Back in Kitely with Birchglen

The first massive chunk of land I ever had in Opensim that wasn't self hosted was in Kitely. I had a 4x4, and it's where Ravens Reef fully became realized. My goal was to make a roleplay community that was accessible all over Opensim, but after the initial setting up I sort of powered out. My goals seemed unreachable unless I was going to sink a lot of time into being in the town on a regular basis to continually encourage the roleplay - and life had a lot going on so that wasn't happening. 

I ended up back in InWorldz and condensed my 4x4 idea that I had created in Kitely into a 2x2 in InWorldz. 

After InWorldz I went to Digiworldz for a while and Tag grid, and finally settled on 3rd Rock Grid to load my 4x4 OAR that I had from Kitely as a permanent home. Ravens Reef is still  in 3rd Rock Grid today. No longer with ideas of it being the best small town RP ever - now it is just themed residential. The back story is still posted for those who do want to RP however. 

So Ravens Reef had been a thing since 2015 app. And every grid I went to I simply dragged it along with me - and recently I wanted to do something different. 

I missed Birchglen. I have for a good while. Birchglen was the name of the town I created in InWorldz on my very first region Diamond Valley. It was on the IW mainland across from IDI.

So I decided to get a 2x2 in Kitely again and recreate Birchglen. But this time it is a 2x2 and not a single region, like it was in InWorldz. 

It's been so nice to putter again with the very small details. Just taking my time to fill things in and make it feel comfy and real. 

And it's funny - In Digiworldz I see there are 70-80 people online sometime, but I rarely run into anyone. In Kitely I have no idea how many people are on, but perhaps because of the very intuitive Explore Worlds section of the website I end up getting people popping in all the time and it's great. Just the other day I spent the evening visiting with Koshari of Four Winds, we were testing out all the rides of her amusement park and chatted up a storm. She is SUCH a lovely person! 

I have new people plopping in looking for things, or to ask questions or just to visit. And likewise I use the World Search section and find all sorts of amazing regions to explore. 

It's been a blast. I'm glad I decided to rebuild Birchglen. Kitely is very stable, the marketplace is so easy to use, and the back end for region owners is great. I've never found a region easier to set up or manage. 

Come by and visit sometime!

Oh!!!! And there are mesh avis for kids in Kitely Marketplace! Totsipops! 

So, that's about it for now - here's some pics :)

Cheap Land and OpenSim Communities - or Feeling Homesick

It's pretty great in OpenSim, you can get a lot of land for a cheap price. Almost anyone can afford to put out less than ten dollars a month for a region to call their own.

Many of us started in Second Life, and came to OpenSim to make our virtual dreams come true. We could create our own space, the sort of space perhaps we always wanted to make in the Big Grid but couldn't afford. It's fantastic. The downside is often deserted communities. People don't need to share land with other people and participate in immersive roleplay or themed regions because they are able to make their very own. Everyone can be their own landlord, their own Game Master, their own town Mayor.

InWorldz was pretty great because although the land was only a fraction of the cost in Second Life, it was still a chunk of change, and there were neighbourhoods, roleplay regions and communities where people joined together to share the costs. Right up until InWorldz closed down, I had some renters in Birchglen that had been there since day one. A good five years at least.

I could be working on the land and a resident would come by and chat, sometimes we'd sit in each others yards and have great conversations, just like visiting neighbours and friends in real life. I spent time in a bustling medieval roleplay community called Chanwood and spent time as a Dornish woman in Westeros. The urban roleplay region I had at the time actually witnessed some great roleplay sessions with a continuing storyline as well as many hours just spent laughing and just goofing off. At one point I had so many residents I needed an additional region just to home people who were disappointed that the parcels were all full.

People started the Great Migration toward the Open Sim non-walled grids, because land was so cheap and many grids had become quite stable over time. People went seeking their own kingdoms.

And now we have many lovely communities built by residents - for residents - that stand empty. Our creative endeavours often seen by no one, because everyone is busy working on their own masterpiece. It's great to have that freedom, but it's lonely. Yes there are clubs aplenty where people can mingle with each other while listening to music, but it's not as immersive as little towns, with valleys and hills, homes and cafe's , streets and pathways . Places where people would come together as virtual neighbours.

In Second Life you still find many people living in communities, visiting each other, and enjoying immersive participation, even among the many thriving clubs and other venues. People are enjoying parks and themed lands, visiting galleries and appreciating the efforts of others while socializing, roleplaying and having a good time.

In the two years of having a (what I consider to be) beautiful region with homes, parks and waterways, I've had one other person join the community and it lasted a week before they wandered off to work on their own land.

We partied on into the night, the Grand Opening for Prickle Pear Bay RP in InWorldz 

I have my own regions in DigiWorldz and Taggrid. a 4x4 on each. But recently, as a bit of an experiment, Ive also taken parcels in Coopersville in Kitely, and New England Estates in 3rd Rock Grid, not only because they are lovely - but I feel like I want to recognize the effort of those creators of beautiful spaces.

There are many breathtaking places to explore in many grids and it seems that being so numerous is a downfall in a way because it dilutes the actual traffic to these places. I'm not talking about regions on grids that are just full of copybotted items being distributed to anyone who wants a copybotted Catwa head, Freya body, Roost or Trompe L'oeil home - sadly those places see LOTS of traffic - but rather the places made with love, and with hopes of being enjoyed by others. Those places are numerous and grand. Even though I have my multiple regions in different grids, I still travel about on a regular basis and explore the various places of beauty and creativity .

If you have friends working on such projects, don't forget to leave your own little hidey-hole from time to time and see how they are coming along. There is much potential for lots of social interaction in OpenSim - if one is willing to step out from their own world and explore.

Sitting on the shore at Anam Cara in Birchglen, DigiWorldz

Islandz is closing down - a great time to do something different!

At least it wasn't up long enough to allow people to get too comfortable there. I'm sad for those affected by it but I am not surprised.

So there has been talk about how easy it is to just start up your own grid,  make your own rules, yada yada… lots of things that are 'easy' to do are also very draining and demanding. However, hats off to those who feel the calling.

I had been visiting some really nice places in Kitely lately and attended their weekly Community Meeting,  in which Ilan had talked about a pretty cool offering for Organizations (a grid within a grid, or a mini grid of sorts) and improved search. Read all about it here https://www.kitely.com/virtual-world-news/2019/01/11/introducing-organizations-virtual-grids/ There are a lot of reasons why this might be a great idea, and I will go over some of it below.

There is a special on til the end of this month... so TWO more days - It's an  Early Bird Special 30% bonus on the starter and 50% bonus on the standard.
It is a great way to have  some control over your virtual space while at the same time still having things taken care of professionally. Whether you are an educational organization or a large group of roleplayers wanting a somewhat separate existence, this might totally work for you.

You get your own log in page,  avatars for selection and even something called Setup Kitely which is "a program whose purpose is to help the Organization’s users, who might never have heard of OpenSim, visit the Organization’s worlds for the first time.

Setup Kitely runs on Windows and Mac computers. It helps the users download the correct version of Firestorm for their computer; add your Organization’s Virtual Grid to Firestorm; choose their avatar; and enter one of the Organization’s worlds."  There are many things in place in order to provide a great learning or collaborative platform.

This could benefit those who now have no choice but to leave Islandz (formerly InWorldz) but still have projects they would like too work on with others. Prices for worlds within these Organizations are the same as regular worlds in regular Kitely.

So, for example, a starter organization is 49.95 and has a 30% bonus right now of allowing 130 users and 13 worlds. Each world can have from a single region to a 4x4 (16 region equivalent) and those prices range from 14.95 for a single region up to 39.95 for a 4x4 with 120,000 prims! So many prims! That 49.95 would get you a management website for your organization hosted within Kitely.  It would give you an avatar selection (you can also make starter avatars by adding your own custom avatars to this list by copying the current appearance of your own avatar) , your own management website page, grid log in uri and more.


Some Upcoming Advanced Features include:

• Customize the viewer login page (what appears in Firestorm before you login)
• A user signup form that you can host on your own website

There is really a lot to see, please check out the links above and take a look at all that's included. The bonus lasts til January 31st! Maybe for some of those displaced by the InWorldz->Islandz shut down! 

At The Sidhevairs - Kitely

Raven's Reef - Kitely

The Sidhevairs - Kitely

Goodbye InWorldz

So it’s gone. It won’t be back – not the name anyhow -it will simply fade away.  InWorldz as we knew it is gone. There might be a new grid created – and it might have our profile data and all that. But it won’t be InWorldz, and it will be a very barren start over. And I don’t know that I could bring myself to be there.

The sudden news of the shut down was a shock. Five days notice? For a grid like InWorldz that has so many residents, even if a large portion of those did not log in anymore? It was still the busiest grid outside of SL. How could this be happening?  I was dumbfounded when I read the Discord message  that morning before I was even out of bed.
So the shock sort of wears off and the packing starts..  or well, unpacking in many cases – taking out your inventory objects that you want to take with you to the Promised Land , stuff the non object things into prims, and then leave those prims out on sandboxes or regions.  My eyes are leaking as Im doing this, but I wipe them away and just scroll through the stuff trying to think ‘what is most important to save?’

Sandboxes getting full,  masses of objects laying on regions everywhere. Planes, boats, homes, clothing, shoes, hair. Then there is the concern by some merchants – “how can I bring my ‘Licensed for InWorldz only’ items into a new entity? Sure same avatar permissions and basic data but is it still InWorldz? InWorldz is in debt right? I mean there was that money raised for financial problems ? Right…  so, if InWorldz has a new name,  new servers with new host and all that, it’s…. not really InWorldz is it?  ” — so now many merchants/creators are deciding that they aren’t letting their creations or licensed- to -use products off of IW. They can go down with the ship.  The ship is sinking.

VKC dog is rezzed… poof he’s gone. Right, another thing not allowed to go to the Promised Land.  Looking at all the things. The huge ship my dear friend and partner made, sitting to my left  that takes up the whole sim,  my favourite skirt… that I just remembered isnt going to be allowed through. Some old school prim builds, oversized that my best friend in my first days of IW made, they get piled on top of each other. Too much, I want to save everything. I can’t do that though so..  so fine, its just notecards now really,  memories. Dropping into prims.  Packing up in a panic. I realize I’m tired. And I realize that I no longer understand what happened.  I just know that we were given 5 days to permanently terminate.  It’s too overwhelming to process and to choose what to try to salvage , so it becomes easier to just take a deep breath, remind myself that I knew this was always a possibility, and log off.  Investing so much time and emotion into a place built on pixels  and imagination … nothing lasts forever. Not real life, not virtual life.

It was with trepidation that I logged in the next day. Set my alarm early so I could attend the ‘last party’. Astoria played the perfect tunes and there were some great people there and we counted down to  the ‘closing time’ – 3pm IWT. As it approached things got rocky, and we needed to leave that region and go to IDI. So we did. Regions were being closed down all around as the OARs were taken. 3pm came and went. The grid was still there.

And we were still there.

Into the night  regions were taken down and eventually come evening, all that was left was IDI. So we went to IDI and waited for the rapture. People I’d never got to meet were there – Daniel Voyager , Mimi from Mimi’s Choice, Fuschia Nightfire – the creator of the first dress I found at Fleure’s region 6 years ago. Names I had known but had never seen in my ‘nearby’ – we were all there at IDI waiting.

By 4am, my nerves were shot , and my heart was  heavy with sad . I realized that I would stay there until it went offline unless I forced myself to understand that it didn’t matter if I wasn’t there for last call. There would never be the perfect time for a goodbye. So I logged. And I didn’t log back in. The servers were still  up later that morning, RackSpace hadn’t shut them off yet I guess,  and the decision was made to pull the plug at noon. I had to start work at noon so I wasn’t there for that and it’s ok.
It’s done. It shouldn’t have been such a surprise, numbers had fallen, I know things were tight. But the short notice was a huge shock.

My partner and I are settled in DigiWorldz now, with many friends from IW and new friends that we’ve made. I know being so invested in a virtual world that can be taken down any time is foolish. But it happens. IW was my first real virtual home – because it’s where I had the best , most enriching virtual experiences.  SL was too big for me and I felt lost. IW was perfect.  There is never another ‘first home’. Goodbye InWorldz.

Starting out in InWorldz 6 years ago with my first region ever.

My last region in InWorldz - Raven's Reef.

OpenSim 'Freebies'

I know this isn't a popular opinion - but when I see regions advertising themselves on OpenSimWorld with 'freebies' and those freebies are Catwa heads, Freya, Maitreya (cleary pictured), and upon checking these freebies out they also include Blueberry clothing and other rigged mesh items specifically for Freya and Maitreya - I find it really disappointing.

I don't condone botting - but I know its pretty common. Someone has an item they paid good money for elsewhere and have no moral or ethical qualms about taking it out of the Big Grid so they can use it elsewhere. That in itself is a different topic outside of this. But to see these items taken from creators who spent a lot of time and money of their own to use programs and create items that take many hours to do - just offered for free to anyone as though it is some sort of good deed is kind of sad.

When I first found a body called Elena , I was pretty excited. Then I put it on and realized it was Maitreya's Lara. Even some parts were still named as such, and the clothing for it was identical to the blueberry clothing I have for Maitreya in SL. So trying another body - one called Mesh Body I believe - I saw it was Freya and had freya clothing.

And in a few other stores I saw these same bodies not even being disguised but actually just called Freya - and the Maitreya sales box with Elena written on it.

It just kind of discredits the opensim community. I understanding wanting to be a free comunity - but commercial creators DO deserve to get paid for their hard work. I am sure we have people here talented enough to take on the task of creating great content and they can do so and then give it away for free. But using exported items without permission KNOWINGLY (i do realize some people might not know what these things are, especially if they weren't familiar with them in SL) and giving it away for everyone else to use just seems kind of cruddy.

One of the photos used to promote a 'freebie' store in opensim

Raven's Reef in InWorldz Officially Closed

Although it was a really hard decision, Raven's Reef - which was located on the Prickle Pear Bay region of InWorldz mainland - has been taken down permanently. It was intended to be a 'create your own story' - live there, play there kind of thing. But there just seemed to be too little interest in that sort of genre.

Goodbye Raven's Reef InWorldz

For me - well I love urban themed regions and genres. Not necessarily those kidnap/violence RP themes - but just a run down city and the colourful inhabitants and storyline potential. This wasn't as big of an interest for others and visitors to the region had become so infrequent that I coudn't justify keeping it going, so I decided to let it go and concentrate solely on the Raven's Reef 4x4 urban rp varregion in Kitely. It isn't super active there either but there are a steady stream of hypergrid visitors that find us via opensimworld.com

Come visit (search Raven's Reef on the map in Kitely) grab a free starter avi, find your groove. We'd love to have you. Also, be sure to visit our site http://ravensreef.shivtr.com

Do you want to help move Raven's Reef into action?

The land, the builds, the website - all are pretty much ready to go. There are even some starter avis in the info centre to get people started.

One of the male starter avis

What we DO need however are people. Not just those who want to roleplay, but those who would like to take on roles as citizens in the town.

There is a partially equipped hospital that needs staff, and any additional props you want to add. There is a police station and a firehall as well. We also have a highschool that will be geared toward older students, given the rating of the region in general. (so ya know, a school full of 18+ers - its an old town, the fail rate is high haha) So teachers, clergy for the church, merchants in general.

There is a lot of room for character development within Raven's Reef and we'd love to have your input.

The streets at night

Take a look at http://ravensreef.shivtr.com to read more about the town, and if you have any experience organizing roleplay, or if you feel inclined to take on a role in the town please just let me know. You can do this by messaging me at G+, or joining the site and contacting that way.

Active community members will get free housing. Either in some chosen homes available, or above the shops if available. (some of the stores have apts above)

You don't have to be a Kitely resident to participate - feel free to come on in from anywhere.

*cheers!*

Raven's Reef High