Grid Report December


3rdRock via hypergrid

The grids continued to be sluggish and slow in general during November with Avination and The Great Canadian Grid holding their own and making modest strides.

Avination has a holiday contest on. It is lovely and white and icy as far as the eye can see. My small build is underway.

The Great Canadian Grid has new citizens as well as some new sims to explore. I made a theater up in the city open to all. Head on over to Parkville if you want to watch some short films.


Inworldz continued to lose in the metrics game and reports from the forums (I seldom venture away from my store sim these days) mentioned that several Big Grid designers were in the process of leaving. They had come with an announced timeline for success and that didn't pan out, so they are heading out. That can't be good.

Toys for Tots preparation was the big event for November. If the traffic in my store's mall and my sales are any indication, things are not going well for retailers.

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The most interesting news of the month was the proposed new rental model in AviWorlds (now defunct) where the rules seem to change almost daily -- nope let's make that hourly. The free residential land became $150 a week land with camping stands put out in order for folks to make their "tier".

Less than a week later the pay every 10 minute camping boxes stopped working -- all that I could find anyway -- and the grid announcement stated that there was a new board where you click EACH 10 minutes to reap your rewards. On the plus side you would get paid (that wasn't always the case on the random money givers). The negative is of course that you really would have to pay attention.

But never fear, that happened so briefly that it was over almost before it was instigated. A notice on Google Plus at 5:33 pm said it was active. Checking in the morning showed that all boxes AND new board had disappeared. A new media screen had arrived.  The land rental (for now as I type this) is on hold.

The head spinning factor is dizzying.

Adding to that tenuous feeling Mike Hart pulled his 100 plus regions from the grid towards the end of the month. A long "conversation" on Opensim Virtual tells a story with a lot of deletions.  At this point I am not sure how many "partners" are still in the mix. The board with support folks and owners disappeared mid month.



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Second Life seems to be recovering from the unusual Fall retail slump -- at least in my little corner of the world. I still though see a lot of designers working way too hard (just my point of view) cranking out new releases for the plethora of venues that abound. Presumably they have bills to pay and since prices are generally dropping (yes in part thanks to the venues) the end dollars need to be made up somehow.

I was very happy to see a NEW WELCOME SCREEN on the Second Life webpage. I so hated the one before. So happy dancing in the streets here.


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Several new grids opened this month and 3rdRock went hypergrid. After a week or so I got the hyper part of gridding to work *wink* and found a very nice welcome area with some DIFFERENT items (a happy surprise). It is layed out nicely and easy to get around and a mentor was on duty when I and some others arrived.  

I found the Destinations kiosk and chose Ironbridge 1837 which is a lovelly role play sim with a quest and free role play garments. I will enjoy exploring there in the future.

grid.3rdrockgrid.com:8002  (type that into your search area in the map)