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excellent guide Deuce!

Maybe a point to add (which also touches on Chavs question) is that right now people are mostly building and not socializing that much. The marketplace is fairly new, there is an influx of content and people are making pretty places in which they can be social at some point in the future. Plus, the amount of cheap land available in Kitely means people have their work cut out. Filling even 1 region with compelling content is fun but exhausting work which takes time. I cant help but feel that if someone came to kitely purely on the expectation of a lively social scene, they would end up leaving disappointed. That's not criticism, just the nature of the beast right now.

For example, if I was building a roleplay region right now instead of my store, I would probably lock down any access to it until it was finished or somewhere pretty close. In fact, that is exactly what I was doing until the price plan change. I only allow my showroom to exist online in a 1/4 finished state because people want to see my work before buying......and I enjoy the occasional chat break when someone drops in

Ozwell Wayfarer wrote:I cant help but feel that if someone came to kitely purely on the expectation of a lively social scene, they would end up leaving disappointed. That's not criticism, just the nature of the beast right now.

Yeah, I think it's where the "Kitely is empty" beliefs come from, the fact that it *seems* empty even when it isn't. Not that I have any idea what could be done to change that if change were wanted in that regard.

Quite possibly you are right Chav, but its not a state of affairs that will go on forever. I know I want to get out and socialize more, but my store keeps me fairly tied down right now. Once it is somewhere near finished, I will be looking into organizing some events for sure. I cant really speak for others, but I would think that their are many out there with a similar plan.

Weekly/Monthly events are what I think would really benefit and help to create more of a sense of community. I think the only regular weekly event right now is the Wednesday mentors meeting *which REALLY needs its name changing to the "Kitely Community Meeting"*.

Its also important for people to have nice places and acceptable avis before they even want to socialize. Most of the SL "social crowd" wont even look twice at kitely until they can buy a decent avatar straight of the MP and just turn up in a world ready created for them.

I predict 2014 will be the year a lot of projects get finished, avatar customization possibilities will grow and we start to see a more social side to Kitely. I know from being lucky enough to bump into folks at my store that it is full of great people.

Ozwell Wayfarer wrote: Maybe a point to add (which also touches on Chavs question) is that right now people are mostly building and not socializing that much. The marketplace is fairly new, there is an influx of content and people are making pretty places in which they can be social at some point in the future. Plus, the amount of cheap land available in Kitely means people have their work cut out. Filling even 1 region with compelling content is fun but exhausting work which takes time. I cant help but feel that if someone came to kitely purely on the expectation of a lively social scene, they would end up leaving disappointed. That's not criticism, just the nature of the beast right now.

Good point, Oz. It probably should be mentioned, possibly in a separate section of the document that could be easily removed later on once it is no longer pertinent to what is happening in Kitely. On the other hand, this document (and the Merchant document) would probably benefit from being 'refreshed" about once a year in any event to make sure all the world links are current, and so forth. Things do change over time, and a newer grid like Kitely will be changing faster than most.

To clarify a few things, I'm thinking the completed "Getting Settled in Kitely" document should eventually be available in two places/versions:

1) As a notecard placed in the inventory of each new avatar account that gets created in Kitely. You might even want to have the notecard opened and ready for reading as soon as the new avatar rezzes in the Kitely Welcome Center. (Certain educational accounts might need their own version of this document or just have it omitted.)

2) As a webpage on the Kitely website. Ilan might even want to consider having a special "Getting Started" section of the website containing this completed document and the similar merchant document.

The notecard version could be useful for new residents who have trouble having both their viewer and a separate webpage window open on their computer at the same time.

The webpage version would be useful for those who can operate in multiple windows while in-world. It would also be indexed by the search engines and provide a place for bloggers to link to when discussing the issue of new users in Kitely (or in virtual worlds in general).

Note to Selby and any other interested bloggers/journalists: Please remember that any version/fragment of the "Getting Settled in Kitely" document that appears in this forum thread will not be the final, official version. The official version will be published by Ilan and Oren on the Kitely website once the document is completed and accepted by all parties. (Ilan, please correct any inaccuracies in the preceding statement as needed.)

(Edited for grammar.)

The Getting Started Guide can become part of our official wiki and pointed to from multiple places in the website.

Ilan Tochner wrote:The Getting Started Guide can become part of our official wiki and pointed to from multiple places in the website.

Sounds excellent. Is the official wiki something that is on the way soon? I haven't been able to find it anywhere - and I even checked with the all-knowing Google.

Look at the Documentation link at the bottom of our website.

Here is a completed draft of the proposed document:

Getting Settled in Kitely

Advice for new residents of the Kitely grid.

Residents of a new grid almost always face the same issues, no matter if this is their first time in a virtual world, or if they are Metaverse veterans.

When you first log into the Kitely grid, you are asked to chose between a male or female avatar. Then are placed into the Kitely Welcome Center world wearing a generic avatar and clothing appropriate to the gender you chose. You will have few possessions, although you will have access to a basic set of items from the OpenSim Library.

Your goals for getting started will probably include the following:

Finding and wearing slightly less generic avatar shape, skin and clothing options.
Finding places to buy or obtain for free the basic items you need.
Finding other avatars operated by real people to interact with.
Finding out where events are being held on the grid.
Finding out where to get more information and where to get questions answered.
Finding your first home on your new grid.

The specific order of importance for these goals may change from person to person, but nearly everyone will want to do these things early on during their time in Kitely. The following is some advice from experienced Kitely residents on how to best accomplish these initial goals.

*) Finding and wearing slightly less generic avatar shape, skin and clothing options.

If you are still in the Kitely Welcome Center, there are a few basic male and female avatar and clothing sets available for free. Proceed Northwest from the initial arrival point and you will find five different avatar/clothing sets for female avatars, and five sets for male avatars. Simply click on the desired set or sets and select buy. The price for each set is Zero Kitely Credits – they are free.

Note that you are buying the contents of the Avatar set vendor. There are no boxes to rez, the contents of vendor should be in your inventory. Assuming you purchased the male avatar set called Ian, there should be a folder in your inventory called “Ian Avatar”.

If you are new to virtual worlds, here is a fun trick to quickly change your clothes. Click on the Ian Avatar folder and drag the folder from the inventory and drop it on your avatar in the game window. (If you bought a different avatar, click and drag the folder you actually purchased.) Presto, change-o! Within a few seconds your avatar should be wearing the shape, skin and clothing of the set you just purchased. Don't be afraid to purchase more than one avatar set. You can buying them and trying them on until you find a set you feel you can live with until you find better stuff later on.

*) Finding places to buy or obtain for free the basic items you need.

There are many freebies available to all users in Kitely. Much of this free content is from the Linda Kellie collection available throughout the OpenSim community.


Here are a few worlds that offer freebie content and are open to all Kitely users, even free account holders.

Freebie Shopping Mall Plus
http://www.kitely.com/virtual-world/Suz ... -Mall-PLUS

City Life
http://www.kitely.com/virtual-world/Joh ... /City-Life

Donnybrook Beach
http://www.kitely.com/virtual-world/Deu ... rook-Beach

If you are looking to purchase some non-freebie items for your Kitely avatar you can find several displayed in the Hall of Merchants in the Kitely Welcome Center. Simply walk Northeast from the arrival point to enter the Hall of Merchants. The displays in the Hall of Merchants provide links to the Kitely Market listings of the merchants on display.

The Kitely Market is an excellent place to find virtual goods of all descriptions to outfit your avatar in Kitely. Many items in the Market are also available in Export versions, which can be used on any other OpenSim grid.

http://www.kitely.com/market

*) Finding other avatars operated by real people to interact with.

Your best bet for finding a Kitely world with people active in it at that moment is the Public Worlds page on the Kitely.com website. Login to the Kitely website and click the Public Worlds tab at the top of the page. You will be presented with a list of publicly available Kitely worlds. Whatever world in listed first – in the upper left of the world list – is the world with the most avatars active at the moment (or one of the most active worlds if two or more worlds are tied for most active avatars).

Click on worlds in the list until you find one with a description that looks tempting to you. When you find a world you'd like to try, click on the “Enter World” button near the upper right corner of the page. If you are already in-world in Kitely you should be automatically be teleported to the selected world. If you are not in-world when you click the Enter World button, you will need to start up your viewer and log into Kitely. Use the “log into last location” option. The Kitely website will automatically substitute the world you just selected for the last location you actually visited and you will enter the selected world.

It should be noted that as of early 2014 most of the people you will encounter around Kitely will be folks who are building their worlds. You will find that most of these folks are friendly and open to brief conversations about their builds, and/or about Kitely in general. The fact is that builders who are not willing to have conversations with visitors as they build usually close their worlds to the public until they are done building. So if you see a public world under construction, you can safely assume that the World Owner doesn't mind visitors looking around during the construction project. Do be aware of the fact that things can be a little weird in worlds under construction – particularly when scripted objects are being debugged.


*) Finding out where events are being held on the Kitely grid.

Another good way to find other people to interact with in Kitely is to attend events in world. Virtually all public events are announced on the Kitely forums under the “Events and Activities” forum.

If you are coming to Kitely as the member of a work or school group, you will also want to check for private events hosted by your organization.


*) Finding out where to get more information and where to get questions answered.

Kitely has a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) document:
http://www.kitely.com/faq

The Kitely forums are the best place to ask any questions not answered in the FAQs:
http://www.kitely.com/forums/index.php

There are Google G+ communities for Kitely specifically and for OpenSim in general. The communities are:

Kitely Virtual G+ Community:
https://plus.google.com/communities/111 ... 4656181042

OpenSim Virtual G+_Community:
https://plus.google.com/communities/116 ... 2234467612


*) Finding your first home on your new grid.

Of course virtual avatars don't really need a home in the same way real humans do. But it is nice to have a private place to change clothes and rez items you obtain during your explorations.

Kitely members have access to at least one entire free metered region as part of their account. So building your own custom home on a 16 acre private island has never been easier or more economical.

Want to have your own private estate, but don't want the hassle of building it yourself? There are many free Opensim ARchive files (also known as OAR files for their standard file extension) available for download. One of the best places to find these files is the OpenSim Creations website:
http://opensim-creations.com/category/regions/oars/

New Kitely Regular Accounts come with 6 free hours to work on your new metered region. After that you need to pay for access one way or another. You can buy Kitely Credits (KC). These cost $1 for 300 KC if you buy at the best exchange rate (buy a minimum of $50 worth of KC at a time for the best deal). Accessing a metered world you own, or allowing other Regular Account holders to visit your metered world, costs you 1 KC/minute of access. This is charged on a per Regular Account avatar visiting your world basis. So if you and three friends gather on your metered world and you all have Regular Kitely Accounts, you will be using up 4 KC per minute. This equates to 80 cents per hour for 4 avatars visiting a metered world, which really isn't that bad.

If your world will only be used occasionally, and by only a few avatars at a time, the metered world, with its KC/minute billing option makes a lot of sense. But if you have a world that will be visited a lot, and particularly if the world may be visited by quite a few avatars at the same time, you might want to consider converting your world to Unlimited Access.

You can make any Kitely World unlimited access for as little as $14.95/month. That would allow unlimited access to the world by you, and by any Kitely account holder (Regular or Premium accounts). There are Prim limits and simultaneous avatar limits on the various virtual world plans.

Not all new Kitely residents will want or need to develop their own entire region. Some would prefer to rent a smaller space from someone who hosts an existing unlimited world. There are stores, apartments and land spaces available on existing worlds – some priced as low as.... free!

Johnny Magic is offering free stores and apartments on his unlimited access world, City Life:
http://www.kitely.com/virtual-world/Joh ... /City-Life

(Need information on other store, apartment, house and land rental offers on unlimited worlds.)

So there we go - my completed initial draft of this proposed document. Now it's up to the Kitely community to suggest changes, and to Kitely Management to decide when/how to publish an official version.

Hi Deuce,

Good draft

One thing worth noting is that we no longer call worlds Unlimited Free Access but rather Fixed-Price. So there are now Metered Worlds and Fixed-Price Worlds.

Also, it may be worth mentioning the Premium Account option for land ownership and the benefits it offers for accessing other people's Metered Worlds.

I'm bumping this thread because it has a lot of good information in it.

Is this something we can use in the KWC 1.3 info area? It covers most of the basics.

If so, how should it be delivered? Via notecard, or automatically?