Linden Lab JUST announced that the new starter avatars I’ve spoken about a few times before, here and here, are NOW available.

Go give them a spin and let me know what you think!

You can red the full announcement here;

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Featured-News/New-Mesh-Avatars-Now-Available-in-Second-Life/ba-p/2720912

So at first sight it is nice to see some diversity.

However, as discussed before, most (if not all) of these new avatars are mesh and with mesh avatars we get certain issues that may make things only more difficult for new users.

Nevertheless, they do look a lot better than previous ones and that is also important when it comes to first impressions.

I’m not sure about the Vampires section, ‘Fantasy’ might have been a better name, as I also see monsters and zombies there.

I still think that we should just get rid of starter avatars altogether and let new users create their own avatar from scratch before they even start their Second Life.

Not only will this be fun, will it cause the new users to invest into their avatar and create a connection, even bond with it, it will also give new users more freedom and will make it easier for them to adapt to Second Life as they won’t find themselves in this virtual world with an avatar that looks like dozens of others, who’s mouth doesn’t move and for whom all the free basic clothes they get won’t fit.

I also fear a flood of new users visiting my sim and then having to explain to them that they won’t be able to dress their avatar in 1920s clothes because we don’t have fitted mesh 1920s clothes as a freebie at the moment and having to explain to them how to completely change their avatar because they choose a fantasy themed one.

Sorry folks, no zombies in 1920s Berlin.

So in short, good idea to replace the old avatars, about time even, but I don’t think it is a huge improvement to SL as a whole.

Here you can see them all;