Long time no see

[Ironchef Cook]

I noticed a post on theverge about SL and I started to reminisce.  I haven't been active since around '04/'05.

Any pioneers still around?

[Ironchef Cook]

I noticed a post on theverge about SL and I started to reminisce.  I haven't been active since around '04/'05.

Any pioneers still around?

[Amethyst Jetaime]

Actually there are. 

Although my own rez year was 2006, I know a number of people with rez years earlier than mine.  There are also a number who were around in the early years that are still here, just in different avatars with later rez dates than there original one.

You should log in and check out SL now.  You'll find it much changed since 2005 with advances in tech and the addition of residents from all over the world.  Just like RL there is good and bad to be found as SL is not a perfect world by any means.  The bad is the Lindens have gone into hiding and its rare to see much less interact with one in world.  They also rarely communicate with residents anymore and no longer seem to listen to what residents want, need, or think.  The good is that the look of SL is much more realistic  and it still remains a place where you can be who ever you want to be and do or create most anything you want.  The only limit is still your imagination.

 

[Ironchef Cook]

I noticed the 'viewer' has changed a lot. Also noticed an old buddy has the tag Charter member while I have Lifetime. I wonder what's the difference. I still see I have the alotted 4096m^2. What happened to the land auctions? It used to be so busy.

[Ironchef Cook]

Haha wow. Noticed a few of my builds from Burning Life/Burning Halloween are on a wiki. 

http://secondlife.wikia.com/wiki/File:Burning_Life_2003_-_Bizzare_Ritual.jpg

http://secondlife.wikia.com/wiki/File:Burning_Halloween_001_by_Ironchef_Cook.jpg

Is Burning Life still a thing?

 

 

[Freya Mokusei]

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Ironchef Cook wrote:

Is Burning Life still a thing?

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Kinda. LL walked away from it, it's now managed by a private group and is called Burn2.

This hasn't slowed it down much, it's still a pretty great place to end up at.

Cool pics too, by the way.

[Phil Deakins]

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Ironchef Cook wrote:

I noticed the 'viewer' has changed a lot. Also noticed an old buddy has the tag Charter member while I have Lifetime. I wonder what's the difference. I still see I have the alotted 4096m^2. What happened to the land auctions? It used to be so busy.

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Coincidentally, someone who is a 'lifetime' member started a thread here very recently to ask if he could sell his 4096 allowance, so that's another old one who is still around - although I think he may have been returning too.

Charter and lifetime memberships were gone by the time I arrived in 2006 - and the stipend was down to 300L - but I can make a guess at a difference between the two. My guess is that lifetime members came after charter members - or vice versa I can't guess at any other differences though. There may be none. It may just be a word change.

[Dhuanolil]

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Amethyst Jetaime wrote:

Although my own rez year was 2006, I know a number of people with rez years earlier than mine.  There are also a number who were around in the early years that are still here, just in different avatars with later rez dates than there original one.

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The same is true for me. I joined in mid-2006, but I am still around...just in newer accounts. Most of the people I roleplay with originally joined SL between '06-'08 and are still around, but in younger accounts.

[Venus Petrov]

Why don't you step inside the world and see for yourself how it is?  You may need to update your appearance but you will find that many things have changed and many things are still the same.

Welcome back!

[Freya Mokusei]

Here's a quick, completely non-authoritive chart compiled by one of the spots at the 10th Second Life Birthday (SL10B) this year, showing the rez dates of the visitors.

I've never been to an SL Birthday though, and I know many others also who wouldn't bother. So I'm sure there's a lot of variance, this chart was just interesting to find.

Chart obviously doesn't know the difference between a new account and a returning user. It's safe to assume there's some deviation based on this, also.

[Yasmine Melodie]

Makes me wonder what happened to cause such a growth spurt in 06/07. And why did the uptake die

off just as quickly?

 

[Freya Mokusei]

Hype is the shortest answer. Longer answers would fill textbooks.

But also, remember that you're looking at skewed data. SL avatars with only one or two years behind them might not even know SL*B exists - it wasn't promoted very much, and they have their own interests. Meanwhile those with a few more years under their belts are more likely to be nostalgic or invested in seeing the 'growth' of the wider community. Not absolutes, but there's plenty of distortion in the chart.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

LL did a lot of advertising and launched a massive publicity campaign. Second Life got a lot of press and was the media darling.  Corps were coming in by the dozen, and there were even TV shoes that used SL in some of their episodes that year and the next.  It was the 'new frontier' and SL was the cutting edge cool place to be.

In many ways SL was a fad in the wider world of RL.  Corps soon found out they couldn't sell anything or market to residents. Residents didn't want to be reminded of RL and what money they had to spend they preferred spending with SL businesses run by other residents rather than enriching the corps and commercializing SL.  A lot of people that joined in SL didn't stay due to the learning curve.  People in general are fickle and moved on to the next big thing.

 

[Perrie Juran]

This reminded me of something but I can't find links.  Maybe someone with a better memory or search ability than me can find the info.

This may have been when LL was changing their abandoned land practices but I recall there were some questions asked about 'heritage' land and LL had said they were endeavoring to contact the people who owned 'lifetime' parcels.

Does this ring a bell for anyone else?

 

[Czari Zenovka]

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Ironchef Cook wrote:

I noticed a post on theverge about SL and I started to reminisce.  I haven't been active since around '04/'05.

Any pioneers still around?

---

Good to see a pioneer posting.   I've only been on SL since May of 2007, but I read a bit about what SL was like in earlier years in "Second Life: The Official Guide" (purchased when I first began SL), and I salute you and others from back then.  Many of us complain about the wide jumps between tier levels but reading about "The Tea Crate Rebellion of July '03" to protest the prim tax was an eye-opener!

The other day I was looking up the profiles of people I remembered from "The Forum Cartel" (a group and in world hangout created by some of the regulars on the "old forums"  - the ones prior to these...there have been 3 iterations of the forums iirc - created around 2007.  Although I don't see them posting on these forums much anymore (many have gone to a third party SL forum), I was so pleased to see a good number of them active or re-active in SL and a good number of them began in 2005-2006.

Oh, over the years there has been a trend for especially newer SL residents to refer to SL as "a game."  While I was checking out the date of the Tea Crate Rebellion, I happened upon a great quote by Philip Linden, "I'm not building a game, I'm building a new country."

 

[Czari Zenovka]

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Ironchef Cook wrote:

I noticed the 'viewer' has changed a lot. Also noticed an old buddy has the tag Charter member while I have Lifetime. I wonder what's the difference. I still see I have the alotted 4096m^2. What happened to the land auctions? It used to be so busy.

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Ah, the viewer will spark a lot of discussion.   It changed from what was called v 1.23 when I began in 2007 to a horrendous mish-mash called Version 2 when a guy named Mark Kingdon was CEO of LL and wanted to turn LL into Facetwit.  After an uproar by many (and his being replaced by current CEO Rodvik Linden aka Rod Humble), the current official viewer is Version 3.  Many of us "oldbies" prefer the old school look, thus there are a number of great third party viewers some of which are Viewer 2 style but incorporate a bunch of features not present in the official viewer as well as some with the Viewer 1.23 interface that still have the new wonderful features.  I personally use the Singularity viewer and LOVE it!!!  The most used viewer currently is called Firestorm.

[Czari Zenovka]

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Venus Petrov wrote:

Why don't you step inside the world and see for yourself how it is?  You may need to update your appearance but you will find that many things have changed and many things are still the same.

Welcome back!

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Or maybe not - I know of several oldbies who are content creators and have the same avatar they began with; one being an amazing scripter I met when taking classes in Gimp.  His "signature" is pink bunny slippers.

[Czari Zenovka]

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Amethyst Jetaime wrote:

LL did a lot of advertising and launched a massive publicity campaign. Second Life got a lot of press and was the media darling.  Corps were coming in by the dozen, and there were even TV shoes that used SL in some of their episodes that year and the next.  It was the 'new frontier' and SL was the cutting edge cool place to be.

 

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This article that, iirc first ran in paper form in Fortune Magazine, about Anshe Chung becoming the first person to become a RL millionaire from being a SL land baron was part of the draw and, imo, the boom that was seen in 2007.  One of the most asked questions in the Resident Answers section of the old forums was, "Ok, I'm here in SL; how do I make the big money."

[Ironchef Cook]

Ah yeah, the Tea Crate rebellion. I remember those times. I forgot most of the details but it was centered around the Americana sim. 

I logged in last night and I still have screenshots of the countdown when Americana went down. That was a great sim. There was a replica of Fenway Park. A whole neighborhood with a diner and a fire dept. Great times.

Back then the system was much different. There was a monthly fee of $14.95, there was no tie in with real life cash (which made for a much much less greedy community), and you were taxed for every prim you rezzed. Land was very easy to grab and if you had the L$, you could have a huge piece of property and rez a whole more prims.

I even wrote some auto rezzer scripts that would automatically create a high rise building on the fly.

I remember me and Charlie Omega would go to the sandbox and do some physics experiments by linking chains across the entire sims and then turning the physics on. We crashed many sims back in the day. Good times.

 

 

[Ironchef Cook]

Anshe was a **bleep**. She would deliberately buy up land, terraform it to make it look like an eyesore to neighboring residents, split up the parcels, and sell them off. She would do tactics to try to make others move out so she could buy up more land. Greedy ass with no class. 

[Shelby Silverspar]

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Yasmine Melodie wrote:

Makes me wonder what happened to cause such a growth spurt in 06/07. And why did the uptake die

off just as quickly?

---

that's when LL started offering free memberships.

[Czari Zenovka]

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Ironchef Cook wrote:

Anshe was a **bleep**. She would deliberately buy up land, terraform it to make it look like an eyesore to neighboring residents, split up the parcels, and sell them off. She would do tactics to try to make others move out so she could buy up more land. Greedy ass with no class. 

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Sounds like the way many in RL become wealthy.  Not everyone (before I get jumped for this) and maybe not even most...but it's disappointing to hear.

Love hearing anecdotes from you.  Honestly, in many ways, I would prefer the SL of 2007. *Puts on flame retardant clothing and wields a fire extinguisher for that remark.*  I honestly had more fun back then, even with less "features."  Interestingly, a good friend of mine who just began SL a little over a year ago and whose friends are primarily "oldbies" says that he wishes he could have been here in 2007ish as well.  Maybe someone or a group could build a "SL Old School" sim.  Or go to one of the competitors, InWorldz, although IW now has advanced beyond SL of 2007 in that they now have sculpties (and probably other things) and were working toward mesh the last I heard.

[cinda Hoodoo]

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Shelby Silverspar wrote:

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Yasmine Melodie wrote:

Makes me wonder what happened to cause such a growth spurt in 06/07. And why did the uptake die

off just as quickly?

---

that's when LL started offering free memberships.

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...and there went the neighborhood. Land of alts and despicable land trashers came to be the new SL. Sad too, in the beginning there were people that took pride in not only what they owned, but also in their own avatar, and could see the cause and affect of "free" alts in the game. There once was a time when you could afford only one reputation.