Anbor Mole At Work

By Bixyl Shuftan

On Wednesday June 12, the Newser reported on new sims and Linden Home areas being set up at Bellisseria. That evening, I got a tip about someone there from my friend Ed (Edconnect Gufler). He sent me a TP over, though taking it, I ended up in the water. Swimming up, I noticed on the map a group of people on land to the west. So I went over, and among the group of people, and one squirrel, there was Abnor Mole, working away while an audience was watching, and chattering.

For the most part, Abnor just quietly listened as he worked on the houses and roads. But he would occasionally speak; "Feel free to watch from a distance all you like. (smile)"

When someone expressed a desire for a house to be next to some rocks, and another commented, "It would be cool if some waterfront homes were centered on the parcels so that the back of the house faced the water," Abnor answered, "Some of them have them, and some don't. But we can't make add or change them. The LI on the main parcel had to have enough remaining to always support the houses. The LI on the main parcel has been carefully calculated to allow for that. If we add more, we run the risk of not having enough LI for a house.. and that would be... 'bad'."

As there had been a talk about fences, Abnor commented, "But the fence is in the content pack, so she could add her own."

"Abnor, would there be like a little hang out area or park being added for the sims?" "That's what community areas are for... that red ring you see in the next region is where a community area is going to go."

More questions would be asked, and Abnor would answer. "Why are the LOD's so high?" "So they don't collapse into itty bitty triangles when you get more than 20m away."

"Are the houses and houseboats in this next release the same builds as the first ones?" "They look the same to me. (smile)"

"Oh Abnor, are we allowed to do shell's on the outside of the houses for more paint options, or would that be going against the look too much?" "Yeah... but if we start doing that then we'd spend all day just moving fences and trees and making sure the LI balances out... we'd never have time to make new houses."

When Abnor was asked about when the houses would be available, he answered, "The only person who can tell you is Patch. until he says something I know nothing. *winks*"

Someone brought up the green markers in the sims, "Did we already find out what the green spikes are for? If so I missed it." Abnor answered, "If people just type in the name of the region they teleport to the center. So from now on we are making it a point not to have that location be a resident's parcel."

There was also a little joking around. When Abnor was talking about when the moles built Nautilus, one resident responded, "Found the big eye under a bush (laughter)." The robot mole answered, "*whistles* I don't know nuthin bout no alleged 'eye.'"

Eventually, someone asked, "You probably  get asked this but why did you chose 'Abnor?'" Another resident promptly gave the answer, "Abnormal, Abnor Mole." "ABNORMAL ! (laughing) I just got it!" "Like Whacka Mole." "(laughter) A few of the moles have punny names." "(I) would completely get 'Guaca Mole' as a Mole name ..." Abnor mused, "I still like my name. (smile) Someone I worked with for years just finally got the joke."

"All playing aside Abnor, what you guys have done with this is incredible and such a great effort all around." "We appreciate it we really do." Abnor soon responded, "This is different because I invited everyone to come, but I do want to thank you guys for letting us work in peace for the most part. Everyone has been really good about it and I wanted to thank you all for that. It makes the job a lot easier." The residents were appreciative, "Thanks for taking the time to talk to us and show us the new ones, Abnor." "Thank you for the sneak peek Abnor...you all are doing such a great job!" "THANK YOU MOLES!" Someone then spoke, "Who wants a 'YAY MOLES' sign to hold?" Then the person started passing them around.

Abnor also revealed what the source of the pickle jokes of theirs around the new continent, "... people said (the original SSP area) Bellisseria looks like  a dragon sitting in a boot eating a pickle.. so... We took that pickle and were going to cut out the center. So we started calling it 'the squished pickle.' But instead I terraformed the whole inside. But the name stuck. So that became 'The Squishy Pickle,' and then the bar followed."

Abnor went on, "What we call a 'community center' is just public places people can gather, like the swimming pools, the Squishy Pickle bars... locations like that. Someone asked, presumably about the one to be built for this area, "is it a huge secret what you are doing with that?" The mole answered, "It's a surprise Patch has, and Patch doesn't like moles ruining his surprises. (smile)."

Abnor soon carved a river into the ground. One resident went, "Oh, I love rivers! Will like to live there." "Drawbridges for big boats!" someone else quipped. "Yes, I know. I've made them before," the mole responded, "They get tricky though." A couple people talked about when pranksters would open bridges when cars approached, or shut them when sailboats approached, and wondered if there could be a way to stop that. Abnor answered an ideal solution was unlikely, "Once you start getting into things to make it not work under XYZ conditions but always work under LMNOP, the scripting can get stupid complicated."

Eventually, Abnor had to go, "I think the refreshment I need now is sleep, and then I start back again in the morning (smile). But if you want to see regions in different stages of production... walk north from here over the bridge, keep going and hang a left at the big river." He then told the crowd goodbye, and called it a night. The crowd then dispersed, one getting a sailboat, and going up the river the little robot had just made.

So that was my chance encounter with Abnor Mole at the new Linden Home area. It was fun and informative, the kind of "abnormal" circumstances a resident of Second Life likes.

Bixyl Shuftan

What It's Like To Acquire A Sim

By MajikVixen (bluevioletvixen.lorefield)

I knew that by the time I had four different parcels I was paying tier on, things were becoming a bit ridiculous, and it was time to investigate actually getting a sim.  With the beginning of Sansar underway, and the new increase of prims allotted to Second Life from Linden Labs, I figured there surely was a good solution to my predicament.

The first thing I did was call Linden Lab.  They gave me a good page off their website to go to (I have listed it at the bottom of this article in the URL section, and rehosted it at Tiny URL).  At that "Name Your Land" page, you can create a name for your region (or see if the name you want is available), find out which areas of the grid are available to make a sim (by putting in coordinates or another region name), and even click to chat immediately with a more-than-happy-to-speak-with-you sales associate.

I found the Linden Lab sales associate very informative, but my gawd, the prices were astounding! $600 USD for the initial buying price of a sim PLUS $300 USD a month tier -a car engine goes for around $500 USD.  Plus you have to take into account, their policy of residents not being allowed to own Homesteads without owning a Full private region, because Homesteads are essentially an add-on for a full region (not physically, but from a sales perspective).  Sadly, there are no discounts available.  Linden Lab only has the Premium incentive to offer: 1) weekly L$300 stipend deposited to your shop, 2) L$1,000 sign-up bonus for first-time Premium Account subscribers to be deposited to your account after 45 consecutive days, 3) Linden Home or 512 Square Meter Tier allotment for use towards a parcel on the Mainland, 4) Expanded Live-Chat customer support, 5) Exclusive Virtual Gifts, 6) Premium-only accessible areas and experiences in Second Life, 7) Exclusive activities and games, 8) Increased cap on missed Instant Messages, 9) Increased group membership limits, and 10) Voice Morphing.

I was a bit thwarted, but I decided to continue my research with one of the companies in Second Life that I had contently rented from for over a couple of years now, ZoHa Islands.  My relationship with them started because I Fish Hunt, and every time I went to their buoy, I was always greeted personally by a sales representative.  No matter that all I was interested in, was just catching fish, they were always polite and wished me good luck, consistently.  I thought that was really cool.  They built a good rapport with me, and I finally took them up on their offer one day, and haven't looked back.  They recently implemented a new system, where you must file a ticket on their website to get a response to any inquiry (I have listed that at the bottom of this article as the second link in the URL reference section).  They do this to make sure everyone gets answered and nobody gets accidentally missed on the group chat.  Tammy Mayo (tammiedee.mayo), a very helpful and patient representative, contacted me, and we talked for about three hours initially (but really, she did earn her commission, poor thing, *laughter*).

At the time, my main concern was being able to have a sim connected to my previous home of Faerie Crossing, a land of 10 neighbored regions.  Now, it is not possible for ZoHa to make a sim from scratch, off of any place on the grid, and sell it to you.  Nonetheless, they do have a fabulous selection of already existing regions to choose from (starting at $30 USD for the initial buy price, and about $120 USD per month for homesteads).  It is entirely conceivable to get a sim and have it moved (it costs a one-time fee of $150 USD, which is what LL charges).  However, in order to move a sim right next to another, and become neighbors, you need to have permission from the owner of the other region first.  All the areas on the map in the first link (under "Region Location" "Region Coordinates") that are cross-hatched in red, are these types of places you need to get permission for.  Everything else is fair game.  Also, it is just as easy to have any of ZoHa's sims renamed (it costs a one-time fee of $50 USD, which is also what Linden Lab charges). 

Next I had to decide whether I should invest in a Homestead sim or a Full.  The difference between them is not just price, but prims and avatar capacity.  They are exactly the same size of 65,000+ SqM.  However, a Homestead can only host 20 avatars at any given time, whereas a Full can have up to 100.  You also get 5,000 prims with a Homestead, but with a Full, you get 20,000.  This is why Homesteads are usually cheaper.  I figured it would be safe to give the Homestead a try, and I could always change to the Full later if it ever became necessary.  It's not like I was planning on renting out parcels or anything, so what the heck?

It took about a day or less to change the title of Vita Nova into Zamargad.  As far as Linden Lab paperwork goes, the Governor of ZoHa Islands owns it, but I have full control of the region.  From making it Moderate, who can visit (open to the public or not), generating parcels, to even writing my own Covenant; Zamargad is a little piece of me that I get to share with all who dare to tread it.  Not a bad deal at all.  I saved $950 USD (OMG!), and ZoHa gave me a current resident discount (for having already been a client).

After recovering from the shock and depression of being banned from my previous Faerie Crossing home of three years, and with some powerfully supportive decorating suggestions and tips from friends, it took about a month to finalize Zamargad.  I learned that the best way to see Second Life is to tick these in my viewer settings: "Automatically change environment to use region/parcel settings" and to "Use Firestorm Parcel Windlight Sharing."  Environment settings really set the mood for what kind of ornamentation is best.  I chose a night theme so the glowing vegetation and other structures had just the right touch of mysteriousness and wonder.  It took about $200 USD of birthday and Christmas money, and countless, relentless hours of scouring the Marketplace to turn my new home into a masterpiece.

I wanted an epic grand opening, and I definitely got one!  Vinnie (acoustic.rhapsody) of The Vinnie Show, one of the performers for my grand opening, mentioned something very key for setting things in motion, in the preparation of this event.  In anticipation of all the traffic this would generate, we were worried about crashing my Homestead of Zamargad.  Vinnie suggested a work around of using a parcel on a Full sim, and then having a tour of Zamargad afterward.  Tammy helped me again to get the grand opening party parcel.  I only had to rent it for a week, and I got another discount for having done so.  I went back into a productive creative mode, and designed the grand opening parcel set, so that all I had to do was "Take" it from Zamargad, and rerezz it at the parcel.  The grand opening was definitely a success!  Over L$2,500 were raised in donations during this all day event.  I was very pleased that everyone came to support and share my reverie with me.

I also learned that it actually doesn't matter where your region is on the grid.  You could be an adoption sim, surrounded by BDSM sims.  In any event, "location, location, location" doesn't matter, unless you're going for Mainland. And in that case, it's because you want to be a part of a historical continent, pricing, or clear rules instead of a covenant.  If your region is awesome, people will come, no matter what.  There are no such things as designated areas of the Second Life grid for fantasy, or any other what-have-you themes, even in Mainland where ironically the only constant theme is variety.  At one time there were a bunch of fantasy regions surrounding the realms of Faerie Crossing, Elf Circle, Farhaven, and Isle of Wyrms, but that is slowly dissipating.  I would love to see a huge continent of fantasy, but I suppose it's like when per say, a cell phone company buys out another cell phone company and they merge ... and they keep on buying all the other cell phone companies until there is almost a monopoly ... and then they split and get bought out by other cell phone companies altogether, and the cycle repeats.  It is just the nature of business and things. 

According to Rabbinical mythology, Zamargad is the name of the land to which Lilith (Adam's first wife) betook herself in her flight from Paradise (the garden of Eden). And it is near the Red Sea, which could be metaphorically construed as the disapproving neighbors cross-hatched in red on the "Name Your Land" map. - Thus I do toy with the idea of poetically moving a water sim away from the fantasy realms I once knew...  But Zamargad currently rests, nestled between a bunch of other private estates on the grid, and is happy there for the time being.  Despite my otherwise assertive soul and meaningful trivia, I do think there are better things to put my money toward... like tipping performers and venues!

But that is what it's like to get a sim.  Lots of research, preparation, anxiety, support, a new found appreciation of everything that goes into all the places you visit in Second Life, and of course, the big payoff - celebration and sharing your imagination with the world!  Very fulfilling and worth it.  If I had more money and ideas, I'm sure I would do it again.  ...I hope this article helped you some, and gave you a bit more perspective on the matter.  Here's to your dreams coming true as well!

Additional Information:

SLURL:
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Zamargad/143/108/21

URLs:
https://tinyurl.com/go2djxd
http://blog.zoha-islands.com/request-form/

Group:
^v^/<|;) (Group Key: 0dceeb4c-62ab-9436-ca6a-5f46106681b4)

Avatar Social Network:
http://www.avatarsocialnetwork.com/profile/MajikVixen
http://www.avatarsocialnetwork.com/ASNpage/BatsOutOfHats
https://asners.com/MajikVixen

MajikVixen (bluevioletvixen.lorefield)
Email: MajikVixen@GMail.com

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