Category: Second Life

Tweek had a really good post the other day, and warrants a bit more than a comment from me.

I’m one of those people who’ve been a loner much of their life; In my case this was a self-defense mechanisn as I fell into codependency too easily when interacting with people. Though that trend is generally reversing as I mature socially, my life the past few years has taught me that doing things both alone *and* together at different times is an experience all its own.

Take, for example, the island of Numbakulla in Second Life. It’s home to what’s essentially a single-player, play-at-your-pace adventure game. But the island allows more than one person at a time, so interesting interactions (not unlike Uru Live today) occur. Players swap info and hints for areas they’ve cleared, for the betterment of both. They work in teams, either fanning out to learn about the environment quicker, or exploring as a tight group (this is no small feat in this game; The SL architecture can be setup to only show messages at the player level). And some – like myself – just visit for the beauty of it all; One couple even got ‘married’ on the island over a year ago!

Getting back to Uru… Though I’m one of those who’ve clearly stated themselves to primarily be in the ‘alone’ camp, I do feel that group activities – be it forced or not – still be out there. That does not mean I’ll not participate; I’ve been to Delin by myself, poked at the door once or twice, and just smiled and drank in the age instead. I figure, that if I really want what the age ‘physically’ has to offer, I’ll join a group that’s interested and help them.

Let’s not forget, however, that places like Delin are supposed to be ‘rest’ ages, and were initially designed to be enjoyed by the soul, not as some waystop for a clue or trophy…

–TSK

In looking at the last few day’s postings over at the Official Linden Lab Weblog, I’m not as much worried about concurrency or City lag with Uru Live.

For those who have not heard, LL did a major and highly-anticipated update last Wednesday; The big change was to visibility, and it was twofold: 1) avatars can now remove themselves from all forms of tracking, including online status, and 2) all island/estate sims will show on the master map, despite any settings disabling access.

In theory, these changes (or at least the second one anyway) are designed to reduce load on their master databases. So I have to marvel at the irony that the problems of the past few days since rollout are due to an overloaded database. :P

*sigh* Sadly typical, but they don’t have a large dedicated (perhaps fanatical) user base willing to test on a regular basis, like Uru Live apparently has.

Last I heard LL is looking to leverage parts of the libsecondlife project for load testing their Beta/Preview grid; Best of luck to them.

In other news, I’ve been AWOL from all IRC channels for a couple days now; It’s been pretty busy at work, and with vacations in full swing as of next week it’s promising to get even more interesting.

–TSK