More April Fools

 

A couple days ago when we wrote about April Fools in Second Life, Spiffy Voxel would comment there was much more.

 

There were some other good Second Life pranks yesterday. The biggest one was the reveal of the 'revolutionary' new mesh body that Salt & Pepper had been teasing... which turned out to be a flat cardboard avatar. However, the joke appears to be on Salt and the other creators who got involved, as both Cardy and Cardo proved to be rather popular! 🤣 They should definitely be easier to make clothing and accessories for, which is perhaps a commentary on the state of working with all the other mesh bodies and heads out there...

Gorean Whip Radio announced their sale to iHeart Radio — no more DJ interruptions, nothing but Top 40 Big Band songs on repeat. 🤣 Apparently, a few people fell for it, while others (like myself) played along. 🙂

More subtle, however, was the April Fool pulled by Luke Rowley, owner of the Primfeed photo-sharing social network — various menu items were rendered in Comic Sans yesterday. 😉

 

Of the Salt and Pepper avie, someone on Virtualverse would say, "It was a very elaborate April Fool's joke. And folks are either 'That was a good one' or they are very very angry on the interwebz about it. However, it is my new shopping event avatar. It's pretty cool. There are clothes and hair for it as well"

 

In gaming there were a couple April Fools I heard about. One was an "Out Meow" for Ark Survival Ascended, a cat update which showed cats going about whistfuly around, either attacking players or casually destroying things without a care. For World of Warcraft, there was the 11.4.1 Patch Notes, "The More Herein," A play on the latest expansion "The War Within."

If there’s anything we know about WoW players, it’s that you want more. In this patch, we’re adding more of everything. More dungeons, more classes, more races, more pets and more mounts and more flight paths and more words on the screen. Unless you want more empty spaces, in which case—we've cut the words and we’re adding more empty spaces! “More more more” is our motto. Read on for more.

Among the "updates" was the new raid "The Deeper Cave Below The Bottom."

After years of going down into Azeroth, we’re going to go below that! What’s below the deepest depth? Only our friends the Digger Miners know for sure, so we’re accompanying them as they go straight down to The Bottom and then go down from there.

In the Deeper Cave Below the Bottom, there’s no light whatsoever except when you cast spells, and the extreme temperature and pressure means the enemies that live there are in a really bad mood! Defeat the lowest final boss—Ugh the Complainer—and look around on the floor of his chamber. Is that a door that leads downward??

 

On a personal note, one friend of mine commented "We need to cancel April Fools Day until sanity returns to the world." I disagree because when has the world ever been truly sane? There have always been evil men, and women, up to evil schemes, there has always been corruption, and there have always been selfish people out only for themselves. If we took ourselves too seriously all the time, we'd go nuts. So let's all take a little time to laugh.

 

Happy April Fools.

 

Bixyl Shuftan

Game Review: Ark Survival Ascended

 

With everything going on in Second Life (and a busy editor), it's been a while since our last game review. However, Nydia Tungsten had a little time to check out one: Ark Survival Ascended.  The sequel to the long-running Ark Survival Evolved, the game has been mired in controversy with it's producers accused of cheating those who bought the original. So what did Nydia think of this game?

 

Read Nydia's review in Other Grids MMOs and Games. 

ARK: Fjordur

 

In her latest game review, Nydia Tungsten looks back at an old favorite, Ark Survival Evolved, or simply "Ark" as it's often called. After some time, she lost interest in it due to changes she felt were due to the developers changing things to suit one group of players at the expense of hers. But modifications brought her attention back. Among these is a new map: Fjordur. So what did Nydia have to say about it?

Read Nydia's article in Other Grids, MMOs, and Games.
 

Ark Survival Evolved Update: New Map, New Version, and Lots of Mods

It's been a little over a year since I last wrote about Ark Survival Evolved. In that time, quite a lot has happened. Mods have been introduced to the game to give it interesting and helpful twists. There's a new official map: Ragnarok. There's a new version of the game out: Aberration. And of course there's more dinosaurs to fight or tame. But the game itself remains the same: survive hostile dinosaurs, and in certain servers hostile players, and improve yourself, your tools and weapons, and your home base.

Read more in Other Grids, MMOs, and Games.

Scenes From Ark: The Hotel Bunnytickle

It's been about a year since I've written about my friends' misadventures in "Ark Survival Evolved." Since then, the game itself has continued to evolve in more ways than I can describe here. Among the changes is a new map: "Ragnarok." Nydia and her friends quickly established a main base in a cavern. But some of us wanted our own secondary bases. Among them is this one in the east side of Viking Bay, which came to be called "The Hotel Bunnytickle." It's grown to be about a dozen stories in height.

Besides the new map, there's a spinnoff game called "Aberration." In this game, players deal with an Ark gone bad with radiation and powerful monsters on the surface, so they have to start underground. I may write on the game soon. But for now, here's a picture to show the hijinks with the dinosaurs continue.

Bixyl Shuftan

Back in Ark: Boats In The Sunset

Since last writing about "Ark: Survival Evolved," the survival MMO with dinosaurs, earlier this year, things have continued to move on with the gamers at Nydia Tungsten's server. Eventually, there was a reboot, and we began building all over again. I've been too busy in Second Life lately to describe our adventures, at least so soon after our last time. In short, we started in the southeast and after making rafts made our way to "Herbavore Island" and leveled up in it's relative safety. But a funny thing happened. People found out one could put floors on the rafts and began making boats. These mobile bases became very handy as you could build smelters, smiths, fabricators, etc. on them. One monster ship was a huge "aircraft carrier" many stories high. My own just had a couple storage cabinets.

Eventually, we were looking to make other bases. I made a small base on the island's western peninsula. But a larger one was made further north near the top. Nydia took this screenshot from there.

"I have always enjoyed sunsets, and this is from the balcony of our westridge base built by out tribe's master builder Jaz, you can see our hunting rafts in the protected bay below"

There have been some frustrations of course. One recent update had the "flying nerf" that put big limits on our birds and pterodactyls, and introduced a big fish that would attack boats on sight, smashing them into smithereens. Once that center portion was gone, the rest of even the biggest ships would disintegrate. Needless to say, that made sea travel a lot more complicated. Nydia grumbled this update was the result of the developers giving in to demands by the PvP crowd. And then there's the upcoming update which introduces active volcanoes, and almost certainly wipes out our best source of iron, crystal, and obsidian.

So how will the tribe deal with this new complication? Like with everything else, find a way.

Picture and quote from Nydia Tungsten

Latest Misadventures in Ark Survival Evolved

It's been a while since I've last written about "Ark Survival Evolved" as my friends who were playing it moved on to other frontiers. But they recently returned, and have found there have been many changes over time, and a few that just happened. These changes include some new dangers, including new deadly beasts. But with the dangers come new opportunities. And the Ark veterans along with some players new to the island are once again taking on the dinosaurs.

Read more in Other Grids, MMOs, and Games.

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.

Further Adventures in Ark Survival Evolved

It's been about a month since the Newser did a review on "Ark: Survival Evolved," the survival game on an island filled with dinosaurs. Since then, Bixyl Shuftan and some of his friends have continued playing the game, in both public and private servers. Here, he writes about some of the adventures, and misadventures, he and his fellow survivors have gone through, as well as a few more helpful hints and observations about the game.

Read more in Other Grids, MMOs, and Games.

SLife and Times: A Thursday in Second Life

When Grease Coakes sat down to think about what to write about when he had a little time yesterday, he decided the easiest thing to put to pen would be the day he had. And for Grease, his day, Thursday, had been an eventful one, taking advantage of having some time off in real life. In this story, Grease describes the day he had, the places he went to and the people he saw, from a writer's event, to a tarot card reading, and more.

Read Grease's story in People.

Game Review: Ark - Survival Evolved

With "Jurrasic World" in the theaters in recent weeks, it's no real surprise a dinosaur game would be released to the public around this time. And on Steam, the latest wilderness survival game available, "Ark: Survival Evolved," takes place on an island full of dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasts. While some are strict plant eaters, and a few are completely harmless to even the clumsiest players, anyone who knows anything about dinos realizes any encounter with a meat eater bigger than you can end very badly. So does this game offer a T-Rex sized bite, or is it as dead as a dodo?

Read the review in Other Grids, MMOs, and Games.

Noah's Ark

With the weather so prominent in the news lately, perhaps it was only fitting I came across a build of Noah's Ark. Filled with descriptions, ans numerous exhibits, the Ark is a detailed Biblical build.

Read more in Places.