We are thrilled to announce the launch of our official Second Life Discord Server!
As a hub of community interactions and information exchange, this
server is a vibrant space for all Second Lifers to connect, share, and
learn together.
Clicking on this link, https://discord.gg/secondlifeofficial , will take you to the SL Discord channel if you're already signed up for Steam. There was about one person or more signing up every minute much of the day and night, and as of the writing of this article there were hundreds signed up for it. There were various threads, from destinations to events, to scripting, and general subject matters. Drama, political and religious discussion, and hateful speech are prohibited, as well as what's considered excessive advertising and self=promotion.
Second Life is no doubt the most successful of virtual worlds. But some people want something a little more. What about one's own private server? This is possible in Opensim in which the servers aren't owned by Linden Lab, but by someone else. In this article, Angel Fencer (Ender Leven) explains just what Opensim is, and a little about what can and can't be done there.
We at the Newser do our best to give you news about the people, places, events, and things about Second Life. We've also invited feedback, especially reader submissions. We've been posting links to many of our stories on Facebook for many years, for instance. But as there have been more questions about the social network, some have stopped going there.
For some months, I've been on a few groups on Discord, a chat program that many have been using instead of Skype lately. So we're opening ours on SL Newser Discord channel ( https://discord.gg/SttVuj). It's still new, with plenty of informal though friendly comments so far. So feel free to join in (though behave yourselves as drama and other trouble is unwelcome). Source: The Guardian
Once again I find myself flabbergasted by the level of community
support we receive from our users. In just over two weeks we have raised
just over L$1.3 million lindens between Gacha sales and donations! This
will be more than enough to keep us going for a few more years.
Our server admin, Mygoditsfullofstars,
has already upgraded us to one new server and you should see faster
download times as a result. He’s now very busy working to upgrade and
migrate all our other things over to a better server too. There is even
enough now to cover our Kakadu license renewal, possibly for two years!
The Firestorm team and I are forever grateful and appreciative for the support we receive from our community.
While there are a still a few more goods for sale in the fundraiser area, Team Firestorm is collecting no more.
Special thanks to all who gave donations, many were very generous! Special thanks to Kio Feila
as well for all her hard work trying to keep the shelves stocked. Thank
you also to all our Gateway volunteers and managers for enduring the
additional traffic! Thank you all SO MUCH for your support!
Although Team Firestorm works for free, they do have a number of expenses. They recently pointed out two, one being "our main server, which hosts our Jira, web site, wiki, code repository, etc." The second expense are the sims for their community gateway, subsidized by Linden Lab, but still costing them money. Their server has been having some troubles, "it is long past its prime, and we’ve had plenty of outages over the past year as a result. We also continue to provide the Kakadu codec to the Firestorm viewer to bring you superior rendering, but this comes at a hefty annual licensing cost."
So Team Firestorm is having a fundraiser to cover these costs. While people can donate to the big tip jar, the intent is for most of the money raised to be from gacha items donated to Firestorm, "For months now we’ve been collecting and categorizing hundreds of unusual and interesting gachas from around SL in hopes some of you may be interested in buying them. Prices are as varied as the selection!" The event takes place on a platform high above the Firestorm Sandbox
As there are no machines that give you items at random, this isn't a true gacha. Instead, individual items are available up for sale on stands or from displays. The event has been going on for a while, so many of the items originally up for grabs are gone. Besides the items at the gacha area, one can also get Firestorm jackets on Marketplace.
If anyone wants to help out by donating items, contact Klo Fella inworld. How long the fundraiser will be going on hasn't been stated.
By Valkyrie McGill on April 28, Normally the Newser doesn't post videos from outside Second Life, but this was from Sunweavers' Valkyrie Ice/ Valkyrie McGill, whom has been building in Skylark Lefavre's "Feed the Beast: Infinity" mod of Minecraft. Here, she shows off "A hi-def walkthrough of Val-Halla 2 ... my underground city complex. Not quite finished."
Yours truly hasn't played the MMO World of Warcraft in a while. But while I was on, I'd heard people have mixed feelings over some changes, such as certain progression systems removed, the end of the three leveling trees, the simplifying of the pet care system, etc. Many felt World of Warcraft had lost something from it's older days. I'd heard of private servers in which players could go back and play the game as it was, but never checked them out. The big problem: they were technically illegal. Blizzard never authorized any, and each was subject to being shut down.
Nostalrius was one such server. A relatively new one, it quickly became one of the most popular. According to Kotaku, it had close to 800,000 registered users and about 150,000 active users, up from 5000 in May 2015. Unfortunately, it caught the attention of Blizzard, whom handed it's Internet hosting service a "cease and desist" order. The server's managers then reluctantly made the decision to shut it down, telling it's players the last day would be on Sunday April 10. In the final minutes, hundreds of players gathered in spots to say goodbye to one another and to wait out the end.
The server team also sent Blizzard a petition, for the company to bring back the World of Warcraft of old in "Legacy" servers, saying the sheer numbers of people whom were in Nostalrius was evidence of how many players were seeking it. "Do you think that a policy change can be made regarding legacy servers based on volunteers work, for very old no longer supported game expansion? Or do you think that legacy servers are doomed by definition since, in the end, it's hurting Blizzard trademark and communication more than anything else?"
It's been just several months since World of Warcraft's numbers had dropped to the point Blizzard would no longer publicly give out it's active user numbers. It could easily be argued that's a good reason for Blizzard to consider legacy servers.
Filmed by Nydia Tungsten. Yours truly hasn't been in Minecraft much lately, though others of Nydia's "Angels" group still have. Here, the progress in several servers has been duplicated and combined in one "Monster" FTB server. Those whom have read Minecraft articles can recognize some scenes.
While Nydia Tungsten's been experimenting with Minecraft maps for her friends to game on, the players on her new Angels Village on her servers have continued to build after the village took shape. Quite a few statues and other things were built. Including a tribute to the players.
Besides Second Life, there was piratey fun other places online last week. World of Warcraft for instance had it's "Pirate Day" at Booty Bay. But there was also Minecraft. Nydia Tungsten was able to set things up for a ship to ship battle, and it was "cannons away." That is, if you knew how to fire the contraptions.
Nydia Tungsten and her friends in the Sunweaver and Angel Estates have continued to have plenty of fun in the popular "Minecraft" game. With the players having fun with the "Feed The Beast" version, Nydia decided to put a new server to the test by holding a building contest. So what was build and who won? And what's next in store for Minecraft's Angels?
Jasmine Dawn Shuftan and friends have done quite a lot in Nydia's Minecraft server. Havenshire has become a larger and more complex place than Angels Village, from which the server gets its name, and its players have done much. But change is coming, and it looks like new pastures, and tunnels, for the Angels.
When Nydia Tungsten first invited me to her Angels Village in Minecraft, she reserved a small cabin with my name, christening it the "MC Newser." As others in the server were making various places away from hers, I had the idea of doing my own: an office building. It was made in a patch of desert not too far away from Angels, and within sight of a desert village christened "Torchlight." After some weeks, three floors were complete, and a sign made of of white and black wool on top on the side facing Angels. While I planned to finish it, I was busy with other things, and it sat there, remaining less than complete.
Jasmine Dawn Shuftan however has been on a building spree in Minecraft. And after my help with her tunnels, she took it upon herself to not just finish the office building, but improve on it. She replaced the black wool with glowstone, with redstone torches just behind them, resulting in a sign in which the letters glowed brightly at night. Then she made a second one on the other side.
Finishing the roof, she added one more touch: five small towers, one for each corner and the center. They have lamps triggered by mechanisms added in recent updates. When the sun goes down, they light up.
So now the office is pretty much complete. While I may add some furiture later, the job is pretty much done. But Jasmine continues to work on her place far to the north of Angels, sometimes called "Jazzytown" by others. So there are still things to do here.
Earlier in April, we reported on the continued activity in the Angels Village Minecraft server. Since then, the activity hasn't stopped but continued, such as the finishing of a long-distance tunnel. So here's a progress report on the digs in Nydia Tungsten's Minecraft realm.
Nydia Tungsten's been continuing to do things in Minecraft, along with a few other Second Life friends. Yours truly hasn't been there much as there's always something going on in Second Life. Then my partner Jasmine got into the build and dig game, and it was time to do an update on what's been going on.
