A change is as good as a holiday, they say. Seriously, I don't actually know anyone who says this other than myself; though I'm assured that there are some folks out there who do.

With that tragically underutilized platitude in mind, then, last week I posed a question to a spread of well-known virtual environment users (at least to those that I felt would actually respond) and collected the responses.

The question put to the respondents was "What's the single thing that the operators/developers could do to make you feel more satisfied with their virtual environment offering; what thing would help an operator keep you as a customer, or that would make some other operator more appealing than the one or ones you already have?"

Continue reading The Virtual Whirl: Vox virtualis

The Virtual Whirl: Vox virtualis originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 08 May 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Avatar Reality Inc, the operators of Blue Mars, are today announcing limited time "pioneer" pricing for developers, digital entrepreneurs, educators, and businesses for space on the Blue Mars virtual environment platform.

Space on Blue Mars is allocated in "cities". A Blue Mars city can be any size up to 16 kilometres on a side (a total of 256 million square metres). A city is more or less a discrete environment, or pocket "world" (if you prefer the term) with its own custom terrain, interface, rules, controls, items, themes, dominant language, and activities.

Continue reading Blue Mars limited-term pioneer pricing plans announcement

Blue Mars limited-term pioneer pricing plans announcement originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 18 Dec 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Desmond Shang, operator of one of the most popular and cohesive themed communities in Second Life, is extending his community into Blue Mars in just a few days time. Shang's Caledon, popular among aficionados of Victoriana, Steampunk and Gaslight, is opening a sister colony, Caledonia on Blue Mars, with an initial stake of roughly four million square metres.

Caledonia is roughly 30% larger than Caledon, sporting a lot of wilder country, forests, mountains and more. We'll be looking forward to seeing what the content development pipeline will really do. Initial reports are that Caledonia will, even when built out, be considerably less bandwidth intensive on its own than Caledon.

Continue reading Second Life's Caledon expands to Blue Mars

Second Life's Caledon expands to Blue Mars originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 17 Dec 2009 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Concerned users gather in Caledon to discuss implications of the pricing/policy changes

Linden Lab have announced an immediate set of policy changes for what they call openspace simulators (more commonly called void sims by Second Life users), and a deferred set of pricing changes that will take effect for all void sims come 1 January 2009.

From 1 January 2009, upfront fees for void sims will be increased by 50% and monthly fees will rise by 66%. Presently the fees are US$250 upfront and US$75/mo. The new fees from 1 January will be US$375 upfront and US$125/mo. Owners with groups of four void simulators will have those groups migrated to class 5 servers at that time.

The pricing change will certainly hit many quite hard. Void sims have been a popular alternative to regular simulators ever since the Lab encouraged more comprehensive use of the simulators, by increasing their capacities and making their pricing more accessible.

Continue reading Linden Lab changes pricing/policy on void simulators

Linden Lab changes pricing/policy on void simulators originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 27 Oct 2008 23:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

One of the things that really impresses us with virtual worlds is all the user-created content. Having spent some time on-grid myself, I can tell you that the array of ideas and designs is just mind-boggling. Today our very own Tateru Nino shares a screenshot she took in Second Life. This area is in Caledon, about two sims north of Tateru's office in Nova Civis. Tateru describes Caledon as "the home of Victorian civility, mad science, and gentleman adventurers in dirigibles where giant steam-powered robots hardly ever attack -- at least not during tea." Having tried (and failed) to build many things in SL myself, I can say that between lining up all of your prims (primitive 'building blocks') and adding textures to them (assuming you didn't have to make your own) you can imagine how much time and care went into all of the many user-generated things that we see in this screenshot. Impressive!

If you have something you've made, dreamed up, or just like to look at, what are you waiting for? Grab a quick screenshot, tell us who you are and what it's about, and pop it into the mail to us at oneshots@massively.com. Your image could be next!

Gallery: One Shots

One Shots: A peaceful day in Caledon originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 15 Mar 2008 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Cinemassively: The Invasion of Artificial Isle originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 12 Mar 2008 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Second Life's Caledon celebrates New Year's Eve across the globe originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 30 Dec 2007 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.