The SL 2010 Predictions Results
Every end or beginning of a year I make some predictions on what will happen in SL, this is what I made a year ago, most of them were Viewer 2 Related, I kinda predicted many, Viewer 2, Teen Grid Merging and XStreet
There you go:
Apez.vend closes
I didn’t really plan to make this post, that was because I thought Apez was already dead and nobody really cared about it’s dead now, but it seems that there were still some people using it.
Apez Vend was one of the early Vendor and then web marketplace systems SL had, It probably competed with OnRez and XStreet when they still existed, but after Linden Lab’s Anticompetitive purchase of SLX / XStreetSL / OnRez it was clear that smaller companies like Apez were destined to die someday, I never really used Apez, I bought their 3000L$ AutoLease system and used it for 2 weeks until I got really depressed by their all-black and green website design.
Also, going into more conspiracy-theory rumor land… Many people are suspicious about CasperVend’s Transition bundle from Apez, some people claim that there are the same people behind them, both systems are really similar and CasperVend just came out a few months ago, maybe the debts made them run away and start from scratch? That’s just a rumor, I’m not interested in any of them.
As a business owner I choose the anticompetitively big SL Marketplace for the web, and use hippoVend for Inworld sales, there seem to be some “Administrative Changes” at hippo too, they probably got acquired by a bigger company.
Good luck choosing what to use after these changes, I suggest you to be at the smaller web marketplaces too and try hippoVEND, JEVN or any of the other competitors for Inworld sales, try to look for standalone solutions which don’t need to rely on web servers that are paid by the business owners and may go down sometime when they get bored of paying.
Here are some pics of a store that is basically dead thanks to this breakdown
Running away from SL
My story in SL has been pretty interesting, I always found SL Interesting and that’s why I will never leave permanently because of some heartbreaking story I go through or some drama that derails the way i SLive.
But the latest thing that happened to me was SL derailing my RL, and that’s no good, It affects everything, even the things you do in SL
The end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009 went really well, I left my first and big job in SL and went into another one with Lionheart, everything went so well that I decided to change and reduce my RL Work-Schedule to spend more time in SL, it sounded like an awesome idea but it wasn’t, after two months I already felt like going crazy, It’s different to try to sneak SL into your schedule than scheduling it, or even worse making your schedule (or loosing it) for SL
That craziness lasted a year and I don’t wish or recommend anyone to do that, without a Real life your power to be creative is gone, of course that lasted until this Summer, now I’m back on my regular job and I’m trying to log into SL as little as I can, I feel like someone put me in a freezer for a year, I lost friends and many things I still miss during that year and I’m trying to get it all back, after that I will try to sneak SL into my schedule again.
I am not sure what I will do with some Business responsibilities of my own and also Lionheart, but I will sort it out a step at a time
Why the New SL Display Names won’t be an identity crisis for SL
Many people reacted quite harshly when they heard about the introduction of display names (read more here) they are basically nicknames you can change on top of your SL User ID, in my case I could change my “Alvi Halderman” Nickname to just “Alvi” or “Alvi Blorbberman”, however the base name will always stay as alvi.halderman for logins and more official stuff like that
Many think this will be a huge issue, with trolly-noobs calling themselves Lindens or overall important people, but i think that something like that is an issue that could be resolved with regulations and this also happens on SL and on the Web already.
The Advantages might be huge, I have many friends and even family members that were interested in using SL as a Business or Educational Platform and the
need to have another name besides the one you already have in Real Life was a bummer.
A great quote I found up at NWN really tells a part of the story ”For Virtual Worlds to Grow, Avatars Must Become More Like Halloween Costumes Where Faces Can Still Be Seen”
I won’t even change my name because I started with “Alvi Halderman” and it became my brand but many people that want to make SL something like an alternative location to be with your RL friends and hang out like on IMVU or even Facebook instead of being completely anonymous would really work for some and I think this definitely opens up SL to another RL audience it wasn’t able to reach yet.
PS: If you’re reading this post and you’re an Engineer of some kind at Linden Lab better fix SL instead of adding fancy new things on top
Lionheart Exceeds 1 Million Square Meters
Last week Lionheart Acquired the latest sim, Lionheart Rafiki, the 16th sim of the continent, which is a pretty amazing number, I Remember when I bought my first land at Lionheart at the end of 2008 there were only 65,536 sq.m. , when I started working for Lionheart there were only a few sims and now there are 16 with Hundreds of Residents having their homes and businesses, It’s really been an amazing journey and I am really glad that I’m a part of it as a resident and as an Estate Manager
I am really excited about next year especially if Linden Lab gets to improve stuff as they promise so the whole SL Experience gets more pleasant and even more people join and come to Lionheart, we all have some interesting Ideas and projects and hopefully 2011 will be a year of progress.
I really congratulate the whole LH Team and Residents for this milestone and lets hope to see other ones in the future 
