I miss the Second Life of old

[Phil Deakins]

I agree with you about Linden Homes, and about the reason. I posted against them at the time. Another change was the marketplace, which caused untold numbers of in-world stores to close. I also posted against it at the time.

All three of those, pre-mesh, pre-Linden Homes, and pre- marketplace, were the old days for many people, and all three changed the Second Life world for the worse. I don't miss any of them though, but it's a pity than newer users never knew the SL of old.

 

[Hysteria Chastity]

things I miss from way back    

Yardsales    I used to love going round them    why did they stop being a thing  ?

Cheap land 

Most people were more friendly than thesedays  imo  

Camping at the casios  it was how I got my L$  lol

Things I don't miss

Super bad Lag    in some  actully most places trying to move was impossible 

Thursday day/eve  down time for maintainace  😬

AD farms   those were everywhere  at onepoint 

noobs walking around with massive apendages( sp)  asking for sex etc 

 

[Ina Fairport]

1 hour ago, Hysteria Chastity said:

things I miss from way back    

Yardsales    I used to love going round them    why did they stop being a thing  ?

Cheap land 

Most people were more friendly than thesedays  imo  

Camping at the casios  it was how I got my L$  lol

Things I don't miss

Super bad Lag    in some  actully most places trying to move was impossible 

Thursday day/eve  down time for maintainace  😬

AD farms   those were everywhere  at onepoint 

noobs walking around with massive apendages( sp)  asking for sex etc 

 

I miss the yardsales too
And the friendly and approachable people

The weekly downtime...lol. When SL was back online everyone tried to login at the same time. It took 15 minutes to get online. And with the first tp you crashed and could start all over again 🤓
 

[Sid Nagy]

Wednesday maintenance down time, Thursday or Friday roll back time, weekends lag as hell.
Next week... rinse and repeat.
Those where the days..... 😂

And I agree, it was a lot easier to meet new people.
Now most people are settled and more concentrating on their own circles.

[EliseAnne85]

12 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

 weekends lag as hell.
 

So many people have said LAG in this thread.  Was that because of Dial-Up?  My ex-husband and I were early adopters of cable and I had no lag.  Probably because there weren't that many people on cable at that time.  

Edited April 5, 2023 by EliseAnne85

[Lindal Kidd]

2 hours ago, Hysteria Chastity said:

things I miss from way back    

...

Cheap land 

You have to be kidding, right? Land prices, and more importantly prices per prim, have come WAY down. Fees on things like buying and selling $L have gone up to compensate.

(Unless you meant ASKING prices for Mainland parcels. Desirable land, e.g. around the Blake Sea, is VERY expensive. Or at least, the would-be sellers would like it to be.)

[Love Zhaoying]

Just now, Lindal Kidd said:

You have to be kidding, right? Land prices, and more importantly prices per prim, have come WAY down. Fees on things like buying and selling $L have gone up to compensate.

(Unless you meant ASKING prices for Mainland parcels. Desirable land, e.g. around the Blake Sea, is VERY expensive. Or at least, the would-be sellers would like it to be.)

I saw that there were quotes where the poster was apparently looking for land that had water access.

I think if one looks for land without requiring "road access", "on accessible water", etc. then they will certainly find those lower prices!

[Sid Nagy]

 

3 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

You have to be kidding, right? Land prices, and more importantly prices per prim, have come WAY down. Fees on things like buying and selling $L have gone up to compensate.

(Unless you meant ASKING prices for Mainland parcels. Desirable land, e.g. around the Blake Sea, is VERY expensive. Or at least, the would-be sellers would like it to be.)

Blake Sea prices come with vanity surcharge.
The soil there is no better or worse than elsewhere in SL.

Once Blake Sea was special, because water to sail. But now with all the Belli water one can sail until one gets bored without passing the same water sim twice during a tour.

[Phil Deakins]

1 hour ago, Lindal Kidd said:

You have to be kidding, right? Land prices [...] have come WAY down.

Absolutely true. When I used to rent out skyboxes, ordinary 512m parcel were anything from 5000L$ up. I even sold some at 7500L$. By 'ordinary', I mean not sea front or anything special. Two days ago I bought a 512 for 344L$ and I have no doubt that there are cheaper ones around. I tried the auction for a 512 and lost it to 620L$. There are many much higher than those figures, but not as high as they were back then.

[Sid Nagy]

Land on private sims goes for 0L$ per m2. Just saying.
In 2007 that was unthinkable too.

Edited April 5, 2023 by Sid Nagy

[Phil Deakins]

17 hours ago, Sid Nagy said:

Land on private sims goes for 0L$ per m2. Just saying.
In 2007 that was unthinkable too.

It wasn't unthinkable back then. It was very common. Private sim owners offered parcels for sale for 0L and 1L just to get renters. The buyers became the parcel owners in the About Land box and had ongoing payments to make, but, unlike mainland, the sim owners(the actual owners) could take it back any time they wanted to. They called the payments tier so that the buyers thought they were actually buying the land, but they weren't.

Edited April 6, 2023 by Phil Deakins

[Sid Nagy]

Sorry but I beg to differ on this Phil.

I hated mainland from day one,  so I orientated on private estates pretty soon after arrival in March 2007.
There were 2 things different than now in 2023: There was a waiting lists for new private regions with Linden Lab of several weeks before one could get one delivered freshly out of the box (1000 USD) and there was a purchase price for the land, payed to the barons, with different prices for land inside, water view and region corners. And they were no peanut prices either. Mostly, when one added up all the parcels the price came close to the initial set up fee for a sim.
Abandoning land was the last thing one would do, you sold it on to the next person, just like mainland. There was land shortage during the 2007-2008 boom.
I never owned land in that time, I always rented on private land the first years I was in SL.  Barons like Azure and Anshe sold land, there were other mostly smaller businesses that bought their parcels and then started to rent them out.

Later on, when it was much easier to get new regions, when the biggest boom was over and LL started to clearly cut better deals for bigger land barons, the prices of land sank slowly to 0L$ like nowadays. I think that was 2008/2009. The same time when most mainland dropped in purchase price to 1 - 5 L$ per m2 (except for the regions who still have a lot of vanity surcharge like the Blake Sea regions).
The middle man who rented the land out disappeared over the time and Azure, Anshe, Count Burks, Zoha and the whole lot started to lease their land themselves directly to customers.

Edited April 6, 2023 by Sid Nagy
It is my Saturday hobby to edit my texts. Also available on Thursdays..

[Phil Deakins]

@Sid Nagy

I owned mainland from January 2007 on. for commerce. I remember considering buying another parcel for my partner and myself, some of which was on private islands, and the prices were pretty much the same as mainland. At that time I didn't understand it all. Not long afterwards, I discovered land priced at 0L and 1L. There were lots of parcels like that. That's when I started to understand it

After all this time, I can't guarantee that that was in 2007, but it was certainly before 2009. Nevertheless, I do think it was later in 2007. Either way, there lots of private island parcels priced at 0L and 1L back in those days

 

[PheebyKatz]

For what it's worth, a friend of mine who's always been a gigantic Lycan decided to try on a human avatar for ease of access to buildings and other places. He asked me where he should try to find a decent human avatar. I told him to find his Library folder, try things on, and see if he could cobble something together like everyone did back in the day. Like I did when I joined.

He is now rocking a classic avi and learning the real joys of Second Life. Every other thing he types is "WOW". I've already got him trying to make a bazooka fire a nuke.

I have to say, the purple Tripp pants with all the flexi streamer detailing are a freaking masterpiece of that loving creative force that I still feel every time I put on my Sauin horns (I've never found better ones for me for any money), or mow down a cadre of Soviet Victory zombies with something I made out of the old Popgun's innards seven years ago.

Nobody puts that kind of loving detail into things like people who build with prims do.

One of my best friends builds gigantic starships out of prims. People have their weekly roleplay on board these enourmous piles of prims, and they enjoy it very much. They aren't products from some marketplace, imported into our world all smooth and sleek and cheaty on the LOD; they're living works of collaborative art that people actually get to use, enjoy, and inhabit.

And they look just as good as the ones on TV and in the movies.

If you miss the old days, I think you might just be letting your social circle dry up. Nobody's going to hand you a replacement for the good old days. You made them yourself. Make them again. It's what I and all of my friends do. To Gehenna with what anyone thinks of what you build and play with, because if they don't get it, their opinion is irrelevant anyway. Make SL fun again, and don't worry about it.

Edited April 6, 2023 by PheebyKatz

[Polenth Yue]

Yard sales do much better now than the past. Gacha meant an increase in good quality transfer items, so suddenly there were more yard sales. The inworld search will bring up everything from large market/mall yard sales to little individual ones to temporary ones where someone's just trying to clear out their inventory. Go forth and yard sale if you loved them in the past.

Cheap land is also everywhere, especially now the auctions have started back up. It's getting all that abandoned land back in circulation.

Some stuff from the past does disappear, but sometimes it's more that it's just in a different place now.

Edited April 6, 2023 by Polenth Yue

[AnthonyJoanne]

I wrote an absolute wall of text ... and decided to reduce it:

When I first arrived in SL (a few years before this avatar was created) I was blown away by the potential.

During the years that followed I watched that potential flower. I shall illustrate with a single example:

Once, if you wanted a pair of black patent shoes ... the only way to make them look shiny was to bake a fake-reflection into the texture. And to be honest it never looked that good. Actually if I'm being really honest ... it looked AWFUL from the wrong angle.

But then we got ... materials! And you could actually make your shoes shiny! There were (still are) limitations to it ... but it was a vast improvement.

Recently I saw an advert for pair of shoes that I thought were something a bit different ... so I went looking for them. Only to find that they are no-mod and use that hideous old-school pseudo-reflection. I was more than a little shocked ... so I did some exploring. A lot  of creators are doing that now.

I can't imagine why ... it still looks terrible, in my opinion. People are buying them though ... and if they like them, fair enough.

In truth, it seems to me that SL achieved as much of it's potential as it was going to  and is now backsliding in some ways. Experiences are mostly a dead mechanism. Animesh never did fulfill it's promise, sadly. Some people did really impressive things with EEP ... but most haven't bothered.

"Back in the day" the potential was yet to be explored ... now it has been, and in some ways, it's been wasted.

At least that's how I see it.

[Rolig Loon]

Like many features of SL, I think the use of materials is far from being uniform.  I run into quite a lot of things with materials, but I do notice that they are perhaps less common on clothing than, say, vehicles or decorative items.  If I had to make a broad brush guess, it might be that creators who are texturing cookie cutter mesh objects that they've imported from elsewhere are less likely to put materials on them than creators who design unique items specifically for SL.  Maybe.  In any case, I think it's too early to be discouraged.

As for Experiences, yes: their use has been limited by the fact that we don't yet have grid-wide ones. That said, I have been to quite a few places -- other than Bellisseria, where Linden Lab uses Experiences throughout -- where I've been asked to accept an Experience.  I was in a new -- to me -- store just yesterday that did. 

Some new technologies spread rapidly, others only gradually. And some are "bridge" technologies that start out with promise but are then  tossed aside by better ideas.  Think of what happened to sculpties, for example, which surged for a while until we got true mesh.  We may see the same thing as PBR arrives, perhaps giving creators a reason to look more imaginatively at textures, including materials.  Who knows?

[Cali Souther]

I miss the friends I had when I first came to Second Life.  We came over from another chat program and had so much fun exploring and learning.  It was a laugh a minute back then!! 

[PheebyKatz]

3 hours ago, AnthonyJoanne said:

I wrote an absolute wall of text ... and decided to reduce it:

When I first arrived in SL (a few years before this avatar was created) I was blown away by the potential.

During the years that followed I watched that potential flower. I shall illustrate with a single example:

Once, if you wanted a pair of black patent shoes ... the only way to make them look shiny was to bake a fake-reflection into the texture. And to be honest it never looked that good. Actually if I'm being really honest ... it looked AWFUL from the wrong angle.

But then we got ... materials! And you could actually make your shoes shiny! There were (still are) limitations to it ... but it was a vast improvement.

Recently I saw an advert for pair of shoes that I thought were something a bit different ... so I went looking for them. Only to find that they are no-mod and use that hideous old-school pseudo-reflection. I was more than a little shocked ... so I did some exploring. A lot  of creators are doing that now.

I can't imagine why ... it still looks terrible, in my opinion. People are buying them though ... and if they like them, fair enough.

In truth, it seems to me that SL achieved as much of it's potential as it was going to  and is now backsliding in some ways. Experiences are mostly a dead mechanism. Animesh never did fulfill it's promise, sadly. Some people did really impressive things with EEP ... but most haven't bothered.

"Back in the day" the potential was yet to be explored ... now it has been, and in some ways, it's been wasted.

At least that's how I see it.

Well, if it's all crap, you always have the option of finding something better and doing that. Sorry it sucks  so bad for you. It's what we make of it, and it's a shame you haven't been able to make more of it.

I don't really recall anyone promising me anything, so I'm not disappointed at all that I can make statues dance. We use our Experience key on my home sim to make everything better for our visitors. Being able to ride a trolley on a tour and not have to click for permission to teleport 20 times is just worthles to some people, I guess.

Yeah, you know, I'm starting to see it your way, I think. These people need to just go above and beyond and amaze me with what they have to offer me all the time, so I can just pooh-pooh it all and complain that it's not good enough, and yet, here I am, stuck with it, because I am not free.

Pff. You know better. You're in it for the same reason I am. I've never found anything better. You're not fooling me. If it was really so pathetically disappointing, you wouldn't even be here.

*laughs insanely and flies away to play in the magical kingdom*

HAHAHHAHAAAAAAAA~!

Edited April 7, 2023 by PheebyKatz

[Aethelwine]

We have more realism now, but some of the sense of fun has gone. With advanced lighting, invisiprims don't work and our boats look like they are full of water. Our full bright hair looks wrong. Once someone pointed out that our flexi hair goes through our bodies looking ugly, we can't unsee it. The boxes of free dances, I now know were copybotted. 

With progress and learning more, there is a sense of loss of innocence and wonder.

But I wouldn't turn the clock back, because progress it is.

 

 

[Ags Falconer]

On 3/29/2023 at 8:24 PM, Love Zhaoying said:

We ARE wonderful!

Yes, you are, @Love Zhaoying!!

[Ags Falconer]

What I miss most are some of the regions that were built just for exploring and some visual elegance. I remember someone built the spaceship Firefly-- very cool. A big hilly landscape with roaming sheeps and a lake. A forest dense and lush. 

I can't find those now.

Otherwise, I still like the people (you know who you are) and the experiences. 

 

[Madelaine McMasters]

Any nostalgia I feel for the "good old days" is really just my endless desire to be a newbie.

It's up to me to make that happen.

 

[Love Zhaoying]

On 4/4/2023 at 6:45 AM, Phil Deakins said:

I agree with you about Linden Homes, and about the reason. I posted against them at the time. Another change was the marketplace, which caused untold numbers of in-world stores to close. I also posted against it at the time.

All three of those, pre-mesh, pre-Linden Homes, and pre- marketplace, were the old days for many people, and all three changed the Second Life world for the worse. I don't miss any of them though, but it's a pity than newer users never knew the SL of old.

 

Yet..all three may have contributed to Second Life's growth. 

And, Second Life did not "die" as a result from any of the three (yet).

Disagree? 

[Coffee Pancake]

56 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

Any nostalgia I feel for the "good old days" is really just my endless desire to be a newbie.

It's up to me to make that happen.

 

Everything was so much easier then.