I feel Old. Or How I Learned to Love The Stippend.

[Veritas Kennedy]

Remember the days of The Edge on its original Sim?

 

Or the days of trading ratings and feeling bad when you can't find the person who just rated you in the throngs of people? (And WHY did that one person leave out a check mark?) Plus the death of this system....

 

How about being constantly annoyed with Havok 1.

 

HUDs being launched... The Controversy of LindeX?

 

Flexiprims?

 

The Doom of Casinos?

 

How about the days where SL was obscure? The days where 9 times out of 10 the fellow geek you are talking to has no clue what you mean...

 

Now its the opposite!

 

Or how about the time the accounts got hacked and everyones passwords were reset? (In this I lost my oldest account... :( )

 

Second Life sure has changed... Sort of feel like it needs to be changed to Third Life now.

 

Here is to my 7th year aniversery on this account. Cheers!

 

 

[Jennifer Boyle]

I have only been here five years come January 13, so I am a newcomer.  Nevertheless, I remember some of those things, particularly the demise of casinos.  Characteristically, LL didn't announce the change with sufficient lead time for residents to adjust, but just abruptly changed the rules.  And I sure remember The Edge.

 

 

[Amethyst Jetaime]

I remember a most of those things.  I also remember these:

Spending hours after first arriving working on my avi and making system clothes with all the textures in the library before I left for the wider world.

Wandering SL and visiting just about every sim and being amazed by the possibilities and the creativity of people

Meeting a lot of great people that had been in SL for a while and wondering why I looked like a toon when everyone else looked 'real'.

Camping on a dance pad to earn $L for long periods of time only to have it dawn on me that for the price of a latte or beer I could buy what I needed.

Fixing up my avi and thinking I was so hot, then looking at the pics from back then later and LMAO

Renting my first house and being so proud to have a home, but wondering if 300L a week was too much to spend. (A skybox filled with cheap pose balls and decorated in crushed red velvet like a house of ill repute complete with poker playing dogs over the fireplace)

Learning to build then being amazed when people actually wanted to pay me to buy stuff.

Building my first sim and being relieved that people actually loved it.

Seeing the grid wide announcement the first time the number of accounts reached 10,000 and celebrating.

Having my first rez day and feeling so 'grown up".

Having my second rez day and being surprised with a big party put on by all the great friends I had made.

The first time a relative newb profile perved me and said "wow your old"  :smileywink:

Congratulations and Happy Rez Day!

 

[Shine Iridescent]

Cheers to you Veritas!  Congrats on your 7th birthday (or rez day)!  I hope that you can still find people and interests in SL that will keep you coming back.   I am a relative newcomer compared to you, but I have also felt the affect of so many changes, I started out exploring (not having any gaming or even much social experience on the web), quickly became obsessed and immersed in all of the social, romantic, economic and creative aspects of sl, as the rl economy slowed down I had more and more free time for sl and then suddenly I realized I had to snap back to rl, pay attention and go get some more jobs so I could continue to pay the rl bills etc.  My time in SL has dwindled, instead of a second life it's became a pleasurable pastime.  These days I mostly log in to say hi to friends, explore, take pictures, build myself a new house or sky box... I can't yet let go of my mainland home tho I don't use it much.  Despite its annoyances I still love SL, it is still an escape. Do you feel the same way?

[LillyBeth Filth]

My account (This one) was created in April 2004, so 8 years old this April.

I not only feel old I feel alone and like I am getting left behind as SL and technology moves on so fast.

3D and mesh is not something one can learn in a week. It has taken me 4 years to learn making 2D textures!

SL was only ever a "fun" pass time for me for 18 months. Now it is pure business and the long term problem with that is when you stick your head in Photoshop 8 hours a day you loose track of SL and people.

When I was a noob we had a plain ugly skin, no walking animations, hair made via the "wig" (no prims) clothes that were made IN WORLD (lol) in fact back then people had stores selling clothes that were made entirely "in world" I imagine a lot of people don't understand what I mean by that perhaps?

I mean you go into "Edit Appearance" and hit the "Make Shirt" button (If its still there?) and a white shirt shape is applied to your avatar and you literally texture it in world with  2 x 2 an usually no tile textures that you could not repeat or add creases to or do much of really... The end result is an ugly ass shirt ...But back in 2004 people actually created stores and sold clothing made that way because there were only a small % of SLers who had and knew how to use 2D software.

Hair was static (no flexi) and if you wanted curls your head would have 1500 prims on it which would in most cases crash a sim as you TP in.

Skin designers you could count on one hand and as such were very very VERY admired and their wares highly desirable.

"Second Skin" was the oldest skin designer I paid 10K for my fist skin and felt like a princess when I applied it. 

Now you can buy the same quality skin from over 2000 merchants for 100L and the "wow factor" is more of a "blah...it will do" 

Yes, I recall the time when people could rate you in world and it appeared on your profile. You could be rated for creativity, appearance and I think also helping people.

The problem was people would neg rate you just for the Hell of it or because you accidentally "bumped" them (which back then was something you could abuse report people for believe it or not) so LL removed that feature. 

I remember talking to strangers that you bumped into here and there was normal.

There were no direct TPs, no one had the ability to have people TP into their store or home you could only TP into TP Hubs which covered a large area of land. This meant land parcels that were positioned close to a TP hub were highly desirable to stores and were very hard to find and if you did happen to find a parcel you would pay 50 times the normal price for that land.

Another thing that store owners did was to try and buy land close to or next to an already popular store that had high traffic in hopes that the visitors of that store would wander into yours.

My first store on a 2048 parcel developed reasonable traffic so my neighbors would build very very high signs that could be seen over the walls of my store. I learnt quickly that having a roof on your store was not good for business as people who flew over your store could be attracted by the goods inside IF they could see them. Putting a roof on your store just made it another roof to fly over. (Impulse purchases only happen on goods customers can see which is also why I never had a 1st or 2nd floor... no one will go out of their way to LOOK for things to buy)

Anyway, I could babble on but instead here are some screenshots of 2004 - 2005 

 

[Porky Gorky]

---

LillyBeth Filth wrote:

My account (This one) was created in April 2004, so 7 years old this April.

 

---

Hi LillyBeth, you will be 8 years old this April :matte-motes-big-grin:

I remember buying my first ever set of textures from you, must have been the end of 2004, maybe start of 05. It has been interesting watching your business develop over the years and I i'm really happy to see that you have turned it into a career, especially now you have moved into working in the games industry. Kudos to you.

The OP neglected to mention Dwell. We used to get paid L$ when people visited our land. The trick was to keep people on your land to take up as larger % of their inworld session as possible so they would generate more dwell for the land owner.

Happy days!

[LillyBeth Filth]

Porky! aaaww I recall so few SL names (my age in RL!) but I know yours.. yes it will be 8 years... after I wrote that post and went to RL things I "literally" had to count my fingers as I went through the years then realised it was not 7 as I had written but 8! That says it all really..when you loose count.

RE business. Yea its been a bumpy ride (as you probably know) and a lot of lessons have been learnt the hard way but I like to focus on the fact I DID learn. 

After all evolution is a series of mistakes and trials and errors that are learnt from.

The game thing.. its not a paid career but I am hoping it will be in 6 months. We have some exciting opportunities ahead so *fingers crossed*

 

Sorry for hijacking this thread guys...I will bog off now  

[Alicia Sautereau]

8 years... now i`m starting to feel young again

[Deira Llanfair]

Yes I remember most of those things - but I'm only 5and a bit.  Remember the grey goo?  Oh, and remember update Wednesdays when we all waited and waited for SL to come back up again?

[Veritas Kennedy]

Dwell and Hubs. Feel ashamed for forgetting those things...

 

How about the Viva Thing where they gave away a Charter account? Or those "exclusive" bracelets with the particle pet.

 

Or the better particles in general!

 

Visitting DaBoom today, for rememberence. The account I lost access to was made in '03.

 

Heh. Is there a SL retirement home? Need to check in.

 

P.S. Just found out there is a Viewer 3! Is it worth moving from viewer 1 to it?

[Porky Gorky]

---

Alicia Sautereau wrote:

8 years... now i`m starting to feel young again

---

SL went into open Beta in April 2003 so there maybe a few Av's still around that will be 9 this year! Maybe a few that already are 9 if they were involved in closed beta.

I have a couple of old grid maps on my HD, I'll paste them in below.

AGNI Grid 2002

 

AGNI Grid 2003

 

 

The grid has definitely grown a tad more since then.

[Veritas Kennedy]

I wonder how the ratio of Combat to Noncombat has changed?

[Kenbro Utu]

I see no one has yet mentioned the old Voting Stations.  Couldn't wander the grid without bumping into one...

[Kobuk Farshore]

And to think I just felt old in owning a legacy name... :smileysad: :smileyembarrassed:

 

I do love hearing the nostalgia of everyone who's been in SL much longer than I, though. As in RL, the "old days" sound much simpler, cheaper, sillier... and yet, slightly unbelievable that people lived like that. :smileyvery-happy:

[Wiggle Biggles]

Dont forget clubs having to hire security to TRY and protect people from griefers... Ahh the good ole days

 

Rates were awesome.. Good way to make money if you had nothing other than the ability to make people laugh.

 

Dern website forgot who I was.. I was borned sometime in october 2004

[Amethyst Jetaime]

I really get a good laugh when I see clubs and venue's still using those voting stations.  They stopped having any effect on a venue's search ranking years ago and the only thing they do is use script resources anymore..  I've told people this many times, but for some reason they continue to believe they do.

[Eileen Fellstein]

---

Veritas Kennedy wrote:

 

P.S. Just found out there is a Viewer 3! Is it worth moving from viewer 1 to it?

---

 

Yes. You'll need it to see mesh properly, but you may want to look into something other than the standard LL V3. Firestorm is one of the more popular ones, and though it's new, seams like it does real well being compatable with all the latest bells and whistles.

I'm not sure if it's the same Edge that you mean but I started nearly 4 years ago now and that was the 1st place I went...for the last 2 weeks it was there. Run by Ms Fairplay if it's the same. I wasn't old enough to work there but had fun joining one of the DJ's in an all girl rockin chorus line of guitar slingin babes. I took my 1st job in SL at a place that sprung up after in the same tradition.

Not as old as some here but yes things have certainly changed. I honestly miss the days when ratings were PG and mature. Life was simple then. I either had clothes on or um...not

 

Edit: Oh yea, if you're a person that still uses prims, you'll like V3's capability to make prims up to 60x60. No more scouring the grid for that perfectly sized mega. You can just make what you need now...or maybe that's 'again'

[Porky Gorky]

I forgot about Tringo. I bloody loved Tringo. Before the days of TP's people use to gather on the border of full regions that had popular Tringo games, waiting for someone to log out so we could all make a mad dash into the sim.  

I've always been a premium member so still get my L$500 weekly stipend. Since they lowered the price of annual membership I actually make money every month just from staying premium. It's cool, It feels like LL are giving something back to those of us that have helped support them all these years. 

 

[Jennifer Boyle]

---

Veritas Kennedy wrote:

P.S. Just found out there is a Viewer 3! Is it worth moving from viewer 1 to it?

---

IMO, absolutely.  One of the biggest improvements for me that ever happened in SL was the outfits that can contain links to inventory items that were introduced with Viewer 2.  Another thing I really like is mesh clothing, some of which is so much better than prim/system clothing,

[Rabid Cheetah]

Ahh, the good old days.

 

People were nicer back then.

 

You could actually FIND people back then, not the ghostown the mainland has become.

 

People weren't jaded if you didn't have the lastest flexiprim bling flashing glow in the dark mesh textured shoes with real toe animations, or whatever the latest fad is.

 

Not only could you buy land that had a neighbor, but the neighbor would log on frequently so you had someone to say hello to.

 

People didn't ban you just for coming over to say "hello".

 

You didn't need to have the latest technology to create super-duper-state-of-the-art prims to get folks to think your builds, clothes, or parcels were pretty cool.

 

SL would actually run on computers that had just a little bit of an edge over the norm for what the average consumer had, not all the special extra-expensive bells and whistles you need today to do mesh or whatever to handle the increasing problems with lag.

 

All in all, it may have looked cartoonish by today's standards, but it was more FUN.  And that's what people pay for, Linden:  Fun.  Not technology.  Not bells and whistles.  They pay for the entertainment EXPERIENCE.

[Brenda Hoisin]

"Outfits that contain links to other inventory items"? I'm unfamiliar with this feature. What exactly is it? I'm on Phoenx and intending to swap to Firestorm. Oh, and I remember using Lucky Chairs starting up! And the awe I felt when I saw my first flexiprim!