EOTB : Linden Lab Announces New Private Sims Available "In Limited Quantity"

 

In May, Linden Lab announced that it could no longer guarantee that anyone whom was interested in getting a new sim would be able to. This was due to the increased demand for them while they were in the middle of the transition of their data to cloud servers. On Tuesday November 3, there was an announcement from the Lab that with their progress on the cloud move, they were "ready to begin offering new private region purchases," though still in "limited quantities."

In light of more regions being moved to the cloud, we are pleased to announce that we are ready to begin offering new private region purchases in limited quantities. As we continue to uplift more of the grid, more regions will become available over time, eventually leading to the Land Store being reopened.  

Those wanting a sim are asked to send a ticket through the Lab's Support Portal, "The ticket can be submitted under the Land & Region > Order Private Region category." After the ticket is sent, it will either be handled or added to a waiting list "which will be handled in the order the submission is received." The Lab reminded the sim's name had to conform to naming guidelines, new sims are charged setup fees, and those wanting sims where "skill gaming" could be run would be paying much more.

For more information, check the Linden blog entry here.

Bixyl Shuftan

Linden Lab Announces "Limited Availability" of New Private Sims

With Second Life's userbase increasing in recent months, most certainly mainly due to the Coronavirus quarantines, it was probably expected that there would be an increased demand for sims by the residents. On May 10, someone posted in the Virtualverse forums that the number of private sims had increased by 361 since March 30. Tyche Shepherd seems to be on hiatus, so we don't have his reports to go by.

With numbers like this when the number of private sims usually goes up or down by less than a tenth that, perhaps it should be no surprise to hear the latest announcement by the Lab. Yesterday on Thursday May 14, Linden Lab announced that it could no longer guarantee a new full private sim to someone who wanted one.

Due to the ongoing public health crisis, we’ve experienced an unprecedented surge in demand for new Second Life regions. While we are thrilled by the heightened interest, the increased demand has consumed our available inventory of full regions (there are still many parcels available on existing regions, both on the mainland and from private estates).  

We are committed to maintaining (and improving) the stability and performance of Second Life. So while we are very gratified that we can be of help to people in these trying times, unfortunately, our current server systems cannot accommodate unlimited growth without adversely impacting that stability and performance. This means that region inventory in Second Life will be extremely limited and may not be readily available until early fall.

The Lab stated that one reason for the inability to handle the increased load was their transitioning from their current servers to cloud ones, which hasn't been finished yet, "As a result, we are in the unfortunate position of hitting the maximum capacity of our “old” servers until the “new” cloud servers are fully operational."

While the Lab stated new sims will be made available as old ones are closed, this limited availability will continue until the new cloud servers are fully operational, which they guess will be "early fall." In the meantime, Linden Lab suggested alternatives to full private sims, such as land on the mainland, or renting from an estate owner.

So far, as of the writing of this article, there have been just a few reactions in the official blog and Virtualverse. But they have been positive ones.

Will the demand for new sims continue to outpace supply, or as the US and other nations relax restrictions imposed due to the Coronavirus, will demand drop? Time will tell.

Sources: Linden blog, Virtualverse, BBC

Bixyl Shuftan

Breaking News: Linden Lab to Impose Complexity Limits on Avatars

In an announcement in the official blog, CEO Ebbe Altberg. Ebbe Linden announced that due to increasing complaints about lag, Linden Lab has decided to put a cap on avatar complexity, at least for those on standard accounts. Starting tomorrow, users without Premium accounts will be limited to a complexity rating of 40,000. While this seems like a lot, popular skins such as Maitreya can use up 80-100,000 with just the base body alone.

We at Linden Lab have strived to encourage improvement for this virtual world. However, the improvements on detail on certain avatars have come with a complexity that is more than two or three times that of characters in leading computer games. This increased complexity multiplied over many avatars has made attending popular events difficult to close to impossible for many without frequent graphics card crashes. So we are encouraging designers to be more creative and are putting a limit on how complex in polygons an avatar and it's accessories can be.

For regular residents who don't change from a high complexity avatar, when logging in tomorrow they will appear in the old default avatar, or "Ruth." Avatars under Premium accounts are unaffected, and still have no complexity limit, yet.

In the forums, one skin designer accused Linden Lab of trying to run her out of business, "Unless you're a pony or furry, you need lots of detail to look good." One fashion blogger felt Linden Lab's real reason was money, "There's an old joke it takes real money to look real beautiful. It seems The Lab wants a piece of that money and is once again reaching for our wallets."

Details are still coming in about this latest move by Linden Lab that is sure to generate no shortage of discussion.

For the blog post in detail: Click Here.

SL Groups Raised to 42, But Your Viewer May Not Show It

A bit more than a week ago, FJ Linden announced in the official blog that the group limit of 25 per account, long the source of complaints by residents, was finally raised to 42. There’s just one slight hitch ...

Linden Labs says you need to be using Viewer 2 to join more groups.


To add groups beyond the previous limit of 25, you must be using Viewer 2.4 (or a more recent version). And if you’re still using Viewer 1.23, or a third-party viewer based on Viewer 1.23 code, then you can add more groups in Viewer 2.4 and they will still be accessible when you switch back to Viewer 1.23.


Viewer 2 has always gotten mixed reviews from Second Life residents. With improvements, some people adopted it. But even after a year, the majority of residents still use other viewers most of the time. This includes yours truly whom relies on Snowglobe. The last few times I tried Viewer 2.0, the result was a cloud instead of an avatar, and finally the latest version would not work at all on my computer. And from what I’ve been hearing, some people trying to use it crash frequently.

So does this mean we have to use a buggy viewer to join more groups?

Not necessarily.

When I stumbled across a “click to join group” poster recently, I decided to give it a try, and went ahead and clicked to add myself. And it worked! So apparently, other viewers also get the new group limit, even though they still say you have a maximum of 25 groups.

Hamlet Au also did an article on the subject, and his readers commented on various viewers. It seems Viewer 1.23 and all third-party viewers based on it can also be used to join more groups. It’s just when *starting* a new group that you’ll need Viewer 2.

In the official blog, there were numerous replies of thanks for the group limit raised. There were some who did bring up the issue of Viewer 2.

On another note, the blog post mentioned improvements for teleporting and sim crossings, saying on average they’ve dropped 40%. Yours truly hasn’t noticed much of a difference.

For the Linden Blog post and comments, Click Here.

Bixyl Shuftan