Online educators looking for platforms more dynamic than conferencing software see the current enthusiasm for investment and development of a new Web 3.0 metaverse platform on the horizon as a hopeful alternative. However, what this new metaverse platform should offer users is still unclear. One indicator of what to expect might be Linden Lab’s Second Life (SL), a virtual world platform released in 2003 and still online today. In this paper, the author summarizes his ethnographic research in two SL learning communities in order to pinpoint the appeal and learning affordances of the platform. Through discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the SL platform in regards to education, the author provides advice to prospective metaverse instructors on what to expect in this developing milieu. He also outlines the challenges that metaverse developers will likely encounter as they attempt to overcome the problems that have led to SL’s slow decline.