Second Life Sketches: In All The Old Familiar Places
By Warren Ellis
The following is an independent opinion column, and is not connected with Reuters News. The opinions and views expressed herein are those of the author and are not endorsed by Reuters.
Updates on some recently mentioned sims:
Carnage Island is gone. Well, there’s shops on it now, anyway. The famed combat area, troubled in recent months, has been disassembled.
Speaking to Carnage Island admin Christoph Naumova, I learn that he and his crew are designing a new sim, Major League Combat, which they intend to open in a month or so. A notecard suggests that MLC won’t be the mad free-for-all that Carnage Island was, which I think is a shame. The raise in land prices necessitated a one-time L$500 entry fee for use of Carnage a while back, which deadened the traffic noticeably. Laying that and a new set of rules on MLC may see it stillborn, but nonetheless I anticipate the opening — if nothing else, Naumova and his team are excellent designers.
The combat sim Armory Xtreme, you may recall, was somewhat hamstrung by ineffectual moderation. I returned recently to find moderation teams on hand at all times, and operating very sharply. A proving range for weapons, and some new combat spaces, have been laid in to great effect. But the place seems empty. This is a great shame, as it’s probably the best free-fire combat sim on Second Life right now. The entry level is purchase of the XCS combat system, which is only L$49.
The Arrakis Project has moved to a new sim, Splintered Rock. As you can probably divine from the name if you don’t remember previous columns, the place is a reconstruction of Frank Herbert’s Dune, as envisioned in the David Lynch film. Which I always thought was a peculiar start point, as it diverges so strongly from the novel and because the recent Sci-Fi Channel adaptations were a lot more successful.
It seems to remain permanently under construction: as of Monday night, there was a disassembled sandworm in the desert, a surreal tumble of cylinders. Dune has among the very strictest of sim rules — even tourists are requested to dress the part before entering, so as not to disturb the presumably heavily-immersed inhabitants. It’s not unusual to hear the pop of gunfire — or, more strangely, the “chuuuuk-SA!” of a weirding module — while wandering around. Security is very bad: a flight enhancer and a phasing device (or some careful camera-and-sit work) will get you into most areas of the sim. Nosing around, I found a test sandworm with sit-balls all over it, designed to emulate a Fremen tribe riding the worm.
The Wastelands have instantiated a new sim, their fourth. Fort Stygian, east of The Great Fissure, should be open by this coming weekend, if Linden Labs choose to unban the designer who took a stand against an extortionate ad farmer during the week.
The Wastelands chain is extremely active right now. I maintain space in The Great Fissure (and will have a place on the new sim, too) just to keep track of it all. There’s still astonishing building design work going on across all three current sims. There was a purge of the “sim queens” I mentioned a few months back, which generally lifted the spirits, and it’s become one of the nicest places to spend time in Second Life. Also, the stores are excellent. The new sim will turn the area into a square four-sim block, which will make it very easy for new visitors to tour, since ban-line fences aren’t allowed.
The steampunk town Babbage has added a new sim, too, Babbage Canals. The place seemed to get off to a slow start, but that’s not the case anymore. I turned up the other day to find an outdoor party in full flow, and a touring aerial bus lifting off from the docks.
I had to duck behind a building and change into something more fitting — I was still in a Fremen stillsuit and burka — in order to mingle unnoticed among the gentlemen and ladies of this neo-Victorian space, the great and good of Babbage discussing things electrical and mechanical. They were all terribly polite, and never once mentioned that I was still wearing the noseplug.
Babbage provides an interesting contrast to Caledon, which is still very pastoral. Babbage is very much a place of the Industrial Revolution, if re-imagined in the steampunk style. I’m starting to think of this steampunk revival as a beast very much of the internet generation, right down to the agreed imposition of Victorian manners and social graces as a reaction to a world wide web that shows little trace of either in its social interactivity. The Babbage chain may prove to be the point where SL and the web-based revival meet.
