All right. I have finally finished reading through Neva's latest NCI diatribe (with a side jaunt into this entry, supposedly linked to make more sense of the first, but I'm still wondering how, precisely), and I think I understand what's going on.
Maybe.
I don't have a lot of experience with the Woodbury group, but I do have experience with their griefing style, and the same style Neva speaks to, especially in the second post, is what I've seen on the grid. They may each have been committed by a separate and individual person--my world is vast, it can encompass several stupid people with the same concept--but I have seen this, again and again. In Caledon, in Luskwood, in FurNations sandboxes, in Rivula, and in Tahitian Dreams.
What connects these sims? Got me. But I have seen the same names, or the same avatars, griefing places; and they've all been part of the same groups in all these cases...that is, when I've seen perpetrators at all, and it's not merely scripture shouted from the heavens, or giant cubes obscuring the landscape. Neva may or may not be wrong in how often it's happening--and how specifically directed at Neva, specifically--but it is happening.
And while banning the university and all its sims won't prevent the idiots already here from continuing to be here--until they're banned, anyway--I can't but think it's not the worst idea to kick their main watering hole out of the game.
Free speech? Who guarantees that right on the grid? This is not a democracy, people. It comes down to the simplest of all bottom lines: is hosting the virtual Woodbury University more trouble than profit? As long as it's more profitable, the Lindens will keep it around.
Guess they're no longer profitable. So off they go.
I'm amused that according to Marty Linden, the Labs might begin blocking non-compliant third-party viewers, and according to T Linden, they will begin blocking non-compliant third-party viewers.
Which is it, guys? Maybe, so people relax and think the Labs are just looking after us, honest, or definitely will, so the Labs are back to their old empty-words/no-communication business-as-usual behavior?
Actually, I shouldn't say that. It is their absolute and utter right to decide which viewers can and can't be used. This is not a democracy, again; residents do not have a Bill of Rights.
(Though it's still utterly true that yelling at a brick wall is easier in the long run, if one wants to work out something, than trying to pin down any particular Linden on any topic relating to Second Life.)
Massively covers Runes of Magic and their new no diamonds resold EVER policy. (This is also covered in a separate article that's not as well written.)
What does all this mean? Well, in the short term, no diamond trading in the Auction House. No listing that I want, say, to pay one gold for 250 diamonds (a dodge around the permissions systems when I want to get diamonds I have, into the hands of friends who want them). In fact, for some time now, if I buy diamonds on the website with a credit card, I can't trade them in any way to anyone else; which is why on occasion we troop down to 7-11 and buy one of the Runes cards, because those you can trade in any way you want to.
Except for now, because Runes have decided that the spammers have to stop, so they've killed the ability to trade diamonds in any way to other players.
Here's the thing, though--the spammers have gotten really bad. First there was an add-on developed called ShutUp! that Curse.com ran; highly popular, it led Runewaker and Frogster to develop their own internal reporting system.
But it didn't stop them. Huge banner messages on the screens stating the simple fact, every fifteen minutes in some zones, that any player found with gold or diamonds or, now, tiered stones will be banned from the game...even that is not enough to stop the spammers, and the idiots who buy from them.
The players started getting inventive. This shot shows you what happens when a couple of fighters engage every single boar in the area, and drag them all onto the bridge where two "defenseless" level 1 spammers are shouting for all they're worth.SPEAK. Damn, plan fail!
Meanwhile, during the Great 2010 Logout of Second Life, Miss Amisha Marsh is trying to help us out by giving us things to do.
Other than check SL frantically, hoping that the next five minutes means we can actually get back on the grid..
Me? I'm trying tomorrow. I'll give up tying up the five hunts I was involved in; really, there was no chance I'd get to them all anyway. At this point I think I'm hunting just out of habit.
And it's a bad habit.
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