I Live in HiPiHi!

Mar 22, 2007

Yes, I am now a resident of HiPiHi – the Chinese virtual world since the first day of its private test. My feeling? Mostly exciting, a bit frustrating at the beginning, plus a bit boring.

If you think about your being one of the first 1000 resident and exploring a complete unknown world, it is really a cool feeling. OK, let’s get my life re-started: select an avator and get myself dressed up at the registration stage, download the client. It took 45min to get the 33M client downloaded because of the slow connection, which made me a bit worried. However, when I run it, walking, flying and driving my helicopter, it is not bad at all! After visited a few public places (beautiful places built by HiPiHi, see the screenshot), I manage to find an area to build my home (the resident can claim an 100mx100m area for free! ^_^). That’s it, my first day of my second life (looks a quite simple life, isn’t?). Well, do not get me wrong, the HiPiHi is not that simple, you can chat, have some funny action and lots of pre-defined objects (such as building, cars, trees, decoration, etc) for you to use. You can use the WorldMap to have an birdview of the HiPiHi world, and the small map can be used for you to instantly transfer to a nearby place. You can personalize your dressing, you height even the color your skin, etc. See the screenshot of the client below, I have put some English caption on it.

As you can see from the image above (it shows the Toolbar, click it to see a larger image), the two button, Social Networking and Backpack (背包) are currently disabled. I am curious about what the features are. The world should be built on the social connection, right?

What is the frustrating bit at the beginning? I tried to use the Arrow keys to walk, nothing happen, I know I could create some nice objects, but did not know I should claim a land first where you can place all the stuff you build. It took me quite a while to figure it out. Next time when you play it, make sure you read the manual which I found it today and it details almost every operation.

Hmm..where is the boring feeling from? The only reason is that I felt lonely, not many users around (only 100 users were invited in the first day) and also I did not know where they were since the Search function is not strong enough yet (you can only search for user by his/her name). Let’s give it a few more days to heat up…

The client is still a bit buggy, the world is too quiet, etc. Don’t be that picky, mate! I am telling you that I really had a nice day!