Back in the early oughts I spent maybe 30 hours over a couple months exploring 2L. Ultimately I got bored and stopped returning because there was nothing to _do

Back in the early oughts I spent maybe 30 hours over a couple months exploring 2L. Ultimately I got bored and stopped returning because there was nothing to _do_ there: it was a non-game game, an un-gamified life that was a paper-thin emulation of "1L". Things they got right: a way of building and dressing your avatar that was simple, comprehensible, yet extensive. In one afternoon I made an avatar that was a reasonable facsimile of actual me, round-faced gray-bearded professorial type, I even found a leather-elbowed sweater to wear. In another afternoon I made a muscular mustachioed dwarf. Also well-done: their system for crafting persistent 3D objects. For professor me I made rose-colored glasses, transparent pink lenses (alpha channel) in a delicate gold frame, and easily had the avatar "wear" them. For the dwarf I purchased a gaudy axe but made an elaborate gold armband. Once you'd done all that, you could buy property and build quite interesting buildings on it, but that needed a degree of OCD-like persistence I didn't care to invest because the reward for all this was zip. Building a scale model of the Eiffel Tower out of toothpicks would be somewhat more rewarding as you'd have the tower for your mantel afterward.