Kate goes grid hopping

I have been grid hopping in the past two days for my own edification and thoughts about future projects. I visited Reaction Grid, 3rd Rock and InWorldz for about the same time periods 2-3 hours and all with the latest Imprudence Viewer release. I am Kate Miranda in all of these grids. I have no business connection to any of these grids. This is one avatar's experience.

In Reaction Grid, I was met by no one and saw not a single avatar in my journeys. There were some basic freebies lying around the welcome area in boxes. I was able to outfit my avatar acceptably from the box contents. There was a monorail in the welcome area but it didn't seem to work. Things not working was my overall impression. I found the Content Creator's group that I had logged on to join (16 members), but couldn't find groups with basic search terms like "events" "music" "education". I tried to visit several regions but crashed on tp most of the time. I did get to Chilbo but when I tried to tp to another region, I crashed in tp again. I didn't find anything that told me land prices. I'm not saying that information was not there but I didn't stumble across it, and there was no one around to offer it to me or point me to the information. I saw less in Reaction Grid than the other two grids as I wasted a lot of time watching the teleport progress bar and unsuccessfully looking things up in Search.

In 3rd Rock I was greeted by one avatar I knew from attending concerts in SL and one of the founders was online and I got pulled immediately into a friendly discussion group in a conversation pit with about 6 folks. People were steadily coming and going. The founding member who was in the conversation group was wildly enthusiastic about a classical music series on his grid. Pricing for land and other information was readily available. Pricing was not bargain basement low but very reasonable compared to SL. There were basic good freebies arranged on walls similar to the NCI set up in SL and I quickly outfitted my avatar with decent skin, hair and a simple walk AO and a business pant suit. There was nothing sleezy in the freebie walls. The mood was upbeat and optimistic and everything worked rather well. I was given some landmarks of interest and all the teleports worked. One sims I visited was a replica of Lunenburg, NS and the building was on a par with the best in SL. One of the governance features of interest in 3rd Rock was that residents were able to suggest and vote on the development of public lands.(I'm fuzzy on the details of that). I was very impressed with the plans and performance of the grid. My sense was that I would get helpful support should I choose to locate a project there and that the people in charge knew what they were doing technically and from a business perspective.

The last grid I visited was InWorldz. Like 3rd Rock I was greeted by friendly people and the welcome portal was quite busy. My starting avatar was the most primitive of the 3 grids. Basically people arrive as Ruth. There are two large freebie stores to get your avatar looking okay. The stores look impressively glitzy. The greeter showed a group of us who arrived together (about 4 females and 2 males) to the freebie store. As we walked, we were sometimes sinking into the ground and other times getting that bendy knee avatar bug that used to happen a lot in SL. Prims turning phantom seems to be a problem, at least in Imprudence. I sank through stairs and couldn't walk on the second storey of the freebie store as I kept falling through the floor. Although the freebie store was huge, there was a lot of sleezy clothes and one AO I tried was Gorean in design and poses. One dress came packed with sex animations. In all, not giving me a sense that this welcome area was set up to reflect a businesslike attitude. I settled on an elven princess dress with ballet flats as the best I could do to not look sleezy. Land prices in InWorldz seemed lower than 3rd Rock but so far it seemed a lot less stable to me and overall gave me a bit of an ickey feeling that was hard to define. Although the greeter was very friendly in InWorldz, she was fielding questions from many people and seemed more comfortable talking about hair and clothes than grid development plans. When I asked about music, I learned that it was only recently possible and the only name that came to her mind as being involved was a German rock promoter I have met in SL in his vampire mode. Someone knowledgeable in SL music had recently told me there were "a lot" of musicians going to InWorldz ... which was why I wanted to check it out... so I expect I just ran into a greeter who didn't know.

If I had to locate a project in a grid based on just these single experiences, 3rd Rock would win hands down.