The Benshee :O

"Ride" a Benshee? I Gotta say it first ...

Av/Benshee sex is evil!

And soon to be made illegal by half the state legislatures. Ignorance of the law is no excuse. Don't assume that because you fiddle with your benshee in the privacy of your home that *they* won't cut a hole in your ceiling to get you. Don't suspect your friend, report him! Read da-fearmonger before it is too late.

On a related note, I have umm... like this friend... who has played the Sims 2... not so much a friend as some guy I know... and anyhow in Simland, sims of the same sex can consent to marriage and "woohoo" with each other. They can also have green skin. Think of the children!

I didn't recieve a banshee, and thus am beginning to sow the seeds of dissent and rebellion wherever possible. It's created another social class in SL, and has further divided the population. I see war looming on the horizon...

I didn't get one either and I was on the entire 3 hours....

Wasn't it a two hour event? And were you on during the right time? PST?

I live in EST and I was on from 10:00 P.M. - 12:00 P.M. my time. You're right it was 2 hours. 7-9 PST translates to 10-12 EST right?

Due to low fps, I have lowered my draw distance such that I cannot see as far as the horizon. However, I have turned my speakers up to max volume, so that I can at least hear them approach - assuming devices of war in SL use sound emitting scripts.


- Newfie

Yes. They play this, at max volume:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/28/The_Imperial_March.ogg

(For those without .ogg support, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Imperial_March)

Perhaps these Benshees are infact another system test, a derivative of the Log-a-Thon? They seem to have been embued with many qualities of our world's laggiest objects.

The purpose? To determine the thresholds of the servers with such objects. And with the Benshees being all basically if not entirely ientical, it provides a perfect, level field for the testing.. ..Until you add in the stuff we all make and use regularly anyway.

I think it'd be cool if they evolved into different things, though.

If I had one, I'd want it to evolve into a 100-meter tall, fifty-thousand-prim robot in the shape of a Transformer with a massive, perfectly-rendered glowing Afro. At that point, it would crush all opponents within a 50-sim radius! Or just crash my client and cause my video card to implode, resulting in a fabulous new energy source that, like, allows my computer to power the equivilent of a large city for a decade. ...What?

I second this proposal. Caleb you are a genius and a tireless civil servant. I applaud you!

My Benshee is actually a graduate of Harvard Law School. All it does is complain about how it's not living up to its potential and feels unfulfilled. I have a feeling that I'll try to rez it one day and find it's run off to join a law firm or worse, has been elected president of the United States.

My Benshee has told me that it's really a Benhee that's trapped in a Benshee body!

so if one was in-world for the required 30 minutes or more during the test period and did not receive a benshee, who would you recommend they contact?

Glad you all like them! Unfortunately I didn't get one because I wasn't able to make it online during the load test

We just thought that people would rather have something different than another virtual t-shirt, and in fact, the name Benshee is a misnomer, as it was put together using the time and efforts of nearly every programmer for the better part of a week, as well the majority of the marketing team to think up the clever name!

Actually, the majority of the code was written by a user who was more than happy to let us use it (and why they ride functionality is there) and combined with a particle script - spent a few hours in the capable hands of an intern, so we could pass the savings on to you! the consumer.

On a serious note though - what would make you want to participate in things like the log-a-thon more? We have found that silly schwag like the benshees are appreciated, but I'd love to hear other suggestions

ben

Ben, I'd be more willing to participate if I had the chance to get...

- Charter Memberships
- Teh Phat Lewts (I'll make something called a Phat Lewt for you)
- tier fees waved for a month/year.
- sizable amounts of L$
- Necklaces, T-Shirts, Foam 'plywood' cubes, branded crap
- Actual .5m plywood cubes.
- my AV featured on the website in some random page.
- A REALLY REALLY NICE SL-CAPABLE PC (this is because I have a slow, old machine) signed by the dev crew, with the SL logo on it.
- Hell. Cough up a free sim for six months and you'll get every serious agent online.

Booty! Treasure! Prizes!

Arr!

How about little things like:

1. Fixing llSetScale in multi-prim objects to work reliably
   
2. Multi-Select in Inventory (Prop 35)
   
3. Default Audio to Stop not Play (Prop 82)
   
4. Array() (Prop 41)
   
5. Freedragging an item (Prop 65)
   
6. Away/Return Button (Prop 43)

The ones above are just a few I semi-randomly picked from the SL voting page, and were ones that appeared to be at least semi-easy to implement. There's plenty of others on that list that could also be looked at.

I wont speak for the masses, but "silly schwag" in my opinion does very little to convince me to participate in future log-a-thons. What would convince me to participate is knowing that the LL is listening to their customers and actually making an attempt to respond to their needs. When we get useless fluff like the Pony and the Benshee instead of even one of the dozens/hundreds of suggestions the customer base has given LL in feedback, how can one have any sense of feeling like we're being listened to?

The answer in my mind is, at least for myself, we're not being listened to. The Benshee is just yet another example of LL not paying heed to their customer base. If LL isn't going to make an effort to genuinely try to improve the SL user experience, then I certainly wont helping them when they come looking for user assistance. "Silly Schwag" is what caused at least two major migrations out of TSO, rather than genuine meaningful improvements.

More stuff, less fluff. Leave the creating and fancy to the various talents in SL, and stick to what LL should be doing - being the enablers and hosts of the talent.


- Newfie

Cash always works well

Personally, I would participate in the log-a-thons without the promise of schwag because it's The Right Thing to Do™.

However, if the opportunity to win prizes floats people's boats, maybe something like a grid-wide scavenger hunt would coerce people to login and stay for a while.

There are some who say this has already happened

My Benshee saved my marriage.

so you could call it a "marital aid"?

Nolan, you must be mixing up your benshees and ben was ;-D

I still never got my benshee. :niff sniff::