Edge Land No More?

Just out of curiousity, I decided to check the age of these edge sims by looking at the claim date of protected land.

The were created between Mar 04 and Feb 05.
The last time that a snow sim was created was Sept 04.

Io -- March 2004
Callisto -- March 2004
Chamonix -- July 2004
Cottonwood -- Sept 2004
Eldora -- Sept 2004
Jiminy -- Sept 2004
Bretton -- Sept 2004
Loveland -- Sept 2004
Yawgoo -- Sept 2004
Benham -- Aug 2004
Skari -- Aug 2004
Hydes -- Feb 2005
Lippert -- Feb 2005
Alcona -- Feb 2005
Mud -- Feb 2005
Black -- Feb 2005
Pero -- Feb 2005
Wall -- Feb 2005
Star -- Feb 2005
Winyah -- Oct 2004
Hennepin -- Oct 2004
Newman -- Oct 2004
Drum -- Oct 2004
Nipigon -- Oct 2004
Louise -- Oct 2004
Abitibi -- Oct 2004
Huron -- Oct 2004
Rydal -- Oct 2004
Caldbeck -- Oct 2004
Keswick -- Oct 2004
Coniston -- Oct 2004

This happened to me last week. In fact, I may be the friendly newbie Dana mentions- since we talked about this.

I wrote to LL, but after an initial response asking where I lived, I have heard nothing. The ocean reappeared the next morning, and then vanished again that night. (Maybe it was a tsunami caused by the land formation.)

It's very disappointing. There were no warnings, and, like you, I had paid extra for that view. I know that two of my neighbors also wrote, but they have heard nothing, either.

It seems there we have no choice but to live with it or start looking around , but I do think that there should be some consideration given to making oh- a lake, or a small park, a little forest, or a waterway between the old land and the new sim. I have no idea if this involves a huge expense to LL somehow. I suppose they have to pay for server space, but it certainly would be a nice gesture for those whose land value suffers from this. At least when it happens in real life, you have town meetings and zoning, and some adjustment time.
I still have the waves in the remaining puddle. I don't have the heart to get rid of them.

But in this case i think it was fairly obvious that these were unfinished areas, as they ended so abruptly in a straight line all the way down.

If you are a newbie, and a non-technical person, you are totally unaware of what that means-- at least I was. This was my point to Dana when she explained to me about edges of sims. As SL expands, as I am sure it hopes to do, into a less tech-savvy population, people won't understand as well as the current generation. From the articles I've read, so far the exposure is still very much to people who have a better than average understanding of computers.

The interesting thing about this case is that you can argue it either way and still be justified, I think.

They were definitely unfinished. That's for sure.

But LL themselves created void water sims off of the eastern edge to connect with the player-created block sims. Thereby, giving the impression that they would never be finished on that side. Also, I have secondhand information through a client that apparently asked a Linden point-blank about it around the time the block sims were created and got a response along the lines that they had no plans to add sims on the eastern edge.

And then there's the question of time. It's been a year and 4 months since the last of those edge sims was created. That's almost half of the total life of SL (since we're celebrating 3 years this month). It's been over 2 years since the oldest of the edge sims was created. In SL time, that's an eternity.

Basically, all I'm really saying is that LL gave plenty of room for people to be confused.

It would have been much wiser, for example, for them to turn back to these sims, instead of developing the southern continent. And they definitely should not have created the water bridge sims off the eastern edge.

These are simple things that they could have done, but didn't.

But, as I've said, I think it's a good thing that they are finally going to finish it.

I'm not terribly pleased with losing my romantic sunrises and sets off my edge land. Although I had planned on selling down to the bare minimum anyhow, the last 512 was a valentines day gift, was ridiculously priced, and is now just a boring, landlocked bittersweet memory.

Tonight I decided to relandscape and redesign my house since the ocean which had reappeared, disappeared for the second time a few days ago and seemed to be staying gone. And then, as I deleted my house, the ocean reappeared.

I stared at it for a while, and it stayed there, so I have decided to wait until tomorrow to see if is still there before doing anything more. If it's gone again, then, really, this is adding insult to injury.

It would just be nice to KNOW what was going on.

It's intolerable that LL won't just lay out plans a continent at a time. It's not like the secrecy and diversion will make them any more money than ultimately auctioning the sims for $1000 starting bids.

I asked about it here, here, and via IM to a half-dozen Lindens. So far the answers I have are hmm, maybe, and

All this silly guesswork we have to do is just amusing hoop jumping for them to watch. I hope they fucking enjoy watching us moving houses, wasting money on views et al. So much for "it's a world" and "community" and "building a country" verbiage. Three years into the project and they're still treating us like stupid cattle.

Does that mean a private island may have other private islands attached to it if the map fills up? I thought the point was that you pay all that bloody money so your land is not attached to anything? I'm still hoping to get a sim despite all the costs, but the design of it relies on nothing being attached to it's sides (basically the whole sim is to be indoors except for a bit at the top. So it'd be built like a tower above sea level, but to build sides would waste a massive number of prims since the rooms would be self-enclosed anyway).

No one can attach anything to your island unless you agree to it. They can block you from expanding your island by reserving or purchasing four sims surrounding you.

Barbarra you certainly have been busy this morning, currently only existing sim owners can initiate land auctions for new reservations so the threat of reserving the coners to a private island aren't as great and you can have a private island moved anyway.

Well, someone notified me that the sims are gone.

Either LL removed them, or just moved them elsewhere.

AFAIK there isn't a way to "hide" an adjacent mainland sim unless it is physically* moved.

Did they hear our complaints and change their mind? Or decide to shuffle the islands off to some invisible part of the map while working on this? Got caught with their pants down on this and decided to reconvene at a later date?

Who knows what plans lurk on the desk of Lindens? The Shadow knows!


*"Physically" in map space, obviously.

Are you quoting the 1950s radio show? I listened to it but sure can't remember the exact opening dialog.

there is ONE thing we all have to agree on, though...

The current grid, in its infancy and jumbled land configuration, looks alot like Central America or South East Asia after a rash of nuke attacks and techtonic activity. The grid, as a whole, has alot of growing and organizing to do.

I know that sometimes, while scrolling around the map, I forget just how small and infantile the current grid actually is. But if you scroll out far enough you are reminded that we're really just playing around the piece of California that fell into the ocean


~Lefty

If you can shape your shoreline, it's waterfront...if it's a permanently straight edge, it's edgeland and it's likely to be joined with another sim at some point.

Just knowing this will help you to avoid disappointment with land choices.

I've blogged about the mainland a bit the past few days.

Today is the official thrid anniversary hoopla stuff. Maybe opening all the new sims is part of that celebration. SURPRISE! Maybe

My Edgeland has returned as well it seems for now..

Well, we had a three week reprieve, but it seems to be definitely gone this time. I am leaving my waves just in case, but am not hopeful. It's the arbitrary nature that is irksome. And the worry about what is going up in my front yard. Did everyone else lose theirs again, also?

Note the orange line around the south and east coasts - I added that to mark where the "old" edge land ends and the new sims begin.

It seems the entire main continent is getting a contiguous coastline. Indeed, edge land no more.

Well, let's see. LL starts out with a small continent. People buy up all the land on that continent. LL wants to expand the continent. Where do the new sims go? On the edge. Duh.

Yes, it sucks having your view change. But what's the alternative? I don't see how more planning would help much -- the views would still change. Even if LL offered to let you change sims for free, that doesn't really work when the new sims are being auctioned off in full.

Yea, it sucks loosing ur edge land... but TBH...

Ya'll shoulda known this was gonna happen... The roads lead right to the edge of the current land, the land is not 'finished' on the edges and there is obviously no private sims around the end... OBVIOUSLY LL is gonna expand the mainland at some point in those areas. Khir Stryker, ya shoulda known of all people that LL would expand... the road runs right past your house and stops @ the edge of the sim.

I like the look of these new snow sims, i might even buy a cliff edge plot

Since I have been whining on a regular basis about the magic disappearing ocean, I wanted to take the time to give thanks when it is due.

I noticed today that the new land where my old ocean had been was designated Mature. One of the reasons I bought Rydal land was because it was PG. I wrote Cyn Linden and told her I thought that was adding insult to injury, since I could very well find myself looking at a XXX casino (actually I was a bit more graphic, but I was being dramatic and she foregave me). She looked at the land, and has turned it into PG sections and I am very grateful.
Thank you, Cyn.

Hi Lady, please have a look at the post here /3/7f/119526/1.html.

So, the Lindens finally decided to tell us what was happening - even though I would have considered it nice, if they would have told us a bit more while the experiments were going on.

Please just ignore all the wise guys here that are telling you, that you "should have known right from he start". Being rude seems to be kind of cool on these forums.

An experienced user could have expected something like what is happening. But many oldtimers I talked to about this issue were rather upset, too. The current edge has been in existence for a very long time. And after all that time nobody was expecting anything to happen here real soon ...

I can only second that. Cyn and Jack are doing a great job under a lot of pressure!

In addition, they are real people to whom you actually can talk. What's more, they listen, think about it and always do what's possible to make their customers happy. Woot!