Teen Metaverse Blog

The title is a bit exaggerated of course. Still, these are some places I would avoid, unless you decide to be adventurous and risk crashing.

Let’s start off with some basics:

The Sandboxes: If one decides to look on their Map, what do they see? Green dots scattered around, some alone, some grouped, even the odd stack or two. But, venture off the main map, and you come across these four sims that don’t just seem to fit in. While the average population density at any sim at one time is quite low (popular Private Islands excluded), there is a steady stream of people (about ten) populating each of them.

What’s there, that’s attracting so many people?

Even though it seems rather tempting to join the crowd, I wouldn’t advise it. I would approximate that about, maybe 20% of the time, teleporting to any of the four will result in:

1) Crashing

2) My favorite: Being stuck in the “Contacting New Region” phase of teleportation. After a few minutes, it will either:

My advice: Just don’t go. If you manage to actually get through, you’ll be greeted by a huge helping of lag, not to mention a very low FPS.

Even though the sandbox is denoted as a “free space”, some people overstep their boundaries, and often infringe on others’ space. Fly up into the sky, and chances are you will bump into a sim-wide cube at some point.

Building there isn’t much better either. Although if one scans enough one could find a reasonable portion of free land, it would be a vain effort; due to the immense lag, it is quite possible that you could crash and lose your work.

Just don’t do it.

—

Snicket (cue ominous music):

I’m sure you’ve heard of Snicket. Even though it is a good example of sim decay, much like Venus is to greenhouse gases, I’ve been told that in its prime it wasn’t half as bad. Culprits? Land barons.

If I could rate the builds in Snicket on a scale from 1 to 10, I’d give it a -10. This is because, it is worse than sandboxes, in the fact that unlike the sandboxes which get cleaned up every three hours or so, the builds are permanent. Yes, permanent.

Once, my friend Jay and I were bored, and decided to take a cross-sim trip in a car, snapshotting the local “scenery” once in a while. Most of the trip could be described as “bland” or “fine”, with no major lag, except for a few rogue sims. Like Snicket.

Again, normally, don’t go. Especially, don’t build there.

Rowling, Coda, Opera, All the Snow Sims, A good deal of the City Sims:

I will go down the list, one by one, trying to share all of my reasons not to go. Shouldn’t be too hard.

Let us start with Rowling. Yes, my favorite one. They should rename Rowling “T3H N3W ROM3″ because that’s what it is. What really irks me about it is that when I always teleport to it, whether to meet a friend, or just by accident, in the space of oh, about two maybe three minutes, an “armyman” always comes and either warns me or just plain shoots me. Goody, now I’m trapped between sim borders, with the obnoxious dialog box “Dwitek’s ‘[Anti Flight] This is a no fly land, and you shouldn’t be flying”. Better yet, the button to click it off says “lolk”.

I truthfully liked it better when Black Talon owned it. At least Martial built really well.

And the lag. Oh yes, the lag. How could one forget it? When the word ‘army’ comes to mind, one should subconsciously connect it to the word ‘lag’. Tada, ‘army + lag’. Army lag.

Just like with school: Only go if you have to. Or if you’re in an army. Or interested in one. Or have no attention span, and just play on SL to kill people.

On the up side: the sim next to it, Meiji East, kicks ass when it comes to peacefulness.

Coda, Opera: Tsk, tsk, tsk. I remember when I first started playing SL, June of ‘06, I thought that they were pretty awesome. Hell, my first two builds were in them. But, like seasons, opinions change.

Teleport there, walk there, drive there, fly there, you name it, you’ll crash upon arrival. But, I digress. Maybe it’s my 3GB RAM computer and High-Speed internet?

Naw, that can’t be it.

Anyway, if, and I say, if, you manage to make it there, you will find upon entry empty parcels, badly-built buildings, boxes tossed carelessly into no auto-return parcels, particle showers, huge banner boxes, the works.

They are perfect examples of New Sims Gone Wrong (NSGW).

The Snow Sims: What I’m writing here only applies to the ‘oldies’, namely Cascade, Tahoe, Sierra, Rainier, Shasta, and Appalachia.

This will be the best one yet. Why? I have pictures!!!

Lookie-loo. http://www.flickr.com/photos/30379481@N00/?saved=1

They should say it all for you. 100% chance of snow, with an increased level of lag.

Some parts of the City Sims:

Don’t take me wrong, I like them too, the increased primmage, the city settings. But…

http://www.flickr.com/photos/30379481@N00/?saved=1 (all the pics after Snapshot 7)

The city sims really need a good cleanup. Or wipeout.

In total:

If you are short of attention, or just plain didn’t get it, what I was trying to explain was that the grid needs a good cleanup. A really good one. Before you all complain about the land shortage, take notice of all the empty or abandoned parcels that exist on the grid. And then, complain to the Lindens how all these parcels are lagging the sims, taking away good land, or are just plain useless. Just Kidding.

This is my second post. I hope you like it.