First Generation Linden Homes

[diamond Marchant]

The first generation Linden Homes appeared in 2010 and consists of (in the ball park of) 1100 regions. A region may contain (in the ball park of) 40 to 50 512 sqm parcels. These regions are connected and isolated as four island continents which also may contain sandboxes and connected protected water. There are four pre-mesh home themes. The landscaping and road infrastructure is minimalist.

When Bellisseria was released  in 2019 April, first generation residents had the option of abandoning their current home and selecting a Bellisseria home, assuming they had they had sufficient tier available. This option remains today. As of 3/2/2023, the website-who-shall-not-be-named reports that 14,767 residents remain.

@Patch Linden recently posted

Quote

We did big launches on those particular themes to propel INVENTORY. When we pull the plug on the V1 Linden Homes, which is still coming and going to happen, we will need the home inventory to accommodate for the people who will eventually be displaced from those homes.

This strategery [sic] prompts a few questions.

1. Why will the plug be pulled on V1 Linden Homes? You have 14K+ residents paying for memberships and spread out over 1100 regions. That is (in the ball park of) 12 per region. What is the problem?

2. Why develop Bellisseria for any purpose other than to provide compelling homes for NEW residents or residents that might want to upgrade from the current 512/1024 paradigm?

It would seem wise to NOT compromise Bellisseria development with first generation considerations. Why not let the first generation homes die a natural death? Today I observed that there are less than 50 avatars active across  a V1 continent. Does this not suggest an opportunity to reduce server resources and turn V1 land into a cash cow, so long as it exists?

UPDATE: Thanks to Nika for pointing out that 4 V1 continents exist, 1 due east of Jeogeot and 3 due south.

Edited March 2, 2023 by diamond Marchant
corrected continent and region count, ty Nika

[Nika Talaj]

20 minutes ago, diamond Marchant said:

The first generation Linden Homes appeared in 2010 and consists of (in the ball park of) 400 regions. A region may contain (in the ball park of) 40 to 50 512 sqm parcels. These regions are connected and isolated as an island continent which also contains sandboxes and connected protected water.

AFAIK, there are four v1 Linden Home continents.  Below I list the names of the most northwest region in each, with my guestimate of the approximate number of regions in that continent. (These are probably low; I find it difficult to estimate because the continent shapes are very irregular).

• Crescent Fresh: ~225 regions
• Bidwell: ~306
• Annadel: ~288
• Cape Ekim: ~288

Guestimated total regions: 1107

[AzureWaves]

The problem with 1st gen is there's no community like on Bellisseria. It's not connected. And it doesn't represent current SL well, all of the stuff is old.

[Evangeline Arcadia]

Patch said right from the beginning of the new homes project that the plan is to migrate residents from the first gen homes to the new ones, and scrap those (although it's been asked a few times to preserve some of the public locations for history). So they need to get to a point where there are enough spare homes to accomodate everyone. I don't think they're there yet (I think the homes proved more popular than they may have anticipated).

Of course, that could change, but somehow I doubt it. As AzureWaves points out they're too dated, and I don't think they would really incentivise users to go for Premium the way the new homes have.

Edited March 2, 2023 by Evangeline Arcadia

[Polenth Yue]

It always seemed obvious to me that they were building a surplus of as many themes as they could, so that they'd have enough to deal with closing the old regions. For some themes, the initial release is enough, and for others they need to build more. Also it was clear they wanted a variety of themes, so they could appeal to different niches, rather than just building one mainstream theme and having all the houses be that theme. Only one theme would ultimately mean fewer subscribers, because of the lack of choice. It doesn't matter that some themes aren't as popular, because those themes will have fewer houses in the end. It all balances out.

I don't understand the narrative that this is a tragedy. The terribleness of being able to go to the land page and have a choice of houses waiting, instead of having to use a page autoloader for six months and hoping you're awake and can press the buttons fast enough when a house finally appears.

[Istelathis]

If I were to theorycraft, I would think it is because it is less expensive to have us all using the same servers. I'm not sure how many regions a server can host, or how they are configured but I would guess that because they are different continents the original homes are running on separate servers.  The newer regions may have been designed in such a way so as to take less resources, who knows?  This is all speculation on my part, perhaps they just want to maintain an image, and the old houses no longer fit part of that image.

[diamond Marchant]

56 minutes ago, AzureWaves said:

The problem with 1st gen is there's no community like on Bellisseria.

I  believe that community in Second Life is based on common interest, not location. We are free to pursue any interest or activity in SL regardless of where we rez our things.

49 minutes ago, Evangeline Arcadia said:

So they need to get to a point where there are enough spare homes to accomodate everyone.

My question is, why? The 14K+ V1 residents have not chosen to relocate to Bellisseria.

35 minutes ago, Polenth Yue said:

The terribleness of being able to go to the land page and have a choice of houses waiting, instead of having to use a page autoloader for six months and hoping you're awake and can press the buttons fast enough when a house finally appears.

If by this you mean that it is terrible to not have all themes available, I agree. Might we have all themes available if stockpiling Fantasy Homes for V1 residents was not a priority?

23 minutes ago, Istelathis said:

If I were to theorycraft, I would think it is because it is less expensive to have us all using the same servers.

I went to a region on each of the four V1 continents and found them all to be running Second Life Server 2023-01-20.577734, same as on my Mainland region.

[Istelathis]

9 minutes ago, diamond Marchant said:

I went to a region on each of the four V1 continents and found them all to be running Second Life Server 2023-01-20.577734, same as on my Mainland region.

I'm not sure how it works, but is that the physical server or the software version of that the server is running on?  I have always wondered that, when I move from different regions and get the pop up message stating that I have crossed into another version of the server - on OpenSim I know it happens when I move from different regions running different versions of opensim, but haven't an idea why I get that message in SL.  

Edited March 2, 2023 by Istelathis

[Patch Linden]

2 hours ago, diamond Marchant said:

The first generation Linden Homes appeared in 2010 and consists of (in the ball park of) 1100 regions. A region may contain (in the ball park of) 40 to 50 512 sqm parcels. These regions are connected and isolated as four island continents which also may contain sandboxes and connected protected water. There are four pre-mesh home themes. The landscaping and road infrastructure is minimalist.

When Bellisseria was released  in 2019 April, first generation residents had the option of abandoning their current home and selecting a Bellisseria home, assuming they had they had sufficient tier available. This option remains today. As of 3/2/2023, the website-who-shall-not-be-named reports that 14,767 residents remain.

@Patch Linden recently posted

This strategery [sic] prompts a few questions.

1. Why will the plug be pulled on V1 Linden Homes? You have 14K+ residents paying for memberships and spread out over 1100 regions. That is (in the ball park of) 12 per region. What is the problem?

2. Why develop Bellisseria for any purpose other than to provide compelling homes for NEW residents or residents that might want to upgrade from the current 512/1024 paradigm?

It would seem wise to NOT compromise Bellisseria development with first generation considerations. Why not let the first generation homes die a natural death? Today I observed that there are less than 50 avatars active across  a V1 continent. Does this not suggest an opportunity to reduce server resources and turn V1 land into a cash cow, so long as it exists?

UPDATE: Thanks to Nika for pointing out that 4 V1 continents exist, 1 due east of Jeogeot and 3 due south.

 

Psssst!    Don't tell them, the numbers are off (but not by far!).   As of this moment there are 15,114 first gen Linden Homes occupied out of 41,730.  

1) For all the reasons.  The web code that drives them is ancient, as old as they are and probably being run on an emulated ColecoVision - not scalable.  The build technique employed in making them and their features is outdated.  We have sufficiently attrited the resources used within the themes and cannot update them - there is no update system built into them (a key component of the new homes ie. new floorplans anyone?).   The web services that drive them are deprecated out of existence.  Survey data tells us repeatedly that they were and continue to be overcrowded, lacking in options and overdue for an update.

2) Because we need to replace the old homes with modernized homes using the latest content production techniques and iterate on new web services that are cloud based/friendly and native.  Eliminate all the issues described in #1 and more.

They already are slowly dying a natural death.  We still pay for all the empty space the unoccupied homes maintain.  At some point I will determine it is untenable to maintain that cost going forward.  That point is approaching.

[Love Zhaoying]

I can see it now, huge "CONDEMNED" signs in the sky!!

[benchthis]

28 minutes ago, Patch Linden said:

3 hours ago, diamond Marchant said:

The first generation Linden Homes appeared in 2010 and consists of (in the ball park of) 1100 regions. A region may contain (in the ball park of) 40 to 50 512 sqm parcels. These regions are connected and isolated as four island continents which also may contain sandboxes and connected protected water. There are four pre-mesh home themes. The landscaping and road infrastructure is minimalist.

When Bellisseria was released  in 2019 April, first generation residents had the option of abandoning their current home and selecting a Bellisseria home, assuming they had they had sufficient tier available. This option remains today. As of 3/2/2023, the website-who-shall-not-be-named reports that 14,767 residents remain.

@Patch Linden recently posted

This strategery [sic] prompts a few questions.

1. Why will the plug be pulled on V1 Linden Homes? You have 14K+ residents paying for memberships and spread out over 1100 regions. That is (in the ball park of) 12 per region. What is the problem?

2. Why develop Bellisseria for any purpose other than to provide compelling homes for NEW residents or residents that might want to upgrade from the current 512/1024 paradigm?

It would seem wise to NOT compromise Bellisseria development with first generation considerations. Why not let the first generation homes die a natural death? Today I observed that there are less than 50 avatars active across  a V1 continent. Does this not suggest an opportunity to reduce server resources and turn V1 land into a cash cow, so long as it exists?

UPDATE: Thanks to Nika for pointing out that 4 V1 continents exist, 1 due east of Jeogeot and 3 due south.

Expand  

 

Psssst!    Don't tell them, the numbers are off (but not by far!).   As of this moment there are 15,114 first gen Linden Homes occupied out of 41,730.  

1) For all the reasons.  The web code that drives them is ancient, as old as they are and probably being run on an emulated ColecoVision - not scalable.  The build technique employed in making them and their features is outdated.  We have sufficiently attrited the resources used within the themes and cannot update them - there is no update system built into them (a key component of the new homes ie. new floorplans anyone?).   The web services that drive them are deprecated out of existence.  Survey data tells us repeatedly that they were and continue to be overcrowded, lacking in options and overdue for an update.

2) Because we need to replace the old homes with modernized homes using the latest content production techniques and iterate on new web services that are cloud based/friendly and native.  Eliminate all the issues described in #1 and more.

They already are slowly dying a natural death.  We still pay for all the empty space the unoccupied homes maintain.  At some point I will determine it is untenable to maintain that cost going forward.  That point is approaching.

RIP v1 Linden Homes. Wonders of the 15,114 how many of those have not logged in for 6 months, just out of curiosity. 

I thought the plan was to move the v1 residents into campers that are 512, the fantasy is 1024? Will they be auto upgraded but grandfathered in price and benefits? Wonders how many unoccupied homes there are in v2, just out of curiosity. 

[benchthis]

17 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I can see it now, huge "CONDEMNED" signs in the sky!!

maybe they can turn some of it into creepy M-A rated sandboxes. 

edit: not for adult stuff persay but just freedom to build crazy post linden v1 apocalypse style. Spray paint huds  

but if it's using older tech and would benefit the worlds power to get rid of them they were good v1 thank goodness for v2 performance rocks. 

Edited March 2, 2023 by benchthis

[Polenth Yue]

3 hours ago, diamond Marchant said:

If by this you mean that it is terrible to not have all themes available, I agree. Might we have all themes available if stockpiling Fantasy Homes for V1 residents was not a priority?

They haven't built new regions for fantasy for some time. There have been multiple new themes and extensions to themes since then. It simply isn't logical to blame fantasy for everything. But this was never about logic. You don't criticise the finances of things you want and like (water regions), only the things you don't want and dislike (fantasy, because it wasn't the sailing experience you wanted). We all have our preferences, but I wish you'd frame it that way, rather than making this out to be about the greater good.

At some point, we all have to accept that they will spend money on things that other residents want and we don't. They're going to need to close the old homes eventually, so it's great if they spend money on making sure there are homes to cover that. It'll benefit a lot of residents and really hasn't been a hardship for people currently in the newer homes.

[diamond Marchant]

11 minutes ago, Polenth Yue said:

You don't criticise the finances of things you want and like (water regions), only the things you don't want and dislike

Please refrain from making things personal or assume you understand the motivations of people.

I do not dislike Fantasy Homes. I have an opinion that Linden Lab is not very good at planning sometimes. In the forum, it should be possible to discuss matters based on the facts as we know them. If my posts upset you, you don't have to read them.

[Istelathis]

3 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I can see it now, huge "CONDEMNED" signs in the sky!!

It would be pretty sweet to have an incursion theme for an EEP,  perhaps some V1 homes being lifted off into the air.

Have one region left over with a home from each theme, with Dr. Strange in the middle maintaining a crystalized force field while saying "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry"

Okay, I'm just playing around but it is fun 😜

[Teresa Firelight]

I wonder how many of these gen1 homeowners are active in SL? some of this may be inactive accounts just waiting to expire. Or maybe even people no longer active in SL who dont realize their premium account auto-renews and who dont want theit finances closely....??

[Eirynne Sieyes]

That makes sense @Teresa Firelight.  I think it is likely that some people still don't know about Belli; some like how empty and unlaggy the old homes are; some just want a place to dress and unpack a box or two; some are creatures of habit; others may want the space to invite residents for game play; some prefer solitude to socialization; some may misunderstand tier, others may not care for decorating or are intimidated by the thought; some may not like the "policing" that goes on in more rule-driven areas; and some may just be plain ol' nuts lol! 

Personally it took me a very long time to move because I didn't like how confining the homes felt.

[Marianne Little]

It is going to be much complaints when the first homes are wiped clean. LL can work hard on reaching all who's living there, and even let them pick the empty home in Bellisseria they want.

LL will not reach all, and the question is how many will they reach, who will get a surprise when they log in. They haven't bothered to read emails, if they still have the email, or any message when they log in, or they have not logged in for years.

So it will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth, no matter how much LL tries to please all.

I think it is enough empty Fantasy and Chalets already, for those who will have them. Over 2000 of each theme. That is about 4500 houses,that leaves 10 000 old house owners left who need to have a home. The best would perhaps be to have at least 5000 Newbrooke ready, since I have a feeling that many first LH owners want something closer to what they have. That, and boats. Boats muct be an improvement? Newbrooke, Boats, Stilts, Victorians, Trads and Log Homes. But I am sure LL has a list over what they are going to build, so we can just guess.

[Marianne Little]

Since you are active in the forum now, @Patch Linden, is it left any Premium themes, or have we got them all?

If I don't want P+ homes, I will buy plain Premium, maybe have two avatars with it, and see what I can get when P+ abandon their Premium homes.

[benchthis]

I wonders if there will be pp+ 2048 linden home abandon waiting list for parcel or will it be a lottery system. I guess could do mainland rental until pp+ opens up could take forever so not sure what sort of system would be in place. We can't wait to see a preview. Maybe a photo preview. 

Boats seem popular. If I had a 2048 boat slip I could use my own boat and build on it, would give bonus prim. That would be worth it for me. A free zone where we can build without being judged. 

[Marianne Little]

24 minutes ago, benchthis said:

I wonders if there will be pp+ 2048 linden home abandon waiting list for parcel or will it be a lottery system. I guess could do mainland rental until pp+ opens up could take forever so not sure what sort of system would be in place. We can't wait to see a preview. Maybe a photo preview. 

Boats seem popular. If I had a 2048 boat slip I could use my own boat and build on it, would give bonus prim. That would be worth it for me. A free zone where we can build without being judged. 

 

I think you can build on a platform up in the allowed height and over, but building on ground will be in conflict with the covenant.

The covenant say LH should not be used as sandboxes. I lay out prims when I make a garden design, to see where the planters go, where I want the edges, stones, terraces and such things. I always hurry to take the landscape mal back to inventory and rez it up on the building platform, before I continue to work with it in Blender.

[Abnor Mole]

35 minutes ago, benchthis said:

If I had a 2048 boat slip I could use my own boat and build on it, would give bonus prim. That would be worth it for me. A free zone where we can build without being judged. 

That's a big reason why the idea of 2048 Houseboat parcels were decided against. We already have enough issues with people pushing the boundaries of building out of theme on the 1024 parcels when we left half of it empty water space. Tripling that amount of space would just exacerbate the problem.

[benchthis]

1 minute ago, Abnor Mole said:

That's a big reason why the idea of 2048 Houseboat parcels were decided against. We already have enough issues with people pushing the boundaries of building out of theme on the 1024 parcels when we left half of it empty water space. Tripling that amount of space would just exacerbate the problem.

These would not be house boats no home required, just boat slips out in the middle of nowhere if needed, but bet they would be popular just start with a center sandbox and build bloat slips just basic docks branching out try to keep the docks connected for golf cart travel. deff be maze type patterns. you guys are great at mazes. Call it junk yard if not to offend the pretty people. It will always be art no matter how it looks to others viewing it. 

[Abnor Mole]

 

[benchthis]

Nowhere would be optimal introduce theme water world pleeease (or consider a betatrial). (A Rated placed far away but optional would be sweet for Yacht parking mostly, nude sunbathing, & swimming. Walkup parcel rentals. Yah I guess your right with the mainland but it's too laggy, bellisseria is optimal, would be fun. You won't have to build anything lol whats not to love about that, wouldn't you love a vacation?? You could retire there? watch over the younglings, make sure they are not building into each others water parcels.  or would that be hell? Linden owns casper now, add rental units all over belllisseria for shopping, candy stores, public creators looking to belong in their communities. I don't know where this ends but hope for few tweaks.

It would have to have zero parcel eject and if you can't find your parcel boundary you don't belong there move somewhere else. So I don't think there will be a problem with crazies. Cut and lease us some quality bellisseria land.  I've heard so many complaints about the state of mainland, land owners begging for quality improvements. I've seen and been there, considering renting, would never, only would if it was not on mainland via island type deal, that's where you come in just give us little islands dotted forever and ever. 

Edited March 3, 2023 by benchthis