desmond-shang
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The Virtual Whirl: Vox virtualis
A change is as good as a holiday, they say. Seriously, I don't actually know anyone who says this other than myself; though I'm assured that there are some folks out there who do. With that tragically underutilized platitude in mind, then, last week I posed a question to a spread of well-known virtual environment users (at least to those that I felt would actually respond) and collected the responses. The question put to the respondents was "What's the single thing that the operators/developers could do to make you feel more satisfied with their virtual environment offering; what thing would help an operator keep you as a customer, or that would make some other operator more appealing than the one or ones you already have?"
Second Life's Caledon expands to Blue Mars
Desmond Shang, operator of one of the most popular and cohesive themed communities in Second Life, is extending his community into Blue Mars in just a few days time. Shang's Caledon, popular among aficionados of Victoriana, Steampunk and Gaslight, is opening a sister colony, Caledonia on Blue Mars, with an initial stake of roughly four million square metres. Caledonia is roughly 30% larger than Caledon, sporting a lot of wilder country, forests, mountains and more. We'll be looking forward to seeing what the content development pipeline will really do. Initial reports are that Caledonia will, even when built out, be considerably less bandwidth intensive on its own than Caledon.
Linden Lab changes pricing/policy on void simulators
Concerned users gather in Caledon to discuss implications of the pricing/policy changes Linden Lab have announced an immediate set of policy changes for what they call openspace simulators (more commonly called void sims by Second Life users), and a deferred set of pricing changes that will take effect for all void sims come 1 January 2009. From 1 January 2009, upfront fees for void sims will be increased by 50% and monthly fees will rise by 66%. Presently the fees are US$250 upfront and US$75/mo. The new fees from 1 January will be US$375 upfront and US$125/mo. Owners with groups of four void simulators will have those groups migrated to class 5 servers at that time. The pricing change will certainly hit many quite hard. Void sims have been a popular alternative to regular simulators ever since the Lab encouraged more comprehensive use of the simulators, by increasing their capacities and making their pricing more accessible.
