If you’re read my other two posts reviewing then there’s nothing new here in this one, it’s just a merging of the two posts to make it easier for future reference. This means it will be a long post, with pictures, videos and probably some errors.
January
January started with a look back to 2013 and the number of private region losses. The scores on the door from Tyche Shepherd displayed a slow down on the number of regions leaving the Second Life grid, something that would continue during 2014.
- 2012 Net Private Region Losess – 2865 (12.0%)
- 2013 Net Private Region Losses – 1719 (8.2%)
The virtual world of Kitely moved to a different pricing model which largely did away with the pay by the minute options as these had not been popular.
Season 2 of The Blackened Mirror was taking a mid-season break but would return by the end of January. The show was recorded in Second Life.
Linden Lab were Raising The Roof : The HTTP Project. This project, which had started in 2012 was aimed at improving HTTP communications to improve the end user experience. Linden Lab would continue working on improvements during the year.
Second Life users were getting frustrated by tax and account information requests from Linden Lab. They would continue to be frustrated by these requests throughout the year despite Linden Lab improving their communications and information on these issues.
Second Life got a mention in the comedy show, 2 Broke Girls.
Then came the storm to warm up many a chilly January evening, Cloud Party announced that they would be closing their virtual doors on February 21st.
This was quickly followed by even more news to warm up January, Aston Villa fan and Linden Lab CEO, Rod Humble, was leaving Linden Lab. This created a Twitter storm.
@Ciaran_Laval Yes. He contacted me directly via Facebook IM and then announced it to friends and family on his private facebook page.
— Jo Yardley (@1920sberlin) January 24, 2014
@Ciaran_Laval I’ve pinged #LL for confirmation. Might or might not get a response. @1920sberlin
— Inara Pey (@InaraPey) January 24, 2014
Oh, come on. @rodvik can’t possibly have quit from @LindenLab. @InaraPey hasn’t had to wait for an answer for a week from Peter Gray.
— SecondLie (@SecondLie) January 24, 2014
Wow @Rodvik resigned – Rod Humble leaves Linden Lab http://t.co/bwi04qWBAH – #SecondLife
— Strawberry Singh (@strawberrysingh) January 24, 2014
Seriously? RT @Demonkid: Rod Humble has left Linden Lab? #Shocked #Sl via @1920sberlin http://t.co/V0q5cMrr8G — Bear Silvershade (@BearSilvershade) January 24, 2014
Is this for real? RT @Demonkid: Rod Humble has left Linden Lab? #Shocked #Sl via @1920sberlin http://t.co/NFYd1h5KBn — Botgirl Questi (@botgirlq) January 24, 2014
.@rodvik So long and thanks for all the fish! Keep in touch eh? *hugs*
— Honour McMillan (@HonourMcMillan) January 24, 2014
So, who will be the next ex-CEO of @LindenLab?
— SecondLie (@SecondLie) January 24, 2014
Seriously will everyone stop leaving or closing their products, I’ve been trying to write a blog about @Draxtor radio hour all night! — Ciaran Laval (@Ciaran_Laval) January 24, 2014
#SL Blog post: “Rod Humble and Linden Lab part ways” – http://t.co/yrMlWUifdG #SecondLife #LindenLab #RodHumble — Mona Eberhardt (@monaeberhardt) January 24, 2014
BREAKING NEWS: Cloud Party hires @rodvik as CEO, start date is February 22.
— SecondLie (@SecondLie) January 24, 2014
Meanwhile, life went on, EverQuest Next Landmark announced their system specs.
Eve-Online had the mother of all battles, with an estimated $300,000 worth of damage the result of the biggest battle Eve-Online had ever witnessed. Second Life content creator Porky Gorky, an avid Eve-Online fan, was unharmed.
Meanwhile, in a war of another sort, Linden Lab updated their bot policy to make it so that the purchase of mainland parcels by Land Bots was no longer allowed. This policy was years too late for many but sits in the better late than never category.
February
Mitch Wagner wrote an article about High Fidelity for Information Week. The article was interesting but the comments proved surprising when someone said :
Second Life would have fared better if it had appealed to MMORPG fans, the primary proven market for such activities. Philip Rosedale, you need orcs.
This caused me to suggest that Second Life has plenty of Orcs!
Arsenal fan Ebbe Altberg was unveiled as the new Linden Lab CEO. Rumours that part of the requirement to be Linden Lab CEO these days involves supporting an English football team whose name starts with the letter A were strenuously denied.
Linden Lab provided even more information regarding tax and account requirements, users continued to scratch their heads.
LindeX trading limits were quietly moved down, from $2,500 a month to $2,000 a month for regular LindeX users. Those who required higher limits could still apply for them. Hardly anyone noticed this and the reason has never been explained although I suspect it’s linked to the tax and account requirements.
Paul Tassi over at Forbes predicted that The Elder Scrolls Online would be the biggest video game disaster of 2014 due to its subscription pricing model. This prediction proved to be false.
Snapzilla, a photo hosting site built for Second Life turned 9 and received a revamp.
A Second Life advert appeared, which annoyed some people due to its design.
Linden Lab decided to change their product offering, with Dio, Creatoverse and Versu all shown the door :
After careful consideration, Linden Lab has decided to cease development and support for dio, Versu, and Creatorverse. We’re grateful for those who took the time to experiment with these products in their early days, but ultimately we have determined that due to a number of factors, we and our customers will be best served by focusing our efforts on continuing to provide exceptional service and compelling new experiences for the users of our other products.
Versu in particular was mourned. Emily Short announced that she would like to keep Versu alive somehow.
Meanwhile, in OpenSim, The Greyville Colony for writers had caught my eye. Nara Malone was extremely happy to show me around.
Linden Lab announced project zipper, a project aimed at making the Second Life client download and install process even faster. This left many scratching their heads as the Second Life client didn’t take long to download and install anyway, however there are suggestions that the longer people have to wait the more likely they are to abandon ship.
Linden Lab announced changes to the Jira which reversed some of the previous contentious changes. Users would once again be able to see all reported bugs (except security bugs) and they would also be able to comment before an issue was triaged. New Feature requests were also returned to the Jira. Many people cheered, rather loudly.
March
SL Go from Onlive was announced. This would allow people to use Second Life on tablets and older hardware. However concerns were raised amongst the user base regarding the per minute pricing model. As noted earlier, Kitely had largely moved away from this model as it had proven unpopular.
Talking of Kitely, their Marketplace entered closed beta during March. The intent of this Marketplace was to allow people to sell items via a Marketplace to Hypergrid connected grids or Kitely users.
Emily Short announced that her attempts to rescue Versu from a dusty shelf had failed :
So for those who were curious, Linden has now given me a definite no about selling me the codebase and IP.
However like most good stories, this one would have a twist, more on that later.
An interesting Virtual Worlds to real world report appeared. The report, from red centric, compared Eve-Online, World Of Warcraft and Second Life to the real world and came up with some very interesting findings :
Between 2006 and 2011, global internet usage doubled in growth – in the same timeframe, Second Life saw a 4000% increase in users.
The Hypergrid stories project launched. This was a project to tell interactive stories in different virtual world grids. Whereas most of the grids were Hypergrid enabled OpenSim worlds, Second Life wasn’t left out of the project, even though Second Life is not Hypergrid enabled.
Oculus Rift was hot in March and Linden Lab announced a limited beta test for Oculus Rift integration with Second Life would be taking place.
Confirmation of the slow down of Second Life region losses appeared in the shape and form of growth! The Second Life grid grew by 14 regions during one week in March, 15 private regions with 1 Linden Lab region going offline, this was the largest week on week growth since June 17th 2012.
Facebook purchased Oculus VR, the company behind Oculus Rift. Many people were not happy about this, including Markus Persson of Minecraft fame :
I definitely want to be a part of VR, but I will not work with Facebook. Their motives are too unclear and shifting, and they haven’t historically been a stable platform. There’s nothing about their history that makes me trust them, and that makes them seem creepy to me.
And I did not chip in ten grand to seed a first investment round to build value for a Facebook acquisition.
Cultured The Magazine launched. This is a magazine that covers fashion and popular culture in Second Life.
Seanchai celebrated six years of storytelling in Second Life.
April
High Fidelity were talking about Identity In The Metaverse. This wasn’t just about your name, it was also related to who and which services you give your name to. High Fidelity also received a visit from Samantha Murphy of New Scientist, who was rather impressed :
As we face each other, the most obvious difference between Second Life and High Fidelity is immediately apparent. Although it is still in early testing, High Fidelity already has the social presence that was lacking in Second Life.
I’m not 100% in agreement with Samantha there.
SL Share, a feature that had previously allowed Second Life users to share photos, status updates and check ins was extended to Flickr and Twitter.
SL GO, in light of feedback, changed their pricing policy from a pay by the minute billing schedule to offering an alternative of a flat fee monthly subscription.
In a bid to help improve documentation regarding the LSL Portal, Strife Onizuka announced the LSL Portal Poetry project. He announced this on April 1st, which set the alarm bells ringing but this was a genuine project. The idea was to bring Haiku to LSL documentation.
Linden Lab encouraged content creators to assist customers to purchase Mesh clothing that fits their avatar.
In order to make this easier for shoppers, we have worked with Second Life content creators to define a way to clearly communicate this to customers. We have arrived at a scheme that can be used for inworld sales as well as those on the Marketplace and ask that Merchants standardize on this model
I don’t know if this has been a success or not.
The Heartbleed bug was causing panic and Linden Lab updated their users on the issue :
You do not need to take extra action to secure your Second Life password if you have not used the same password on other websites. Your Second Life password was not visible via Heartbleed server memory exposure. No secondlife.com site that accepts passwords had the vulnerable SSL heartbeat feature enabled.
Linden Lab updated the transaction history page on Second Life accounts, much to the annoyance of merchants. Linden Lab announced they would seek feedback.
Seanchai announced that they would be extending their storytelling capabilities to the virtual world of Kitely.
May
Fantasy Faire!! My favourite event of the year by a country mile. The event is part of Relay For Life in Second Life and is simply awesome.
What about the rest of May? Linden Lab announced Project Interesting, a project aimed at improving object loading to make scenes appear to load faster.
Landon Linden explained, in some detail, the recent performance problems that had been causing distress for Second Life users. This was a refreshing and open post.
Another event arrived in the shape and form of The Sci-Fi convention in Second Life, this event is also related to Relay For Life.
June
The Empire Struck Back as Linden Lab announced they were now proud sponsors of The Drax Files : World Makers series. There was even a new trailer on the Second Life website featuring clips from the series.
Versu was saved from life on a dusty bookshelf when it was announced that Linden Lab, Emily Short and co. had indeed been able to negotiate an agreement.
Second Life’s 11th birthday celebrations were in full swing during June and Linden Lab were giving away a very funky robot avatar.
The Guardian were talking about the best video game cities. Linden Lab and Jo Yardley encouraged people to submit Second Life cities to the discussion.
Talking of Jo Yardley, The Drax Files : World Makers episode 2 1920’s Berlin received an award for Best Machinima at the New Media Festival.
Kiely announced that the would be removing metered worlds and introducing Premium Worlds as they continued to tweak their pricing model.
Meanwhile Linden Lab were happily announcing that Project Shining was complete :
So if you happen to notice quicker avatar renderings, faster scene loading, seamless region crossing, or just better overall router stability, these are all objectives of Project Shining.
There was a bit of a hoo-ha regarding a competition for SL11B, it required Second Life residents to enter via Facebook and as many of us know, Facebook is not exactly Second Life friendly. However Gray Of The Lab from San Francisco (AKA Pete Linden) explained :
We realize that a number of Second Life users have reservations about using Facebook and other platforms. In this case, we chose to run the contest through our Facebook page simply because we have a tool on our page that facilitates running a contest with all of the legal stuff (technical term) we need in place to run something like this, and we thought it would be of interest to the more than 366,000 followers of the official Second Life page. Our aim certainly isn’t to discourage participation, and we’ll certainly explore alternative ways to run similar contests in the future.
Ebbe Altberg started to talk about a new virtual world offering from Linden Lab. The project, which remains top secret, has so far not released many details at all but Ebbe went to forums and blog posts to discuss the new virtual world.
Ebbe Altberg made a brave, some may even say very brave, announcement on Twitter :
@ebbealtberg how about you fix this SL chat before you build a whole NEW SL? Grrr
— M.J. (@Belladonna066) June 27, 2014
@1920sberlin @Belladonna066 We’ll fix chat way before then. Top priority for the SL team. — Ebbe Altberg (@ebbealtberg) June 27, 2014
July
New changes to Skill Gaming policies in Second Life were coming to the fore in July, the result would be a learning curve for Linden Lab, creators and region owners. This was not a smooth process. KR Engineering, creator of the very popular Greedy Greedy announced they would be releasing a free to play only version of the game to ensure they did not have to deal with the Skill Gaming Policy.
Experience keys were the flavour of the month as Linden Lab invited us to the Cornfield to experience the new experiences!
Linden Lab updated section 2.3 of their terms of service. The update wasn’t really convincing and remains problematic. CG Textures, who now forbid use of their textures in Linden Lab products remained unconvinced that any of their concerns had been addressed at all and told Jo Yardley :
I’m afraid this does not change the situation for us.
I’m not sure why it’s so difficult for Linden Lab to address this issue.
Linden Lab announced upcoming improvements to Second Life, including experience keys beta, improving group chat, implementing the chrome embedded framework and more improvements for Mesh and texture loading.
I covered the University Of The West Of England teaching an MA in Virtual Worlds within Second Life. This course was aimed at those who want to teach in virtual worlds but some of those taking the course were actually just interested in the subject matter.
Despite the slow down in the loss of private regions in Second Life, the overall amount was still dropping. Tyche Shepherd informed us that the number of private regions had slipped below 19,000 for the first time since 15th June 2008.
The new Skill Gaming policy in Second Life, which had initially been pencilled in to be enforced from August 1st had its deadline pushed back to September 1st.
August
Tax and Account confusion continued in Second Life, with Psyke Phaeton open sourcing his HS security Orb after being informed by Linden Lab that his account would be terminated at the end of August if he didn’t fill in the paperwork. Psyke’s website is no longer available so I don’t know if he changed his mind, I do know people over at SLUniverse tried to persuade him that some of his fears were unfounded.
Karyne Levy over at Business Insider rubbed Second Life users up the wrong way with an article entitled : Second Life Has Devolved Into A Post-Apocalyptic Virtual World, And The Weirdest Thing Is How Many People Still Use It. This didn’t really end well.
Anshe Chung’s land empire expanded to the Lord British game Shroud Of The Avatar.
High Fidelity were making a lot of noise during August and were exemplifying their early work on pupeteering an avatar via facial movements. The result was Emily Donald singing beautiful.
The discussion about the controversial Linden Lab TOS continued, even the SL bar Association were confused and critical about the TOS.
Improvements to SL GO were being announced, these included implementing SL Share functionality. Onlive also offered paid work to viewer developers to help improve the experience.
High Fidelity were very much making a noise in August, interviewing intern Paloma Palmer who had been using Javascript for her project and measuring the speed of sound in another post :
We are obsessed with reducing latency, because we have observed aspects of 1:1 interaction which are broken by too much latency.
In even more High Fidelity news, Tony Parisi of VRML and Vivaty fame joined the team as an advisor. In other High Fidelity news Ryan Karpf took us behind the scenes to discuss how they had created a video of frogs who are not frogs, sitting on lilypads. A lot of peripherals and software were required but that’s the nature of a developing platform at a time when the industry is moving fast.
Meanwhile in Second Life, the latter part of August saw approved Skill Gaming Ventures appearing on the wiki. This meant that my prediction that the deadline would have to be pushed back again was completely wrong!
September
The Skill Gaming Policy for Second Life kicked in on September 1st but it came with a late twist that payment info on file was required for participants. This was a sensible late twist.
The Fort Worth Weekly covered singer/songwriter Matthew Broils and his performances in Second Life :
Broyles and the virtual concertgoers are part of an elaborate computer game. In Second Life, their avatars are human-looking, and they interact across detailed replicas of real-world places like New York City and Chicago. Unlike most computer games, which emphasize fantasy universes and defeating opponents, Second Life is for folks seeking to re-create everyday experiences via virtual reality, including music concerts.
On this day, Broyles is sharing the stage with violinist Beth Odets-Brown, a frequent collaborator who improvises over Broyles’ songs, performing from her home in Dallas.
Discover, a Science publication published an article about skin colour in video games. The article was based on research by Jong-Eun Roselyn Lee at Ohio State University and had a Second Life slant as that was the platform used for the research :
She found that black participants reported less willingness in the low-diversity scenario, and that they also created whiter avatars, as judged by objective raters. By comparison, white study participants were largely unaffected by either the high-diversity or low-diversity scenarios.
The research was far from perfect but made for an interesting read. Another issue it raised was Linden Lab’s improved Flickr pool for journalists, which helps to represent Second Life better in the media, as exemplified by the picture that was used for that article.
Nara Malone talked to me about Opensim, Exhibitions, NPC’s and the Open Simulator conference scheduled for November at which she would be taking part :
Nara is a storyteller and of course her stories must be told. However she’s not alone and the exhibit she’s giving me a sneak preview of is part of her group’s work for the OpenSimulator Conference in November. Whereas the big names are keynote speakers such as High Fidelity’s Philip Rosedale and Oculus Rift’s Steve LaValle, many from the general OpenSim community will be there too and exhibiting their wares.
Nara explains to me that her group will have a total of eight examples of their work running at the conference. Whereas there’s a lot of storytelling, there’s also a lot of scripting involved and Nara tells me that scripting guru Fred Beckhusen is on their team.
Sad news reached us that former Linden Lab executive Joe Miller had passed away.
Over at High Fidelity, Dan Hope was taking a look at the work of some Alpha Testers.
Blizzard were gearing up for World Of Warcraft’s 10th birthday with more discussion about their expansion, Warlords Of Draenor, birthday events and slapping their UK based customers in the face by yet again putting up the price for those using pound sterling. There were ways to avoid the rise for those who stayed subscribed. I decided to unsubscribe and therefore save even more money.
Blizzard then announced they were cancelling their next gen MMO Titan. Things just had not worked out for the title. I suggested there were lessons to be learned here for next gen titles ….
Linden Lab announced some updates and performance improvements to Second Life, proving that they weren’t abandoning Second Life for their next gen platform. The improvements included implementation of a content delivery network to try and increase performance for those further away from Linden Lab’s data centres :
Separately, each of these will improve texture and mesh loading performance, but put together, you should really see some exciting improvements in how long it takes to load new areas and objects – making touring the many fabulous places in Second Life you have not yet visited even better!
October
Facebook was in the news for upsetting Drag Queens due to their real names policy. Hamlet Au over at New World Notes wrote : Facebook Apologizes & Tweaks Real Name Policy to Better Support LGBT Community — But Avatar Community Should Stick With Fan Pages. The gist of the article was that Facebook were not likely to extend any changes their naming policy to Second Life avatars.
Meanwhle, in the Gamergate cack, Intel pulled their adverts from Gamasutra after an article by Leigh Alexander rubbed people up the wrong way. I despaired.
I discovered the Virtually Speaking Science podcast, which takes place in Second Life.
October brought no respite to the tax and account woes for Second Life residents. The latest issue was a delay in the length of time it took for the submissions to be processed. Gray of the Lab from San Francisco explained the reasons behind the problem :
Due to a significant volume of payout request in recent weeks, payout requests may take longer to process than expected. We apologize for the delay, and we are working hard on clearing the backlog and process requests as quickly as possible. In the meantime, we advise residents to please address any specific questions through their Support cases. We appreciate the cooperation and patience from all residents, and hope to have payout request processing times back to normal soon.
Designing Worlds 250th edition was held at the spectacular Matanzas sim, owned these days by Skate Foss. The sim had featured in episode 3 of the show so had some historical significance, the show also featured an interview with Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg in which Ebbe talked about Second Life and plans for the future.
Linden Lab announced that Patterns, another product that appeared under previous CEO Rod Humble, had reached its conclusion. Patterns users weren’t happy. However Linden Lab did hold out an olive branch :
Patterns had early promise, and while Linden Lab focuses our efforts on our other offerings, we are still evaluating the future of the Patterns technology. Interested parties are welcome to contact us with proposals.
I don’t know if anyone took them up on the offer to contact them.
Tom Simonite of MIT Technology Review visited High Fidelity and liked what he saw :
Some of what his company is creating is much the same as Second Life. You download some software and then enter a virtual space where you can steer your avatar around and build stuff. This time, though, building is much easier, the lag mostly eliminated, and the graphics more impressive.
I didn’t quite agree about the graphics being more impressive or the building easier, not at this stage anyway, however it’s still early days for High Fidelity.
Linden Lab blogged about yet more performance improvements for Second Life, this time speeding up the marketplace was added to faster texture loading, improving group chat, quicker communications and Linden Lab even invited feedback from users on these performance improvements, exemplifying how much better Linden Lab are these days when it comes to communicating with their community.
November
In the ongoing issue of getting approval for their skill gaming application for Second Life, SL Capital Exchange suspended activity until further notice. This was due to a deadline of November 1st for regions to comply with the policy, even if they still had a pending application.
November was a big month for conferences and events. The OpenSim community conference ran from November 8th – 9th and featured presentations from Philip Rosedale, Nara Malone, Steve LaValle of Oculus and Pathfinder amongst others.
Meanwhile Ebbe Altberg found himself at Engadget Expand in New York to talk about virtual reality from the view of a company who don’t make games.
Meanwhile, Philip Rosedale, fresh from the OpenSim Community Conference was making his way to Gigaom Roadmap where he was interviewed by Signe Brewster.
Back to Second Life and a new funky sim had appeared, Meauxle Bureaux, home of the Second Life moles who work for Linden Lab.
The Lindens invited people to visit and came out in force, Gray of The Lab From San Francisco even made an appearance.
Linden Lab announced that Desura had been sold to Bad Juju Games. Desura is a digital distribution platform that welcomes all sorts of game developers, the press release was complimentary :
Desura is a fantastic platform for game developers and players, and we look forward to seeing it continue to evolve and grow, now as part of Bad Juju Games.
Linden Lab blogged an update regarding the CDN project and acknowledged that some users had been experiencing difficulties :
However, we have also seen that some users have had the opposite experience, and have worked with a number of those users to collect detailed data on the nature of the problems and shared it with our CDN provider. We believe that the problems are the result of a combination of the considerable additional load we added to the CDN, and a coincidental additional large load on the CDN from another source. Exacerbating matters, flaws in both our viewer code and the CDN caused recovery from these load spikes to be much slower than it should have been. We are working with our CDN provider to increase capacity and to configure the CDN so that Second Life data availability will not be as affected by outside load. We are also making changes to our code and in the CDN to make recovery quicker and more robust.
Latif Khalifa, developer of the Radegast Metaverse client posted sad news that due to ill health he would no longer be able to develop the viewer. Meanwhile in gaming news, the latest expansion to World Of Warcraft, Warlords of Draenor hit the streets and was accompanied by the usual impressive promo video from Blizzard.
What a shame that Blizzard Europe seem to have adopted such a bad attitude to their UK customers. Linden Lab had engaged in a week of maintenance on Second Life. Many users were confused as to exactly why this had happened, Linden Lab updated them via their blog :
The region restarts that some of you have experienced this week were an unfortunate side-effect of this critical maintenance work. We have done our best to keep these restarts to a minimum as we understand just how disruptive a region restart can be. The affected machines have been repaired, and returned to service and we are confident that no more failures of this type will occur in the future. Thank you all for your patience and understanding as we have proceeded through the extended maintenance window this week.
Draxtor Despres took his radio hour to Linden Lab HQ, where he talked about the new virtual world venture, although it’s so top secret even the name of it couldn’t be revealed. He also talked to Lindens on various subjects and found Linden Lab swag, including cups with FIC on them.
DX Exchange, who had until this point been largely known for running a virtual currency exchange, entered the virtual Marketplace market.
December
Err not a lot happened in December! I mean there was the whole Christmas thing of course, but in terms of news, there wasn’t a lot!
Target Australia engaged in what looks more like a PR stunt than a stance when they removed Grand Theft Auto 5 from their shelves but kept lots of other R18 products on them.
Linden Lab announced a new way for people to share their ideas and feedback regarding Second Life :
What’s the one thing Linden Lab could do that would have the biggest impact on further improving your Second Life experience? Many Second Life users have thoughts on this – from different approaches for the way things are done today, to brand new features that could dramatically improve their experiences, to seemingly small things that could have a big impact. Today, we’re launching an easier way to share your ideas with us, a new “Feedback & Suggestions” page on SecondLife.com. You can also find this page by going to Help and finding New Feature Suggestions in the drop down.
SL GO from Onlive was back in the news because they now offered the option to use the Firestorm client, which was a very sensible move. The Firestorm team were certainly excited about it :
We are very excited to announce that OnLive has just released Firestorm in their SL Go app, allowing you to run it on your PCs, Mac computers and soon on mobile devices! What’s most exciting about this is how it enables residents on older computers and less capable laptops to experience Second Life and Opensim on ultra graphics without spending hundreds or thousands to upgrade their systems. It’s an affordable way for everyone to experience the full potential and beauty of SL with high framerates and great performance!
A Change.Org petition appeared calling for Second Life avatars to be allowed to have a Facebook Page. They meant a full Facebook account in their Second Life avatar name.
Linden Lab ended the year by announcing a snapshot contest for Second Life residents and offering residents a gift.
There ends the year. Linden Lab’s communications have improved greatly, although some issues still remained when it came to tax and account and skill gaming policies. The Second Life TOS remains problematic but overall, this wasn’t a bad year for virtual worlds at all. Whereas Cloud Party closed, High Fidelity certainly arrived and with a next gen virtual world from Linden Lab in the progress, the future looks bright.
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