Tag: SL News

Premium subscription changes: a little more news from Grumpity

Posted on by Inara Pey

At the April 20th, 2018 town hall event, Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Linden confirmed that as a part of pivoting Second Life’s revenue generation away from a heavy reliance on land, the Lab are looking at introducing a range of Premium account options which will have different levels of benefits associated with them – see here for more (includes an audio extract of his comments).

While details have yet to be finalised, Grumpity Linden spoke to some of the ideas under consideration at the Web User Group meeting. Because her comments are likely to be of interest beyond that meeting, I’ve provided a transcript of her comments, with an audio recording, below.

to précis Grumpity’s comments:

  • The Lab is looking at a range of Premium subscriptions, not just the single tier we know at present.
  • As per Ebbe’s original comments, how many and what they might each comprise is still TBD.
  • The over-arching idea is to make premium options so attractive, it would be “insane” to ignore them.
  • Simple examples of additional benefits being looked at is guaranteed access to in-world events / early access to in-world events, but overall, the Lab is looking at a broad range of benefits and (in the case of Basic accounts) limits.
  • With regards to Basic accounts, the Lab’s view is:
    • There are many things within Second Life which come at a cross to everyone’s in-world experience, but which are offered on an “unlimited” basis to Basic account holders – this may change.
    • Despite rumours circulating on the forums, there are no plans to prevent Basic account holder from rezzing things in-world.
    • The Lab wants to provide a Basic account experience sufficient to give incoming users an understanding  / flavour / taste (call it what you will) of all aspects of Second Life, while encouraging those who engage with the platform motivation to move to a subscription tier.
  • The coming changes are not about curtailing any use of Second Life or limiting what people can do or “nickel and diming” everything that can be done within Second Life.  they are about giving people more reasons to go Premium, make them happy / excited about premium opportunities, and hopefully of driving revenue generation.

Obviously, it would be nice to have more in the way of specifics – and these will come it time. As has been noted, it is still somewhat early days in what is being considered / planned, and I (and others) will obviously be reporting on things as the plans are made more public.

In the meantime, for those interested, here are Grumpity’s comments, and the audio recording of those comments as made at the April 25th, 2018 Web User Group meeting.

What’s coming on the premium tiers? We are looking at all of the existing premium benefits, we’re also looking at what is included with Basic accounts. Our goal is to make a basic experience that allows you an introduction to all areas of Second Life.

So I saw some fascinating speculation on the forums, and I don’t believe we’ve ever considered not allowing Basic members to rez. That would be probably insane on our parts, because this would take away from an integral part of Second Life.

But there are certain things that impact everyone’s experience on one hand, and are completely unlimited to a Basic account on the other.

So we’re looking at different ways of putting in limits that will actually improve everyone’s experience, give basic accounts a sufficient taste of what it is like but also; honestly, our goal is that if you’re committed to Second Life and  you’re invested in Second Life, the Premium benefits are such that it would be insane not to be Premium. And that’s the end goal.

And we’re looking at all sorts of limits, and we’re also looking at higher Premium levels that give you even more things. Like you could get into events even before all the other people, and you’d be guaranteed to get into the hair fair or something.

I can’t give away specifics, because this is so far away, and then when we announce you guys will be, “Oh, this is old news!”  So, we’d like to hold some stuff back. But our goal is to make you happy; it’s not to make your lives miserable and to nickel and dime you at every turn. It is to make Second Life more profitable and successful by making our residents happy [and] also by making new residents’ introduction to Second Life smoother.

Second Life: Town Hall series announced

Posted on by Inara Pey

To mark Second Life’s fifteenth anniversary, Linden Lab has announced a series of Town Hall meetings at which Second Life users can hear members of Linden Lab and well-known groups within SL talk about the platform, their work, and answer questions offered by users.

The announced sessions will comprise:

  • Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg.
  • Members of the Firestom team.
  • Residents of Bay City.
  • The Designing Worlds team.

The first of these town hall meetings will feature Ebbe Altberg in a double session on Friday, April 20th, at the following times:

  • 09:30 SLT.
  • 13:00 SLT.

User are invited to offer questions for Ebbe via the forum thread A Conversation with Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg. Questions will be selected from those submitted, and as many as possible will be answered within the time frame set for the meetings.

Users can attend the meetings by teleporting to one of the three following landing points at Town Hall Island:

Not: none of the above SLurl may be open to the public prior to the day of the event. 

Other Town Hall meetings, to be “held in the coming months”, will be announced in due course.

Second Life: Last Names update with audio

Posted on by Inara Pey

Update, April 21st, 2018: at the April 20th Town Hall meeting with Ebbe Altberg, it was indicated that the new first name / last name system might be a Premium only benefit, or that if generally available to all users, that Premium account holders will have some advantage in using the capability over Basic account holders. Please refer to the audio of Grumpity Linden’s comments from that event appended at the end of this article.   

Update, March 28th, 2018: further information was provided at the Web User Group meeting on this date. This information has been appended to the end of this article. 

Following the Lab’s announcement that last names will be returning to Second Life  later in 2018 (see my post here), Oz and  Patch Linden have been providing further details on the change.

Patch has been commenting on the forum thread related to this topic (and the Lab’s 15th anniversary blog post in general), starting here, and I’ve also quoted him below.

Oz Linden took time to address questions on the subject at the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting on Thursday, March 22nd.

The following is a summary of what has been said thus far, predominantly using Oz Linden’s comments at the CCUG meeting. I’ve attempted to summarise the key points as series of short topics, and have included audio extracts of Oz’s comments with each topic.

Note that the audio extracts draw together related comments voiced at different points in the session, as Oz addressed questions. I hope that presenting them in this way, rather than just chronologically as they came up at the meeting, helps to present a clearer picture of what is being planned.

In General

As the original blog post indicated, the return of last names will be coming later in 2018 – not in the immediate future. There are some back-end changes to SL which need to be made before last names can make a return, so it would seem like “later in 2018” users might be read as “late 2018”.

That is not something that we’re going to be able to deliver real quickly. Don’t look for it in the next few weeks. But it is on the road map for this year, and we’ll try to make it better than the very end of the year, but there are a couple of things that have to get fixed on the back-end before that can work.

Oz Linden, CCUG meeting, March 22nd, 2018

With the introduction of this system, Agent IDs will become the primary means of link names to avatars. As noted below, this means that those scripting items which require avatar details, and who don’t use Agent IDs might want to start thinking about revising their scripts to do so.

In Summary

  • The plan is to allow people to change their first and last name whenever they wish.
  • As with the “old” system, users will be able to choose whatever first name they like, then select their last name from a pre-set list of available names.
    • The list of last names will be routinely refreshed.
    • The Lab is considering accepting suggestions from users.
  • Once a name combination has been created, it is forever tied to that avatar, it cannot be used by anyone else, even if the “owner” later changes their name, or their account is deactivated.
  • Previous names will be retained by the system, so:
    • If you can remember someone’s previous name, you can search on that and get their current name.
    • Users will be able to switch back to previous names they have used, as well as select new names as the list changes.
  • Unicode will not be supported when entering a first name.
  • The first name / last name capability will not replace Display Names1.

This has no effect on display names and largely I do not anticipate we will change how display names work. If anything, it somewhat sunsets the need for them.

Patch Linden, March 22nd, forum thread

  • There will be a fee associated with changing your name (which has still to be determined).
    • The fee is liable to be “large enough” to prevent people simply constantly changing name just to use the “good names” up.

  • Advice from the Lab to scripters:
    • Given this change is coming, scripters who have a need to same avatar details should start to consider doing so by Agent ID, not first name / last name.
    • The Lab will most likely provide an API for resolving first name / last name into a valid Agent ID.

In the forum thread, Patch also reiterates the uniqueness of first name / last name combinations, as noted above.

No hiding of names. First name and surname combos will have to be unique like they are today. A couple of other questions that came up – no re-use of retired names, once a name has been used, it belongs to that account forever. We keep a transnational name change history. Only standard English characters will be permitted.

Patch Linden, March 22nd, forum thread.

I’ll have more on the return of Last Names as information becomes available, mostly like much nearer the time the feature is ready to deploy. In the meantime, Patch may post further information on the forum thread, so it might be worth keeping and eye on that.

Update From the Web User Group, March 28th, 2018

  • “Original / legacy” last names will not be re-opened for use.
  • New users joining Second Life will still be given the automatic “last name” of “Resident”, but have the option of changing if they wish.
  • The fee for name changes has not been announced, however, at this point the indication is that the fee will be in fiat currency (i.e. US dollars) not Linden Dollars.

Update From the Town Hall Meeting, April 20th, 2018

  • Intimation that the name change capability might be a Premium-only benefit.
  • Indication that if available to Premium and Basic, Premium members will have an (at the time of reporting) unspecified advantage over Basic account holders.

  1. Oz indicated that Display Names will not be replaced due to the work involved in removing the functionality. It’s also worth noting that – depending on the fee levied for name changes – people  who have multiple characters associated with their avatar for role-play, etc., and so frequently change their name, might find using Display Names remains more convenient / cost-effective means of doing so once the first name / last name capability is deployed.

Second Life: Last names to return – Linden Lab

Posted on by Inara Pey

Update, March 22nd: At the Content Creation User Group meeting, Oz Linden indicated the return of last names will be somewhat similar to the “old” system – users select a last name from a list. However, people will be able to change their names as often as they like (although a fee will apply). See more in my summary update.

He also indicated that the Lab might take suggestions from users for last names which can be included in the various sets of names offered.

As promised during the VWBPE 2018 conversation with Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg and Brett Atwood (Brett Linden), Senior Manager for Marketing at Linden Lab, the company has provided a blog post presenting something of a “roadmap” for Second Life.

The post, which also serves as something of a launch of Second Life’s 15th anniversary, starts with a recap of the Mainland price restructuring announced on March 14th, 2018, and goes on to provide an interesting list of items – some of which could prove to be highly popular.

Key among these is the promise that – after years of requests – last names will be returning to Second Life.

No time frame is given – beyond later this year. Note that this is not necessarily the return of the “old” system of last names, but appears to be a means for people to more readily change their last name, the blog post stating:

The return of Last Names – You’ve asked for it (a lot!), so we will provide a way to customize your last name in Second Life! More details will be available later this year.

Another item which may well be of interest to existing users is a new attempt by the Lab to raise the level of new user retention within Second Life, with the post noting:

Themed Learning Islands – Getting connected to people who share your interests will be easier than ever with “Themed Learning Islands.” Soon newcomers may start their adventures in one of several themed areas, so their first experience in SL will be among Residents who share similar interests. This new initiative is in addition to our existing Community Gateway program which empowers independent communities to develop their own newcomer-friendly experiences.

Speaking at a recent Third-Party Developer meeting, Grumpity Linden, a Senior Product Manager at Linden Lab provided an overview of what this will entail:

Another intriguing change will see the Mainland Land Auction system overhauled, including integration with Place Pages and the ability for users to auction their own land.

Merchants are liable to be interested in the news that the Marketplace will see improvement, with the blog post noting:

We’ve got a number of improvements to Marketplace in the works, too! We’re integrating many long-requested features that will help to reduce clutter and improve the functionality of listings as the Marketplace gets a facelift later this year.

Among the more general items listed in the blog post – at least for those who follow this blog  – is a summary of some of the new capabilities and updates which are coming to Second Life:

  • Animesh.
  • Bakes on Mesh.
  • Environmental Enhancement Project (EEP).

All three are primarily covered in my Content Creation User Group updates.

It’s also worthwhile that alongside of the EEP work mentioned in the blog post, there is also a project – no time frame available – to improve the Second Life’s atmospheric shaders – which could help update SL’s general appearance and more easily allow atmospheric effects like Godrays.

The work to move Second Life to the cloud gets a mention in the blog post. Credit: Linden Lab / Amazon Web Services Inc.

The work to move Second Life to the cloud also gets a mention – and I’ll have a blog post on this up and available soon, largely as a result of the VWBPE 2018 event mentioned above, and also comments made by Ebbe Altberg and Oz Linden at a recent Third-Party Developer meeting. In the meantime, the blog post notes the work to enhance and improve SL’s performance both on the server-side and in the viewer.

Elsewhere. it is noted that Premium members will see further benefits as the year unfolds:

  • Additional benefits for merchants with Premium membership, which may have come out of / been hinted at during Web User Group meetings.
  • Linden Homes are going to get a (long overdue) revamp.
  • Premium users  will be able to run Experiences that are enabled anywhere on the grid (unless specifically blocked by a landowner). This is again something many Experience creators have requested since the introduction of Experiences.

Finally – and as some have noted with the arrival of new region groups on the grid in recent weeks – a further new Experience-based game is on the way. Expect to see that, according to the official blog post, closer to the actual SL15B celebrations.

All told, the list of 15 expectations is an interesting mix of news, some of which those actively engaged in Second Life will already be aware, as note. Others – again, perhaps notably the upcoming return of last names – could generate excitement among users. I’m personally keen to see the new themed learning islands, and will hopefully have more information on them as the project launches in the new future. I’ll also continue to cover the technical enhancements to the platform through my weekly project updates.

Second Life: Mainland price restructuring

Posted on by Inara Pey

On Wednesday, March 14th, 2018 Linden Lab announced a restructuring of Mainland tier costs, with allotment of “free” land for Premium members doubled from 512 sq metres to 1024 sq metres.

The announcement was made via a blog post, which reads in full:

We’ve got some exciting news for both aspiring and existing Landowners who think the cost of land is too darn high in Second Life. Effective immediately, we’ve reduced Mainland costs by over 10 percent. 

But, wait…there’s more!

Premium members now also get DOUBLE the Mainland allotment! That’s twice as much space to build, create and design your own home, business or experience in Second Life at no extra charge! Premium subscribers now have 1,024m² included with their membership: you could keep your Linden Home and still have another 512m² left over, or use your entire 1024 allotment towards a parcel on the Mainland.  To learn more about specifics of this change, view our Pricing and Allotment Comparison chart.

We know that costs associated with land ownership can hinder some people from realizing their full creative vision in Second Life or even keep them from participating in Second Life as much as they’d like. In 2015, we decreased land setup fees by up to 40% and restored a 50% discount on set-up fees and ongoing maintenance fees for educators and nonprofits. In 2016, we offered a limited-time “buy-down” opportunity that rolled back maintenance fees on full islands and homesteads.

As Second Life begins to celebrate its fifteenth birthday, we hope that this latest price drop will be welcome news to those who aspire to explore their creativity in 2018 and beyond.

The new Mainland tier rates for Premium members (right), with the new “free” allowance of 1024 sq metres of land, compared to the pre-March 14th tier rates

Of course, when people talk about tier being “too damned high”, they are generally referring to the cost of private regions (particularly Homesteads), so this change in Mainland rates many not be looked upon favourably in some quarters. But the fact remains – as I pointed out in 2013 – lowering private region tier isn’t as easy a proposition for Linden Lab as some tend to think, the (roughly) 23% reduction in tier revenue the Lab has seen since November 2013, notwithstanding.

As such, this should be seen for what it is – an attempt by the Lab to encourage land take-up  – and leave us not forget there have also been calls to re-invigorate Mainland with all of its abandoned land – without unduly exposing their bottom-line. So, if nothing else, it will be interesting to see what this offer does both in terms of Premium subscriptions and in encouraging people to take-up their “free” 1024 square metres of Mainland (or go bigger and use the 1024 “free” + the reduced difference in remaining tier).

A slight spanner in the works here, of course is that obtaining Mainland parcels can be time-consuming, and comes with the initial overhead of the purchase price. Nevertheless, it will also be interesting to see if / how this affects Linden Home ownership. A complaint against the latter is that while they come with a 175 LI allowance and a house which does not count towards that total, the houses themselves are oft viewed as unattractive. So, will these changes encourage some of those with Linden Homes to abandon them in favour of a 1024 sq m parcel (the aforementioned pain in finding and purchasing a suitable parcel notwithstanding) with at least 350 LI and a house of their own choosing, even if it does count against that total?

Time will tell on this.

Second Life: official 64-bit viewer and plans

Posted on by Inara Pey

On Tuesday, January 16th, Linden Lab promoted the Alex Ivy 64-bit viewer (version 5.1.0.511732 at the time of writing). This is a significant release, not so much because of any specific new features (although it does include improvements to media handling), but because it marks a number of important changes to the viewer.

Following the release, which Oz Linden blogged about the viewer and the Lab’s plans around it, on Wednesday, January 17th, 2018, and I’ve highlighted a few points of note from that blog post below – but do please read it in full.

Most notably, this version of the official viewer is built using an updated set of libraries (some of which will be undergoing a further update in the future), and a revised build process. It is currently being made available for download for Mac OS X (64-bit) and Windows (32-bit and 64-bit) – there is no Linux version of this viewer at this time, as explained below.

For Windows users, the most significant update lies with a new viewer executable, the SL_Launcher, which – as Oz explains in his blog post:

Manages the viewer update process, and on Windows also ensures that you’ve got the best build for your system (in the future it may pick up some other responsibilities). For Windows systems, the best build is usually the one that matches your operating system. For example, if you’re running a 64-bit Windows, then you’ll get the 64-bit viewer. If not, then you’ll get the 32-bit viewer.  However, some older video cards are not supported by Windows 10, so the launcher may switch you to the 32-bit build which is compatible for those cards. You won’t have to do anything to make this work – it’s all automatic – if you get an update immediately the first time you run this new viewer, it’s probably switching you to the better build for your system.

Oz also notes that if you have a shortcut to the viewer set-up, you should update it to point to SL_Launcher rather than the viewer .EXE, to avoid issues with running / updating the viewer, and indicates there is a slight bug with both the SL_Launcher and Second Life Viewer processes both show as icons on the OS X Dock, and will be fixed in a future update so that only a single icon is shown.

One of the things the Lab has been tracking with the Alex Ivy viewer is overall performance / stability. It had long be noted that running the 32-bit version of the Windows viewer on 64-bit version of Windows with more than 4 Gb of memory could lead to fewer crashes related to running out of memory. However, with the 64-bit version of the viewer, the Lab have seen further benefits for Windows users, and so are encouraging those who can to switch to using a 64-bit version of their preferred viewer, if one is available (e.g. users still running a 32-bit version of a viewer on a 64-bit version of Windows, or those upgrading their hardware to a system running 64-bit Windows).

Linux will be supported – if there is sufficient input from the open-source / Linux communities

Linux is the notable exception to the Alex Ivy branch of the official viewer, as there is currently no support for the operating system.

Linden Lab halted Linux development work in 2015 for a number of reasons (see here for more), and sought the support of the Linux community (who represent around 1-1.5% for the SL user base) to help maintain the viewer on Linux. More recently, as I’ve reported in a number of my weekly SL project updates (see here for an example),  the Lab has set out new plans for Linux support going forward, With Oz explaining:

We’re reorganising the Linux build so that instead of a tarball, it produces a Debian package you can install with the standard tools, and rather than statically linking all the libraries it will just declare what it needs through the standard package requirements mechanism. We’ll post separately on the opensource-dev mailing list with information on where that project lives and how to contribute to it.

Again, a key aspect of this project will be continued support from the open-source / Linux community to help maintain the Linux viewer going forward, in providing bug fixes, etc., and the Lab providing essential QA and the core build environment, as noted above. This approach is seen as beneficial, as it will remove many of the idiosyncrasies / overheads involved in producing a Linux viewer, such as maintaining multiples libraries associated with the viewer, and instead provide a basic viewer package which can be used by TPVs / Linux users to meet their specific preferences.

Some TPVs have already released versions of their viewers based on the Alex Ivy code, and Firestom’s upcoming release should also, I believe, include a 64-bit version based on Alex Ivy.

And if you’re wondering about the viewer’s name – as Oz explains (and I noted back when the first 64-bit project viewer appeared), Alex Ivy is derived from 64 in Roman numerals: LXIV – aLeX IVy.