The New Continent with Free Houses for Premiums

True enough, there's a greater cordon sanitaire between Zindra and Mainland than between the newbie-land and Mainland.

But no Federal Commission (of any nation) is going to be investigating whether or not the newbies are sufficiently isolated...as they certainly have done, and will continue to do, with the sex stuff.

So I still think it's odd they've gone to some trouble to guard against newbies accidentally finding something other than Nascera on the Map.

anybody remember blumfield? free houses for new premium accounts, ante-Shermerville.

we who lived there hated that there was poor community planning and no zoning. And it was a megaflop in some ways and left us quite disappointed, despite our community meetings.

the linden who managed it and apparently promoted the idea vanished into the ether. most of us thought she was fired.

and they think this will work again?

I wrote this about Nascera on my blog last night. It's less coherent than it seems to me, but I finally got an eyeful and did not like what I saw one bit.

http://tacheiru.us/byriatt/

It's the top post.

All the stuff that you write about not being there are not any different that the majority of the places I have ever lived in SL. I never cared about roads near me - I found some whenever I wanted to drive or ride a horse. I never cared about shopping close by - hell I usually would prefer none near me cuz I don't want that kind of traffic close. I never walked far from any of my homes and couldn't care less about public areas like parks. pools, or skating rinks within walking distance. I us TPs for all of that stuff, so I just don't see the lack of it there as being a negative - and in many ways it is a positive.

The only real negative I see there is the way the houses are packed together. Unlike other comments, I also experienced no lag or sim crossing issues.

Given what most of us deal with in our first rental experience, I still think this is a great thing for new folks. It might even help some take a bit more time to find out what they really want and how things work before they plop down lots of cash on something they may not like in a week.

I just went back and found no lag this time. I always have my draw distance set to 64 so that wasn't the reason for the lag on my first visit. It was probably at my end.

Not having roads or public amenities nearby works AGAINST building any sense of community. You are more likely to meet new friends walking around public spaces or on the way to public spaces, then you are if you just teleport to some empty spot. It is easier to meet and greet neighbors if they gather in common ground.

Also walkability gives a sense of neighborhood either that or the social norms become allowing everyone to cut through everyone else' yard. I walk around my neighborhood up in Hartley every day or two to see if anything has changed. I look for unauthorized sandboxes and I got a squatter evicted. I talked to the landowner and asked if she had given him permission. She took care of it.

The new trend in development in real life is new urbanism, mixed use developments such
Atlantic Station.

One would think the virtual could somehow imitate the real for the same reasons that the real is a good idea.

The closest to the new urbanism I have seen in SL are Akiba and Atlantida. Neither are trully new urbanist but with a few residential builds thrown in they just might qualify.

I dislike how most of the areas seem to have the buildings just plopped down. Just a random collection of buildings. That does not a village make. (admittedly some areas did have paths, either prim path, or cut into the land)

Also dislike how they don't want me there

Eek!

/me tried to picture Ceera as a human and now has to deal with an exploded brain

I don't want SL to mimic RL too much. I have a home, but I don't necessarily want the rest of my RL experience to look like RL. If I want to socialize, I go somewhere to socialize. If I want to isolate for a while, I go to my home. For me, and a few others that I know of, the only purpose of roads are to be able to drive cool vehicles or ride neat animals around.

I never lived anywhere in SL that had public gathering areas close by or shopping within walking distance, etc... Yet I found a sense of community right here in the forums and in a few inworld hangout places.

Just more proof that we are all different and we all come to SL for different reasons and want different experiences here.

Don't feel bad Lexxi. I have the 512 tier available and did not get an invite either.

Have to agree with this. When I first came to SL, I did like 'realistic' more than I do now. Just felt more familiar, comfortable, to look at things that I was used to seeing in real. Now, I avoid those things, and prefer the fantastical 'only in SL' stuff. I got more and more that way, the longer I was in SL.

Thanks, Feline, for posting the relevant covenant sections for me. Appreciate it.

I certainly don't think that things like shopping should be in amongst the homes, but I do think it would be very good if they had a sort of gathering place either in each sim or in the middle of, say, 4 sims. Even something like a small fountain with a few benches would be good. Then some residents might like to just pop along there to see if anyone's around. It could provide a nice way of getting to know people and of sharing information.

I thought I saw that, in my flying tour of the Linden Home sims. Small park type areas.

And they could have a few bots hanging around... just to keep the traffic respectable

I for the most part am really satisfied with my 512 (bought on the secondary market) in Hartley because it is in a mixed use area. There are two malls and one large store within walking distance as well as a blank, abandoned sim. I visit one of the malls a lot more than the other and hardly ever visit the texture store. One mall is a very well done shopping center and fun to walk in. I also walk down to the road and sometimes follow it.

I think whether stores work well with residential properties has to do with their external economies. External economies happen when a business adds something more to the area than its good and services. For example, the stores along a stretch of Mammaroneck Avenue in White Plains used to (and probably still do) have a parking lot behind them. The store owners ended up with both front and rear entrances and fixed up their back ends to make them attractive rather than eyesores. My mom used to love the open air lot behind the stores and we'd cut through one store or another to reach the shopping area.

Perimeter Mall in Dunwoody is both auto and pedestrian accessible (near a MARTA station) and has beautiful outside plantings and entrances. This is another example of external economies. There are also apartments and a new urbanist development within one to two blocks of the mall. I will ride MARTA 15 stops to shop in and around Perimeter Mall due to the whole way the neighborhood is laid out.

What I like about this is that new folks can check out SL with a home base. SL can be overwhelming for new folks, especially now when those of us who have been here awhile don't chat with newcomers the way we used to.

And for the new folks, there are other new folks to connect to and SL is better with friends (at least until you become the mad hermit content creator!)

I own some private sims but I wouldn't mind at all using my unused tier to have one of those spots because it could be a neat way to connect with the enthusiasm of the newbie again.

Though I do worry about these areas becoming haunted by the same awful people who made the help islands and welcome areas such horrible experiences.

I don't think that's Likely. Those twits wouldn't dream of going Premium.

They have neat parks in-between the sims that have homes, separating the styles. Park benches, fire pits, giant fish statues, etc. Fantasyland is like one huge park with various LL created locations (infohub, etc.; fairy capture zone, etc.)

/me continues ruminating over the lyrics to 'little boxes'

What is to keep them from hanging out in the public spaces?

What, and leave the Welcome Areas? I don't see that much happening.

It is, but it's also tremendously laggy. Even with only four or five avatars in the sim.

It won't be able to function as 'a place to gather'; one can't help wondering if that was deliberate.

Because they do not usually know how.

If I had a nickel for every time I mentored at a HI and someone asked me how to get to SL and I pointed them at the big, glowing, spinning sign...

When I dropped in it was mostly a huge number of gray spheres and crisscrossed pieces of gray cardboard, for an annoyingly long time.