The New Continent with Free Houses for Premiums

The banlines won't be as bad as on the rest of the mainland because they'll only surround the Linden house, and very little, if any, of the neighboring land. The Linden Homes I looked at fill the parcel, the surrounding land is protected.

I actually DON'T think that's unreasonable...if new Residents enjoy their Nascera experience but gradually become aware that they could enjoy SL even more if they moved on (whether to Mainland or to Estates), that could make for a viable business plan.

My contention is that by permitting the ban lines and security-and-media-streams that go beyond parcel boundaries, LL has miscalculated. I think that by permitting that level of unpleasantness, LL won't motivate newbies to upgrade----they'll motivate newbies to decline to pay for a second month of Premium membership. And leave SL, and tell all their friends about how awful it was.

As with other recent initiatives*, this will result in more bad word-of-mouth for SL.



*I do think the initiative against ad farms had a positive effect, so that one wouldn't be included in the 'counter-productive recent decisions' list.

They'll still make flying difficult.

And if security devices are permitted to extend beyond parcel boundaries, many people may find they can't even walk to their home---TPing in will be the only option.

A shame, as it is all unnecessary: if each home has a working lockable door, then why would either ban lines or security devices be needed? (Considering that in the vast majority of parcels, the house covers the entire parcel.)

I think you are thinking about this all wrong. Linden Lab is looking to not only make Nascera permanent, it is looking to make it the norm. I visited the SL web site today and saw a background of Nascera before which stood a pretty, female avatar.

She was fully clothed (which is fairly unusual) in a tight shirt with a sleeveless insert beneath it. She was caucasian, no neko ears, or tail as far as I could tell, normal skin tone, harmless and inviting.

In case none of you have noticed, Nascera, is a heavy-handed attempt to shift Second Life's norms toward a supposed mass audience. There are no tropical venues (a great excuse to run around nearly naked, but NOT fully nude). The background against which Ms. Normal, the fictitious avie stands is the Japanese sim. Would lolita school girls be welcome here? Would they fit in? As for the fantasy sim, where are the vampires and demons? The fantasy is saacharine or at least it seemed that way to me. There are no urban builds for punks, steamed or otherwise. There are no blank plots for builders. Sorry geeks who push prims together are not wanted.

Nascera is the place where ordinary folks can go to meet with others of their own kind. And maybe they'll teleport to I'm not sure where, but it probably won't be any hangouts where I am unless Nascera has a Portuguese speaking area. Does any one know if Nascera is an English language only experiment? That would be interesting.

Nonsense! There WILL be ninja ferrets in Nascera!

Actually, my thoughts were somewhat along this line. The whole thing is sooooo 1960s suburban.

Not sure I'd go so far as to say that this represents an attempt to suburbanize all of SL, but it's clearly (to me) an attempt to create a kind of new "normal" for first-timers here.

If you want to have some fun, compare Nascera Nancy (the avie advertising Nascera on the Second Life site) to the good folks on the top of this forum. I just noticed this.

What will really spell a full suburbanization of Second Life and probably send most of us to greener pastures is if the new norms become rules. A norm is something you are supposed to do if you are normal (Turkey on Thanksgiving, standing when the Pledge of Allegiance is recited etc...) . There is no legal penalty if you violate a norm, but other people may not like you. There is usually a social cost.

I've been running a nightmare scenario through my head. It goes something like this:

1) SL puts up Nascera and lots of Nascera clones.

2) SL then cleans up the main land (just like Xstreet). You need a "builder bit" to build there. You need to pass a building exam before you acquire blank land or you use only structures created by certified builders.

3) OR -- Gorean, some vampiric, neko etc... all ends up with an "adult" classification or some new classification that takes it out of the mainstream.

4) OR -- Small interest based continents work so well (Look at University of Texas, NMC etc...) that why not have continents for the major cultures and obliterate the mainland. I hope there's one for amateur builders and artist types, but I'm not sure I'd like this arrangement.

Again, none of this may come to pass. Seeing Second Life full of people who get spooked by vampires, nekos, furries, quads, and folks who run around nearly naked will be bizarre. It could happen if Nascera is successful. Iyoba might even be scarey. After all it is amazing what prejudice lies just under the skin.

I'm sure regardless of Linden Lab's intentions, wonderful, awful things will go on in those little houses.

The simple fact that you get a bunch of extra prims will lead to many of them being stocked with all manner of toys.

And at least one shapeshifting furry kitten *mew*

I didn't think these were possible. I know security orbs can spam you past the boundaries but I didn't think they could actually eject you. I've never heard of media streams working past the parcel boundaries, although I think there's a setting for object sounds.

Actually, with houses filling the parcels banlines could create a problem. The banline is a little into the neighboring parcel (to see this, turn on property lines and put a thin prim that meets the exact edge of your parcel). If there is no protected land between two parcels you could have one neighbor putting up a ban line and it appearing in the next peep's house.

Not to mention mentors of some type if they put infohubs there. Not that LL will like oldbies with tails and such corrupting their new users.

Hmm, maybe they should disband the mentor program to lessen the chance of that.

Indeed...oh!! They did already...hmmmm lol

That's eyeliner that pandas use. /me sucks teeth and rolls eyes. Learn the difference, male......

Can you imagine getting mascara out of fur? Brrr!

Tell me this is not a panda:

http://slapt.me/wiki/index.php?title=Zindra_Alliance_-_Blondin_Linden_Meeting_Transcript:_07-12-2009#msg_83
To be fair to Blondin (not a phrase you often hear), it's not clear whether that's his theory or LL's.

True.

And I would think that various Lindens would have various opinions on whether the choice to permit ban lines and beyond-parcel-security-orb-spamming will result in newbies motivated to upgrade---or in newbies motivated to leave SL in disgust and tell all their friends how awful it is.

I could swear I've heard media from a parcel when not on it, but could have been mistaken.

Still, having neighbor's security devices haranguing newbies in their little Nascera homes every time they're there, would be enough to make them leave This Awful SL Place in disgust (not to mention the Ban Line overlap that Kara mentioned in post #184.)

This characterisation of how it's going to work is not accurate.

40% of the city is already prebooked by block developers with absolutely no requirement to keep my original structures, and believe me, they have their own ideas.

Oh, OK, I figured they'd be going in the gaps. It's kind of hard, walking around, to see what the real layout of Caledonia is because of the truly horrible movement controls.

What about people who are just renting instanced houses?

I took 512 of donation out of one of my groups - just in case.
I got an invite late my yesterday.

I opted for the Aspen theme as one that allowed most flexibility.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Buckeye/133/157/32
Ooooh! Bang in the middle of open plan suburbia.

Now I'm in shock. 117 prims. I'd forgotten how quickly it fills. Lucky that I'm a prim miser by inclination. When I used my skybox, my bed was a flat 6m cylinder with a fur rug.

Leaving 30 prims free to rezz my vehicles eats into the 117 allocation.
I don't do 'house' - so the odd pieces of furniture that I happened to have in inventory are freebies.

Seats, flags and danceball methinks.
I put some fish swimming inside for a bit of virtual.


Feel free to drop by.

It's interesting to look at which regions are getting more dots on map.
THe Aspen theme looks quite empty. Maybe somebody heard that I was moving in

I suspect object sound or voice if the parcel is set to the region channel

I think all securety orbs sold today have the option to limit to the parcel, some might actualy have that option on by default, I haven't done any measurments on my plot yet so I am not sure if it is even posible for the orb to reach other parcels beyond the buffer around the parcels.

That can only happen if parcels are joining, most parcels there have a buffer all around so doubt that will pose much of a problem.

It's actually much worse than that.
Those builds use textures with alpha in the walls.
The ban lines will shine through those walls even if they are 6 or 7 meters away.

Ban lines are da ebil!
At least the viewer now gives the option to turn off ban line visibility.

One of the reasons that I chose the Aspen theme for my place was the openness of the neighbourhood. I have to wait and see if any of the neighbours coming in are antisocial - and how that affects things.


I haven't explored the areas enough to come across ban lines.
Can anyone supply a Nascara sim name or LM for where large numbers of parcels are ban-lined?

I haven't seen anything more than individual banlines in a few regions.

Most of the homes appear to be far enough apart that banlines shining through walls won't be a big problem. The A Frame cabins definitely are. For anyone who hasn't looked around these regions and has just seen snapshots from the air, there's a lot of protected land in them.

The one build where that could be a real problem is the quad-plex in the California Modern areas. Of course, if one of the neighbors there turns on banlines, they have two others who can return the favor.

ETA: A couple jokers have already started going at it.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Sansomal/105/228/40

Two of the four have banlines, and the third has the buy pass access set. You can't see either through the walls of the fourth house.