Green Dots

2 clubs, a store and a box o' bots

I paid a visit to the Sea Hawk sim this morning, investigating three small groups of dots on the map, and found a club in a castle with two live people in voice chat and a third I could pry away from watching motorcycle racing on TV to text chat, and two campers, another club in a skybox with five employees, one patron, and some club chat, a store with the owner arranging products and four bots in a skybox, and a lone avatar floating in a field. There was also another functioning but empty store and at least one other looking partially moved-in.

I wasn't sure how to classify this, it being so mixed and individually too small to report on, so I went back seven hours later to see if the same people were there (that'd make me suspect they were bots and campers), and found the first three still there, this time AFK but not (away), five bots now in the store's skybox and a visitor trying out poseballs on a sex bed, and two people in the other club.

Solid Camper

This next visit is to a pair of sims with some really high stacks of avatars. I already know I'm going to find Bots and Campers.

These three stacks are courtesy something called Solid Camper. It apparently packs campers...well...solid. It's paying L$2 per 10 minutes. There's a picture of one of the bundles under the cut.

What are they boosting traffic for? Two nearly empty rings of stores in the lower sim and one large store in the upper sim (South I City, 50 avatars, and Souljazz Grounds, 21 avatars, respectively). There's also an empty club (not too horribly fashioned) and what look to be two fraternity houses in South I City. The sidewalks are pretty nice.

And there are six people playing Tringo. They seem to be live.

The lone avatar in Souljaz Grounds is a mannequin.

The bot merchant

A random zoom on the map placed me near a loose cluster of about twenty avatars in the Monema sim. Through ban lines and ridiculous lag I managed to locate them in a mall that I believe is called City of Monema.

The first avatar I found was an animal in a cage with the hover text "money: 5". I'm not sure why he was in a cage, but he was apparently camping.

Next I found a group of four avatars in a store, one of them looking like Cookie Monster, wearing a City Security tag. Here's what they were up to...

A pretty casino

Another visit to the mainland, this time to one of the newer continents. I found myself at the LS-Complex, which is a large skybox containing a texture store and casino, in the Gariepy sim. It was pretty nice as far as casinos go. There's a fountain, a prim tree with a shadow, a bird chirping, and lots of seating in the camping area.

There were about 24 people present, with a Camp Ma$ter 2.0 running the show with a limit of 14 campers. Camping was paying L$2 per half hour.

A busy infohub

I chose another spot on the mainland for a visit. It turned out to be the Nova Albion Infohub at the corners of the Miramare, Barcola, Sistiana and Grignano sims, west of Ahern. There were about 30 people present at 2 am SLT. I was here a few weeks ago and found this place to be mostly occupied by bots that had lost their way, but this morning things were different. These people were text chatting, and for the most part they were well-behaved. There was a mixture of relative newbies and relative oldbies, Payment Info Used (PIU) and No Payment Info (NPIO), and they were having a real conversation.

This one's easy. These were Real Live People.

A radio host's big dreams

A couple days ago I made my first random visit, starting on the mainland in the Helicanus sim. The crowd was in the Escorts Tropic Lounge. There were about 15 people there. The empty Escorts Tropic Mall is out front.

The only one speaking was the DJ, through his stream, which was playing some aggressive 90's rock music, and also through a scripted object. Some things he said appeared in text chat normally, but most were shouted through an object (the text appeared in green). It was ascii art chat gestures and some other really odd things. Here's a sample:

ok,, i Have all top Of the line stuff
^5
neet ,,
i like Being with the people
where i belong
Ty

Found a gem

A couple days ago I found the Rasta Ventures sim through random discovery. It contains three attractions: a reggae club (Club Rasta, or something), an amphitheater for live performance (Red Rock Amphitheater), and a blues club called Mama's, which also hosts live performances. I arrived at the end of a performance at Red Rock and then caught a performance at Mama's. I didn't think to get pictures, so I went back today. I'll talk about Red Rock and the reggae club in future posts. Right now I'd like to talk about Mama's.

Mama's is a gem.

They call 'em actors

Today I chose what looked from a distance like two small groups of avatars. On closer inspection they're more dispersed than that. See the icon.

This is Liquid Heat - The Experience in the Liquid Heat sim. There are four similarly named sims adjacent, but they're empty. Liquid Heat has 12 green dots when I visit.

The sim is quite attractively built, if a bit dark, with a medieval theme. There's a castle and a coliseum, a pirate ship, a cave, a dockyard with some very nice little buildings and a hot air balloon ride. Well, the balloon and the coliseum with rusty domed roof kinda spoil the medieval theme, but it's still a very nice build. The stream is playing film music.

Let's see what them green dots are up to...

Chilling and IM-ing at a nude beach

I found a group of about 20 people relaxing at the Solana club and nude beach in the El Tajin sim. It was very quiet. No conversation at all. Most of them seemed to be alone, and a few were wandering and therefore probably at the keyboard, so I didn't think I'd be intruding by saying hello. I did so three times over the course of thirty minutes before I got any response at all, and when someone did greet me a few others chimed in.

At the moment this place was being used for chilling and IM-ing. How do I know? I asked. I hadn't thought to create a category for that, but now I have one, and I'm naming it after the response I got when I asked what people were up to here. Chilling and IM-ing.

Hangin' at the mall

Today's random teleport takes me to the Capital City sim. The crowd here is in the club portion of the Bootyliciouz Club & Shopping Mall, which is just what its name says it is. The stream is an internet radio stream playing hip hop at the moment. There are 24 people here, including myself. There are two German girls in voice chat and some typical club chat in text.

I say hello. Nobody notices.