Polenth Yue

Some people noted that their total didn't go up initially, but they could still join more groups. I didn't need to try it as I'm not in many groups.

It's a prior image in the sense that the region doesn't look like it now, but it's not like the ones where a completely different region shows on the map as a ghost. All the waterways and houses line up with the current region. It's just the ground texture that's different. It could have been done as part of a test, an accident, or just seeing if we were paying attention. Either way, I thought it was fun.

Wibbly Crossroads, an unreleased fantasy area, switched to having light grass texture on the map. The actual region doesn't right now, but strange magic is happening! I don't think this is important, but I've not seen it happen before, so go admire the map while you still can.

I've had people try to suggest I should do builds for people as well, and they don't understand when I run away. Trying to build someone's else's dream is almost always a nightmare. It's very common for people asking for commissions to feel they're entitled to more for less, because they don't value the work. I'd much rather make what I want and put it on the marketplace. People either like the stuff or they don't, but they don't get to tell me it's all wrong and they want it redone and they're only going to pay half the agreed amount because anyone could do that. I do like making builds for events, as there's usually some general rules and guidelines for what's needed, but much more creative freedom.

I expect many will abandon the ticketed homes when the bigger homes come out. Also right now, any house abandoned so that someone can put in a ticket is going to be in the queue, freeing up some plots that might not have been available for some time. (I don't plan to abandon though... they'd have to do something amazing for me to move again, which I don't expect will happen anytime soon.)

Bardwell (houseboats by the chalets) is now released. Lots of square plots.

An advantage of mainland is you can pick somewhere and stay there. Having your landmarks stay the same for ten years is useful. I do get some traffic from the road, but most people visit my shop via a landmark or search teleport. I wouldn't keep hopping around. Laggy neighbours come and go. What you can do to help customers is make sure you understand occlusion. Have solid walls, no holes, no windows, no textures with hidden transparency (make sure they're all set to "none" if they have an alpha layer). That way, they won't be trying to load the neighbours.

The big problem with the old system was nobody was getting the most unique parcels in newer themes. There was enough surplus in the initial releases of cloned regions to cover people who wanted one. So when construction started on the coast, railway and river regions, people were out of luck. Those regions were unlikely to rise to the top of the queue when earlier regions were still sitting empty. The plus tickets are the first workaround which doesn't involve having endless premium accounts. In future, they might need to tweak how the automated system decides on which region to assign. In the right now, I enjoyed touring around and picking a house. It wasn't an option before, because the house I got just wasn't available from a random roll.

There's a certain beauty in Reddit sending people to the forums and the forums sending them to Reddit. Brings tears to the eyes.

There always could be someone who'll break the rules in some way or other, or do something or other that might upset others, but it's a stretch to think it'll be so common as to cause a major impact. It's like the idea that a large group of premium plus people will request most of a region, leaving anyone who gets a remaining house feeling out of place. It could happen, but the houses I've seen in fantasy are either single or next to one other claimed house. Most people are not that organised outside of maybe sorting something with their best friend. If you didn't know premium plus existed, it's very unlikely that you'd notice anything was happening.

You can access your ticket to update it if you think you missed something important. Follow the link again and look up at the top of the page. Click "My Tickets". Click your active ticket. Now you can add a note.

I respond if I see someone say "hi" because half the time it's a customer who feels it'd be rude to tell me what's wrong immediately, so they say hi, ask how I am, comment on the weather and then explain that the mushrooms exploded and everything's on fire. A lot of the other "hi" are people who need help with something, because I do a lot of basic help on groups. The few remaining ones are spammers/scammers. This does mean that if you just wanted a chat, you'll probably be confused about why I'm asking what you need help with and is anything on fire right now. Always best to open with something after the "hi" if you can, to make it clear what you're about.

You need to create a ticket, which you do here: https://support.secondlife.com/create-case/ You choose "Land & Region" and then "Linden Homes" as the category. They're dropdown boxes, not ones you type in. Make sure you give them a direct slurl. So you want to be standing on the house parcel, not near it. I also gave the parcel ID, but I think most people didn't.

One thing to keep in mind is not to fall for the GoH mindset. That is the idea that a new house is automatically better. Therefore, once that house is not new any more, it's not worth having. A house that someone just abandoned could be your dream house. Some of the ones people are claiming by ticket aren't houses that you'll ever want. The ticket system won't mean that there are no good houses left. Also, I fully expect people to be abandoning houses they've claimed via ticket as soon as the next new thing comes along. People who switch houses multiple times a week are very unlikely to settle. The interesting thing will be what the system does with the houses. I wonder if the regions we're in will start to fill up now that someone has a house claimed there. Will the autoassigner kick in or not when a house gets abandoned?

For the yearly, you pay the amount extra to cover plus until your normal renewal date. So if you had three months to go on premium, you pay the extra to make those three months into plus. Then you'd pay for the premium plus as usual when your renewal date comes around. I wouldn't have upgraded this early if that system hadn't been in place.

I backed off because it felt like you wanted a fight no matter what. Providing the link just would have provoked you in that context. This has been happening all day, where people ask for information, then shout at the person who answers. They don't really want the answer and often knew the answer (but were making a point that it wasn't on x page or something like that). You came across like that. But if you want a moment of assuming good faith, I'll assume you're just going to say "thanks" and stop shouting at me if I reply. You've been given some other links, so here is Patch briefly explaining why free mesh uploads aren't live yet:

My fantasy house was assigned! So far so good on people picking different stuff (which also demonstrates that there's no single best house... we all have different opinions on what that means).

I posted the information because I thought the person saying it had not heard about it and would want to know. I'm not a Linden. I'm not involved in any way in the admin of Second Life. People are aiming comments at me that really shouldn't be coming to me. Personally, plus is cheaper for me than regular premium with tier (and VAT), so it's an easy choice. I don't need the upload cost changes for it to be cheaper. They're just cake.

I submitted at 11.23 SLT. If I don't get it, I'll go houseless for a bit until some of the unfinished fantasy houses are up or the house I wanted gets abandoned again.

That's going to be added later.

A bunch of people said they'd sent in a ticket (including me) so we'll see what comes of it. Hopefully we all picked different houses.

The problem when you try to start a conversation with a stranger is that you'll find most people are socially awkward in that situation. So you have two people who don't know what to say. Joining groups and going to events helps smooth that, because you don't have to carry the whole conversation. You can just add comments here and there.

In the fantasy area, there are lots of regions that are sitting in the queue, and enough abandoned houses on currently open regions that those regions in the queue are not going anywhere. The risk isn't that someone will claim the requested house by the normal method, as that's just not happening. It'd only be if someone else with plus gets a ticket in first. Some houses might well end up with a lot of people wanting them, but this is going to be spread over a lot of themes, with a lot of people who want different things.

Things I'd be interested in knowing are whether the house request feature will be there from day one and what will happen to people upgrading from a yearly premium (does it change the renewal date, how will that work with the money, etc). The requesting feature is one of the few things that'd tempt me into an earlier upgrade. There are some great houses just sitting there.

They could use the old houses for displays about the history of Second Life and Linden Homes, which would go with the museum idea. I actually hope they do move whatever they make, as it'd be nice if it connected with the rest and people could sail/fly out there. Once they cut down the regions to the special builds and examples of each home, it'll be a smaller block to move.