Advice on building a Second Life Island?

So I find myself in the position of needing to buy and help build up a Second Life island for the day job. I’m excited in about it insomuch as it’s a new project, and something I’ve never done before. Plus, hey, it’s almost virtual reality. Granted, it would have been far, far cooler if the college had gone ga-ga for World of Warcraft instead, but hey, I’ll take my virtual worlds where I can find them.

In the meantime though, I find myself having to work through questions I don’t really know the answers to. Specifically:

  1. Preferred Grid Location: I know we want our island to be on the public grid, but where on the public grid? Is it better to be off by yourself? Should you be next to another college? Or the New Media Consortium? Or does it not really matter, because people will be ‘porting in, not wandering the wilds of SL looking for college islands to explore?
  2. What island shape do we want? Is one type of island better to build on than another? For example, we’re thinking of either the “donut” shape, which is an oval island with a lake in the middle, or a mountainous shape, which sticks an mountain on one side of the island. Which is easier to build on?

I’m sure there are other questions, but these were the ones that leapt out at us when looking over the “so you decided to buy an island…” form on the SL web site.

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