Monday, August 2, 2010

SL Home and Garden Hunt...some impressions

The Second Life Home and Garden Hunt officially opened Sunday, August 1st. I really wanted to do this hunt “right” – the first day, chatting with the official hunt group, and in order. This is the first time I’ve done a hunt in this manner! Let me share with you some things I’ve learned from this hunt.
  1. Hunting before there is a hint and/or SLURL list is really time-consuming! Especially with big hunts like this one (50 items). It ended up being a commitment of about 4 ½ hours of my time on Sunday, broken up into 2 hours + 1 ½ hour + 1 hour segments. I have not even finished the hunt. I have maybe 42 of the 50 items.
  2. Many of the folks who are into designing and blogging about home furnishings in SL are really, really nice people! The official hunt group chat was full of helpful folks who would trade hints and help those who were getting stuck. As the day got later and an unofficial SLURL/hint list was posted at The Hunt Locations blog, there were less people on the group sharing hints. 
  3. Home furnishing stores in SL tend to be either really, really big (Aria, What Next) or very small. Generally, it’s easier to find an object in a small store than a larger store. However…
  4. some store owners (both larger and smaller stores) are almost sadistic in their hiding of items (nothing new there!). There were many items on this hunt that I never would have found without a hint or help. There were some shops with obvious hunt gift locations (there was a group of 5 or 6 in order that were astonishingly easy).  And then there were the ones that were so hard, very few people could have ever found them on their own (Aria, for example). Store owners should take into consideration that it’s not just about who can be the cleverest in their hiding of items, because this can backfire on them, aggravating a potential customer. Personally, I bought three things while on this hunt, considered several other purchases, and found several stores that were new to me. I’ll remember the aggravation I had in a few stores as much as I’ll remember the items in their stores.
  5. Albero has got to have some of the silliest local chatters and hangers-on that I’ve seen at a SL shopping location or shopping-related event. That’s twice now in just a week – at the Gatcha festival round two last week, and now during this hunt. I’m not talking about event-related chatter, or even simply friendly chatter.  At the Gatcha Festival, I ended up adding a bunch of trash talkers to my personal ban list. This time around, it was a constant stream in Chinese. People…can’t you IM or start a group or something?
Obviously, the hunt became a big black hole of time for me yesterday, so I threw the fashion post and the other home furnishings post that were in the works out the window in order to make the progress that I did. And I don’t have any shots of hunt items to show you yet. But I hope to, later today. I can tell you that I’m excited to start unpacking, based on what I’ve seen from other bloggers!

1 comment:

  1. Aria really won the "Way to piss off any potential customers" award with this hunt. Several of us were in there for well over half an hour yesterday before finding the gift, and I was told that it was moved yet again afterwards. That is a store I will definitely NOT be returning to, that's for sure!

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