The Alphaville Herald

Secret Island Owners Get Free Name Change

by Pixeleen Mistral on 28/11/06 at 11:22 am

Coming out party for mystery islands include special freebie

by Pixeleen Mistral, National Affairs desk

As reported earlier, the Lindens will raise hidden islands from under the sea as they make all private island sims visible tomorrow. Reliable sources just informed the Herald that this coming out party will also include a special consideration for the formerly closeted island owners – a free island name change. This leads to speculation that some of the mystery island sims could have names that might not pass muster under the TOS – or perhaps the Linden concierge just wanted to throw in a spiff for outing the hidden islands?

Some residents are wondering about the Linden’s claims that hidden islands were causing map load slowdowns – while this seems plausible, adding more levels of “friend” visibility to eliminate map stalking would seem to increase the load in the Lab’s servers. Could the removal of hidden island be the price that is paid to provide the ability for resident to hide from their friends? The metaverse will have to wait until after tomorrow’s update to see if this is a zero sum game or if there is any improvement in the sluggish map load times.

[concierge letter obtained by the Herald below the fold]

Dear Concierge Client,

We are contacting you to let you know about an important change that
will be coming to Second Life on Wednesday, November 29th. With this
newest release, all islands currently set Invisible to the Mainland
will be visible on the map. This will not affect your island’s
accessibility.

We are making this important change to help us with scaling. Right
now, any time you open the map, we must figure out exactly what you
can and cannot see. As we grow this obviously becomes a much bigger
task, much more than we can deal with while still keeping service
timely. New features will, however, enable you to control your own
visibility to your friends list and other privacy options.

We realize that keeping your privacy is important to you, so to that
end we are offering you a one-time chance to change your hidden island
name(s) for free. Please email concierge@lindenlab.com, using the
subject line “[Private Island Name Change] Your island name here ” .
We will make every effort to be sure that your island name is changed
before the update Wednesday if you email us on Tuesday before the end
of the business day. We cannot guarantee that emails without this
subject line will be changed before the update. We will not change the
names of islands that are set visible to the mainland.

If you have questions regarding this change, please read the blog post
here:
http://r.vresp.com/?LindenLab/c166fb…aac009/c97cd5e

Thank you for your time.

Best,
Cyn, Jack and Fritz
Second Life Concierge Service