February 2013 – Page 4

February 18, 2013

Adult Rated Regions Outnumber General Rated Regions

Tyche Shepherd informed us on Saturday that Adult rated regions now outnumber general rated regions, this the first time that this has been the case. The state of play has changed slightly since Saturday and on Sunday looked like this:

3,940 – Adult
3,925 – General
19,836 – Moderate.

So Adult has just pipped general but Moderate is still the rating of choice. Adult rated sims make up around 14.2% of the grid, however they are more popular with private region owners than Linden Lab’s mainland.

Which brings us on to more of Tyche Shepherd’s statistical goodies. This week’s update over at SLUniverse informs us that the grid is lighter to the tune of 84, however 44 of these are Linden Owned and were largely made up of Linden Realms and Premium Wilderness sims, however that still means there are 40 private regions no longer on the grid. Now for the updated stats:

Estate – Adult: 3,594
Estate – General: 2,200
Estate – Moderate: 14,809
Estate – Offline: 4
Linden – Adult: 346
Linden – General: 1,725
Linden – Moderate: 5,027

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February 16, 2013

The LindeX And Virwox – Pro’s And Cons

When it comes to getting money from Second Life to your bank account, there are quite a few methods. The popular method is using the Linden Exchange, known as The LindeX. Another method is using a third party exchange, such as VirWox. There are other exchanges but these are the two I’m familiar with.

There are pro’s and cons to The LindeX and VirWox and I’ll go through some of them here, this is my opinion and the post should be read with that in mind. I base this post on my own personal experience, your mileage may vary.

The LindeX is the largest currency exchange with whopping amounts of usage, it’s ran by Linden Lab so the source is extremely trustworthy. There are fees involved, there’s a 3.5% fee for selling Linden Dollars on the LindeX and you will be charged USD$1.00 if you want to cash out to Paypal, that’s a flat fee.

One of the big disadvantages with the LindeX is how long it takes to process your credit, it can take upto five working days is the official line but recently there have been reports of it taking longer, Khamon Fate recently created a thread over at SLUniverse saying he had been waiting nine business days.

VirWox has more fees than Linden Lab, they also charge more for a paypal withdrawal with. VirWox allows you to cash out to currencies other than the US Dollar, you can cash out to currencies such as The Euro or British Pound and this is where it gets to be a bit of fun, you can sometimes get a better rate if you cash out to your local currency. The LindeX only deals in US Dollars. However if you do cash out to Paypal via VirWox, say the British pound, you’ll be charged a quid for your Paypal withdrawal on top of the fee, if you use US Dollars, you’re charged a dollar. A quid is worth more than a dollar, but as I said, you may get a better rate by cshing out to British Pounds than US Dollars, so swings and roundabouts.

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February 16, 2013

Dwarfins – Fussy Mating Habits And Job Opportunities

Dwarfins, the Second Life breedables game where you breed Dwarfins, seems to be going along very well with the creators seeking staff to help them support the product. The thing with Dwarfins is that they are very fussy when it comes to mating. I mean when they mate, they don’t do any naughty business, they just create a birth rock together but even then, they are fussy about whom they will create a birth rock with.

They won’t mate with anyone they’re related to and they will only mate with someone of the opposite sex, which leads to situations such as those in the image below when you make the wrong selections:

An Image Should Be Here — Dwarfins Have Fussy Mating Habits.

However when you do choose the right mate, and only a female Dwarfin gets to make the choice, flirting does happen:

Now everyone is happy! The Dwarfins inworld chat is usually peaceful and doesn’t get too complicated, other than the odd person asking to trade, which isn’t allowed in the official chat, trading is ok but outside of that group. However customer support is needed and that’s why they are currently advertising jobs.

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February 15, 2013

Please Sir, I Want Some More

I think it’s fair to say that a lot of us want to see Linden Lab do more for Second Life. For example I want them to make bots available in the form of current avatars, with maybe premium members getting x amount and others needing to pay for packs of them. These bots would work just like a normal avatar in many ways, they’d need to be customisable and respond to pathfinding commands, but they’d be rigged already. They wouldn’t need an inventory. They’d make for great NPC’s.

I’d like to see group pages become web based so there was no need for us all to receive notecard, landmarks, textures etc. to be alerted to events.

I’d like to see better reading systems to replace notecards full stop and then allow people to publish books in Second Life. Yadda Yadda Yadda. The bottom line is many of us want more, but as The Rolling Stones once so well sang, you can’t always get what you want…. unless it’s changes to the Jira of course, which should happen as a matter of bloody course … oh rant should have been left in last post, flame off!

The thing is, Linden Lab have a lot on their plates and one man’s meat is another man’s poison. When Linden Lab introduce feature A, x amount of people will complain that it isn’t important, fix the damn bugs, but which bugs do they mean? Then later Linden Lab introduce feature B, which the people who complained about feature A think is awesome, however the people who loved feature A are not impressed, they want Linden Lab to concentrate on fixing the bugs.

In many ways Linden Lab face a thankless task, they can’t please all of the people all of the time, not even jiggling boobies via avatar physics managed that. However it’s rather healthy for users to suggest new features and fixes, although we should temper our expectations, except when it comes to the bloody Jira which needs fixing, ok ok that was the last post rant, I’ll let it go … no really!

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February 15, 2013

Will No One Rid Us Of This Troublesome Jira?

Gadget Portal started a thread in the official forums: New Jira System – Not Fixing Problems. In the post Gadget highlights the problem of not being able to comment on an existing Jira, an old one relating to group chat. As Gadget couldn’t comment, he raised a new Jira on the same issue, which was then closed as it’s a duplicate of the older issue, on which he can’t comment!

I’m sorry, I’m going to have to be blunt here, but this is yet another example of why the new Jira is a steaming pile of cack. Within the comments in that forum thread, besides me pointing out the new Jira is a pile of cack, we see posts from others who are so unimpressed with the new Jira that they are reluctant to report bugs. Let’s look at that again, people are so unhappy with how the new Jira works, they are reluctant to report the damn bugs. This is not a surprise because I had an issue today that sent my blood pressure rising merely at the thought I’d have to engage with this awful Jira system, fortunately I was able to sort the issue without having to go through the pain and agony of the Jira.

Is this really want Linden Lab want? A bug reporting system that people are reluctant to use despite being fully aware of how to use said system? I’m not going to pretend that the old Jira system was great, because it wasn’t. The new Jira system has one big advantage over the old one, it’s far easier to report a bug now because they’ve taken away lots of options on which category to file a bug under. However, the disadvantages are massive. Reporters are no longer informed when an issue is resolved being a massive disadvantage.

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