I played SL for a bit a long time ago (after State of Play I -- see TerraNova). The lack of direction in it was truly daunting. When I first signed on and made my character and made my way to the mainland (through the newbie training ground), I looked around and thought to myself "okay, now what?"

There *are* things to do - building things, owning land/making a house, scripting, participating in scheduled community events (e.g. trivia, bingo, etc.), hanging out in social venues (e.g. clubs), exploring, purchasing things (e.g. music, created items, costumes and outfits), PvP in appropriate zones (with guns and other weapons), heck there was even a small RPG game-castle somewhere.

*BUT* honestly it wasn't quite enough to hold my attention. There's no overriding goal. There is no level 60, no uber-sword-of-amazing-death-power, no established lines of advancement. And I think that bothered me in the end.

I will say that I certainly admire Linden Labs' approach to SL (players owning content they create, generally responding to players' concerns, etc.) and SL's overall goals. The scripting in it is rather powerful and the concept is fairly novel. People legitimately earn a living in SL. And I say legitimately because it's LL-approved and sanctioned - trading Linden dollars for real money and vice versa. The fact that real world advertisers have "snuck" into this equation annoys me a bit but what can you do - it's a facet of life so it's a facet of SL.

Also, SL's character creation/edit is incredible. The customization is just, wow. Amazingly wow. I thought City of Heroes had it nice, and they do, but SL is insane. You can customize the look of your avatar like never before - I have yet to see any other game or virtual world approach the complexity and options. Truly. Of course this does mean characters can range from nearly free-form to nearly life-like (within the confines of the graphics and engine, of course) but that's half the fun.

If for no other reasons, you should poke around SL for the character creation and to get an idea of the range of content, all player-created. I don't think SL will ever become as mainstream as other venues such as World of Warcraft or Everquest II or the like, but it's an excellent alternative that really does go in new directions. And you have to respect that (or at least I do).