I've been gone for 2 years...

I feel so overwhelmed trying to catch up. can some one give me a low down? I cant wait to start playing again even though its very likely most of my friends have moved on. Also I dont get why so many people dont like SL. I always had a blast when I played. I always felt I could let my true colors show in SL without being judged.

Sexual ageplay banned.
Gambling banned.
Ad farms sort of banned.
Banks banned.
Europeans have to pay VAT on tier to Linden Lab and purchases of islands.
Popular places is disappearing and being replaced by showcase so you won't see lots of sex and camping places listed there.
Furries are still getting grief.
Ditto Goreans.
Philip is no longer CEO.
There's too much land for sale.
besides that everything is wonderful.

and, it turns out we're more mainstream than you might think!

Phew!

The persistence of slow rezzing objects and gray textures on every teleport or rapid flight, that completely deny the illusion you are in a persistent 3D world, should provide a comforting sense of being at home again in Second Life after a long absence.

Havok 4 is new in the past two years, I suppose.

Welcome Back.

we have sculpties now!

Since I can't log on this morning, I'll fill you in on the more important events:

Shirley finally admited to Mark that she loved him, but not his island.
Raul rented a sim from Anshe and then filled it with megaprims to look like a huge bowl of sweet potatoes.
Anshe was not amused.
Priscilla married Joy in a lagtastic ceremony at the Greenies sim. The color scheme was beige. Go figure.
Babaloo stayed in his Mom's basement for most of June and sulked.
Several people broke up with Rocky, all too good for him.
Mavis started up a mall that only sold sunburned skins.
Wandloo joined Twitter and now "Twitters" me to tell me every time her AV scratches its butt.
Brandi broke up with Bobo who was sleeping with BanzaiBabe037 who had an affair with BrillopadsAhoy who forgot to log on last week so all his inventory disappeared then suddenly reappeared in Torley Linden's video of the week.
I bought a Gorean Flea Collar and now every SL pest is my slave.
Bwa Ha Ha!

Not much has changed, really.

Not meant as a flip comment, but from 2006 to 2008, there were less changes than say 2003-2005.


For instance in 2003 - 2005 we saw:

- $L go from prim allotment markers to money;

- only being able to walk and sit to... well, more than that;

- from Company staff announcing events gridwide on dropdown boxes and most everyone showing up and knowing everyone, to an almost faceless macroeconomy


So you won' t see a lot of difference like in the old days. Change is coming a lot slower now.

Which in most cases, I think is probably a -good- thing.

and you missed the advent of the flexi-prim. No more helmet head.. hair moves!

Welcome back!

Now we've got sculpties and flexable prims, improved local lighting, Windlight atmospheric rendering not to mention that the stability of the grid has greately improved, downtime has greatly decreased and they are no longer releasing buggy unstable viewers every other week.

2 years ago the whole feel of SL was changing. Due to mainstream media coverage and the inception of free accounts we were heading into self destruction towards the end of 2006. millions of accounts were created and the grid could not cope with the influx of online accounts. Everything ground to a halt and it took a over a year for LL to catch up and improve the platform to return to some level or normalcy. This is still a work in progress and on the whole we are doing ok now, although there is allot of room for improvement! The L$ has remained very stable for a long time now although land prices compared to 2 years ago are very high. There is currently too much land for sale so it's a buyers market and I would maybe hang on a few more months for prices to drop if you are planning on picking up a mainland plot.

Land prices are at a relative low! I've been in this game for about 19 months and unless land was 2L/m in June/July of 06, I sincerely doubt you could buy anything cheaper than where it is now. That is not to say that there isn't a lot of overpriced land, but one can buy cheap land very easily.

As far as slow change is concerned, I see that Porky has still not overcome his irrational fear of the spork.

(do you still have the spork I gave you a year or so ago?)

is there still slingo?

WindLight lighting, sky, and water is much better than what we had before (assuming your computer is able to show all the effects). Havok4 physics seems to make things behave better - it's possible to drive a car across sim borders about 90% of the rime without crashing.

There's much, much more land! Oh, and sculpted prims, you'll notice some objects that don't look like they're made from any of the ordinary prims.

In the pipeline now is real dynamic shadow effects. No hint that these will be coming in the very near future but LL is working on them and there are some impressive videos of SL with experimental shadows. Apparently it's possible to download some bits of code or something that you can add to something in the client viewer that enables dynamic shadows if you have the right graphics card. But it's complicated and beyond me.

Most importantly, I joined.

And still playing "havoc" with most any hugging/kissing animations..bleh.

Welcome back, Senna!

Can understand how you feel. I am playing EQ a bit now (after playing for 7 years solid, then gone 2 years) and have forgotten so much...plus all the changes made in the last two years.

Several things have changed in the 1 year I've been in SL, but all have been already noted (did anyone mention voice yet?).

Nothing irrational about it. SPORKS are evil and need to be erradicated at all costs!

EDIT - I do still have your spork but it has been banished to Hell (more commonly known as the mainland). Currently resides in storage box on top of a volcano.

Ha, mere volacno won't kep it safe from your opponents, you got to hide stuff in the asset server if you really want it hidden. I lost 100 minions so far trying to get my favorite sunglasses back

Yes, except now its called Devil may Care or something like that, shortend in events to DMC.

or Zyngo, made by a different guy.

Low Prim sims - the have ful 65ksqm, but only 3750 prims.

So that's SL-- and where the hell you been?
Jail? Something worse?

You should at least apologize to everyone! (I speak for my main alt, who created me in his/her image, only better)

And since I haven't been around that long, I'll have to get back to ya

sculpted prims, half-fixed megaprim code, havok4, mono compiler, ability to purchase openspace/lowprim sims directly, ability to build up to 4000m high, land price collapse wich MUCH more for rent... all that causes a shift to openspace regions (barely any need for 15000 prims per region when everything becomes >5 times as efficient).

Yet people invest insane ammounts in "special" mainland just because it is west of the first in infohub and has double prim count for the regular mainland fee and it has "special" linden attention that takes away any terraforming rights within a city theme.

Bay City, which is a group of Linden-built sims, with double prims and building codes (they provide parcel owners with textures appropriate to the era, which should be 1930-1960, from what I understand.) Prices skyrocketed to six-figure fees for 512 and 1024 parcels. But dang, it's neat.

Torley Linden has come out with a ton of new tutorial videos, available on YouTube.

Orientation Island is now much more detailed, and much more complex, and doesn't seem to help newbies any more than the old one did.

A whole rash of new avatars are available for new residents.

AO's (Animation Overriders) are huge business now, and get rid of that sexy newbie waddle, which, coincidentally, is also being changed by LL.

And there is a way to report bugs and vote on which is important and should be fixed... it's called JIRA and is a true PITA but can be useful. See here:
http://jira.secondlife.com/secure/Dashboard.jspa
as the old Forum-driven Feature Suggestions is now defunct.