The Oldest Noob in IMVU

With the popularity of IMVU now matching Second Life levels, I decided to check IMVU out again after a 4 year absence.

I signed up after IMVU went open beta, and was the 814th person to do so. In those days IMVU was Instant Messenger Viewer Utility. It was a tool that you add to any IM program of your choice, so to use IMVU you had to be using AIM or YIM, and the person you were chatting with must be as well.  Finding people to chat with was difficult. Eventually, they got smart and just started their own IM service for IMVU users to use.

Even after creating their own IM service, I found it annoyng that you could only form a chat with one person, and then add people to the chat.  I prefer to chat wih groups rather than random strangers.

I returned back about a year later to discover they were experimenting with a group chat feature. I liked this, but it was a bit flaky at first. It wasn’t long before I lost interest again, and I pretty much did not have it even installed on my computer for 4 years.

So, after reading the press release about IMVU making money,  having 6 million unique monthly visitors, and traffic equal to Second Life, I had to go check it out again after a long absence.

A lot has changed, so much that I feel like a noobie again.  The biggest change happened in July 2009 when they completely revamped the client program.  In the early days you had to keep 3 windows open to use IMVU: the IM program, the client, and the website.  When they added their own IM service it was reduced to two.  As of July 2009, you only need one.  Shopping, friend finder, group finder, and profiles are all now accessible in the client itself, even through tabs.  It is all organized really well, and Second Life could learn a thing or two, (or three, or four…) from the client.

IMVU now has in my estimation the best 3D client program of any 3D Virtual World I have seen.  Its unfortunate that the bar for this achievement has been set so low.

Since the last time I started IMVU, they have changed the default avatars.  The oversized heads are gone, feet are smaller, and they look more proportional to human normal.  Hands are still big though.

The bad news is that my account still has the old avatar with the big head.  Some would just roll a new avatar with better looks, but in the last 4 years I have collected over half a million game credits through various promotions. Plenty to fix my avatar’s flaws. Its also too cool to have a 3 digit ID number when most have 8 digits.

I have been visiting random rooms, trying to reestablish myself.  I like the rooms with 6 to 8 other people.  I don’t know very many other players so I just dive in and see what people are discussing.  It is mostly just fun blather — the same stuff I find a lot in SL or There.  Part of that is due to the max 10 person limit in all rooms.  The small limit also  forces you to circulate, don’t feel obligated to stay in one place, and don’t get offended if you get booted from a room due to overcrowding.  There are all the usual rooms: roleplay, night clubs, sex play, etc.  Finding stuff you are interested in is not too difficult. Finding people you actually want to hang with is a little more challenging.

I got an “adult pass” years ago, allowing me into all but the VIP rooms.  Rules on the use of adult pass (known as AP) has changed a few times.  For a while there, the only difference between AP and not is the ability to see and say dirty words.  Today nudity is allowed in AP rooms, though it is not as prevalent as one might imagine. People like to dress up a lot. AP is a good way to avoid the “teens” and troublemakers on freebie accounts.

Among the things you can purchase in IMVU is music that you can play in world.  Its about 65 cents a song, but you have to be in a room with someone else to play the music — RIAA rules.  Most of the music comes from emusic.com, so lots of indies, not a lot of mainstream hits. There is some good stuff in there though.

So far I am enjoying the visit, but I have no plans to become one of the IMVU addicts.  My favorite activity in 3DVW’s is to explore, and the format of IMVU is largely anti-explore.  The 10 person per room limit restricts the kinds of events you can have.