Victoriana triumphantly returns!

I had previously blogged about Victoriana and Tinytoriana, a Victorian-themed Second Life estate that had been forced to leave SL due to gigantic permissions screwups caused by Linden maintenance routines. The decision to leave and the resulting close-down caused a lot of sadness in SL residents.

However, I'm very happy to report that Victoriana is rising from the digital ashes over at InWorldz! I had found out about it this afternoon while in a group chat with fellow Raglanite tinies. After checking the map, I had teleported to Victoriana Square to take a brief look. Later on in the day after I got home from work, I had checked out Tinytoriana, a place made specifically for Victorian tinies. If there were any differences from when the estate was in SL, I couldn't notice them. So there's relatively little readjustments structurally, despite the fact that LittleBlackDuck Lindsay is still in the process of reconstructing the Victoriana estate.

Nevertheless, it's heartening to see this wonderful estate get a "second life" again, thanks to InWorldz and OpenSim.

P.S. - For a future post, I may try to get in touch with Mr. Lindsay to ask him some questions like why he decided to pick InWorldz, how he reconstructed his estate, what the future holds for his newly resurrected estate and more.

Victoriana & Tinytoriana: A case study of how SL is losing it's soul

Very early this morning, the Alphaville Herald broke the news that the "mayor" of the Victoriana and Tinytoriana communities is to leave Second Life for OpenSim, as will the communities.

The reasons he gave for his departure read off as an indictment of the Lab's mismanagement on nearly every level. Here's the money quote:

This lacklustre response from Linden has brought to light a great deal of uncertainty in our little community about the future of Victoriana and the Linden grid itself. I’ve seen a number of people in the past few weeks re-evaluate their own personal investment in SecondLife, and sadly a number of them have chosen to leave the grid for fear of losing everything they’ve invested money in. It’s a very very sad thing to see good people go (especially long-termers who’ve been around for a while) for fear of "what will happen to them" come the next maintenance rollout/asset server failure/grid issue.

That pretty much says it all. This person had invested $30,000 over two years+ to acquire 13 sims and build a sizeable community on it. Common sense would dictate that the Lab should have given his problems some modicum of attention and care due to his very considerable investment towards Lab employees' paychecks. But he didn't, and this was the proverbial "straw that broke the camel's back".

I wish Mr. Lindsay and the Victoriana/Tinytoriana community the best of luck in relocating to a new home. While I've never had the pleasure of visiting your community, I hope to do so during my travels to other grids.

The Lab, on the other hand, should be very ashamed. Communities are the lifeblood and soul of the grid, and should be fostered with reasonable care and attention. This is a fact of the metaverse that seems to be ever lost to the Lab under Kingdon's reign.

I still hold out hope the Lab can stop it's looming downward spiral into financial ruin, but with all the recent bad decisions it's been making, it's becoming much harder to hold on to.