October 2012 – Page 4

October 20, 2012

Private Regions Down Almost 10% This Year

The image above is a bit difficult to read here, but it’s a graph of sim losses since January 1st this year, published here with kind permission from Tyche “Statto” Shepherd, for the full sized image click here. The graph is from this post over at SLUniverse, where Tyche updates us regularly on the state of play with the land mass. The latest post (a new one usually appears over the weekend) points out that the grid is lighter to the tune of 2353 private regions this year, which is around 9.9% of the total number of regions recorded on January 1st.

Estate losses are painful, to owners and renters. TheRoyal Properties website currently displays the following message:

“Sadly, due to so many avatars not making payments as promised, Royal Properties has had to officially close its doors. Enjoy your journey… I only wish it would have worked out for me to… ”

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October 20, 2012October 20, 2012

Unintended Consequences

Sometimes in life, we use things in ways they weren’t intended to be used. Then we become accustomed to that usage and get miffed when we’re told changes are being made to make us use those things in the way they were intended. This appears to have happened with the Jira AKA bug tracker, following an announcement in September.

I’ve used the Jira as a knowledge base in the past, and it was a bloody good one. I’d search for an issue, see something that looked similar to my issue, read the report and sometimes find a solution! Hurrah! Now I can’t do that for new issues, the thing is, the Jira was never advertised as a knowledge base. However it was a useful resource and now it has been nerfed.

I went to the Jira today, and was rather impressed when I was told my time settings didn’t match and quickly unimpressed when I found that I can’t see new issues, search will turn up old ones so there’s some knowledge there still, but that knowledge will become obsolete over time in many cases.

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October 19, 2012

Marketplace Wounds Can Be Healed But Surgery May Need To Be Drastic

I’ve been playing the latest World Of Warcraft expansion, Mists Of Pandaria, recently. The starting zone introduces you to the wise Master Shang, who offers wisdom and tells you that something is wrong with the world, he is seeking aid on how to fix things. Does this sound familiar? The solution in the end is rather drastic, very risky and takes a lot of healing.

Which brings us to The Marketplace. I’m not going to go into all the current woes, Inara Pey’s blog post and a forum thread or two, will do that for you. Suffice to say there are many unhappy bunnies, merchants and customers.

Someimes you need to stop digging. The Marketplace is suffering all sorts of woes, I’m sure people at Linden Lab and on The Marketplace team are tearing their hair out and beavering away trying to come up with a fix, but it may be time to think again and look at another big overhaul.

I’m sure there will be groans at such a prospect, but sometimes you need to rip it up and start again.

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October 18, 2012October 18, 2012

Rod Humble Moves Linden Lab Forward, But He Shouldn’t Leave Second Life Behind

I’m seriously having to drag my mouse away from add to cart on Steam where Football Manager 2013 is seductively glancing at me… well it’s more than a seductive glance, it’s winking, fluttering its eyelashes and licking its lips … I must resist, I mean it destroys your social life, it’s too time consuming these days … wait they’ve introduced a new classic mode which makes gameplay quicker, like in the old days, beta will be available any day now if I pre-order and resistance may be futile …

Now when I was a lad I knew more about the people behind games, people such as Paul and Oliver Collyer, whom brought us Championship Manager and are still part of the team now that it’s called Football Manager. Going back further into my childhood I knew who Kevin Toms was, he wrote a game called Football Manager for the Sinclair Spectrum, which I loved, the speccy game is not related to football manager 2013 in any way, shape or form.

Then there were people such as Ron Gilbert, Peter Molyneux, Jeff Minter yadda yadda yadda. However I had never heard of Rod Humble when he came to Linden Lab, by the time Mr Humble arrived my days of reading magazines such as Computer & Video Games, Crash for the ZX Spectrum, Amiga Power for umm, The Amiga or PC Gamer were long behind me. However those in the gaming world do know Mr Humble, when an article appears in gaming related sites, you see comments from people asking why is Rod Humble is at Linden Lab.

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October 17, 2012October 17, 2012

Tier, Not Land Barons, Will Undo Second Life

There are a few posts over at New World Notes during the last month or so regarding Land Barons, the damage (or not) of the SL Marketplace, tier prices, entertainment and roleplaying. I’m not a Land Baron, I do have an interest in roleplaying, entertainment, tier pricing and the damage or not of the SL Marketplace. There are links between these subjects.

Desmond Shang kicked things off back on September 27th with a post about whether land barons matter anymore or not. They do, love them or loathe them land barons do work that would otherwise fall upon Linden Lab to do. Linden Lab are not Blizzard Entertainment, they don’t have the resources to deal with lots of individual customers day in, day out, they have a product that is chaotic in nature, Land Barons fill a gap.

Masami Kuramoto then inspired a post from Hamlet Au regarding themed mainland, and Masami makes some reasonable points but misses the point that the chaotic nature of Second Life is also one of its biggest draws. Masami is quoted as saying:

“SL has the largest map of all games, but the content is messed up. Imagine entire continents of adjacent regions featuring the same theme. Sort of like the Linden Home areas, but without the prefab buildings. Imagine Nexus Prime, Suffugium, S.I.C., The Next Day, Insilico and Hangar Liquides side by side and The Wastelands somewhere nearby.”

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