Virtual Worlds – Page 194

May 7, 2013

Tyche Shepherd’s Private Estate Survey For April 2013

Tyche “Statto” Shepherd has some really interesting reports going around right now and I think I’m going to have to poke her about using some of them, but the results of her private estate survey for April are in. As usual I won’t report all the findings, you can find them in the link. There isn’t anything eye catching in terms of changes in land holdings this month, the grid has shrunk and at a faster rate than in March but one interesting point to note is the change in class of Servers, there has been a leap, a rather significant one, in class 8 hardware.

Now remember this is a survey, not a census, so there are margins of error.

The key points I will highlight for this survey are:

Private Regions down 158 regions (0.8% since last month)
Total private regions now stand at 20,324
Estimated monthly tier income – US$4,091,000 +/- US$51,000 (Down around $45,000 or 1.1% on last month).
Top 20 landowners own 38.3% of private regions (Up 0.8% on last month).
Top 20 landowners pay 30.7% of private region tier (Up 0.4% on last month).

Nothing earth shattering in these figures, although the decline in private regions was higher during April at 0.8%, when compare to March where it was 0.3%.

Whereas the top 20 landowners holdings are up slightly, the Top 10 are down slightly, very slightly at 0.1%.

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May 5, 2013

From Tier To Eternity

You will hear it being whispered in darkened corners of Second Life. Shadowy figures are abroad, they may even be coming to a mainland sim near you and with them they carry no tier contributions, but they will be in the possession of mainland parcels.

There’s something amiss and according to the whispered reports, there has long been something amiss. These shadowy figures are allegedly taking advantage of a rumoured exploit and getting for free, something that others pay through the nose for. I should be outraged, for some reason, and I’m not quite sure why, I’m not.

One reason perhaps is that some people will inadverently be taking advantage of this loophole. I’ll give an example, I’m frustrated that Linden Lab have made no moves to address the tier issue, tier remains too damn high. I have taken steps to downgrade my land holdings. During the course of this I started to unload some mainland parcels, then I decided to check my group contributions in case I had tier donations above and beyond what was needed. I found that I didn’t have enough tier donations in one particular land group, I found myself 2 metres under. Now 2 metres is neither here nor there and it may have only happened as I unloaded parcels owned by that land group due to losing land in tier bonus, or I may have long been 2 metres under and not realised it. I had more than 2 metres of tier available, so it was easy to put that right.

Another reason I’m not outraged is that even if Linden Lab send round the tax collectors and plug this hole, they won’t shift a damn inch on their tier pricing. The shadowy figures aren’t likely to pay for their tier, they are more likely to abandon, so the net result would be nil.

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May 5, 2013

Are The Foreign Language Forums As Vicious As The English Speaking Forums?

I will shortly be embarking on a much needed holiday to Majorca, to prepare myself for this I decided to delve into the Spanish Forums to polish up my reading skills. I don’t need to do this, the part of Majorca I’m going to speaks fluent English, indeed during my holiday I will pop along to a place called Paguera, which is largely full of German tourists but where I know from previous experience, despite not knowing German at all, the bar staff will be able to speak English too.

When I read the Spanish forums, a cursory glance suggests they are helpful, indeed I see references in some posts to English speaking blogs, such as Del Blog De Strawberry Singh. Now if someone pointed me to a Spanish speaking blog, my limited Spanish would leave me lost.

However what I really wonder is, are these foreign language forums as vicious as the English speaking forums? I see posts in the English speaking forums that make me wince, someone posts for help and they receive abuse. I’m no angel when it comes to forums, indeed some of my past history of forum responses in the old days makes me cringe, but I do wonder if the foreign language forums have their trolls, trouble makers and unhelpful folk or whether they are more supportive.

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May 3, 2013

Outside Companies Should Create Their Own Second Life Faires

Fantasy Faire is over for this year, but what this year’s event has left me wondering is why aren’t there more faires and why aren’t there more faires with outsiders involved? Now by outsiders I’m talking about people who don’t see Second Life as being their natural place, such as people who don’t really use Second Life but could use it for promotional purposes.

Now let’s just pause for a moment here, Linden Lab have brought advertising to their website and a lot of this advertising is from people who don’t see Second Life as their natural place, there are adverts from all sorts of different companies there. Why not harness that advertising potential and point advertisers in the direction of the Fantasy Faire website and say, hey, here’s what you can do in Second Life to make feature rich advertising.

Now there are a few reasons why this sort of thing generally doesn’t happen. The first is that Second Life is a rather small subset of potential consumers for any organisation to be concerned with, I mean there are plenty of us here but there are not eye popping amounts. Another reason is that Second Life users get a bit uppity at times about outsiders advertising on Second Life properties, some of the feedback about the website adverts demonstrates that. Another reason is that advertisers don’t want to be associated with dodgy content.

Some of these factors can be overcome, but let’s just imagine what could be done with a Fantasy Faire for fantasy authors and MMO companies. This could bring new users to Second Life, a short faire on this scale would mean people weren’t tied to tier in Second Life to display their wares, but they could get some damn good promotional material out of a short term event. The game companies should have no problem making avatars for Second Life, whereas the authors could work with, Linden Lab or even, shock horror, Second Life residents to help them build displays to promote their books.

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May 3, 2013

The Drax Files Episode 5 – Engrama

May 26th 1982, Aston Villa defeated Bayern Munich in the European Cup final to become champions of Europe. The following season, Aston Villa defeated Barcelona over two legs to win the European Super Cup, which whilst not quite as impressive, was still a mighty success for The Villa.

This week in The Champions League, Bayern Munich completed a stunning 7-0 success over two legs against Barcelona to reach this year’s final. Buenos Aires isn’t in Europe so there are no European football games to link in, patience, I’m getting there.

What on earth has this got to do with Second Life I hear you ask, well other than an excuse for reliving Villa’s glory days, Barcelona, Bavaria, Birmingham, Buenos Aires, different parts of the globe all brought together in Second Life and in the case of Bavaria, Barcelona and Buenos Aires it also points to the latest episode of The Drax Files.

This week Draxtor Despres has published an edition where he talks to a couple who live in Spain, one half of the duo is originally from Spain and the other half originally from Buenos Aires, I believe. Together the couple play live music in Second Life and also play live music in Barcelona … see, there was a link! I’ll post the video at the end of the post but yet again Drax has done a fine job here and we have yet another good example of use cases for Second Life.

The male and female duo of Pupito Helstein and Lakua Arriaga have joined together to form a group called Engrama. They perform live in Second Life by using an electronic guitar, electronic drums and a mixer, which they then stream into Second Life. When it comes to Second Life some people play live and others use backing tracks, Engrama don’t use backing tracks, they prefer their music to be live and unique. They also prefer to play original songs and will, if the mood takes them, improvise and create their own new songs during their performances.

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