The Alphaville Herald

Tizzers Foxchase: Linden Lab is Linden Lab’s Worst Enemy

by Defne Demar on 03/06/10 at 12:16 pm

I recently interviewed Tizzers Foxchase, the perma-banned Woodbury University faction leader, as part of a post-mortem of the mass delete of the Woodbury group from Second Life. Of course, this is far from the first Linden Lab group ban – many of us remember the mass ban of Voted 5 on September 19, 2006 when Philip Linden claimed 60 avatars were suddenly and permanently booted out of SL after a series of grid crashes, and their sim, Satyr, reclaimed without a refund.

Tizzers Foxchase

The sins of the bad boys and girls in the Woodbury group seem to be a little bit more serious than the grid crashing goons of Something Awful – not because they harbored griefers extraordinaire amongst themselves (which unfortunately they did) but perhaps because they ruffled some feathers in the ranks of the Linden game gods.

First the Justice League Unlimited faction and several Linden staff colluding with the JLU were embarrassed by the Brainiac wiki leak masterminded by the WU subgroup, the Wrong Hands. This was followed by the Wrong Hands exposure of the Emerald viewer developers, Jcool410 a.k.a. Fractured Crystal, et. al., and more revelations of questionable involvement of Linden game gods with players acting as vigilante groups, compiling secret databases, and spying on others in the community.

Let’s put it this way: the information revealed as a result of the Brainiac Wiki leak suggested that some of the folks in the G-team had been getting rather cozy with some of the people who like to wear tight spandex. The questioning of Fractured Crystal (Jcool) as to his motives (and his iffy background) by the Wrong Hands and the disclosure of the secret datamining taking place by developers of the Emerald viewer severely undermined the credibility of Linden Lab who gave its blessing to the tainted viewer and  developers. The most likely conclusion, in the absence of any other explanation is that these two incidents led to the mass ban of WU.

When asked, Tizzers Foxchase strategically says “At this point we have no proof of what actually sparked that final ban decision.”

Tizzers recollection of the events is a bit more revealing, however: “Between January and April of this year, Woodbury University (represented by our solutions provider Loki Clifton) and Jack Linden had been in extremely amiable discussions about Woodbury’s future in Second Life. The company was VERY willing to work with us and met with us on a regular basis. On the 16th of April, we had a short meeting with George Linden who told us. ‘Everything is fine, we’re looking forward to meeting with you again next week.’ (This is a week after they sold us 2 more sims). On the afternoon of the 20th during that meeting, they were banning our members and destroying our sims.” Woodbury was even approved for the educational discount. The only thing that could have happened between the 16th and the 20th is Hazim Gazov’s e-mail to Soft and Joe Linden about the questionable practices that had been taking place with some Emerald viewer developers.

For those who are used to brushing off WU as a de-facto griefing group, Ms. Foxchase reminds people that the mission of Wrong Hands was to enlighten the Second Life community about some of the more scandalous behind-the-scenes happenings on the grid. While the group was originally formed to infiltrate the JLU, and the Emerald revelations were never part of the original plan, eventually the Wrong Hands thought it was only right to expose who exactly was developing the Emerald client clients, as it was being used by so many people.

It turned out that several permanently banned griefers with questionable pasts were developing the viewer that had received the Lab’s royal blessing – Emerald. The shocker was that LL was very well aware of who these individuals were, and continued to do business with them regardless. All the clues that have been disclosed thus far seem to suggest that the ban hammer may have struck to WU group for something other than several grid crashes and some tasteless chan humor. The recent purge in the ranks of the G-Team not only confirms this suspicion, but also may be indicative of some kind of a change in direction for SL’s not-so-distant future.

Ms. Foxchase explains that WU exists as a commentary for SL that said “HEY! Stop taking this seriously” - as have many other groups who made it to the Halls of Notoriety before her. So, what next, one would ask…

Comparing Second Life to a ten-year-old car, Ms. Foxchase explains that Woodbury’s primary focus over the next year will be to branch out of this aging platform onto other worlds such as Blue Mars and MyCosm. While admiting that “[SL] was undoubtedly a necessary step for virtual worlds,” Ms. Foxchase hopes that “next generation worlds will begin to materialize as polished platforms that learned from Second Life’s mistakes.” Clearly, according to Foxchase, Blue Mars is one such platform. Yet others, citing clunky interface and steep learning curve, beg to differ.

Explaining that Woodbury currently has 20 developers working on several different projects in Blue Mars, Ms. Foxchase admits that they are extremely excited about their involvement in this promising platform and that they look forward to hosting the first annual Metaverse Community Convention this July in Long Beach, California.

But branching out does not mean that Woodbury is going to leave the grid, at least not right now.

Insisting that that Woodbury has not left the Linden grid, Ms. Foxchase boldy states, “Linden Lab can destroy our buildings and sprawling landscapes but they cannot destroy the resolve of our members to maintain freedom in the metaverse.” Woodbury University is working on an OpenSim grid for which they will be releasing a custom-tailored client that will allow users to seamlessly jump between the AGNI server and theirs. For now, the OpenSim Project is essential for Woodbury because it’s an environment that their members are familiar with and whose tools they are comfortable in using.

When asked if Woodbury – or anyone in Woodbury – held any grudges against LL or anyone else in light of the recent events and whether the OpenSim was going to be used for any retaliatory purposes, Ms. Fozchase retorted that “Linden Lab is Linden Lab’s worst enemy. We could not even begin to rival the damage they are doing to their own company. We have hired a lawyer, which is the extent of our ‘retaliation.’”

Whatever the plan may be (and Ms. Foxchase assures me that it will be clear as day soon), it appears that WU may not be responding to the ban hammer by crawling back to the IRC dens or flushing the SL forums like the Voted 5 faction did several years ago.