Virtualverse Forums Down

 

 

 Virtualverse, probably the most popular online forums to discuss Second Life other than the official ones run by Linden Lab, is offline. According to Daniel Voyager, it has been down since early February. 

Virtualverse was preceded by the SL Universe forums, which were popular with both factual discussion and "peanut gallery" irreverent chatter. Then in September 2018, a couple months shy of it's 15th anniversary, it's owner Cristiano Midnight began taking it down and created a new forum area: Virtualverse. While perhaps not as active as it's predecessor, it still got plenty of attention, including from Tyche Shepard who would post statistics about Second Life there.

 

Daniel Voyager would state that Cristiano had some health problems that he was recovering from in early January.  It is unknown if these troubles have anything to do with the forums being down or when they will be back up. For now, fans can continue to use the Virtualverse Discord channel (here). 

Source: Daniel Voyager

Bixyl Shuftan

SL Universe Forums To Become VirtualVerse

Many if not most longtime Second Life residents have heard of the SL Universe forums. Sometimes factual with discussions about some of the latest developments and events in Second Life, and sometimes irreverent with some "peanut gallery" discussions, it has been pretty much anything but boring. It's also moved beyond Second Life in topic discussions going to various real-life matters such as politics. Turning 15 years old this November, owner Cristiano Midnight posted on Thursday September 20 that SL Universe was undergoing it's "Third Major Act" in it's history.

So a lot has happened in the past 24 hours. I nearly lost 2.4 million posts and obliterated SLU, got them back, perhaps may have cried a little, then made some decisions about what to do about SLU.

I detailed what I was going through my mind in this post, so I won't repeat it. However, since writing that, I made some rapid decisions that are already in motion.

First of all, I am launching a new site - VirtualVerse, which expands the scope of SLU to all things related to virtual worlds, whether it is Second Life, Sansar, other VR worlds that are gaining in popularity, or game related worlds like MMOs and open world games. I've wanted to become less SL centric, but it has been hard to do that with SL as part of the name.

The SLU forums will be closing within the next few weeks, depending on how long the transition takes. These forums will be archived - they may be unavailable for little while but will come back as a read only forum.

The new site domain is VirtualVerse.one - http://www.virtualverse.one

Why .one? There has been a significant number of new top level domains added, and I considered .cloud, .site and even .ninja, but .one appealed to me the most, since this also is starting over in many ways.

Cristiano's near-loss of so many posts was presumably because of trying to save them as they had become corrupted, according to the post he had made the day before, in which he had pondered the future of SL Universe.

Taking a look at VirtualVerse, the topics were grouped in three categories. "VirtualVerse Related" has topics such as "Site Announcements." "Virtual World Discussion is where you can find the "Second Life" group of threads, other virtual worlds and MMOs being the other two categories. "Off-Topic Discussion" is about everything else, such as "Politics, Religion, and Society." This has the most groups of threads.

Again, thank you for your patience while I've been dealing with all of this - and while I know it is a bit scary to move to an entirely new forum and site, the move ensures that this can all continue. I'm extremely excited by it. I'll go into more detail about why I made this change soon.

Image source: Ryan Schultz

Bixyl Shuftan

More Second Life April Fools

Our "April Fool's" joke on Friday got a number of comments. While one thought it was in bad taste due to the subject matter being of someone she didn't like, most had a chuckle out of it. Daniel Voyager for instance told the Newser it was one of the funniest April Fools he had seen pulled. He later posted a link to it on the SL Universe forums. Many gave it the "peanut gallery" treatment, though one man commented, "That was a far better April Fool than LL's official one."

The "official joke" by Linden Lab was posted on their blog at 10AM on April 1, saying they had an "Exclusive Message" for Second Life residents inworld, hinting it involved their next virtual world, Project Sansar. People were asked to head to the meeting point of the four Town Hall Islands sims, where there was an auditorium. Daniel Voyager was there, writing that about 150 avatars were there at one point.

And the exclusive message: Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up." Or as Daniel put it, "You All Got Rick-Rolled By Linden Lab." On the official forums, someone suspected it was a joke. In SL Universe, there was a variety of comments from "Linden Lab's Poor Effort at Comedy" to "Rickrolling is indeed lame, low effort and old. But it can still make me smile at the right time, and when I heard about LL's april fools this year I smiled because it's a very LL sort of thing to have done. ... But you know, I appreciate that they did something for the holiday, didn't have to." Nalates Urriah noted that all those avatars caused so much lag, she and presumably many other residents couldn't see the video, and had to wait until hours later when there were only a few around, "I appreciate the Lindens taking the time to put it together. I just hope they realize how bad things have gotten when lots of avatars are present. ... It leaves my wondering if if we are going into one of those periods where the Lindens get ridiculously out of touch with the users’ experience."

One other April Fool's joke was posted by a user of the High Fidelity forums, an official-looking statement announcing that Second Life would be closing at the end of the year. It got sent to some SL Universe users on it's email list, causing a bit of confusion. There is no evidence that anyone with High Fidelity was involved. Still, it did make a few people briefly wonder.

* * * * *

On a final note, when we reported on other examples of April Foolery across the Internet, we hadn't seen what "World of Tanks" was offering yet. What they did was to make a "Lunar Lunacy" map in which players controlled "Russian IS-8 Ball" tanks. While the ball tanks were armed, the best way to knock them out was to knock them into one of the six lava pits arranged on the edge like pockets in a pool table. For those who won ten battles on the map, one got a token for use anytime that would increase experienced earned by three times for an hour. To see a youtube of their April Fool stunt: Click Here.

Top image credit: Daniel Voyager

Bixyl Shuftan

News and Commentary: New Terms of Service Provoke Questions.

Logging into Second Life yesterday, I was greeted with a new Terms of Service to read and click "Accept" on in order to go about virtual life as before, which can be read in this link here: http://www.lindenlab.com/tos. And as soon as I logged on, I was IMed multiple times by friends bringing up certain lines, asking if these changes meant things from the Lab stating that legally any content uploaded belonged to them, of which another change in the ToS in August 2013 on thie matter caused a controversy that lasted for months, to clearing Lindens of wrongdoing should they decide to ban someone for sending reports against someone whom had some influence on the Lab. The Second Life Universe forums didn't take long to come up with a thread on the topic, "Ah well, at least the responders to your support tickets can still be snide to you, even if you can no longer be snide back."

The announcement announcing the ToS changes stated there were three major ones, (1) to "remove outdated references to Desura and Authorized Resellers," (2) to "explicitly address our intolerance of harassment of Linden Lab employees," and (3) to "clarify the arbitration provision in accordance with applicable law." The first was the result of their selling of the Desura game and application program provider service over a year ago and their banning of third party virtual currency exchangers, such as Podex.

Inara Pey touched upon the second and third statements in her blog. Of the second, "There has been speculation this relates to certain personal attacks directed towards Ebbe Altberg through the likes of Twitter. However, it would seem more likely (I would hope) that this section is intended to address similar attacks which have been made through the Lab’s own forums, etc., over which they have full jurisdiction." Of the third, "While I am not a lawyer – and so the following statement is purely speculative on my part – it would appear that included in these changes is an attempt to prevent class action suits from being bought against Linden Lab as a part of the arbitration process:"

My own opinion, Linden Lab could be trying to protect themselves against a class action suit by banned residents, such as the one Intilibber Brautigan was a part of. And of course the Lab has a history of trying to cover their behinds with lines and lines of poorly written legalese that can be interpreted quite broadly, leading to distrust by residents whom have learned to assume the worst at every change the Lab makes.

So what do you the readers think? Please leave your comments below.

Bixyl Shuftan

SL Universe in Ark

When it comes to games and Second Lifers, there's no shortage of them inworld, as "Tiny Empires" demonstrates. Outside of the grid, "Ark Survival Evolved" continues to be the favorite among the "Furry Gamers," the group of Second Life residents whom love playing games. But as it turns out, they haven't been the only ones in the Ark game lately. Another group of Second Lifers has given it a try: the Second Life Universe Forums.

Read more in Other Grids, MMOs, and Games.

Various Happenings at the SL12B

Yours truly spent most of his time at the SLB grounds before Press Day building the SL Newser exhibit, so I didn't get much of a look elsewhere. On Press Say itself, I only had a short time to get around. I didn't get the time of any official tour, so just looked around a little at the entrance sim of SL12B Beguile. The "dream" here looked more like a nightmare with this disturbing-looking train.

Not far from the train into the next sim at SL12B Impressive (224/57/24) is the exhibit of our sponsor M&M Creations, by 10 and Marcthur Gooson with their "Cottage Ma Mason."

Near the Newser exhibit at SL12BWonderous (232/231/22) is the SL Universe Forums exhibit by Soen Eber.

 Just across from the Newser's exhibit at SL12B Wonderous (233/196/22) is the "Spire" by Mac Kanashimi, whom assisted with the Cake Stage and whom some time ago worked on the "Pinwheels."

I happened to run into Mac, and had a few words with him. The hat of course was from Mikati Slade, the main builder of the Cake Stage. "So how was it working with Mikati?" I asked him. Matter of factly, he answered, "Just like 3 years ago (at the) cake stage SL9B. She made a scale 1:10 model of the cake stage, then uses my script to move an object to the right region, to the calculated real stage coordinates, then resize times 10."

Of The Spire, "(The) view from the top straight downwards is very nice." Asking him about it, "Well. take a square, then draw a square in it, but slightly smaller and slightly rotated, continue until the squares are small. Later I added the color effects and the changing from left rotating to right rotating squares, and back."

I asked him what other exhibits attracted his attention, but his answer was, "I didn't write them down, i was just flying around."

I soon had to be elsewhere, but did come across two events that evening. One was a stand up comedy performance at the Cake Stage at 4PM SL time by SL comedian Lauren Weyland.

An hour later at the Auditorium (Dreamatorium), was a group of roleplayers of the "Sanctuary" RP, discussing the history of their roleplay, and a few words from each of the players there.

Among the roleplaters was ZodiacLansing, whose words included, "Sanctuary, like several other sims, is born out of an intense love and it shows. When I arrived in the sim and explained that I was new to CCS, I was taken aside by several of the players who worked with me until I understood how things worked. Even to this day, they are willing to help me with any questions I may have. The environment of Sanctuary is one of help and kindness out of character. The members of the city are always willing to help out each other and new players so that everyone proves to the a be better player.

"When the RP starts, things can happen that are dark, but the people remain the same friendly sort who are willing to help. That's the biggest difference I have found and that is what brings me back to the city over and over again. As many will attest to, in our sim we strive very hard to create an atmosphere that sponsors RP and friendship in OOC. To me, it's the best sim."

More to come later this week. In the meantime, don't forget to stop at the Newser's exhibit at SL12B Wonderous (207/195/21).

Bixyl Shuftan

Megaprims Accidentaly Removed by Linden Lab, Lab Says Problem Solved

Last night, I was contacted by Jasmine Dawn, whom pointed out to me a thread in the SL Universe Forums. It stated Linden Labs had “blacklisted” someone and their actions in dealing with him had the side effect of removing megaprims with his name on them. There was a link to a JIRA filed about the problem, which had been written down:


Just a few moments ago most megaprims contained in the SALT collection were blacklisted. These megaprims are part of a collection used by most creators across the grid. Any items created with these prims are no longer rezzable. This includes components of a product I work on as well as possibly thousands others. It is not even possible to remove these prims from builds as the items containing them are not rezzable.


This was a potentially big mess, as a numble of builds I knew made use of megaprims such as Tuna Oddfellow’s Odd Ball and Club Zero Gravity. but stopping by the club, it was intact, and Tuna Oddfellow held an impromptu event that night without trouble. I never heard from any of my friends having a build taken down that night.

A couple posters on the SLU Forum thread checked and found of about a dozen makers of megaprims, it was one whose creations were blocked. Looking further, a couple posters mentioned having items taken down, and another those of his customers.

Later on, there was a Grid Status Report about the issue. Apparently, Linden Lab had fixed the problem, and while the affected megaprims weren’t back up, theye were no longer blocked, so those whom had them returned to inventory could rebuild. Those whose builds had disappeared were asked to contact Linden Lab, with a shortcut for Premium members.


[POSTED 10:35AM PDT, 20 October 2011] Due to a change we recently made to address a griefing problem, some megaprims were removed from the grid, which has affected users’ creations containing these megaprims. The issue has been resolved, and the megaprim objects can be re-rezzed from your inventories at this time. If you do not have a copy of the affected build, please go to your support portal immediately and file a case. If you are Premium member or above, you can use these case types: “Technical Questions” > “Objects (Rezzed) Issues. If you have a free membership and your group owned land was affected, please use “Land & Region” > Report an Offline Region”. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience and are reviewing our processes to try to avoid repeating this situation in the future.


There was also a post in the official forums, though with no new information.

So hopefully the mess is resolved. But this on top of the mass of sim restarts earlier this week, one wonders what next?

Sources: SL Universe Forums, Grid Status Report

Bixyl Shuftan

Endangered Numbakulla Sim Saved, For Now

I recently read on Daniel Voyager's Blog that another sim had closed down: Numbakulla. It was described as a first-class puzzle game sim, reminding him and others of the classic computer game "Myst."

Daniel referenced the SL Universe Forums, which described the place as closing down due to lack of finances. But reading on, I found some good news. Calanris Pendragon announced people had been sending her donations, so the place would stay for at least one more month.

And dropping by the sim, it was still up and running. By the entrance, I found a sign:

Reprieved for a month

Due to the kindness of some generous donors, the tier for the next month is paid and Numbakulla can stay open for the next few weeks.

I am trying to find a way to keep it for the future. Thank you for your support.

Calandris and the Numbakulla Project Team.

From what I read, this looks like a great place. A review will be written on it later, but I feel I can recommend those whom like to explore even only a small amount come on over.

Bixyl Shuftan