Massively^™

At one of Linden Lab's recent Second Life server updates, it appears that they have disabled (or expanded) the constraints on prim sizes. As a part of the Havok-4 project, there was considerable discussion about bringing large prims back into the picture again, so we think this is an intentional change, rather than an accidental one.

Whether or not Second Life users were supposed to find out about this or not at this stage, they certainly have. Simple packet-injection gimmicks have spawned whole new packages of the so-called megaprims in the last 36 hours, many of which are freely available. Indeed, we've been sent lots of them.

Linden Lab's published their Second Life service quality metrics for April and the results are about as poor as you'd expect -- April was a poor month for the virtual world service. 630,000 user hours were lost to global failures, and that doesn't count the number lost to assorted subsystem failures (as you may recall) were abundant through the period, and still remain a daily occurrence.

As for the asset system itself, Linden Lab is having problems with some third-party hardware and software (Fortune, apparently passes everywhere), though the late-night asset problems that are being experienced each night may be less related to hardware than they are to processing batches that add load to central database systems.

So far May has been considerably smoother than April, but that is not to say that it is anywhere near trouble-free.

Iron Man is kicking butt both in the theater and in the virtual world of Second Life. The Warner Brothers Reitz-Lang (Sorry, Jason!) machinima team in charge of the Gossip Girl set took some time out of their busy schedule to enter the Silverscreen Iron Man Fan-Art Contest. They chose a humorous and silly approach to the video, but all professional.

Everything about this video, including the lipsynching, the falling scene, and the way the bad guy was saved, makes us drool. We previously featured their initial effort in SL, UES Insider, but had some serious criticism about it, and they've improved 100%! We can't wait to see what kind of trouble Gossip Girl will write about next, and when it will premiere. Don't leave us hanging!

[Thanks, Jason!]

If you have machinima or movie suggestions from any MMO, please send them to machinima AT massively DOT com, along with any information you might have about them.

On April 1st, Philip Rosedale appeared before the Congressional Subcommittee to discuss virtual worlds. Among those testifying was Susan Tenby, whose in-world name is Glitteractica Cookie. Once the Daily Show found out, it was open season for Second Life.

After John Stewart mocked poor Glitteractica, Robert Bloomfield, aka Beyers Sellers, had her on his show, Metanomics, on the SL Cable Network. While there, he issued a challenge to the man whom he felt was John's little brother, Stephen Colbert. You'll just have to watch to see the amusing incentives that he offers!

[Thanks, Beyers!]

If you have machinima or movie suggestions from any MMO, please send them to machinima AT massively DOT com, along with any information you might have about them.

Linden Lab seem to have finally gotten the new land store together and up-and-running, albeit as a limited beta at the present time. The old land store has been switched off, so no more orders through the old system.

Some people will have access to the beta Land Store at present. If you don't, and you want to access it, you'll need to fill out a Support Ticket (Land and Region Issues > LandStore Beta Access). This process takes about a day.

If you've got positive or negative experiences with the new land store, let us know.

Linden Lab has released the seventh 1.20 Second Life release candidate viewer. Release candidates start counting from zero, so the first one in the series is RC0. This is accompanied by a new download page for all versions which appears to be designed to make Mac and Linux users feel like poor cousins.

Mighty Mouse users, while we were told that your problem was fixed in the last release candidate, it appears to be an open issue again. Perhaps it wasn't fixed at all. The nasty message from the smartheap library are supposed to be gone, and the way property lines have been glowing through objects has been changed. (There doesn't seem to be any indication that the vanishing skirt issue has been fixed -- April Fools' Day is long past, boys)

(This video contains some unnecessary language. You've been warned.)

Koinup, a virtual world multimedia sharing site, recently held a Second Life music video contest. Yesterday, the judges, including Codebastard Redgrave and Tao Takashi, gathered to announce the winners of the contest. They picked two winners by jury, and the other was selected by the community.

The Community Award went to a video, The Little Newbie, by Alienhearts. We previously featured the work of this talented machinimator back in November, with the first, and only, episode of NooB. The video highlights a moment we've all had in SL where we create something we think is beautiful, but turns out to be not so great. Set to a fast-paced electronic mix, it blends newbie gestures with cheesy group dance scenes typically seen in real-life music videos.

[Via the Koinup Blog]

If you have machinima or movie suggestions from any MMO, please send them to machinima AT massively DOT com, along with any information you might have about them.

The latest Second Life metrics and statistics are out from Linden Lab, covering to the end of April 2008. We're only a week into May, so this is definitely one of the more timely statistical sets we've seen so far -- a trend we hope continues!

Short version: The third month of decline in premium accounts, reduction in Lindex activity, reduction in user hours, sharp rise in land ownership, and the user population continues to trend towards older users.

In August 2007, Rivers Run Red released a gorgeous machinima of an event held in Second Life. Coca-Cola premiered "Happiness Factory -- The Movie", and a virtual Avril Lavigne attended. We must say that she's never looked better than in this video!

Now RRR is possibly making machinima history by winning a 2008 Webby Award for Branded Content for their coverage of the Coca-Cola event. With this medium growing in popularity by leaps and bounds, we hope that more mainstream awards are won. Machinimators work too hard to not get recognition for their efforts!

[Thanks, Justin!]

If you have machinima or movie suggestions from any MMO, please send them to machinima AT massively DOT com, along with any information you might have about them.

The Chicago Tribune is carrying a story about Congressional Representative Mark Kirk of the district of Illinois. Kirk alleges that Second Life "is a risk for children, who could be sexually exploited" and has written a letter to the US Federal Trade Commission, urging them to issue a consumer alert to warn of this danger.

We're pretty sure that Kirk isn't going to get that consumer alert.

As of tomorrow (Tuesday, 6 May), Linden Lab is reducing the retention time of group notices from 31 days by roughly half, to 14 days in order to reduce load on databases going forward.

Additionally, a second cap will be imposed that will limit storage of group notices to a maximum of 200 notices per day (with the oldest notices in excess of that being removed). This reportedly affects approximately 135 groups. We're astonishingly glad that we are not in any of those groups. Really. Owners of those groups will be informed, apparently, but we're not sure they'll see the message before it takes effect -- you know, with all those messages and all, already.

No information has been given on approximately what time on Tuesday this change will be set in. It could be from Midnight, or it might commence somewhat later in the day.

Linden Lab is looking for feedback on the matter of dropping support for Mac OSX 10.3 Panther (though retaining support for Tiger and Leopard). According to Linden Lab, this affects 0.25% of "the entire base of Second Life" users. Now assuming they actually mean the entire user-base (as opposed to some lesser figure that we don't have access to), that's just under 34,000 users.

Unfortunately, asking for feedback on a blog entry where only 150 people can comment on the post, and -- moreover -- posting for feedback at a time where much of the Second Life grid had become effectively unusable was perhaps not an ideal way to garner useful feedback on the move. Most of the responding comments are not on the topic of Mac OSX Panther.

If it is decided to drop Panther support, we are told it there will be 60 days notice, though the message is unclear as to whether the clock is already ticking on that 60 days.

Some unknown number of Second Life simulators are designated PG, though we've asked Linden Lab and received no reply, we believe that the number is under 2% of the total. The rest of the simulators are designated as Mature.

PG vs Mature. No problem, right? Unfortunately, Linden Lab's description of those ratings is inherently contradictory.

Several months ago, we featured a golf lesson being given by MarkTwain White in Second Life. Golf is hardly a new phenomenon, as it is enjoyed by many residents of the virtual world. They've even expanded their course offerings, allowing for housing and varying scenery!

The Holly Kai Golf Club plans to take their SL success even further, though, by pitching a pilot program to the Second Life Cable Network (SLCN). From the looks of it, they'll be filming their tournaments monthly and showing highlights from the events. With the right announcer, this could be a winner. Judging by their future expansion, residents seem to agree!

If you have machinima or movie suggestions from any MMO, please send them to machinima AT massively DOT com, along with any information you might have about them.

Linden Lab have presented a prospective design for a system which allows users to flag search results for attention. The proposal was sent out for comment on the Second Life developers' mailing list yesterday.

The proposal describes a system where search results may be flagged by users as spam, mature-content, prohibited content or for consideration by the editorial team for the Showcase feature.