Second Life – Page 156

November 11, 2013

CasperTech’s PrimBay To Provide Web Based Virtual Shopping Experience

I’d heard a few whispers about something called PrimBay from Caspertech but details were thin on the ground. However I’ve unearthed a bit more information via a blog post from Steampunk enthusiast Lelani Carver. Now the first thing to note is that you have to be using CasperVend to sell items on PrimBay, Lelani gives a little bit of blurb about the venture in her post:

“For anyone using Caspervend products, there’s now an online marketplace where your products are listed, similar to the Second Life Marketplace, but scripted to be much faster, easier to search, and with better options for showing color variations and demos. ”

I’m not sure what stage this venture is at, the actual website (which can be found at https://www.primbay.com/) looks rather sparse and lacks information. However if you browse categories you will see, as you’d expect, categories and if you click within those categories, for example buildings & prefabs, you will see listings. Alternatively you can just search for items by Lelani Carver!

According to Lelani’s post there are plans for banners and storefronts. I also suspect this may be used to sell items on other grids, for example there’s talk of Avination currency in the terms of service and when you click login there are options to login as a Second Life customer or Avination customer.

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November 11, 2013November 11, 2013

New Marketplace Merchants Will Need PIOF

Linden Lab have announced that those who want to open new stores on the Second Life Marketplace will be required to provide payment info on file (PIOF). The move has been warmly received by merchants, many of whom who seem to view it as a beefing up of security.

This will, once one or two teething issues and quirks are ironed out, undoubtedly reduce the amount of throwaway alts used to practice questionable behaviour on the marketplace. Obviously it won’t cut down on all questionable behaviour but it will greatly reduce it and we should see less of the most brazen scams taking place … one would hope!

The blog post states:

“Only newly created accounts will be required to meet this requirement at this time, and existing Merchant accounts will not be affected. However, we strongly recommend that all merchants complete the steps necessary to meet this new requirement.”

If they ever do get around to requiring PIOF for exisitng merchants, I think we’ll see a few more complaints, but as it currently doesn’t seem to have any implications for exisiting merchants, the news has been well received.

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November 9, 2013

Disrespecting Hedgehogs, Mafia Hits, Trolling Forums – A Look At The Old Police Blotter

Back in the day Second Life used to list the 25 most recent offences in what was known as the Police Blotter. Later on it became the incident report. These reports looked like this:

Date: Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Violation: Community Standards: Indecency, Global Standards
Region: Ahern
Description: Offensive language in IM.
Action taken: Warning issued.

Being as that offence took place in Ahern you can’t help but wonder whether the issue was using offensive language in IM, whereas in Ahern it’s traditional to be abusive in local chat. Some of the offences fall into the bizarre category, such as what appears to have been the St Patrick’s day massacre:

Date: Friday, March 17, 2006
Violation: Community Standards: Violations using Alternate Accounts
Region: —
Description: Use of primary and alternate accounts for mafia “hits” on residents.
Action taken: Suspended 14 days.

We see examples of offences that were serious enough to be listed but had a touch of humour about them:

Date: Friday, June 30, 2006
Violation: Second Life: Respect, Pets
Region: Arabian Nights
Description: Hedgehogs will be respected, dammit!
Action taken: Warning issued.

Date: Saturday, July 8, 2006
Violation: Terms of Service: Adult Allowing Teen Access to MG
Region: Hawaii
Description: “My little brother did it.”
Action taken: Suspended 14 days.

Then we see examples of action being taken because of abusive behaviour in the forums, spamming event listings, nudity in profiles and using real world trademarks to sell goods in Second Life:

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November 8, 2013

AnnMarie OToole’s Automated Vehicles Hit The Buffers

They filled mainland roads .. and roadside parcels. They sped along the highways, cars, tanks, Taxis, Ice Cream trucks, motorised vehicles but it seems that they’ve now crashed permanently. I’m talking about the infamous AnnMarie OToole (not to be confused with Ann OToole) automated vehicles which have apparently disappeared from the Second Life highways.

In her profile, AnnMarie says:

“Yes I am the notorious AnnMarie who invented the drunken vehicles on the SL Roads but the Lindens have shut it down.

Remenber you live in a dictatorship, not a democracy. No charges, no arrest, no hearing, no representation, no appeal. Don’t forget to give copies of all your creations to an alternate account and never keep Linden $$, convert to US$ or risk losing everything.

5 years with over 110,000 visitors taking over 325,000 rides. All gone.”

Now these vehicles were not universally popular, this may be an understatement. A thread over at SLUniverse entitled Guess who’s at it again…Exploiting Mainland cites many reasons for their unpopularity. Allegations about exploiting exploits, crashing, using Linden rez zones, polluting the highways etc.

AnnMarie herself actually pops into that thread to explain a few things, to try and dismiss a few misconceptions and most intriguingly to me, to explain about the problems with an Ice Cream Truck:

“There was a conflict with the Ice Cream Truck, it used to vend ice creams when clicked but people wanted to ride them so the click was changed to RIDING instead of VENDING. Despite 10 fancy Italian flavors they all tasted the same . IM me if you would like a free ice cream.”

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November 7, 2013

No Sex, No Drugs, No Wine, No Women, No fun, No sin, No you, No wonder it’s dark

“Learning providers can create entire campuses composed of multiple learning environments. Game designers can create custom games Virtual world providers can provide any type of environment (within similar constraints as the Entertainment Software Ratings Board [ESRB] content ranges, we intend to avoid the issues that Second Life is wrestling with due to the adult/erotic/pornographic flavor of so much of their content).” – Richard Garriott (AKA Lord British).

The above quote, which I covered in more detail back in June 2011 was to do with a project that Lord British was contemplating, that now seems to have morphed into Shroud Of The Avatar, an MMO, so the previous post is now well out of date. However the issue of adult content is rearing its head once more, this time in Cloud Party where more attention is bringing more questions.

Questions regarding adult and mature content in Cloud Party are not new, indeed they have been discussed in the Cloud Party forums more than once. Cloud Party’s community standards are pretty clear on the issue of mature and adult content:

“Sexually Explicit Content We do not allow adult content or behavior, or visuals of explicit sex or simulated sex on the platform.”

Yet there’s another side to this coin, it’s the whole icky factor some have of sharing spaces with children as young as thirteen. This happens in World Of Warcraft, you’re short of a player on a guild run, you advertise for one more and along comes a gnome warrior with purple hair who tells you “I’m 13” and the rest of the group are “WTF!” but of course, in a 13+ environment you’re likely to run into thirteen year olds!

A thread over at SLUniverse raises the issue of the other side of the coin:

“It has some very good stuff. But no cash out and the PG13 rule ..”

“There’s PG-13, and then there’s hanging out with 13 year olds.”

“The point remains though that in Cloud Party there’s no partitioning of age groups whatsoever at present. They could use a General (13-17) and Mature (18+) filtering themselves, even if they omit Adult forever.”

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, but can a happy medium be reached?

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