Tag: SecondLife

Second Life’s 22nd Birthday Celebrations: Important Stuff to Know

Last night, I heard my phone make that particular chime that signified there was an email from Linden Lab,or something Blogger Network related. Could there be another Zoom Call already? What might this one be about? Are they going to force reset everyone’s passwords yet?

Nay my dear readers, it’s an advanced list of all the SL Birthday celebrations info, dates and links all in one place.

Last year I was able to snag a Premium Plus Lifetime membership, (which I’d saved up for since the previous year) so not much can top that to be honest. Let’s see what they have for us, shall we? I am quite curious about what the new Last Names will be though, because an old friend has made a return to SL and is looking to ditch their old Resudent name, I suggested she wait until this list came out. I hope there’s some better than Myth on the list!

One thing I was disappointed to see however is that some of “Meet the Lindens” talks are going to be pre-recorded. How is that “meeting” the Lindens if the residents aren’t there? At least there is a live session with Philip on the Wednesday, but someone that’s conspicuous by their absence; Where’s Brad on that schedule?

Anyway, here’s your schedule:

SL22B Timeline:

  • Opens to the public on June 20th at 11am PT
  • Shop & Hop: June 20th to July 20th
  • Live Music Events: June 20th to June 29th
  • SL22B closes on July 20th

SL22B Key Info:

  • 76 regions total for the entire event
  • 500 exhibitors showcasing 244 exhibits across 19 regions
  • 532 performances across 4 performance stages
  • 480 merchants on 24 regions participating in the Shop & Hop

SL22B Shop & Hop Highlights:
Did you know you can get early access to the Shop & Hop if you join the Second Life Birthday Group inworld? Early access starts on Thursday, June 19th, at 9am PT!

  • 480 content creators participating across 24 regions (400 on moderate regions, 80 on adult regions)
  • 20% or more discount on all items, plus a free (non-group) gift at each shop
  • Early access for Second Life Birthday Group members: June 19th at 9am PT
  • Open to the public: June 20th at 11am PT through July 20th

Blogs & Links for SL22B:

More to Look Forward to on opening day:

  • SL22B Last Names: New Myths and Legends-themed last names like Myth, Dragonheart, and more!
  • Hunts & Premium Gifts: Dragon Eggs and Swaginator clues await adventurers at SL22B! Premium members can pick up exclusive swords and shields at premium gift vendors.
  • Physical Merch: Want SL22B gear for the real world? Check out our SL22B merch on Redbubble.

What am I trying to Achieve?

Earlier today I saw a post on Bluesky from a longtime Second Life resident and very empty club owner. I responded with a genuine query about what might encourage them to return more to SL, because non-returning residents and lack of new ones is a real problem for the platform. It was an interesting and enlightening conversation, until I messed up and mentioned something Brad had said (and the Lindens have been saying for years) about land prices vs fees. I just want to try to do my little bit to help, but here I was spouting a mantra that has annoyed myself and others for years, even decades.

As the exchange came to a close, they wished me luck in “whatever you’re trying to achieve”, which made me think.

This blog is meant to be about the fun stuff I do and find in Second Life. I look at my previous three posts and they’re related to what Linden Lab has been up to. While these things do and will have an effect on everyone’s Second Lives, it feels maybe I’ve become too “Linden-adjacent”, whatever that may mean.

The fact that two bloggers have actually said they wouldn’t bother joining the Zoom calls and would wait for my summary writeups instead, supports that.

A final note on the conversation that made me almost laugh at the unlikelihood (but validity) of it was “LL should be paying you and others in the program handsomely to do outreach”. (“program” being a reference to the SL Blogger Network that I mentioned being part of.)

Time to play now.

Ava Bloodrose,MA Education in Virtual Worlds

Avatar Account Security – Stop Self Hacking

Today there was a Zoom meeting held between the Second Life Blogger Network and Linden Lab, to discuss “account safety and security”.

As you’re probably aware by now, these meetings get arranged when the Lab has something in particular it wants to share with the Community and they know that lots of Residents don’t see or read the announcement blog posts(me included).

When I received the invitation email and read the subject matter my first thought was “they’re going to ask us to push MFA” (Multi Factor Authentication).

Which was correct, but not the main focus as I’d expected. I was hoping that at this meeting they were going to announce the introduction of recovery keys when setting up MFA, but no.

The main cause of account takeovers are people sharing their passwords. So the accounts aren’t so much being hacked, but as Brad Oberwager said in the meeting, they’re “Self-hacking”.

This is because fraudsters have gotten so good at social engineering. Basically becoming your friend and duping you into sharing your login details.

So there’s some simple DO’s & DON’Ts that the Lab would like to reiterate:

DO:

  • STOP sharing your passwords
  • Change your password (Can you remember when you changed it last? No? Change it NOW.)
  • Enable Multi-Factor Authentication in your account Dashboard

DON’T:

  • Buy Linden Dollars outside of the Second Life platform. (It’s always a scam and Linden Lab can’t help you.)
  • Click on links in chats (yes they could disable them, but can you imagine the backlash?)

All seems quite obvious really doesn’t it? Well yes, but people still aren’t doing these things.

Remember that the Lab could force a grid-wide password reset at any time. The reason they don’t (it would make things easier for them) is that there are people that have been logging in for a decade or more with a saved password they may not even know anymore. So change your password and keep it safe.

You may be wondering why you’re hearing about more account takeovers than you used to, as always it comes down to money. Linden Lab wants to make financial transactions as smooth and timely as possible, everyone likes things to be easy, right? Well the downside of doing real-time transactions is that you become a very attractive target to bad people, that are very good at what they do.

There’s a lot of trust in Second Life, which is great for community spirit, but when it comes to your account password, treat it like your bank details; don’t share it.

Linden Lab Official Post

(Yes, I did practice what I preached and changed my password.)

Herb & Fable – Beyond Lavendell – The Public Beta Quest

On the 1st of March Herb and Fable (HnF) went into public Beta testing, and has had a steady signup of new players.

This was boosted by players joining the game to take part in the Lavendell Quest during Fantasy Faire. If you completed the Lavendell Quest, some of this will be familiar, some not, if you didn’t complete that quest, it is still available to play at the Lavendell Quest region (link below).

For the Beta launch Julula created a similar Quest to introduce players to the different elements of the game and how it all works.

As you progress through different tasks, you’ll receive a whole bunch of Badges, that appear on your profile on the website and an object inworld that you can display, or add multiple ones to a display board.

Show spoiler

The “First Altar” sequence, is similar to the other Rituals previously released by Jinx. If you previously purchased one of the other ritual sets, there will be an update to a Herb & Fable version when they become available, that will allow you to earn associated XP and related badges.

There’s quite a collection of items you need to collect for your Ritual:

Show spoiler
List of items required to perform the Ritual

Like the Lavendell Quest, tracking these items down will have you searching high and low for them all.

One of the steps in preparing for the Ritual is carving your First Wand!

In the ritual you will learn about setting up an Altar with your various Craft tools, where to place them and their significance. These steps are the same as the ones you may take if you set up a real-world Altar at home or other location.

I set out the Rirual items on the counter in my tavern, in the corresponding directional locations:

The Chalice, representing the aspect of Water:

Show spoiler of the Chalice

The Feather, representing the aspect of Air:

Show spoiler of the Feather

You can get your Herb & Fable Beta pack in the Herb & Fable store on Centauria.

However given a screenshot posted today by Julula in the #Teasers channel of the Discord server, we may be out of Beta very soon!

Image from Gyazo

(The hovertext says V.1.01, the Beta version says Beta 0.11)

Herb & Fable links:

Blogger Challenge: My New Shiny: Dark Star

I found a new store I love: Madame Noir. The Faire is mostly all about bright and shiny stuff, but you can have shiny Black too! The dress is called Lux, so why “Dark Star” in the title of the post? Simply because that’s what sprang into my mind when I saw the way the light reflected off it, it looked like a sparkling star in the darkness. Of course I needed an appropriate setting to show you it, so Nox Sanctum seemed appropriate as the Faire slowly begins to drift into the Mists for another year.

Upper closeup
The Boots!

To Know the Dark
by Wendell Berry

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

THE FAIRELANDS WILL CLOSE TUESDAY 6TH APRIL MIDNIGHT SLT

(Then you’ll have to track down all the creators mainstores yourself, so better go grab the stuff at the Faire?!)

Credits:

The Dragons Guard

Darkness… penetrated only by a few torches, the glow of the lava well and the reflection off the hoard. The hoard, and a few fragile eggs that couldn’t be moved, they’re why she’s here, guard duty.

Under normal circumstances this wouldn’t even be an issue, the Dragons do it instinctively. However when the time comes that Mortals can enter the Faire, that doesn’t really work; since the Dragon instinctive response is to just to breathe intruders to cinders. So after a few unfortunate incidents, the Dragon Council agreed to keep away from the paths the Mortals trod during this period. Obviously that meant someone had to guard this stuff, if a Mortal were to take an extra souvenir from the chamber… it wouldn’t go well for the mortal race after that. At least it’s quiet and warm down here, blissful when you’re cold-blooded, but that’s why her race got the job; she won’t pass out from the heat of the lava well. The draconis are also the only humanoid race the Dragon Council will trust, due to their distant genetic history that no-one seems to know the origins of, but accepts because fireproof scales for skin counts for something.

At that point one of the gates opens and interrupts her thoughts, a mortal comes down the steps into a pool of light and sees her standing there. She points with her staff at the opposite gateway “Greetings Fairelander, do not dally here, on your way, please.”

Credits:

Paper People Prank – Evolution not Revolution, but a success?

On the 29th of March (not 1st of April) the list of creators involved in something called “Project Mesh Revolution” was revealed via a post on Flickr, it’s quite a list.

Project Mesh Revolution - Creator Reveal

I’m now wondering how many of them are still glad they joined in on the prank. Since it would seem that not all of them read the application form thoroughly.

I spoke to a couple of fellow bloggers before the release, who had varying opinions:

I can’t help but think it’s an April fools joke.

With another having the counter view

If it’s an elaborate April fool they’re gonna lose a lot of customers

I had my suspicions though, which I voiced in the discussion with one of the bloggers:

Seems I wasn’t totally off the mark

So at Midnight SLT on April Fools day, the group notice goes out and everyone piles into the various stores to get their free bodies, heads and apparel. I would guess some were laughing and some were crying when they unpacked their haul.

What actually got released was basically a pair of paper doll avatars, which have been around for years, just with changeable outfits and apparel from the listed creators. This is a key difference, the avatar genre has evolved to include easy modification, with this set of bodies.

There seemed to be a divide in opinion as to whether this was a totally upsetting letdown or an amusing prank that they were cute(ish) dolls.

Reading the group chat on the day, you’d have thought this was a totally new concept and Salt Peppermint was a genius for coming up with it, but it’s not. Paper doll avatars have been around for quite some time. Some examples would be those made by Paper Friends, whose store parcel was claimed in 2014 and a range of paper avatars by MOoh!.

The PMR avatars however do bring easy customisation back to Second Life, akin to the early 2000s when people made perfectly acceptable avatars for the time on the default system body using clothing layers, now known as Bakes-on-Mesh (BoM) layers.

Writing this a week after the release, the interest in these avatars doesn’t seem to have slowed down, based on the activity in the dedicated Discord server and the amount of search results now showing on Markerplace.

There was a claim made on Facebook that new users had signed up specifically because of these avatars availability. While anything that brings new residents into SL is good, when I asked Linden Lab if there were stats that support this claim, I was told: “We’ve seen a slight up-tick in returning residents”. I’d say that’s still a positive.

You can get these bodies on the Marketplace:

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/PMR-Cardboard-body-head-CARDY-by-SP/27028090 – Female Body

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/PMR-Cardboard-body-head-CARDO-by-SP/27028089 – Male Body

Celenor

Standing at the inland end of the pier,Ava glances at the ominous black doorway at the far end and ignores it, focussing her attention on the bright light in the fog.

Slowly as she walks through the mist,a stone circle becomes visible, the light she had seen was at its centre. Carefully she circles the stones, you never know what, who, where or even when might be on the inside.

Part way around she notices that one of the stones has fallen or been laid down deliberately, a sigh of relief escapes her, the circle is broken; so relatively safe.

When Ava entered the circle however, there appeared to be a woman next to the light. She whispers a few words that start Ava pondering, then in the blink of an eye, she is gone.

Continuing on her way she notes the entrance to a cave in the nearby cliff as she comes to the shore of the sea, leading to a small harbour and a cosy hut for a rest from wandering.

This is a beautiful place to wander around if you want some quiet peace. The firelit cave is particularly charming, a nice place to chat with a friend.

For anyone wondering where the ominous black door on the pier leads..have a look. Be warned however there’s not a Teleporter to get you back, so maybe go there last.

Location: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Celenor/159/170/21

Linden Lab adds Phone Verification to Second Life Discord Server Access – A step too far?

I’ve been in the Second Life Discord server for some time now, since I was granted access as an Alpha tester for the mobile app. I was very pleased when they finally made the server public recently. To be able to post any messages in the server you now have to link your Discord account with a Second Life avatar account. I’d say that’s fair enough, it provides a layer of accountability that is reasonable.

That is of course until yesterday someone posted:

I verified with an alt

Which reveals a big flaw in that idea.

So what was the Labs solution? They added the requirement to “Verify Phone”, which is what I was presented with this morning if I wished to post in any Channel in the Discord mobile app.

While I understand they want to protect the server and themselves from misbehaving members, I think the mobile requirement is a step too far.  I think this step may put people off participating. Including myself.

Of course the Lab knows my real life identity, but I don’t think people should have to hand over a phone number to be able to use a Discord server. A well known blogger has the same requirement on their server and I just didn’t join on the grounds of that.

What makes this more of a joke is that today getting a phone number is almost as easy as creating an alt avatar account. Unfortunately Google Voice that offer free numbers aren’t available in the UK and equivalent services are paid for. Adding another security layer, that’s easily bypassed, seems unnecessarily futile and could negatively impact Resident  engagement.

Addition:

First reader comment received directly minutes after publishing:

they tell how much they value being anonymous and then they did that. Pissed me off big time

Second reader comment via Bluesky:

Great… I just joined the server a couple of days ago and now this happens – and I feel like leaving the server again. I honestly don’t want to add my phone number for verification

Third response received directly:

Just saw this – and just left the server. lol

From Bluesky:

I was able to chat 4 hours ;D – than they activated phone verification…. SOOORRYYYYY

Another comment via Bluesky puts a slightly different spin on the topic:

It’s more of a moderation used in and by big server all over discord.

This is to verify the account holder is human and not a throw away account used for trolling/spamming sure the system is not perfect but stops 97%-99% of unwanted behaviour.

Anyway discord doesn’t share this number with third parties

While this might explain things a little, the Lab should make this detail clear in the server description or rules text.

But the discussion continues some time later:

The official Second Life Discord server is so great that I quickly left it. I have no desire to talk to uneducated people who comment on topics they know nothing about. I don’t usually dehumanize, but what’s there is a zoo.

Firestorm Zero!

Tomorrow the 14th of March there’s going ot be a Roundtable about Project Zero (accessing Second Live via a web browser) and it’s roadmap going forward.

Last night there was a Zoom call with Philip Rosedale,Sntax Linden and the Firestorm Viewer development team along with a collection of bloggers.

We will be getting browser access to the Firestorm Viewer.

They hadn’t actually given it a name, because the name “Firestorm” technically belongs to the developers, so Linden Lab can’t call it that. However since both Linden Lab employees and the Firestorm developers have been referring to the project as “Firestorm Zero”, that’s likely what it’ll be.

There is however a catch…250L$ for 5 hours of viewer time. To clarify that’s a “bundle” of time, like mobile phone minutes. The 5 hours can be spread over multiple sessions over a period of time.

So why are they charging, while offering Project Zero access for free? It’s fairly straightforward, they’re matching demand with the Firestorm sessions. There is a capped number of sessions for Project Zero, so you basically have to wait in line for a session to be available. With the paid Firestorm sessions you get a virtual Windows PC, running in the Amazon Cloud, to yourself. Although obviously they may limit the number of passes sold initially to manage load. It will however be operating at a financial loss to begin with. Pricing is being based on what they expect costs to fall to as GPU market costs come down.

I thought the easiest way to demonstrate how well it works, I made a few gyazo video clips:

The blue loading screen took about a minute, the Firestorm progress bar took about 2 seconds.

My Homested, a mainland parcel and a CDS venue:

Cyber Fair:

Warehouse 21 Club:

In a crowded place like that, I’d normally bump at least one or two people on the way out, but that was so smooth, it was frankly better than my hardware. However what happened at the end of that clip was evidently the equivalent of a crash, you’re presented with a download page for the desktop viewer. (Edit 15/3/25: If you get kicked out, your browser will redirect to your Account Dashboard).

It wasn’t all smooth sailing to start with though, this was a visit to the same venue about 12 hours earlier and the login process showed more Firestorm loading dialog:

I described it as “like using SL on my old i5 laptop with 16GB of RAM” in an email at that time, I guess they took the hint and turned up the virtual host PC’s specs!

Tech bits we were told:

  • 1920 x 1080 Resolution video
  • Frame rate 30-60fps
  • Local chat logs won’t be saved, but IM logs will
  • Preferences will not sync from your desktop, (that might not be preferrable anyway on a different system) but any settings you customise on the virtual host viewer will stay for your future sessions. (I didn’t find this to be the case)
  • Login, teleport and loading times are expected to be much faster, but busy locations may still be..well…normal for SL.
  • Snapshots to Disk won’t function because the viewer is running on a remote virtual PC, so people taking photos will have to use “Send to Email” option or other methods instead. (Send to Flickr or Primfeed were mentioned.)

You will buy the bundles of time from your Account dashboard on the Second Life website and will have a link to where to log in from wherever you want. The passes are expected to go on sale on Friday 14th.

The question of whether access bundles may be included as perks with paid subscription plans was raised, it might be possible in the future. A question that I thought of and have emailed to Philip, is whether the bundles will have an expiry period in which they must be used. It’ll be interesting to see what gets announced at the Roundtable.

Community Roundtable Announcement post

Firestorm Zero Annoncement post