this blog. This concludes the time I alloted to stop in and check out the virtual world Valentine’s Day happenings but I remain curious what other valentines did today in virtual worlds? My son told me that inside World of Warcraft they were having special Valentines-oriented quests which sounded kind of fun.

What did you and your virtual Valentine do today? And if you are partnerless inside SL, how did you spend the day? Just another day?