Aramis Khandr

Sim gone. Thanks.

Hi. We are offering our showcased romance sim Miranda's 4 Seasons for new ownership. We have dissolved the group (which had 2600 members) but have left all copy prims on the land including a great house in each season. The sim was much complimented for it's natural beauty, and even in semi stripped state is still outstanding. Any new owner could reopen as a public sim, or perhaps rent each season with it's house and keep one for themselves, or run it as a group pay sim. We have the names of 14 people who were prepared to pay $1000L a month. That was before we closed the group and we could have made it user pay twice over when people realised it was really going. We love the sim but have put enough energy and money into it and now have rl interests to develop. So this is our last try to save what many said was a work of art. Most of the vegetation is in temp rezzers and there are 1400 prims approx available. If someone wants to return it to its original state and full beauty we would assist. It will no longer be available after the 30th. The tier is US$135 a month, no other charge. Original easy listening music stream (currently not playing if you visit) available if required by negotiation. Contact Aramis Khandr or Miranda Writer if interested - Ims and replies are directed to email for prompt attention.

And then a great silence fell across the land as the forgotten people waited with bated breath..................had their cry been heard,........ was it a true dawning of the long hoped for new era of caring?

Warm welcome Rod! New Zealander living in Western Australia here. Great to know you have officially arrived and have been for some time inworld creating and learning. Great also to know that you have read through the official welcome thread as one would have hoped. It is wonderful that you say you are here to serve us. You have made a pledge of huge and heartening importance in that simple statement. These are very encouraging first steps from a new leader. It's all looking good. Hoping this is the first of many blog posts as Twitter is one technological step I never intend never to take. Ps. Looking forward to seeing photos of your building progress. It all started in a log cabin huh? Well done.

That is a masterly and informative post Agent. Well done! Thank you for laying out the case in favour of introducing mesh to Sl out so clearly, and in such detail. I understand the situation much better than I did previously in regard to why it should be implemented. Sl will clearly be transformed when it arrives. I can't wait to see what designers such as yourself do with it in regards to objects and avatar skins. And by all reports, as it is adopted on a wide scale, it should also considerably improve SL performance. Bring it on!

Well Rod. Middle of January is here! What would be really very welcome, in my opinion, would be if you were to put your stamp on SL from day one in a totally positive way. Send us all a 'Hey. I'm here, and I promise you all now that things will be very different from this day on!'. Give us some good news, such as that mesh will be introduced without equivocation on a certain date. Advise that the viewer 2 interface will be changed to the user friendly interface type that we are all familiar with. Inform us that tier pricing will be dropped, and that a greater variety of tiers with better prim allocations will be put in place. Tell us that it is a priority for you that customer service will be substantially improved. Take charge Rod and let us know that a better world is coming for all. If you do that we will all love you for it. We need hope Rod. Hope of a better sl future, and hope of a LL that listens and treats us as equals, and as fellow team members. Are you the man to give us that hope? I HOPE you are! Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Be our man Rod.

Hey Mike. I had your concern also, but it seems unfounded after scrolling through the posts. There is plenty of robust criticism in here which is still there, so clearly that wasn't a criteria for removal, and that is heartening. There was one instance I think I recall where a coupe of people started sniping at each other and that was clearly inappropriate in my opinion, so I would be guessing that is what has been removed and I agree with that. I guess the question I am left with is that this outpouring will only be of importance if the demographic it represents is of importance to Linden Labs and how they see the future of SL. It may just be that despite our being clearly passionate about SL, as a group we are expendable or unimportant, and all this just represents wailing at the wall. It will all become clear very soon I am sure.

Well Rod, it is a bit of a concern to me that no one is exactly lamenting and tearing their shirts at your departure over at the Sims Online. One criticism is that you took an open ended 'sandbox' experience that people very much enjoyed and made it task/quest orientated, and the other is that you didn't listen to the users. Hoping you don't repeat those patterns in your management of SL. In regard to the ill fated Viewer 2 that is scary news from Smoke that it could become mandatory. Why not licence the most successful viewer 'Phoenix ' , soon to develop to another level in Firestorm, and start with a proven success? Or just let Third party viewers continue and let us vote with our feet as we are doing now conclusively. Here is an interesting extract from an article I found online at The Metaverse Journal. Author Lowell Cremorne dated December 31, 2010 Virtual worlds predictions for 2011 1. Second Life It’s fair to say that Linden Lab had a mixed year during 2010 with Second Life. 2011 is likely to be even more turbulent. I’m not going to fence sit on this one too much: the next 12 months will see Linden Lab finally sold to a big tech player based in the US. Whether it’s bought out or not, expect some more significant user-interface improvements but an overall decline in number of hours in-world per user. That decline will be driven primarily by diffusion as dedicated content creators, educators and long-term residents increasingly spread out to OpenSim grids, Blue Mars etc . Second Life might see an increase in concurrency, coming from the more casual / social users attracted by an easier to use interface. That seems to be Linden Lab’s strategy anyway. Oh – and legally compliant gambling will be provided in-world by Linden Lab.

Well said Ryuu. LL has to work out what Sl is. Can it be all things to all people like they seem to currently think it can be? I don't think it is possible to make a swiss army knife application on the net. Everyone specialises. In regards to the payment issue, I pay US$9 a month each for both my kids on Runescape. That is just the fee to use it and it is hugely successful because it sticks to what it is and changes things just enough in regards to graphics and gameplay to keep them interested. My son is 17 and still plays it at regularly. They have been there for years. So if SL wants to make a better individual user product with less lag, better service, and more flexibility on land tiers and their costs and prim allocation then I would pay that without a problem. Maybe drop land prices and put in a set monthly fee, with a free 3 month trail period for newbies. So the issue is what way is Sl going to go. I am sure Rod is aware of the issues. He would be very familiar, I would imagine, with Sl prior to making his position application, and he would most likely have been required to make a presentation, along with the other candidates, on how he would see Sl developing in the future. So at this stage we don't know what that future is that LL have agreed that Rod should implement. Things change. Maybe Sl will change for the better along the lines here that most have expressed. Maybe it will move to a totally different model and users like myself who have a relationship and a successful romance sim with my partner will be left with no choice but to move on. So on that note does anybody know of any good alternatives to Sl because that would be a great opportunity for another virtual world to pick up a lot of customers. What is the current best competitor for sl? Is there one? I hope so, but I also hope it won't come to that because I have invested so much in so many ways in sl, along with so many other highly creative individuals, and I think it could be brilliant in our wonderful little world of possibilities with enlightened management and appropriate improvements. On another note there is a thread on unsticking ghosts and the most effective solution in the absence of a sim restart appeared to be just to keep continually logging in one session and it eventually clears. Hope it helps.

Welcome to SL Rod. Can I suggest that you look at the issue of prim allocation. My partner and I have a Homestead sim with 3750 prims we operate as a 'Romance' sim. That isn't really a comfortable amount to present our sim in the manner we would like. The next step from there is to a full sim with 15000 prims and vastly greater financial commitment and more prims that we would ever need. Why not a midsize sim with 7500 prims? Or even a series of layered prim allocation sims so people can choose what allocation they want, and need, and even upgrade if they require it. Sl's present system offers no flexibility whatsoever, it limits creativity and is inherently frustrating, and I can't see any real reason why it has to be so, apart from making it easier for Linden Labs to manage. But surely the aim of any successful business is to make it easier for the customers. I wish you all the best in your endeavours and hope to be pleasantly surprised. Sl has so much potential, all it needs is a cultural rebirth in the Linden Labs management team and their philosophy. I sincerely hope you are the person to lead that change.