After a change of location of an avatar in a virtual universe, an avatar is encouraged to remain at that location and avoid an immediate further or return change of location (e.g. by teleportation) by prioritizing rendering of objects such that objects most likely to be of interest to the avatar is performed prior to rendering of objects less likely to be of interest. Prioritization is performed by comparing metadata concerning objective(s) of the avatar and metadata of preferences of the avatar and objects in the avatar's inventory and/or implied from the avatar's activity history with metadata corresponding to objects at the location to which the avatar moves. Preferably, the metadata corresponding to the avatar is ranked in order of the number of occurrences of metadata terms and synonyms in metadata of the avatar.