Second Life officially hits eleven years old this month, although if you count closed beta it’s older than that. I’ve decided to delve into the annals of history and look back at some June highlights from the early years of Second Life.
I’ll take a brief look at some topics from June 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006. This covered a period of major growth in Second Life, especially 2006 when users were no longer required to provide billing information, there also seemed to be a lot more competitions back in these years.
I provide this information courtesy of the old old old forum archive at : http://forums-archive.secondlife.com/120/1.html
There’s a lot more information there but I can’t fit that all in one post!
June 2003
Robin Linden confirmed that the NDA had been lifted and people were free to build Second Life websites, they even provided some resources to help with those websites.
Tanya Linden announced that someone had won the free use of an Island for three months as well as as well as an NVIDIA nForce™2-based computer, including an NVIDIA GeForce™ FX 5900 graphics card, courtesy of NVIDIA. The computer comes equipped with the Cordless Elite Duo, state-of-the-art wireless mouse and keyboard, courtesy of Logitech.
Hunter Linden announced that groups would now need to consist of at least three people after three days of existence or they would be disbanded.
Haney Linden announced that the payouts from voting stations would be increased from 10,000 Linden Dollars to 12,000 Linden Dollars. Now if you’ve ever wondered what the purpose of those voting stations around the grid was, this gives us a bit of a clue.
James Linden announced that there would be some downtime to roll out patch 0.9.1. Highlights included Trying to link a tree to a primitive does not crash the simulator (it will quietly fail) and a rather worrying look at how things used to be in the shape and form of Sandbox simulators being tax free.
June 2004
Robin Linden announced that Philip Rosedale would be appearing on CNN News.
Catherine Linden announced that someone had won a lifetime membership which came with a free 4096M parcel.
Robin Linden announced a big technological breakthrough that would allow content developers to tie in-world objects together with programs written in languages like Perl, Python, PHP, or Java. XML-RPC was fully functional and live.
Haney Linden announced that there would be a gala to celebrate Second Life’s 1st birthday. Highlights included a parade, which attracted so many attendees that it pushed Second Life past its technical limits, as Haney explained :
This afternoon’s parade attracted so many viewers that it pushed past the limits of Second Life’s current technology. The brave float drivers experienced major problems especially at sim boundaries.
Problems at sim boundaries hey …….
Magellan Linden announced that a resident needed to be sacrificed to satisfy a newly discovered volcano of Mt. G’al. I do like Magellan Linden!
June 2005
Robin Linden announced a new development, for the cost of 250 Linden Dollars you could run a classified Ad in Find, the ad would run for a fortnight.
Jesse Linden announced that 78 residents would share the prize pool of USD$ 5810.00 as winners of the developer incentive award. Amongst the winners were Anshe Chung, Sensual Casanova, Munchflower Zaius, FlipperPA Peregrine and Salazar Jack.
Jeska Linden announced that a new greeter program would be going live, this was intended to assist new users:
During signup, new Residents will be prompted to “Choose a Greeter Experience” and select from those Greeters who are currently in-world. After they have spent time in Orientation Island, they will meet up with their Greeters and have a distinct one-time experience in-world (from avatar tweaking to game playing).
Jeska Linden announced a new forum policy, that linked in with the inworld community standards. This now meant that if someone was suspended inworld, they would be suspended from the forums and if they were suspended on the forums, they would be suspended inworld.
Robin Linden announced some changes to land sales, Islands would now carry an increased setup fee of USD$1,250 and Mainland auctions would be for 16 acre full sims, which would no longer be parcelled in advance, although auction winners could parcel and resell them themselves.
June 2006
Torley Linden announced that plans were afoot for Second Life’s third birthday celebrations. Tateru Nino would offer assistance. An interactive experience was planned, with some inspiration from the work of Salvador Dali.
Chris Linden announced a big change, a change that still rankles with some oldbies to this very day. Registration for Second Life would no longer require billing information, they would just need to supply some basic identifying information. However the new free accounts would not receive the starting bonus of 250 Linden Dollars.
Jesse Linden announced the Second annual movie trailer contest, with movie makers being urged to make trailers that showed Second Life in all its glory. The grand prize winner would received 100,000 Linden Dollars, with winners in each category receiving 50,000 Linden Dollars.
Jeska Linden announced that the ban limit for parcels would be raised from 15m to 200m.
Robin Linden announced that due to concerns about the new open registration system, a new terms of service and privacy policy would be released. There would also be a community round table to discuss these matters in July.