SL factbook

[Canoro Philipp]

Early users of Second Life debated the idea of what Second Life was going to be, some wanted a medieval setting, some a science fiction one, some an oriental setting, today, we have all of that and more.

[Caitlin Tobias]

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Kenbro Utu wrote:

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Caitlin Tobias wrote:

... also the frustration on Wednesday-evenings when the grid was closed for maintenance, once open it could take up to 2 hours to finally login. (Evenings for Europeans that is, LL did it of course in their morning...)

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There were times when the grid did not come back up in the scheduled time.  I cannot remember the exact time it was down, but one time it looked as if the "maintenance" was going to run into the weekend.  Anyone remember the longest down time from Wednesday maintenance?  It also seems that invariably, most Wednesdays, someone would come onto the forums bemoaning the fact that they had scheduled a wedding for Wednesday night, having spent tons of Lindens and weeks of preparation for the event, even though everyone knew maintenance day was Wednesday, the grid was never guaranteed to come back up, and usually did not within the predicted time frame.

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I remember one really long downtime indeed. In 2007, I got back from holiday and discovered gambling was forbidden. I worked in a casino then. Ppl went protesting, in front of Governor Linden's Mansion, with signs. Then there was maintenance, grid closed..and it stayed closed till after the weekend (or maybe Sunday, not sure).

At some point we could log in, but not teleport, I think I sat in front of the Governors Mansion for 2 days? LOL.

(too bad I lost most of my pictures from that time when my harddisk crashed...)

 

[Venus Petrov]

Too funny, Cait!  I recall the protests at the Mansion over the rollout of VOICE (scary!).  I took photos of avies carrying signs (it was a silent protest) but, sadly, those photos are gone.

Before voice was rolled out gridwide, one had to go to Help areas to 'hear' each other speak.  You would have thought none of us had ever talked on the phone with anyone EVER.  Such a novelty.  I recall the club owner where I worked (Bladyblue Boomerang) cajoling some of us to go there with her.  We sat around in a huge group of avatars listening to 'voices'. 

/me belly laughs

Good times!

[RockAndRoll Michigan]

Somebody briefly touched on Ruth's origins already, but there is one other fact they didn't mention (unless it was in the video, I admit I didn't watch it)

Ruth was a model for Daz 3D that LL had purchased, and used as the first avatar. The model name actually was Ruth, so they just kept the name for the avatar.

I've heard that Linden World was also initially black-and-white only, color wasn't added until later. When color was implemented there still wasn't an option for streaming audio either, it was a very silent grid. I'm not sure when they added that but it was there in June of 2006 when I first signed up.

There was also a school named Teazer University that is no longer present, where a lot of things related to Second Life building, scripting, texturing, creating gestures, using gestures, even how to put on clothing, were taught. I myself took many classes at Teazer U. As I recall it actually had some sort of official backing from Linden Lab themselves, but I could be mistaken on that point.

I also heard that the green voting boxes (you can still find them in SL) were at one time actually used by LL as a measure of a location's importance. People still click them when they are around, but they have been relegated to pretty much a bit of nostalgia of no actual signifigance. Can be somewhat handy for the landowner to see who's interested in their property if used properly, but it doesn't impact search rankings like it once did.

[Storm Clarence]

Great post RnRM.  Thank you.

[Tex Nasworthy]

Someone mentioned the "head up the arse" era a few post back.

 

Not the best quality pic but you get the idea.

As I remember this was a bit of a rare event. A shoe up the rear was more common.

[Tex Nasworthy]

There was also an uproar and some protest when the previous forum was being closed.

[Tex Nasworthy]

Scenes like this, and many that were a lot worse, were common before LL cracked down on unsightly land ads.

[Pamela Galli]

I remember when a 4096 on a private sim cost 20,000 - 25,000L -- on top of tier.

I had three of those and had just bought 4 more on another sim I was moving my store to, and before I could sell the first three, LL dropped the price of a sim from $1600 to $1000.

After that, land was worth nothing. :-)  (I always think of that when someone goes ballistic in the forums because they got ripped off a dollar.)

 

[Peewee Musytari]

At first, prims used to be per sim, not per parcel, so there was a shared pool & people used to hoard prims by rezzing loads of prim cubes so they would have enough to build what they wanted and not share with their neigbours...Prim wars! lol

Over the years LL have played a few April Fools pranks on residents, such as spoof  messages on the login screens & during teleports & changing people`s Account type on their profiles.

At  New Year,  2009 or 2010 (can`t recall which) Lindex went insane for an hour when the exchange rates were messed with & people made an absolute killing buying & selling Lindens. No idea if it was deliberate by LL or what but it was hilarious.

Also on the subject of money, in 2007 Ginko (an SL bank) crashed & burned taking with it millions of L$ from 1000s of residents. LL did not compensate residents but did eventually ban banks in SL to stop it happening again.

[Venus Petrov]

Peewee, I remember the banks closing but I never knew the genesis.  Awesome!

Not only did I have the 'head up my arse' experience, but once a friend took photos of my avie collapsed on a dance floor.  In my view, I was dancing.  Not in her view.  Circa April 2007.  The question mark above my avie has nothing to do with the collapse.  It was one of the club quiz games.

 

Clubs used to attract patrons with sploders.  You would toss L$ into the sploder (usually L$10 minimum and one could pay it many times) and watch it count down until it exploded and paid off winners.  Usually there was one big winner and a few smaller winners.  Of course, the venue took a cut.  If the club was packed, most people won nothing.  Then, the whole thing would restart.

One evening, the club was full...50-60 patrons and the sploder had about L$40,000 in it.  We waited and waited for it to explode.  The club crashed.  When we returned, the sploder had L$0 in it.  Management was accused of stealing money.  When management finally showed up, she said that she had no record of the amount of L$ in the sploder so the money was lost.

Sploders of this sort were banned in late 2007 or 2008, clubs lost patrons, and many clubs went out of business.  Club owners were on their honor to remove the sploders but, if they did not and someone informed LL, a Linden would show up at the club and confiscate it.  I witnessed this once.  Funny.  What was so controversial then, one has to laugh at now.

[Peewee Musytari]

ROTFLMAO @ drunk avvie making a spectacle of herself in the club...everyone has moved away pretending they aren`t with her.

[Venus Petrov]

You are absolutely right Peewee!  That brunette is my 'friend' moving away from me as she snaps incriminating 'evidence' while laughing her ass off.

[PeterCanessa Oh]

The first sculpted-map of a sim in SL was created in June 2007 and was of Sploland (http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/SploLand/186/77/25), whose owner was radar-mapping Mars in RL, so it seemed appropriate.

(Sploland is owned by The Exploratorium in San Francisco and has some very cool interactive exhibits to play with)

ETA: And the sculpted map is in the curator's office still, I just looked

 

[Void Singer]

er sort of... Ginko was in trouble, but at least on the books they were solvent... when LL banned banks they did so within the space of a month with forced repayment effective immediately for all such entities.... most of the shadier places just closed shop and walked of with users money, but the ones that couldn't liquidate that much cash at once did the same, which effectively burned more users than necessary....

[Peewee Musytari]

Yeah I agree that the sudden closure of other banks did cause more losses, was a bad year for finances that one.

Does make you chuckle when you see some people now having a hissy fit over losing 100L or whatever...If only they knew some of the massive losses people have had in SL in the past with events like that.

[Storm Clarence]

When were the first AO's introduced?

[Void Singer]

funny you should ask, I was trying to pin that down myself.... no later than '05 I'm sure. I believe the Framination was the first Open Source one... I'm not sure if it was the first ever though

[Marianne McCann]

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Storm Clarence wrote:

Please post any facts about SL.  (SL Trivia)

I also hope some will ask those burning questions about SL, e.g., Who created the first prim?  What are the color sims?  What is mud?  Who is Ruth?

This is an open invitation to all SL Historians.  

 

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I'm sure I'm late to this but...

The first prim is unclear, and would depend on definition. the first prim in LindenWorld? in SL beta? When it came out ot beta?

Now if we're talking about the oldest item on the grid today, that would be the nickle created by James Linden in February 2002, as a texture test.  It used to be on I-world island, but is now not on any Linden land that I know of. I do know of several SL history collectors that have copies, including myself.

The "Color" sims are in Northwestern Sansara (maybe I should explain that in a moment, too!) above the San Francisco sims. Each is named after a color, for example Blue, Lime, Plum, Sage, Violet, Fuchsia, Beige, Brown, Green, etc. They were the second major batch of regions to come online, after the San Francisco sims. Those, BTW, are all named after various streets and alleyways in the SOMA district of San Francisco (Dore, Ahern, Natoma, Minna, Varney, Clara, etc.).

Ruth. The original SL mesh avatar (the avatar in use on LindenWorld prior to Ruth was a "primitar," as in wholly constructed out of prim bits). She is the basis of all SL avatars. You can still sometimes see her when various maladies undergo an avatar and they do not rez properly. See http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Ruth

Now, to add to this, some mainland geography:

The main Second Life land masses are Sansara (an old proposed name for Second Life itseld, from the Hindu concept of the world. This is the original mainland), the Heterocera Atoll (North of Sansara and discovered by Magellan Linden, with region named for various moth types), Jeogeot (south of Sansara, with Korean-named regions), Satori (Southeast of Sansara, and named via the original forums), Nautilus (north of Satori, and including the Nautilus City "island"), Corsica (north of Nautilus), Gaeta (north and east of Corsica, unfinished), the Teen Grid continent (no formal name, Southeast of Satori), Zindra (far east of all land masses), and Nascera (Linden home land. South of Satori and also twice-duplicated elsewhere on the grid).

Sansara, as the first landmass, has a lot of unique features. San Francisco and Color regions have greater terraforming limits than the rest of the mainland, being able to be raised or lowered up to 40m. You'll also find Nova Albion (west of the Ahern Welcome Area), one of the first attempts as a SL "city," the suburbs of Shermerville/Blumfield/West Haven, a Linden-home like experiment involving the old "First Land" project, and Bay City, the city area that launched in May 2008. There's also the Snowlands (land with snowy ground) to the south on this continent, the lost lakes regions (which, yes, has many lakes), the "volcano" regions (tropical island names and features), and the Islandia sections to the east, originally terraformed by a land speculator on behalf of Linden Lab.

Now... to read the rest of the thread!

[Marianne McCann]

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Claireschen Hesten wrote:

don't know how true this is but i read somewhere in an early version of SL you could set fire to the trees and i think Av's too lol

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Not so much "set fire," but you could throw grenades in LindenWorld to destroy just about everything and to terraform the ground.

[Marianne McCann]

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Storm Clarence wrote:

Governor Linden's Mansion is located on the Clementina sim on the Sansara Continent.

 

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...and was built by the first non-Linden resident, Steller Sunshine. She also built the beanstalk in Welsh, the first non-Linden build.

[Marianne McCann]

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Chelsea Malibu wrote:

Who created the first pose ball?

What was the name of SL before it was SL?

When I first joined (yes this is my second alt) we had 300,000 residents and rarely ran over 5,000 concurrents.  Oh how things have changed.

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It was named LindenWorld, after Linden Street, where the San Francisco office once was.

I came in when there was about 9,000 concurrents, or more accurately, when people feared it hitting 9,000 on Sundays because it would often take the grid down. 

[Marianne McCann]

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Keli Kyrie wrote:

FACT:

The oldest existing object in Second Life is a

Beach Ball.

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Not quite... that's the third oldest known object

http://lalotelling.blogspot.com/2010/06/seconderth-deep-map-sl-825-b.html

[Marianne McCann]

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Six Igaly wrote:

I once was told that first year avatars (really from the beginning, maybe even beta testers alone)  were offered to settle down on thier own sims (old peoples places?) for grandfathered prices and  free membership for life.

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Not so much their own sims, but you'll find many parcels owned by Lifetime Members in the SF and Color sims.

[Marianne McCann]

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Claireschen Hesten wrote:

if you want another fact i remember reading on an NC at Isabel info hub that non-premium members get a weekly stipend of L$50/wk that certainly isn't the case now and definitely wasn't when i joined back in '08 

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It's true And accounts of that age still do get that stipend. Older premiums also get larger stipends (as much as L$500 a week!).