Back From The Dead - A History Of SL

Hi all,

Like the rise of a historic figure from ancient, ancient past, Jsecure Hanks will be back in SL in the near future. It's been five years since I regularly used SL - in SL time I figure that to be about a thousand years...

There certainly has been about a thousand years of progress. What is all this about Linden Labs offering land with buildings on it? And themed areas? And what is SL Street?? It seems there is a Linden Lab sponsored marketplace idea/concept...

Imagine I'm Austin Powers and I've just been defrosted... Can someone who has regularly used SL for years and years fill me in on the major advances of the last five years? Last time I was here:

* Private sims had been on offer for a while
* All land other than private sims was on mainland
* All land was sold just as bare land
* Anshe Chung was just getting started renting people land she owned, which had houses on it
* LL had just launched their currency trading thing

I'm curious also, did we ever get

* That havok4 thing everyone was always asking after
* A scripting language other than LSL in Second Life

Any help bringing me up to speed much appreciated

Oh yeah, is the prim limit still 15,000 per sim, and can you still only create a prim 10m x 10m in size, max? Are there any cool new shaped prims, and are there any particularly cool new LSL functions?

Are the ways of moving data in and out of SL still only xmlrpc, email and... that other one I forget?

We only have LSL for scripting and Havok4 has been rolled out. Anshe may or may not still be around, but few make much money off real estate anymore as the price per sq m has dropped really low. There are tons and tons of private islands and all other land is mainland and requires a Premium membership to own. Prim limits are still the same, though there are a few double prim areas. Number of accounts has skyrocketed because LL opened things up so you can create free accounts without giving any credit card info or anything. However, there is now an Adult continent where all Adult content has been moved and you must have payment info on file or go thru a third party Age Verification system to gain access to it.

Prims are still limited to 10x10x10, HOWEVER, there have been a few glitches that allowed folks to create large ones -- megaprims -- and there are a huge number available for free to use in building. We have Flexible prims and Sculpty prims now also. We can exchance L$ for US$ and visa versa, with some minor fees. The new XstreetSL is a previous third party site for L$/US$ exchange and content selling that LL has now bought. The new Linden Homes land has 512 parcels with houses that exactly fit the parcel and they will be free to premium members that have at least 512 tier available.

Premium membership is 9.95/mth, 22.50/qtr, or 72.00/yr and that gives you your first 512 m of tier free, but there is no longer a First Land program. Basic accounts and alts are free so that is what the majority of accounts are. Premiums only get L$300 stipend a week now and basics get nothing.

There have also been a variety of content theft methods spring up, along with some LL glitches that messed up item permissions and let people get stuff w/ full perm unintentionally. The worry over content theft has many creators rightly upset, especially since LL is doing little about it, so a lot of clothing/hair/etc... that should probably be modifiable are now only modifiable via scripts imbedded in the items. That could prove to be a problem soon though as Script limits will be implemented sometime in 2010.

Also, bots (automated av accounts running on minimal resource software) have become a new thing that started sucking up all the camping spots and taking all the money tree cash as soon as it was available. Bots were also used to game the traffic numbers -- traffic being what replace things like dwell and voting systems. Bots are now not allowed for traffic purposes and camping for the sake of gaming traffic is also not allowed. Bots are primarily used to make clubs look like there are people there or in stores to greet customers or model clothing, or to buy up land quickly that goes up for sale cheap.

Gambling has been banned, and adult content has been quarantined on an adult continent.

and there is a viewer that has jiggly bewbies now.

Trust me when I say the jiggly boob thing will make coming back worth it.
Oh and the sky is prettier and you can use voice.

SL has jumped the shark, of course, jumping the shark has also jumped the shark.

/me predicts a quick flash and then you will move on again knowing in your heart it was the right thing to do in the first place. You might come back to read the forums once in a while and I mean these forums not that "other" thing that claims to be forums but is really just a big pile of.... well, no sense in spoiling the plot.

Communique #16.3

Welcome back, Comrade! The Central Committee has authorized me to offer you a full membership in FLOSK (Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Slaves and Kajirae). We can start your arms training immediately.

Yeah, you'll find a few things have changed, alright.

Have a cigar. They're Cuban.

Yours sincerely,



Comandante 8 1/2
F.L.O.S.K.

FREEDOM TO SLAVES!!!! NO KAJIRA LEFT BEHIND!!

you haven't been gone five years.... some things in no particular order....

the Lindex killed the offsite money markets as predicted (this is now referred to GOMing... business being undermined and taken over by LL despite assurances that they wouldn't enter that market)

private sim land price hikes, cheep cut rate sims introduced with lower limits, then the prices are jacked up and LL complains about how they are being used.

telehubs die out with point to point teleports, but sim border crossings become flakier. ratings goes away, as does dwell, but people continue to use free accounts and bot clients to increase their traffic numbers to get higher search listings. new physics engine after years of promises, but it doesn't change much, just runs a bit faster.

new scripting compiler (same old language) has lots of problems, but is faster when it works... still has issues, but they want to trash the old one now, and install peravtar and per parcel script limits.

ll Shoots itself in the foot by doing a tutorial on a certain tool, that allows for content theft.

inworld banks are given a month to close up shop and pay out their customers.... 99% of them immediately fold, leaving their investors high and dry. gambling is banned too, to satisfy credit card company agreeements about online gambling.

paranoia about child porn leads to witch hunts sponsed by poorly worded LL posts encouraging resdients to report neighbors that are "Broadly Offensive".

witch hunts against people with child av's follow that, then LL tries to get everyone to "age verify" which turns into a hugely idiotic circus and eventually becomes an "optional" method for being able to view adult content.

Goreans and Furries go to war apparently and the fall out is that they get blamed and chased with pitchforks too.

speaking of which mature as a category is nerfed to pg-13, pg becomes something even disney would laugh at, and the new "adult" category people are told they have to move to a new continent. they're offered land trades, supposedly first come first serve, but it's quickly apparent there isn't enough land... to make up for this they completely change the advertising guidelines, and turn a blind eye to what goes on in mature mainland.

the viewer goes open source, and the independant developers make better viewers than LL does, (and eventually include many tools they don't, including theft tools)

the two biggest of world shoping sites get bought up by LL, which closes one, and rebrands the other (almost GOM'd but the site creators got paid this time.)

scripters finally get http access, but with weird ports that even LL finds to be too much a hassle to use on their newly bought up shopping website, instead relying on the xml/rpc that they said they wanted to dump.

speaking of scripting, the wiki for it changes hands multiple times being hosted by multiple people until now there are three, and one is actually hosted by ll

these forums get continually nerfed, with less and less LL feedback or control, until they are replaced with some idiotic blog software / yahoo answers style mess, and technically we shouldn't be able to post here, because they said they would freeze it all.

I wouldn't be suprised if Anshe made a deal to sell back her excess stock to ll with buildings included, for their new premium project...

People seem to be having more privacy issues than they used to.

It's no longer cool to wander around someone's home....then soak in their tub for a few hours.

uh oh ...
/me makes note

XStSL is SLExchange, and SL Boutique is dead.
Hi, Jsecure. Where've you been? And it's only been a couple of years.

yeah - just got ejected for that. People seemed to enjoy that so much more in the old days. It was like one big happy commune. Not now.

I need to set up a hot tub in the bayou. Cajun style.

Nothing's changed, really...

Hiya, there.. i have no idea how long it's been, but it's been a long time. Good to see you around again..

there's also;

- new registration
- new default avatars
- new viewer (has been announced) (this would be much different viewer)
- They've started using Mono
- Zindra (the Adult continent) is very... interesting. Very... adult, but some cool builds.
- No more in-world live help, replaced with Live Chat (Premium and Concierge accounts only)
- Windlight (pretty skies, able to be toggled)
- Glow feature added to prims
- Mesh capabilities have been announced as well
- Linden Lab run open source, "let's play with stuff", viewer, "Snowglobe"
- Updates are done with "Rolling Restarts" instead of shutting everything down
- Important messages moved to the "Status Blog"
- Of course, the new Dashboard/website


..and i'll stop there.


Until after now...


Edit: oh yeah... and "AvaLine".. make/receive calls to land lines from SL Voice

Wow these posts are all really great... Good to see you're still here Cybin... I'll have to spend some time working out who on my contact list is still here and who has left I guess.

My first big thing is I want to finally finish my completely scripted automated restaurant, the Belvedere.... So has anything changed with inventory? Is the asset server still creaking with expansion, or dd they sort all that out?

There's still occasional issues with the asset server, but not like before. They've had to expand and put several sets of asset servers all over the globe since SL is 60 percent non US anymore (last I heard anyways, directly from Philip), so if a cluster has issues the others can take up the slack. Still there are problems at times with them but fewer and far between and down times last much less. Also, they're kind enough to trash any sales for me for the rest of the day by issuing "dont rez no copy items/don't spend L$" system messages when things do bork.

Gambling has been banned, but you can still gamble.. still haven't figured that out yet.

If you've truly been gone 5 yrs, your account would have been deactivated, so I'm guessing you've been on here and there as accounts die after a year or so without activity.

Sculpted prims kick ass, look into those.

SL is about the size of Rhode Island now compared to smaller than San Fransisco 5 years ago.

Havok 4 came in a long time ago, work has begun on upgrading to 7. A new hire has already had SL running under it (windows, not Linux yet). Latest word from Andrew Linden is 'sometime in 2010' for that. We've also been discussing cloth simulation and/or a rewrite of flexible prims, which apparently was hacked in.

nah, accounts from that era are lifetime paids... they aren't supposed to ever expire.

Wednesday maintenance is no longer.

Actually, I kinda miss that. Or maybe just the forum rants that followed.

Philip left.
Robin left.
Cory left.

Hii J!!!!

How do you figure this?

I paid like $255 bucks to stick around forever so i don't expect my account to be deactivated no matter how long i am gone. Lifetimer FTW!

On top of all these amazing things.. a few more to add....

Mostly avies have gotten nicer to look at with improved skins and better built attachments.

Lag still sucks, griefers still attack, and sand boxes are still (mostly) trash buckets.

Animation over-riders -Ao's to the residents, killed the duck walk and made us fly/walk/move/stand in style, and LL tried to confuse everyone by making AO=Adult Orientated.

Ad farms got kicked out, Torley became a Linden (YAY!!) and now, instead of roaming the land and paying attention, most are too stuffed up with their own self importance to stop, chat and meet the residents.

Neko is now no longer *abnormal* like it was in 04 (when my 1st alt was born) when folks said.. Oh my not human, not allowed, you have a tail.

Lots and lots of AMAZINGLY built sims to explore... and lots and lots and lots and lots, Did i mention LOTS of junked up abandoned mainland.

Oh and the Adult Continent, where all us deviant folks live. *grins*.

Oh, and just like before, LL decides to make major changes, asks for feedback, ignores 99% of it, and does exactly like they wanted to initially.

Welcome back.

~Brie

Yeah I'm a lifer too; my account never dies!

Good to see you Briana, great to see some of my old friends are still here