Metaplace Adds Custom Avatars: Get Out Your Gold

Location: New You Store

I logged on to Metaplace to bug Raph Koster about speaking to our Second Life Roundtable group, when I saw that customized avatars were available. Finally, I had a way to spend some of the gold coins I've acquired through the Beta-test phase of this virtual world.

The New You offers free hair styling for the rakish Metaplace bobble-head, and I found at least four other avatars there who were awake. I wanted to change my look to more of the mad-scientist style I've been craving. I think I ended up looking like Hamlet Au's less-cool cousin, but somebody will invent a Metaplace lab coat!

Next to the salon I found a clothing store with men's and women's departments. As I chatted up a few visitors, a few others dozed, including this poor woman, who had removed nearly all of her clothing and was standing around in her Metaplace "whitey-tighties." At least she wasn't naked, as so many are in Second Life. The Metaplace avatars, like those in SL from the New Media Consortium, have sprayed-on underwear!



Clothes! It's a nice way to blow those gold coins. Of course, unlike SL, one gets gold and "levels up" simply for exploring the worlds created by others and by writing reviews. For those in need of a quick-fix, Metaplace lets players buy gold just as they would Linden Dollars in SL: with the swipe of a credit card.

Now Metaplace has crossed a boundary of sorts; like SL, it has an exchangeable currency and may have to deal with all of the drama, rage, and peevish complaints for those whose inventory goes missing, whose items never arrive, and so forth.

Cost for my all-white outfit, the building blocks not of a fake Hamlet Au, but of a mad scientist? About 30K Gold of my 80K stash. Time to write more reviews and go play a few Metaplace games. Then I can have a death-ray and giant killer robot.


No mad scientist should leave home without them.