Rausch Combat Sandbox "Makeover"

On April 17th 2008, the Combat Sandbox known as Rausch and it's sister sims of Red Team and Blue Team were erased and replaced by a textured mess of sculpted boulders. It took a Linden (from the governance team no less) less than 1 hour to to ruin what had been been a creative piece of Second Life lore. All 3 sims were were raised to terrain level of 70m or more (no more waterways) and simply littered with sculpted rocks that all looks the same.

It's unfortunate that Linden is now asking for comments after they changed the Rausch sims without any customer input. Nonetheless, the makeover of Rausch was done in less than one hour and it shows. If the previous version of Rausch was one dimensional as Linden believed, this new version is the absolute in one dimensional ugliness (even with Windlight) - a "Mars" like scene with eye straining textures and a mess of boulders strewn everywhere. All 3 sims were were raised to terrain level of 70m or more (no more waterways) and simply littered with sculpted rocks that all look the same. That's hardly creative and as another resident put it, it's fuggly.

The real serious problem here though is not terraforming or textures, or the residents who use the simulator on a regular basis. It's the inability of Linden to deal with griefer throwaway alts who have continuously trashed and crashed the sandboxes on a daily basis and have made it so many residents simply give up and somewhere else. It's time for the governance team to put on their thinking cap and place logical restrictions on new residents until they have provided pay information or have been on SL for 30 days. The Help Island Sandbox can be expanded and allow new residents to learn from other residents without being a nuisance, and the griefer throwaway alts will have to find a new to get on. Also, since Rausch is a combat sandbox, an auto-return of less than 10 minutes should be standard.

Let's hope for positive action here, but having a governance team member terraform on a dime is not going to solve the issues.

everything was in place for a reason no boulder prims equals no lag no safe zone equals alot more PI*(&& off people and more AR. i can believe the thought of taking the SZ out even entered michaels mind. michael said they want more people in the combat sandboxes well then make more combat sandbox believe me they will come. you cant fill a combat sandbox up to much they just kill eachother (of course). Give US more options then you can do what you want with the sandboxes without peoples feeling like there home has been destroyed.

Hi Clifford! Nice chatting with you again! I would also propose having more combat zones built for for damage weapons with no push, orbit or HUD insta-kills, and TP would be back to the team spawn point (set your home to the appropriate box). Sure there will be violations of these rules, but it would cut it down drastically because there would be a region for those weapons which is currently Rausch.

OR you could just buy some land and start your own free weapons simulator sandbox..
Nah didn't think so.