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Latest Second Life News Updates and Reviews Updated daily
Second Life : Reuters reporter to withdraw from Second LifeBy: Tateru Nino
Sep 30, 2008 02:30:00 PM News Item: 5551
Filed under: Culture, News items, Second Life, Virtual worlds Eric Krangel, whom most Second Life users will more readily recognize as the personable and approachable Eric Reuters and primary representative of the Thomson Reuters news service in Second Life for so long, is finally moving on.
Krangel will be taking up a writing position with Silicon Alley Insider, ending his long stint that saw him replace Adam Pasick (aka Adam Reuters) as the front-man for Thomson Reuters in Linden Lab's virtual environment.
In many ways it seems like the end of an era.
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Second Life : Linden Lab hires another from Adobe SystemsBy: Tateru Nino
Sep 29, 2008 05:00:00 PM News Item: 5528
Filed under: MMO industry, News items, Opinion, Second Life, Virtual worlds Tom Hale, formerly Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Knowledge Worker Business Unit at Adobe Systems has been hired to fill what is apparently a new role at Linden Lab: Chief Product Officer. Hale, as CPO will be reporting to new Lab CEO, Mark Kingdon.
Hale isn't the actually first to be poached away from Adobe Systems to the Lab recently. Clare Rees, a Senior Group Manager there was recently hired as the Lab's new European Marketing Director. Marketing what and marketing to whom -- this is not yet clear.
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Second Life : Massively's guide to reducing your Second Life lagBy: Tateru Nino
Sep 29, 2008 10:00:00 AM News Item: 5536
Filed under: Guides, Tips and tricks, Second Life
One of the most misunderstood concepts in any online medium is lag. Lag essentially refers to a delay. Most commonly we're referring to the delay between when you expect something to happen and when it actually does happen.
What makes lag difficult to understand is that it is a syndrome. There are multiple possible causes for lag, some under your control, and some not -- all of which contribute to that molasses-like feeling, and occasionally crashes or disconnections.
To help you make the most of your Second Life experience, we'll look over how to easily and simply identify what kind of lag you're getting, and what (if anything) you can do to reduce it.
Jump to a section:
- Your computer
- The servers
- The network
- Final thoughts
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Second Life : Phatland for sale: Famous island to go on eBayBy: Tateru Nino
Sep 28, 2008 06:00:00 PM News Item: 5535
Filed under: Culture, Economy, News items, Second Life, Virtual worlds
Phatland (aka Phat Cat's Jazz club) was originally founded by Dilbert Dilweg and Charity Colville, two people who met in Second Life, worked together, fell in love, and forged a successful and lasting relationship in the physical world -- not an uncommon story. Indeed, it seemed like Phatland and its club grew with their romance, up until mid 2007 or so Phatland was one of the single most popular places in Second Life by any reasonable reckoning.
When the couple moved to be with each-other in the physical world, they needed to make some changes in their lives, as one might expect. And that included the sale of Phatland. The sale went through, but not everything went smoothly with Phatland after that, and Dilbert and Charity were banned from the site. Phatland's traffic started to fall significantly. Where there had once been 90 or more users at all hours of the day, soon the site seemed to be a mere shadow of its former success.
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Second Life : Class 6 servers planned for Second LifeBy: Tateru Nino
Sep 27, 2008 04:00:00 PM News Item: 5505
Filed under: News items, Second Life, Virtual worlds Linden Lab apparently is in the planning stages for an upcoming rollout of new, "Class 6" hardware for Second Life, representing a step up from existing Class 5 server systems. Little is actually known about the roll-out, but they appear to be part of another project to migrate the server systems from 32-bit to 64-bit. How far along in that planning they may be is uncertain.
With SLS-1.24 server code still in the process of being stabilized, we wouldn't even begin to venture predictions as to when 64-bit server software or Class 6 servers will make it into testing, let alone into actual production. We assume it will be some time yet before the hardware is even purchased.
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Second Life : Anti-Aliased: WAR, huh, what is it good for? pt. 2By: Colin Brennan
Sep 27, 2008 11:00:00 AM News Item: 5507
Filed under: Fantasy, Game mechanics, PvP, Warhammer Online, PvE, Opinion, Hands-on, Anti-Aliased
With that said, let's get to the big gorilla -- the Realm vs. Realm combat. On the surface, it looks good. Letting people walk into clearly defined battlefields to fight over with incentives in the form of quests from the specific RvR warcamps and not to mention exp for killing other players as well as renown points, it looks like it's a winner. And, to be extremely honest, the system does win when you get a bunch of players in one place.
"Player vs. player combat comes extremely naturally to WAR to the point where sometimes I forget I'm in PvP because I'm having so much fun."
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Player vs. player combat comes extremely naturally to WAR to the point where sometimes I forget I'm in PvP because I'm having so much fun. Yes, that line just came from the guy who'd rather do reputation grinds than visit Alterac Valley in World of Warcraft. I despise PvP, I despise battlegrounds, and grinding reputation is fun compared to getting killed every three seconds and then teabagged.
WAR makes sure that each person can actualy survive in PvP, have a chance to get away, and they make it into a worthwhile endeavor. Even if you lose a scenario, you can still turn in the specific PvP quest and get experience because you completed the scenario. PvP is tactical, interesting, and just overflowing with rewards. That's a good system.
The bad news comes in the form of World RvR battlegrounds. Once again, they're barren wastelands. No I mean that, they are barren wastelands. Haven't you seen the screenshots? (Insert rimshot here.) But, there's not enough people to really support the battlegrounds system. What we really have here is a "go in, take what you want before someone notices, and leave" system. Sure, there are quests that have owners of the landmarks "check up" on their property --
"Should that problem stop you from playing Warhammer Online? Absolutely not."
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quests that will bring the enemy back to their control points -- but even those aren't being taken advantage of by the players.
So, what is WAR good for? WAR is good for a bloody fun time. The game's systems are all well done and are fun to play. The problem is that WAR is missing the fundamental oil in the machine, people to WAR with. The endgame is secure, as everyone is going to end up there, turning the endgame into a giant, vicious struggle (as it should be) but the first and second tiers are going to struggle no matter what. Even in overpopulated servers just a short while from the launch, we're already seeing signs of attrition in the design. Mythic simply thought they'd have more people constantly flowing in or making new characters.
Should that problem stop you from playing Warhammer Online? Absolutely not. The state of the game is still strong, and it's still more fun than you can get in any other game. In fact, if you jump in, you're going to only going to help in curing the problems it has. So go ahead, WAR away. The game is good for it.
Colin Brennan is the weekly writer of Anti-Aliased who finally is having fun with RvR. When he's not writing here for Massively, he's over running Epic Loot For All! with his insane roommates. If you want to message him, you can do so in Second Life (SL: Seraphina Reymont), or send him an e-mail at colin.brennan AT weblogsinc DOT com. Comments
Second Life : Production Second Life viewer 1.20.16 available now [updated]By: Tateru Nino
Sep 26, 2008 12:30:00 PM News Item: 5489
Filed under: Patches, News items, Second Life A new Second Life viewer is available. Not a release candidate, but an update to the 1.20 series -- what's generally referred to as an 'official' or production viewer. The version number for this release is 1.20.16 (97603), and only contains one listed change over 1.20.15.
The lone change appears to be security-related. The text of the change (not yet available in Wiki release notes) is "Discard messages sent over UDP that should not be trusted."
It isn't clear exactly which messages those are, precisely, and whether they might be sent from servers or spoofed from other hosts (or if they should simply be being carried on another transport protocol) -- however if it was important enough to release a fresh production viewer with just this one change, it is likely to be an important upgrade for users.
The new viewer is available for download now for Linux, Windows, or Mac (universal binary). We assume that if you've had problems running the 1.20.15 viewer, 1.20.16 will not work any better for you.
Linden Lab has not yet announced this release on any of its blogs.
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Second Life : Second Life's low population densityBy: Tateru Nino
Sep 26, 2008 09:00:00 AM News Item: 5488
Filed under: Culture, Opinion, Second Life, Virtual worlds
One of the things that comes up repeatedly in third-party discussions about Second Life is the low population density, often with concern that it represents some manner of deficiency or failure. Two general points are made: Firstly that the Second Life grid lacks the ability to support very high densities, and second that the Second Life grid is largely "a deserted wasteland", due to the low active population per square metre. Take a moment to imagine the digital tumbleweeds.
Actually, there's a good reason for the second, and it makes the first rather irrelevant. Sure, the population density is low -- because, apparently, that's the way the users prefer it. Many individuals might prefer higher population densities within Linden Lab's virtual environment, but as an aggregate population Second Life users tend to actively select against that in practice.
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Second Life : Second Life publicizes din of inequityBy: Tateru Nino
Sep 25, 2008 11:00:00 AM News Item: 5461
Filed under: Culture, Second Life, Politics, Virtual worlds
Week after week, year after year, Australia's police-men and -women put their lives on the line for us. Even when we're ungrateful and unpleasant about it. They see the best and the worst of us, and they keep on going. The Western Australia police force have a recruiting center newly established in the virtual environment Second Life -- and there's some interesting stories being told there.
You see, there's a peculiar issue with the police force in Western Australia which has long been under the radar for local print-media. It took Second Life and the Metaverse Journal's Feldspar Epstein to bring it to light, and now the Western Australian print-media is buzzing with it.
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More Second Life News
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