diamond Marchant

I agree, that part is good... BUT When someone looks at the video on the splash page they see avatars that are non-human and human avatars that look pretty good. Then they click "Join" and must endure the Senra human avatars that appear to live in the uncanny valley. One of the key points of Wagner James Au's book is that realistic human avatars create problems in virtual worlds, particularly for young people that do not want to be judged. So where are the non-human avatars in this onboarding customization process? Do you think a new resident wants to be judged on how they customize a Senra avatar? Why are they not offered avatars that come close to what is shown in the splash video? Where are the non-human options?

I too was appalled but for a different reason If there is a light that connects us, it will shine less bright. Thank you for being here all this time. And remember, you can always check in if you get the itch. Fair winds.

Not anymore it seems. A recent upgrade of Premium Plus allows you to just buy a homestead.

The only way to really know how low the land can go is to try it. You would need to get the seller to show you. If that option is not available, you could ask owners of neighboring parcels how low their land goes. But that could be misleading. I assume that coastal property for sale is presented in the most appealing way, so if there is no room for boats, it is likely that this cannot be improved. But who knows.

The first part of the video is for those just joining SL... then they talk about upgrading a classic system bod to Senra (nee NUX?). One curious thing, the customization process does not explicity ask about gender/sex preferenece. Rather, it simply uses body shape and boyish/girlish naming. Is this a hit or miss? Oh... if you go to the Library folder in your Inventory (I am using Firestorm), you will find a new subfolder named Senra, which has subfolders for Blake and Jamie. The blog post has the word "beta" in it but the youtube video for Second Life University does not.

Here is additional info you may find useful. A resident should be Premium Plus only if 1) they want a 2048 sqm Linden Home AND/OR 2) they want the Premium Plus perks, such as free uploads or ability to pick your Linden Home. For those simply trying to pay the least amount for included land tier (or get TWO 1024 Linden Homes), it is less costly to have TWO Premium accounts (the second one being purchased by an alt). You can then combine the two 1024 included tiers into a single land group (which also gives you a 204 sqm bonus). Also, you can save more by buying annual memberships. Yes, this is complicated, but that is the nature of Second Life. To do things on the cheap, you need to know stuff.

Nobody is suggesting that. My point, not clearly expressed, is that Linden Lab may have difficulty retaining "top talent". But the real issue (and this relates to the OP) is that Second Life now finds itself centered on a demographic that is small, old and diminishing. Whatever it is that we do in Second Life does not appeal to the masses (see Wagner James Au new book for details). Anecdotally, I am part of a large family and have a few friends, all of whom know about diamond. Nobody else is in Second Life or any other virtual world (that they will admit to) with one exception... a preteen niece who was very happy to splain Roblox to me. This is not a hardware issue. I have been running SL just fine on a laptop since 2009.

I agree with your point about creators. My point concerns Linden Lab employees and contractors. Is there someone currently at Linden Lab that knows how to move the needle from 40,000 concurrent users per day to 4 million? Would such a person be working as a contractor or as a salaried employee with a dubious equity position? Jumping to a company with better prospects and/or seeking venture/angel capital for a startup is what (younger, non risk-averse) people do. As they say in Silicon Valley and Mandalore, "This is the way".

Coffee will answer, I am confident, but this is what I see... things got different in the late 20 teens (when alternatives took off) and are really different since 2021, when the original investors exited. It is a financial number game now as SL is not growing concurrent users (and likely revenue). Unfortunately, SL is pursuing a strategy that is not decreasing their expenses... they use Moles to build content and do stuff rather than invest only in the platform and let residents generate ALL the content. And the price of having a data center in cloud is actually going UP, sort of a Moore's Law paradox. And there is the staffing issue. If you are someone who knows how to turn a 20 year old sandbox game with near photorealistic graphics, no mission, a small user base, and no gaming platform... into a huge phoenix-like success... why would you not get your own funding and equity and do a new startup.

as do I. Hey, this is a Gor thread. But as long as we are off topic, I have been reading Making a Metaverse That Matters very slowly and find it to be like a slap-in-the-face-snap-out-of-it. We are tiny compared to Fortnite/Roblox/VRChat and others... for numerous reasons. Linden Lab/Tilia is privately held, meaning that our fate could be an outcome of who Brad Oberwager had dinner with last night. My philosophy is enjoy every day while it lasts. There will be no warning. It will be like the Succession episode where Waystar strips Vaulter for parts.

That happened to me. Went on vacay and didn't get to shop. Re: Gor... there is stuff in Gor that carries over to virtual worlds like SL - the world map - age stabilization... most of us are stuck at 22 with no medical problems - this one is a stretch, but have we not been plucked from earth and cast upon hidden sister planet with different rules... are not Lindens similar to Priest Kings (except for the kidnappy part) - and, unfortunately, are we not portrayed in the media as a "wasteland of sexual perversion"

So the Gorean Master did not understand the difference between "in context" and "out of context"? Back to the OP, I suspect any falloff in Gorean RP is more a consequence of the current state of SL (upon which I shall not elaborate as that would be off topic in this thread). p.s. I recall reading about 10 of the Gor books in the 90s. Never occurred to me to RP it in SL. Did anyone RP a priest king?

The Sea of Fables IS the biggest block of protected water at an elevation of 20m in Sansara, but there are also many smaller navigable areas connected by channels (some treacherous but navigable) which allow us to sail all over Sansara and reach Heterocera via the ANWR connector. Bleaberry Tarn/Harter Fell IS the place to connect Sansara... the key question is what will LL do. There are three options, the first being not connecting. The second is to add water regions up the east coast and connect to Old Bellisseria. This would grant protected water access to existing edge parcels, fundamentally changing their monetary value. When faced with a similar situation on the west coast of Satori, LL opted to NOT do it... they created the connection from Belli to Satori (and the Blake) via Stromberg. Note that the connection to the southern Satori tip is NOT a Blake connector (but it is nice). The third option is drawn on Peresphone's map above (thank you). This involves expanding the Ranch home regions to the northwest and perhaps continuing in that direction with a new Thousand Island theme. The problem is the coastal edging that would be required. I have not counted, but this would be ALOT of regions. They put houseboats on the Log region coastal edges but, so far, I see no evidence of that happening with the Ranch. So I am concerned that, at best, it may be a long time (years) before this "connect the continents" path is completed. If Thousand Island were a water-based theme similar to the Stilts, that might address the non-revenue-generating-coastal-edge problem. Time will tell.

A few thoughts.... 1. Love, what if they invited you to a FMAT (furry menage a trois)? 2. There is always karma. Once upon a time, there was an (advertising) sex club in the Moderate region where I had a parcel. When they were into it, the region got very laggy... so I ARed them, as did my neighbor. Governance eventually busted them (just made them stop doing the sex club) but also made me take scripts out of seasonal trees and stuff. 3. Governance is a black box... as far as I can tell, they never explain why they do what they do. 4. For land encroachment issues (e.g. into protected water or land), sometimes they take no action even though there is an obvious violation. @Abnor Mole often says just because you can do something, that doesn't mean you should do it. (btw in Belli, if you encroach, make it look like what Moles build) 5. Personally, I would not AR a single transient incident, like humping on MY lawn. But I would AR an advertised or commercial sex business in a Moderate region.

If you have a Belli skybox, turn off visibility, and turn on a 15 sec orb, I would be shocked if Governance would act on any AR from somebody camming in. I know for a fact they will not act on obvious porn "art", publicly visible at ground level.

I believe the following is true... 1. Adult regions in Zindra exist and many parcels are currently for sale. Because land flippers exist, should LL add more adult regions, they would likely be purchased, subdivided, and resold. Not clear that the casual land buyer would be paying significantly less per sqm that what is currently available. 2. LL expects that residents will do adult activities on Moderate rated regions. This is why they TELL YOU how to do it in their official policies. 3. The process for shutting down non-conforming adult activities on Moderate regions is the Abuse Report. This requires a resident to file a report AND for Governance to accept it as probable, investigate, and provide a remedy or NOT. This is a subjective process. The current adult policies give Governance some leeway in making decisions. 4. The primary difference between Adult and Moderate regions with respect to adult activity concerns what can be done IN PUBLIC (and also the commercial thing). LL is fully supportive of adult activity and, over the decades, has attempted to have policies that strike a compromise between the needs of different communities. This is the reason for Adult, Moderate, and General ratings. 5. diamond is NOT a LL shill. An opinion... I think it's OK that a resident purchasing a Moderate parcel pays less than a similar sized (and located) Adult parcel. For example, L$1024 vs L$6144. For the extra L$5,120 (or 20$US), you can get jiggy with it in broad daylight. Tier is the same so it's just a ONE TIME payment. Might you not pay that amount on a monthly basis to an OnlyFans creator? Don't be cheap!

Reference this https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:Adult_Content_FAQ I have always read this to mean that if you can satisfy the "behind closed doors" requirement, you can do otherwise legal adult activity on a moderate region. So put walls around it (e.g. skybox) and don't advertise. My experience in bringing suspected violations to the attention of Governance is that the alleged violation has to be obvious (to Governance). For example, "Nude art that is not sexual" is rather ambiguous.

Had to look that up. We are NOT getting into that. Nobody suggested that. An avatar that is a table can simply be a table.

Yes! We have been lobbying to get this connection for a long time as it completes what many sailors consider to be connecting the continents. The East River is navigable but one must be careful to avoid banlines and orbs, some of which have no visible demarcations. Recommend using the mini map with parcel lines turned on.

Wrong forum for this post

To collect money from a new owner. The landscaper in question appears to be in the business of renting the creations of others.

Great question. The seller could simply sell the land with objects. Abnor Mole has previously mentioned that auto return is turned off when land changes owners, so no problem there. The issue is that the owner of the landscaping can pick up or delete the objects at any time, and likely will do so. I assume that the landscaper periodically checks up on their clients.

I could not find a sailboat at the Welcome Hub, but Abnor Mole gives out an ancient motorboat that looks sort of like a sailboat bath toy at the BelliHub (http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/BelliHub/158/160/23). Fortunately, there is an actual sailboat, the N~17, in a nearby giver.

I have a bicycle rezzer in Kiva ☺️

There is perhaps a market for landscaped land but I suspect it is small. I always start from bare terrain and have fun landscaping, buying new plants, relandscaping, rinsing, and repeating. Second Life is, fundamentally, a sandbox game/not-a-game.