A “virtual” waste of time

This article was originally published on Cache Up NB. It has been mirrored here for archive purposes only.

Living in NB, we don’t get a lot of exposure to “virtual” caches. This type was retired long ago and so the few we have here are pretty precious to us. But in other parts of the world, virtual caches are quite common.

A few years back, I started doing virtual caches when I would travel for work. Since it’s a type that is common in many other places, but not at home, the allure of snagging virtuals was too great to pass up. I passed 100 virtuals a couple of years ago and today I logged my 126th virtual cache.

Now, prior to today, I would have been in the camp of “bring back virtuals”. This is probably the most common request Groundspeak gets when it comes to player feedback. The consensus is that virtuals could be restored in a way that would be respectful of the game, but not let it get out of control.

But after today, I kind of get why Groundspeak doesn’t want to bring them back.

If you look at the geocaching map of Las Vegas, you can filter down to see that there are a lot of virtual geocaches in that city. Now, I’ve been there several times and the first time I came here as a geocacher, I loved the virtuals I got on the strip. Lots of cool and interesting places to see.

Today, I did 14 virtuals. In fact, I spent the entire day going from one virtual to another and skipped regular caches all together. Of those 14, 6 of them I found interesting. The rest of them were a collective “meh”. Another smiley but not anything that really jumped out at me as being overly interesting. Some of them leaned towards the “memorial” side of things and yes, some of those types of virtuals can be really interesting. These memorials were not. In fact, there was one memorial that I was brought to that I was kind of scared to get out of my car because the neighborhood was clearly not a place I should be in.

I’m sure for some people, they would have enjoyed these virtuals far more than I did. But after going from one boring plaque to another, to a mural that was supposed to be dedicated to someone but the plaque has been destroyed, to yet another area where there’s nothing to speak of to take a photo of or make note of, I was glad my day was almost over.

In seeing these very “underwhelming” virtuals, I began to understand why they were retired and why they aren’t being brought back. When one virtual cache brings you to the Great Pyramids of Giza, and another one brings you to a firehose (one of the ones I found today), you can clearly see why Groundspeak pulled the plug and opted to just keep the ones we have now.

I don’t know if I’d say I don’t want them brought back as I’d love to be able to hide a virtual cache to highlight something really cool that can’t hold a container. But after having seen so many underwhelming virtuals today, I certainly have a different perspective on them.

Have you found both good and bad virtuals? What’s your “virtual” story?

—

For those who are interested, here are the GC codes for all of the virtuals I did today:

GC765E
GCD026
GC9FA1
GCCCA0
GCH63R
GCE3FA
GCB5DE
GCACAD
GCB41E
GCE4C6
GCE3FC
GCHYED
GC4E96
GCG2VN