Minecraft: Building Around Angels Villiage

Since the new Angels Village in Nydia's Minecraft servers was built, the place has taken shape, with walls going up and buildings inside the walls. Then the building began going outward, such as the SL Newser office building there. But the building didn't stop there.

Jasmine's a fan of the "My Little Pony" show, or a "pegasister" in pony fan slang. So she built this tribute, "Luna Sleeping."

How many of you have heard of "Hogzilla?" Well, he just showed up in Minecraft, or rather, this statue of him did.

Another build was this double tribute to the mob Minecrafters love to hate: The Creeper. There was this creeper statue, and a creeper temple built.

And if mobs weren't enough to scare someone at night, we started spinning yarns about what else might be out there, such as the Minecraft legend of Herobrine, the ghost miner who supposedly digs all those tunnels we find underground. Note the arched bridge and the beach picnic areas.

 The building wasn't just out from the village, but also down. Inspired by the Dwarven City in the "Lord of the Rings" Minecraft map, Valkyrie was inspired to build her own. And it was quite an impressive sight. Just ask first before digging in the mines next to the place. Dwarves aren't keen on strangers digging on their turf.

There was one other building outside the village build, a horse track, presumably in case we ever decide on a horse race. But I was waiting until daylight to take a picture, and had to go before sunrise.

 And a statuesque tribute to four of the players of Angels Village. From left to right: Jasmine (vixen with diamond minepick), Kryxia (wolfess with diamond sword), Skye (horse with diamond sword), and Phy (pony with golden carrot).

 Jasmine however wanted to build one of me. So she took a few screenshots, with my armor off, and got to work.

 Not a bad likeness ... of my 8 bit self.

So what would my statue carry? Well, others had picks and swords. So what else did I use a lot? My compass and map (ask a girl how often men will speak up and ask for directions). So Jasmine made one on the statue's hand.

The building continues around Angels' Village. There was a subway entrance made, with plans to connect it to somewhere. Then people started digging down and then out. Looks like if there's nothing in the distance to connect to, we'll dig and make something to connect it to when we surface.

That's all for now from Minecraft. Until next time, happy digging.

Bixyl Shuftan

Minecraft Games

By Bixyl Shuftan

Following the pirate ship battle in mid-September, Nydia wanted to do more group activities with her new server set up for uploaded maps. She found a couple more she liked, and on two different occasions invited residents in the HV Community sim group and her friends in the Angels community to take part.

On the evening of September 22, she uploaded a "Lord of the Rings" map. It was meant to be seen with some additional textures uploaded, so mobs could be seen as attacking orcs, etc. And the "swiss cheese" texture seen on some builds led to a few jokes. But there was quite a bit of detail, especially in the palaces and towns.

Nydia took on the role of a dungeon master for this game, leading the party down the path after leading us to a chest with a little gear, giving us a few rules and reading the introduction. We soon had to go through a dark cave, and when mobs attacked many of us lost sight of one another. Nydia ended up having to port those behind to the group. Our journey went across fields, mountain passes, towns, underground passageways, and more. Every so often, we would come to a chest with a notecard describing the next chapter in the action, such as having to carry a message to a leader.

One of the more thrilling parts of the map was the mine area, complete with a fast-moving minecart ride, which got a few comparisons to the one from "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom." Unfortunetly, if anything went wrong, the character would end up off the cart, and one wrong step off the track and into the darkness. I myself ended up in a cavern under the rail, and had to find my way back, and go down the track until I finally found the cart.

Probably the scene that gave us the most headaches was having to go through a mob-filled town. The action was harrier than Nydia had expected, and she passed us chainmail armor, and then diamond. But we ended up getting split up again, and Minecraft veterans can pretty much guess what happens to players who get repeatedly assaulted by attackers. I was among them, but managed to find a two story house where I could wait for Nydia to port me over. Others weren't as fortunate.

The adventure for me lasted a few hours, and over 25 levels of experience from clobbering mobs.  Before it was finished, players began to drop out as it was getting late in the evening, and we had real-life work or college in the morning. Perhaps Nydia's next map adventure will start on a weekend afternoon.

Nydia's next map was "Race Fo Da Wool." This  would be a competition between two teams: red and blue. Each had an identical obstacle course to search for three colors of wool: blue, lime, and magneta. The base had receptacles for one of each of the wools, with trunks nearby with armor, weapons, food, and torches.

Just in front of the base was a forest area, which had some underground caves one could dig down into. Getting through the forest was a building a few stories tall. But getting through it, or up it, one had to get through a number of mob spawners. Past that was a chasm in which players had a choice: build a bridge across it, or go down and then back up, across a number of mob spawners. Getting past that was a thin bridge over a lava pit, followed by a vertical maze in which one went up and down some steep ladders. One wrong move near the top and one would plummet to their avatar's demise.

If one croaked, one had to take a waterfall down. To keep from drowning, one had to poke out just enough to breath, but not so far as to plummet. Player versus player action was allowed, either arrows or the cannons at one point on the course. But in the games I witnessed, the players concentrated on the mobs and getting through the course. For one player, the vertical maze part was the hardest, "Gaaah! I'm afraid of heights!"

We had choices to make, such as taking the time to destroy mob spawners or take chances and try to speed through. During the day, the mobs couldn't usually get far from the building. But at night, they could sneak through and attack the base. And for a newly respawned player whom was alone while the rest of the team was deep in the obstacle course, the relentless waves of zombies, skeletons and creepers could send them back to the respawn point before they could so much as grab a weapon. Players who respawned at night began to wait until daybreak to go back down.

I took part in two games, both which took well over an hour. In one match, I had found one of the wools, and was on my way back, only to find nightfall  had come, and ended up pushed off the edge by attacking mobs, and therefore loosing the wool that had taken me a while to get. My team lost that match.

Despite the frustration with getting clobbered and having to respawn repeatedly at times, everyone had fun. And the player who was afraid of heights, by the end of the game wasn't so afraid.

In the meantime, progress continues in the new Angels Village, with players spreading out again and making new builds. But this is another story.

Bixyl Shuftan

Minecraft Ship Battle

By Bixyl Shuftan

On the evening of Wednesday Sept 18, the night before "Talk Like a Pirate Day," Nydia Tungsten wanted to do something with Minecraft. She mentioned she was uploading a "map" onto a new server, and invited people over.

Logging on, I found myself in the water, and had to swim for it. Getting to the surface, I found two ships, one with a pirate flag, the other with an English one. Both had four large openings on each side. I swam to one, and was told this was going to be a battle between the two ships. How would the ships fight? Looking around on the deck, I found above each of those holes I saw were loading mechanisms and buttons. On the other side of the deck were chests full of dynamite.

What we were supposed to do, at least once the signal was given, was to load the dynamite into the bottom part of the "cannons," press the piston button, then repeat a few more times. Then load another couple pieces of dynamite on a hole on the side. To fire the "cannon," one had to press the button to ignite the stacks of dynamite down below, which was to act as propellant, and *quickly* ignite the dynamite acting as the "cannonball" before it was launched, and scramble back a few feet. If all went right, a piece of ignited dynamite would be launched toward the other ship, where it would do some damage if it hit or blew up close enough.

But it was tricky to use, and I don't think I really got the hang of it. Once I figured out what to do, well, what came to mind was the expression "knowing just enough to be dangerous." I ended up blowing up the cannons when I fired them the way the girls were, leaving a huge hole on the side of the ship. It seemed to be safer to just fire the propellant, and wait for the gunner on the other ship to slip up and go boom. It seemed to work, as more often than not the other ship would end up unable to fire before ours was. The result was one or more of the other crew grabbing a sword, and swimming over to board us. I never could find the crate where the swords were, but the others on my team were able to beat them back. The exception was the "guys vs girls" round, in which the girls were just merciless with the stickers.

Eventually, it was time for some of us to go to bed, and the Minecraft ship battles came to an end. At least for now. Perhaps another day, It'll be time to once again "strike the colors."

If only I could get the hang of firing that blasted cannon.

Bixyl Shuftan

"Feed The Beast" and The Minecraft Building Contest

By Bixyl Shuftan

Since the Minecraft "Angels Village" server was updated, and it's contents wiped away, the attention of the game's players in the Sunweaver and Angels groups switched to the FTB, aka "Feed The Beast," servers set up by both Kit Repine and Nydia Tungsten. Kit's initial server went from a shack set up near the spawn point for anyone unfortunate to drop in at night to a small stone fort with an ever-expanding underground chamber and tunnel network. Valkyrie McGil built an impressive build on the cliff next to the fort.

Jasmine quickly noticed the wide variety of tools the FTB version of Minecraft offered, from robot miners that could clear out sections of underground for stone and ores, to better suits of armor, including one with limited flight ability, and some nifty gadgets. One I found useful was a mechanical arm that acted like a combination diamond pick and gun. One could use it against zombies and creepers, but it had a strong recoil. Another was a pair of boots that kept one from getting hurt when falling from a great distance. It's a safe bet most Minecrafters ended up back in their bed after making a misstep at least once. One gadget some players had fun with was the "Portal" gun, which acted like the one in the game. One fun thing that came later were the funny hats that one could collect from mobs they appeared on at random.

But building these tools and toys required machines, machines that required energy. Exploring around, I came across a few oil fields some distance away. Those were one source of energy. But Jasmine's bigger machines required more. One interesting feature of "Feed The Beast" was accessing other worlds, or overworlds in Minecraft jargon, besides the Nether and "The End." Some of these places were quite strange, such as one in which players could end up damaged from sunburn if not wearing certain types of armor, which put us in the same position as a zombie or skeleton. These worlds could be accessed through portals, but they could also be traveled to and back via special books, leading to this part of the game being called "Mystcraft," after the popular computer game Myst in the 1990s. Besides places to explore, Jasmine used them as a source for mass quantities of energy-supplying lava and lots of ores.

All these features were certainly a contrast from the Minecraft we'd first set foot it, and it came with a price. Lag began to become a problem. And then, the servers would start to occasionally crash. This became quite frustrating to players and server owners alike. As it turned out, "Feed The Beast" was the combined result of over a few hundred Minecraft modifications cobbled together. Little wonder it could get unstable at times. And then came the server updates, which would sometimes wipe out what was made.

Despite the bugs, interest in Minecraft persisted. Nydia took some time to clean up her new FTB server before inviting her friends over. Once she thought it was ready, she wondered how it could be tested.

"I wanted to test the latest FTB server, see if the problems were solved," Nydia told me in a conversation, "so … I thought what a better way to test it than to have my friends go NUTS with their builds." Nydia decided to hold a competion to see who could come up with the best build, "So I turned them loose with OP powers and kept an eye on the server." The rules were fairly simple, build a town a small group of players could reside in, " purposely left the build requirements vague, I wanted to see how they would be interpreted, and I must say I was NOT disappointed in the creativity that was generated. (I wasn't the) only one impressed either, the builders were as well when they got to see each other's builds."

The competition attracted a number of players, "We started with over eight builders, but due to their real-lives, some had to drop out, which was a shame really. The beginnings of their builds looked so promising. We had futuristic to medevil and even fairy tale fantasy. We even had some Anime thrown in, but unfortunately that one wasn't finished. … This will sound obscure to those not familiar with the series 'Girls und Panzers' it was going to be a city ship," a ship with a city built inside, "It qualified for the contest (laughter)."

"The way it was judged was very unique as well," Nydia explained,  "I have never heard of (Minecraft) being done like this at all. I left some of the judging be done by the builders themselves. The only reason I did it that way was I knew all the builders and knew they would be fair. They would judge the others, but not themselves. And I had 2 people here with me in real life that don't play MC (yet) to help me with the judging. And yes I did the live broadcast the event to help." Nydia put a live feed of what she saw into her video channel on the day of the judging.

One problem the contest had was the unstable nature of FTB Minecraft, and the contest was suspended and extended a couple times due to the server crashing, " I run it off my same system I use I thought it could maybe it could handle it this time, unfortunately...it cant. … I wish I could invite everyone on to view the builds, but itwas just too hard on my system, I have 8GB of RAM with the server and (with) Second Life running, it would climb up to the 80% used area. If I was linked a video....it would go into the 90s. More than once it got to 98%, if it went higher I would crash." Still, she persisted, "But we were able to finish the contest and have a lot of fun in the process."

Of the winners, Skylark's village came in third place. Valkyrie was second "by only a few points." Her village was near the server spawn point, and had crop and berry bush areas, with miniature golems gathering the fruit. For first place, it was "a tie between 2 good friends and Angels Jasmine and Shion (Winkler), it was so close it was almost a 3 way tie!"

Jasmine's place was a treehouse village with buildings set up on super tall trees, "t was a fully function town any elf would DROOL over with all the tech any mage would envy and then it had the walk ways between the massive trees to count as a city in itself." Jasmine tapped into another overworld via "Mystcraft" for the lava to power it, "Val went into the Nether to power all of her computers and tech as well." Jasmine's village had a diner in which automated machines could dispense a variety of foods with the press of a button. Kryxia Silverfall helped her out during the building.

Shion's town was build around a cathedral, as were some Medieval cities. It was the most detailed building, both inside and out. It had a harbor with ships, and a balista and a number of cranes around, to give it the look of a place still in construction.

For the winners, Nydia had a prize, "I kept the prize secret until the day of Judging I was able to offer the winner $50 USD or split it as it turns out, but they both turned it down. Sooo, I donated it to 'The Furry Gamer' group to help some of our members get into the rest of (the games we play). They wanted me to use it for my Angels, which I will do if it is needed. But I think it could do better for a group dedicated to having some fun. Thats what this was all about, having fun."

As good as the builds were, Nydia had to take the server back down. The FTB was just too much on her systems to keep up without crashes. But her new "vanilla" server, updated to Minecraft 1.62, was available. This newer Minecraft is commonly called the "horse update" due to its now including horses. They can be fitted with a saddle and "broken" for riding.

So how to build a place for the Angels there? Nydia soon had her answer, "that night when I finally had all the votes, I brought them all to my office at home (in Second Life) and told them who won, well, they started talking about each others builds, and before I knew it I had a build crew on my hands for the new Angels Village. … once in and started they met up with 'Hojo' another builder from the last world we had and he joined in"

Dropping in for myself at Jasmine's invitation, the place wasn't too far from the spawn point. Just walk down the road for a few minutes, and one would soon see the place, encompassed by walls. Inside, they had built a barn for horses (by Jasmine) and other critters, a town hall, an inn, an outdoor market, a mages tower (by Valkyrie), a cathedral (by Shion), a harbor with ships (also by Shion), and more. When Nydia saw it for herself, "I can sum it up with one word: 'Whoah …' "

So what was next for Nydia and her Angels & friends in Minecraft? She does have some plans, "in the future I am planning on having adventure maps for group play. I have a bit to learn still before I can start hosting events but it IS planned for in the future. We have had 'End raids' in the past and those were a LOT of fun."

So despite "Feed The Beast" acting a bit beasty, the action in Minecraft from residents of the Sunweaver and Angel's estates continues.

Nydia has a video of the villages during the contest judging donwloadable in the following link (here - 498MB).

Bixyl Shuftan

Minecraft Angels Village: An Ending and a Beginning

By Bixyl Shuftan

Since I last wrote on Minecraft, the activity continued in Angel's Village's server. Jasmine continued to work on improving her chicken cooker at her place of Havenshire, and then went on to work on other projects. She built an object sorter, a "silkstone" maker, an obsidian generator that worked on redstone dust, and more. One of her newest, an "enderman spawner" in the nether. She had corralled them so in one region they spawned only in one place, and players could easily hack away at them from spots they couldn't reach, getting lots of experience orbs. Trouble was, there were more orbs than could be easily absorbed at times. So a player could easily be swinging blind at the enders in front, and not notice another player stepping in front of him/her. The result could easily be one player back to her bedroom, without her gear.


Jasmine and I had been alone with occasional visits from others, other friends of Nydia preferring her "Feed the Beast" and the Kitsunuki servers. But we soon had company. Kryxia and Valkyre signed up on Minecraft and joined. Kryxia made a nice longhouse near Havenshire with Jasmine's and my help. Valkyre once she had a little time to figure things out went on a 24 hour building spree, creating a *massive* tower. Taking a look at it, Jasmine had thought Nydia had made Valkyre a server op without telling her. That wasn't the case. Valkyre had done the big build simply through hard work.

Then Jasmine went to work on her biggest project: literally. Nydia's Village was surrounded with a  detailed wall. Jasmine planned to do even better by surrounding the place with castle walls and towers. So starting in one corner, the first structure went up, and bit by bit the walls extended away from it, with castle gates and battlements going up along the way. Jasmine did the planning and the bulk of the work with some help from Kryxia and I. We soon came across one problem: Jasmine's house was built into a hill that would be level or taller than the castle walls. So an excavation was called for, one done partly through server op powers of easy digging, and partially through blasting through TNT, "Jazzy wants big boom." Eventually most of the hill was replaced with flat land on level with most of Havenshire, and the walls continued to go up.

Soon, the walls were more or less done. Havenshire was surrounded by castle structures that could be walked through via gates or climbed from the inside via doors in the battlements and ladders upward. It was so big, only from the air could one see the whole thing. From the castle led roads to Valkyre's tower and Kryxia's longhouse. There was also a road heading north to the desert. To the east deep in a region of tundra was Nydia's ice castle. And further east of that was Skylark's home. The area north of Angel's was getting some truly great builds.

It was about this time that came two major events. One was the Dragon. If Minecraft has a way to win, it's beating the Dragon at "The End," accessible only through the nether. Getting there, there's only two ways out, die or defeat the Dragon. Nydia never had, and when she was on with Jasmine, Kryxia, and Valkyrie also there, they decided to team up to beat him. And they did. Jasmine got a dragons egg out of it, as well as able to say she had "beaten" Minecraft.

Going to the spot where they had gone to "The End," instead I was shown the credits, as well as something else. What is it? Well, I won't spoil the surprise. You'll just have to find out for yourself.

The other event, well, it seems all that has been created in Angles will soon be coming to an end. Nydia says the servers will soon be updated, an update that will essentially wipe the slate clean. Back to an unspoiled wilderness with no buildings, roads, machines, farms, or roads. Just the players, the wilds, and the monsters that come out at night.

Nydia says those whom were still active there will be made server ops, once this change occurs. Which means the option of playing the regular way, or being able to create as we please, flying across the land. And since the server's starting over anyway, Nydia's installing a modification called "Terra Firma Craft." It's a bit different from normal Minecraft in a number of ways. For one, you can't just knock down sections of tree trunk to get wood for a shelter. You need to collect small rocks on the ground, gather branches from trees, notch a rock to make an axe head, make a hatchet, *then* cut down the tree. There's also a thirst bar in addition to the hunger bar. But the hunger bar doesn't go down as fast. And the monsters at night are stronger. More information can be found in the Tera Firma Craft Wiki, in addition to the youtube Brandi Strussel sent me (Click Here).

Our friend Ranchan, or Amaya as she's sometimes called, has a server as well, the Kitsunuki one, of which the Angels world is one of several the players can free hop and take inventory from one to another. Her Angel's Village was duplicated there, as well as the Newser building (before the top floor was finished). The difference there seems to be mainly graphics. Nydia also has a server with a modified version of Minecraft called "Feed the Beast," but as of the writing of this article it is shut down due to bugs. Our friend Kit Repine has a FTB server as well. I've heard that one has a number of machines one can build. It also has a number of new materials, and plants. A short look at Kit's server also revealed new dangers. There's quicksand in places which can trap you if you're not careful. Some of the monsters are more powerful here too. There seems to be a number of different versions of FTB, so what works in one may not work in another.

So it looks like the Minecraft journeys of Jasmine and I will be taking a new turn. Will we build a new Castle Havenshire, or just take things one step at a time. We'll soon see.

Bixyl Shuftan

Back to Minecraft Part 2

Earlier this month, I wrote about the continued activity in Nydia Tungsten's Minecraft servers, notably what Jasmine Dawn Shuftan had been doing. Far away from Angel's Village, she had been building a place of her own. Since I first wrote about it, her progress continued.

Jasmine's complex, seen from a log cabin on the outskirts. Note the archery tower to the right, with a flaming netherbrick roof for easy visibility at night.

Jasmine soon made a second archery tower, with the two connected by a glass and iron rail walkway.

 The first level of Jasmine's place, or "Jazzytown" as I dubbed it, which contains some stables. Here's some unusual cows I hadn't seen before, which she called "moo-shrooms."

Looking for monster spawners, she found this zombie one not far from the surface. Since they're not as bad as other hostile mobs, slow and they don't blow up on you, she had the idea of an experience farm.

So she surrounded it with fencing, and the zombies were trapped. She made a ladder, and built around it, including a glass ceiling. Now one could hack and slash the baddies and have the experience orbs fall into your lap, just waiting for new mobs and occasionally having to replace your sword.

And yes, that's my sword. Jasmine tossed me a few diamonds for one. Reminds me a little of being a "rune goon" in Runescape.

While digging her tunnel, Jasmine came across this place, which she named "Strussel Village." I later came back and added this nether portal for quicker access.

While digging the tunnel, Jasmine wanted to take a break, as well as get a few supplies. So we made this waystation that she later dubbed "Havenshire."

And this is where our marathon tunneling session ended, a village northwest of Angels that someone had built a wall around and improved. Not sure who made it or what name it was given. After that, Jasmine's main focus went back to Jazzytown.

While finishing the tunnel, digging west from Angels and south from the walled village, I came across a few obstacles, such as water when coming across rivers. So the way to go was lower, at least until it was past.

Ranchan's ship, due west of Angel's Village. The tunnel went under it, and I built an entrance next to the boat.

"And the twain shall meet." Finally Jasmine's subway from her place to Angel's Village was complete.

Jasmine showing off her place to a neighbor, Skylark and friend, who made their own place north of Angels, and east of Jazzytown. Note the signs showing how far it is to Angels and Strussel.

And Jasmine's latest creation: her "chicken plucker." The fowl in the upper chamber lay eggs, which fall through the water, into dispensers, which lay chicks into the lower chamber. When grown, a user can press the pistons to crush the birdies, "Buck-AWWKK!!" And one gets seperated feathers, meat, and sometimes more eggs.

Small irony it was built by a fox, "Colonel Sanders, eat your heart out!"

And that's it for now from the Angels server.

Bixyl Shuftan

Back to Minecraft

By Bixyl Shuftan

I haven't mentioned too much about Minecraft lately. That doesn't mean things have been quiet there. Nydia Tungsten has continued to keep a presence there. Besides her original server, she also got a second one. This was of a variant of Minecraft called "Feed The Beast," which has more things to build. And "Angels Village" with the other builds was duplicated on it. Then Alynna Vixen and Skylark Lefarve got their own servers, and with another copy of Nydia's map became part of a group of realms which players could freely move from one to another. These were an upgraded version with slightly better graphics. Nydia's original "Vanilla" server was getting only a little traffic.


Then my partner Jasmine got into the act. After she had a talk with Nydia about Minecraft, she gave it a try and began building on her own. Unlike most of Nydia's friends, she preferred the original of Nydia's worlds, and so began leaving her mark there. Unlike myself, who set up a location not far from Angel's Village, Jasmine wanted to go far off. Earlier, Nydia had dug a tunnel about a couple miles long to encourage exploring. Jasmine went down that, and set up a place. With Nydia's help, a portal was set up and in the Nether (to those who don't know, a hellish-looking paraell world Minecrafters use to get resources and travel through as a shortcut) a tunnel was dug through to the Angels' Village own portal. Jasmine was in business.

 I've been going in time to time to check on Jasmine's progress and help her out. But she's done most of the work. She's expanded her original "safe haven" to quite a complex, with a few structures poking up onto the surface. We have done a little exploring. Going into a dungeon area, we stumbled across an abandoned library. The two of us together made off with well over a hundred books, to be used later for an enchanting room.

Thinking of Nydia's tunnel, she wanted to do one of her own. So we both began digging. Two players with iron pickaxes can dig pretty fast, so we made quite a bit of progress. We did find a village about a third of a mile away from Jasmine's place, which she named Streusel village after Nydia's partner Brandi Streusel. After a couple other stops along the way to get wood and other materials, we finally stopped at a large village most of the way over.

Jasmine plans to finish the tunnel, eventually. For now, she's gone back to improving her place, putting in underground gardens, an underground greenhouse with the sun shining through glass on the surface, animal pens, pastures, and an archery tower, taking down those pesky creepers from a distance. I pop back on occasionally, to help her out, work on the tunnels, and maybe work some on finishing the SL Newser office. The unfinished office was duplicated in all three locations, so it does seem I won't be bored for some time as far as Minecraft's concerned.

What's that hissing noise? Oh, great … *BOOM!!*

Bixyl Shuftan

News & Commentary: Second Life's Declining Sim Numbers

By Bixyl Shuftan

Daniel Voyager recently posted his Second Life user concurrency Winter 2012 report on his blog, using statistics from the Second Life Grid Survey. The results were disappointing. While user concurrency itself had remained stable, the number of sims on the grid has been falling. In January 2012, the number of sims was about 31,000. By July, the number had dropped to 29,000. And now, the number of sims stands at 28,300.  Almost three thousand sims vanished, or a decline of 11.3 percent.

The cause of this, Daniel thought the reasons were Second Life users spending more time outside the Grid and fewer people signing up. Listening to people and reading comments, I heard two things repeatedly: dissatisfaction with Linden Lab's performance, and a poor economy that just isn't getting better.

So where are the users going? Facebook has certainly done a better job at attracting a mass audience, but what Second Life users are looking for is a virtual world. Daniel Voyager thought that one big reason was people moving to the OpenSim worlds, such as Avination and Inworldz. But his observation isn't quite the same as mine. Among the people I chat with, a few mention checking the OpenSim worlds, but not that many.  One gamer whom a couple years ago bought some space in Avination because of its friendlier policy toward gambling still maintains some places in Second Life. I've also heard comments that OS worlds are less stable than Second Life. A number who did talk about moving to Opensim were not doing so because of overall dissatisfaction with Second Life, but were Star Trek fans alarmed by CBS's moves against Trek-related items on the Grid and getting the impression it was time to consider moving on to other worlds as what they were doing might soon get them in serious trouble here.

Among those in Second Life who prefer nonhuman avatars (or in the words of a few "I don't want to look like a Ken doll"), the OpenSim worlds seem to have less to offer. In Daniel Voyager's comments, Pussycat Catnip commented her avatar was a furry feline, "When I can have that in an OS Grid, and a social community that is thriving, and a large continent I can explore around in, then I might start looking at an OS Grid seriously." Of her avatar, "I didn't make that furry, I bought it. Many folks don't have the time or expertise to make things like that. The people who do have not left SL."

So if not the OpenSim worlds, where have the people I've been talking to going? Massive Multiplayer Online games have been around since before Second Life, though their popularity seems to wax and wane. With the release of the latest "World of Warcraft" expansion, a number of my friends have been playing it more. They've also mentioned other games such as "Star Wars: The Old Republic," and "World of Tanks." But as popular as these games are, compared to Second Life, one's ability to express creativity is limited.

More recently, another kind of virtual world made an appearance: Minecraft. The graphics there were primitive compared to Second Life, but it did allow players to express their creativity in making buildings, gardens, and other structures. Not to mention for newcomers it offered clear short-term goals: don't get killed by the monsters coming out at night. While some Second Life residents will have nothing to do with this "8-bit throwback," overall it's been so popular, a number of communities on the Grid have been getting their own Minecraft servers, including the Angels/Sunweavers, the SL Newser office building's neighbors.

So what can be done to stop the decline, or at least slow it down? One response I hear again and again to the question is "lower the tier!" By making it less expensive for residents to get sims, more will put up their money for them. Simple supply and demand. Well, maybe not.

In an article in September, Hamlet Au brought up one noteworthy statistic: most sims in Second Life are owned by only a handful of residents. He stated of the 75 million US dollars Linden Lab made, half a million residents paid about three million for Lindens for various items while about 5500 residents paid sixty million for private land. And of those, just 500 paid 48 million, more than half of Linden Lab's revenues.

Hamlet thought it would be "a near suicidal gamble" to lower tier with this kind of arrangement, even if more residents were less able to pay. The majority of residents would probably disagree with him, and many who did had quite a few comments on the issue in several of Hamlet's articles related to the topic. Someone suggested, "replace those 500 high profile customers with 50,000 low profile ones." Hamlet's response was "Yes, but to get 50,000 customers … Second Life will probably need 500,000 or so more unique users, which will require growing the user base" with games and other attractions.

One land baron, Desmond Shang of Caledon, gave one reason shaking up the real estate market might not be good for Linden Lab's bottom line was what he called the "Rip Van Winkle" residents. These were residents whom almost never popped onto the Grid, but steadily paid their rent, content that their "happy place" was still around, "I've had to close a few regions over the years, and I can think of only two cases where a 'Rip Van  Winkle' made time to pull up stakes and move to another location. The rest simply quit."

So if lowering tier isn't an answer, whether or not the Lab can't or simply won't, what is? Hamlet himself thought that Linden Lab would offer occasional goodies to encourage Premium subscriptions, but it was up to the residents to offer more substantial things to attract new residents. He brought up a zombie MMO that was making news in Summer 2012 and suggested that something similar could be made on the Grid, or perhaps a third party SL Viewer with gaming controls built in. Indeed, there is no shortage of combat sims in Second Life, such as Aria Clash and New Bastogne, and a number of role-play regions have combat built in as part of the action.

Desmond himself thought there was "no easy fix" to the problem, "Lowering tier to match demand might bring back growth, but it would take a lot of lowering before growth came back. And it might not return." Could anything else bring back growth?  Not mentioning Hamlet's ideas, he felt "there are several (options), but few are legal," mentioning gambling was done away with, and some of the early growth was financed by "bank scams and ponzi schemes." He agreed with Hamlet that lowering tier was a risky move, but as numbers continue to drop, he did feel the option would be "someday ultimately necessary."

For now however, any talk of lowering tiers is pretty much ignored by Linden Lab. And it's up to the residents for an alternative solution for the Grid's shrinking numbers. 

Sources: Daniel Voyager's Blog, New World Notes

Bixyl Shuftan

"Luskcraft" - Luskwood's Place in Minecraft

A few months ago, the Sunweaver/Angels' community in Second Life began making a place for themselves in Minecraft. They weren't alone as a number of other groups from the Grid began expanding onto the sandbox world. Recently I heard that the oldest one, Luskwood, was among them. They had been there for about a year, which raised the question what could they have made given that amount of time?

Talking to Michi Lumin, she told me who to get in contact with for access, and it was soon done. This is what it looked like when I first arrived. But what had I arrived on?

As it turned out, the entrance to the server is one giant Luskwood logo. Although building mode was off for newcomers "so that they can't place destructive lava," there were a few supplies in a nearby ship.

The place is called the Community Project Docks, part of "the player-run city of New Horizon." And it was a well-detailed port area, with a carrier, a submarine, a zepplin, and this clipper ship.

Quite a bit of detail went into the making of the vessels. There were a few monsters about, but things were set so creeper explosions couldn't hurt them.

A look at one of the port cranes.

A walkway connected the docks to the mainland.

And getting to land, there was a huge wall (the Great Wall of Lusk?).

 It went on for quite a distance.

 A look back at the docks, from further along the wall.

  After a long while of walking, and spider-stomping, the wall ended at a complex of buildings.

 There were a number of things here, rooms with beds, indoor farms and critter pens.

 So far from the port, it can't be seen.

The tallest was so high, clouds brushed against the top.

And that was my introduction to the Luskwood server. Unable to build shelters, I was pretty much limited to where there was light, which was the wall and the buildings. A more detailed look of the interior will have to wait until I can get build permissions. I had been told there were some places built inland, though warned some were booby-trapped. So a look there might be hazardous. A bit of an irony that the place that gets so much griefing in Second Life has residents setting up traps as pranks.

After a year, the Lusk residents have created quite a bit. And only part it it's been shown. I still haven't gone the other length of wall, so perhaps more pictures soon, build permisions or no.

Bixyl Shuftan