Second Life players party in Palia (pic via Gogo)
Palia, a recently-launched, free-to-play MMO described by developers as a cozy community simulation game (read my 2021 post on it here) has seen a notable growth of one sub-community of players in particular: Second Life users.
"All of my SL friends who joined, we're addicted," as famed Second Life blogger Gogo puts it to me. "And it's only been two weeks. What we do is farm, hunt, mine, level up all of these skills and more to access different goodies. It's all FREE. you can farm and sell your crops or mine and sell the mineral or melt it into gold bars and sell. With that gold, you can go shopping just like in SL, but the content is all created by the company."
So instead of Second Life events around, say, new brand launches or discount fairs, the social fun in Palia is around collaborating together. And unlike standard MMOs, it's not about grouping to raid dungeons or kill Yet Another Boss.
Instead, there's... cooking cakes.
"So we make like 50-100K [in Palia gold] per cooking round (cooking like 50 cakes in a team) everyone gets 50 cakes even though we only use ingredients for 50. So after we get all the cakes, we sell it and go raid the furniture store or the markets/black market. And make mansions, it's hilarious!"
Gogo counts at least a dozen Second Life players in her Palia network, and has seen many posts about it across SL-themed social media channels. Part of the appeal, she points out, is offering a break from the cash-driven creator economy of Second Life:
"I think for people that DON'T have money, they would really get into this MMO. The only time you have to spend money is to buy special outfits or hair etc, but the company provides a nice variety."
Sparkle Skye, creator of amazing SL wedding dresses -- listen to this podcast we did about that topic -- is now also a passionate Palia player:
Above: Sparkle in Palia
"Palia is graphically beautiful, and while it is only in beta the amount of content already in the game is incredible," Ms. Skye tells me. "They have already added more clothing a new furniture set new area to explore. [The developers] appear to be responsive to the player requests and working quickly to fix the bugs that come up. I think Slers who enjoy farming cooking decorating would love Palia, most of the people I have introduced are obsessed with it. It is a highly social game that encourages you to work as a group, but you do not have to."
Nearly 300,000 people are already in Palia's official Discord, which I'm guessing is about the size of the game's active user base. Clearly there's an audience for coziness, free fashion, and of course, cake.
PALIA TIPS FROM SPARKLE
If people would like to get started in the game they can join our Discord SL Cafe we have a section there for game chat, tips, and general game help and chat.
If people are new to Palia, I would suggest joining cake parties, it is a great way to meet a lot of people and make in-game money.
Contact me via Discord in SL Cafe. [Click here to join that server]
PALIA TIPS FROM GOGO
Join the Palia discord group, be patient, level up ALL the skills, you'll need it. Like you can't cook a recipe if you don't have a certain fish and no one can give you what you haven't gotten once.
The game also rewards generosity so players can request items and give each other in-game, but not like [the way it works in] SL -- we can only request limited items per day.
Its very much an individual game, play at your own pace... the land for the house is free, I think you get two lil squares. Then when you make more money you can unlock it all and build a mansion.
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