by Omelet ex-Linden, concerned shareholder

Recently I was talking with my last two inside-the-Lab contacts - Sensipoo and Hubris Linden - about Second Life's trajectory, which inevitably ends in oblivion. As usual, Sensipoo Linden broke into tears at the thought of criticism of Second Life. Meanwhile Hubris Linden and I pondered the words of Linden Lab founder Philip Rosedale, who once warned SL's most dedicated users, “Try not to cling too tightly to what we have now... [coming] changes are sometimes going to be disruptive and painful.” 

point and click navigation now - BBQ later?

Hubris reminded me that disruptive and painful change has been the key to destroying all player trust in the Linden Lab, so more of the same would certainly help. But what could the Lab do beyond Facebook integration and point-and-click avatar navigation to save Second Life - and upset current players? Then it hit us. Second Life needs to copy The Sims 2 with special Baby BBQs to meet the needs of the seriously underserved virtual cannibalism market.

After watching a few YouTube videos, the path forward was clear. Hubris Linden promised me that soon all Linden Homes will include realistic grills suitable for disposing of prim babies and Second Life will be saved - unless the current players make Sensipoo Linden cry again.

In this interview we meet, Ghost, a former resident of Blazing Falls on TSO. He is currently involved in a project called TSO Restoration, which is a team of developers that are working to build a version of TSO on private servers. He claims it will have all the features of the TSO we loved to hate, and more! But if they build it, will people come?

Urizenus: Ghost, tell me about your project.
Ghost: Before TSO Restoration was founded, it was initially just a solo effort started by Mats (Afr0) a talented programmer from Norway who desired to create a TSO Private Server. He began work on this project in 2007 before EA-Land and managed to get together a small team of developers on a game developer forum. It was done more as hobby, working in their spare time to emulate the game. The small team eventually separated and went on to do their own things but Afr0 continued to work on it once in a while. It was in late 2007, when TSO was still around, that I contacted Afr0 about helping out with the project. After several years of keeping the project hidden, we decided to release the project to the public – in hopes of finding talented programmers to assist us with this task. The TSO Restoration Project was officially public on October 22, 2010. Since that time, we have gained several more developers who are assisting in various efforts of the project and we are confident that we will eventually achieve our goal.

details please

Urizenus: How does one do something like this, especially now that the original TSO is no more? Do you reverse engineer EA’s platform?
Ghost: Unfortunately, because the TSO servers are no longer online – we’re unable to gather any more packets. This means we’re no longer an “emulation” project. Everything except perhaps the art and graphics is being recreated by our team.
Urizenus: So you are building it from scratch. Will it be aesthetically identical to the tSO we remember?
Ghost: Yes, our goal of the project is to make it look and interact exactly as the original TSO.
Urizenus: So the same motives then. What about all the usual interactions? tickling, dancing etc?
Ghost: You will be able to do all of the interactions. In fact, there is no reason we can not have more than just the original interactions. Our team plans on not only providing the same TSO experience for free, but also adding improvements to the game. What is to stop us from supporting unicode with special characters? Why not raise the tile limit and have size nine or ten lots? These are just a few of the ideas our team has in making the game more enjoyable.

Urizenus: What about the possibility of having users provide custom content and custom animations?
Ghost: As we saw in EA-Land, the TSOClient definitely has the potential to support such endeavors. We will pursue such capabilities in the future. I can’t promise you that custom content will be in our first release though.

business plan?

Urizenus: What is the business plan for this going to be. How are you going to pay for this? And is the plan for it to actually make money for you some day?
Ghost: Our team is not motivated by financial reasons. We’re planning on providing the game free of charge on our own servers supported by donations. It is also our goal to eventually make it Open Source. This will allow developers to make their own versions of TSO and also allow people with little to no programming experience start their own servers with their friends.

when can we join?

Urizenus: How long before this is ready for open alpha/beta and how will people find out when it is ready?
Ghost: We’ve been getting that question a lot. It’s hard to give a definite timeframe on a project like this. I want to emphasize: The question is not “Will TSO Return”.. The question is “When will TSO Return?”. Our developers are motivated and dedicated to this project. A few more talented C++ programmers can make the difference between years and months in development time before we begin private testing. This is why it is critical that we continue to find more talent to work with our team. We will release information regarding testing on our community website http://www.tsorestoration.com – Anyone who contributes their time or money on our website should expect to be called upon when we’re ready for testing.

why TSO again? now?

Urizenus: As you may know, I left TSO in 2004, the same time as many other people moved to Second Life. On my visits back to TSO it seemed rather primitive and quaint, although I did have some big nostalgia attacks. So the question has to be asked: Why are you rebuilding what is really an ancient platform? What are you still attracted to it? Why are other people attracted to it?
Ghost: First and foremost, we’re rebuilding TSO because it is something that we are very passionate about. We miss the game and enjoy the challenge in a project of this scale. I also left TSO in 2004 when they took away the old friendship link system, which by the way – will be brought back. I personally believe that TSO filled a subconscious void in peoples lives. Besides being a part of The Sims Franchise, people loved the simplicity of the game. That is ultimately what it comes down to. MMORPG’s like World of Warcraft do well because they are easy. It is not because they have superior graphics or complex, thought-provoking gameplay. That is not to say that TSO was easy, it certainty wasn’t.. but doing things like playing pizza doesn’t take anywhere near the effort it takes to become a successful content creator in SL. It forced people to interact, to make friendships that last to this day. I think even years later, people will still be attracted to it.

will people actually play this?

Urizenus: How many people do you think will come and play your version of TSO?
Ghost: You look at TSO in 2008, you had thousands of subscribers spending $10 a month for each account. While that may not be a lot compared to other online games, I believe there will still be thousands of people eager to play. Especially now that it is free. I’m optimistic that we will have at least one full city of people. We’re hoping to make it as easy as possible to get into the game, unlike other private servers which requires a whole lot of tinkering with game files. Even if no one is attracted to our version, we will still release the technology which will allow people to run their own versions. This will allow a small group of friends (assuming they have the hardware) to have a small “Sims Online” community between just them. Since we’re not motivated by money, we really have nothing to lose if what we’re doing isn’t as popular as we thought. Of course, it is always good for morale to see people interested in playing again.

Urizenus: a few thousand subscribers?
Ghost: When EA-Land was in it’s peak (all of the cities merged), They had around 900 users online at a time. I also want to point out, they wouldn’t be subscribers, since they are not paying any fees to access our server. A few thousand users should be more than enough to have a "full city" feeling 24/7.

community management

Urizenus: Do you have plans for dealing with disputes between residents and griefers? And mafias?
Ghost: Just like the original TSO, we will have a Customer Service section dedicated to solving disputes between players. People may feel that they have less to lose since they are paying nothing to log in the servers, but I would like to point out that we can do a lot of things that EA wouldn’t do. For example, EA was never strict on IP Banning, you could go purchase a new account and log back in after getting banned. We eliminate such capabilities for griefers. We have no issues with mafias or other role-play groups that decide to settle in our server.

Urizenus: will you bring back red links?
Ghost: Yes, the old friendship link system (tagging) will be brought back.

legal issues

Urizenus: Let’s talk about the legal aspects of this. Do you have permission from EA to do this? It is hard for me to imagine that they would willingly turn over their Sims franchise to a handful of independent programmers.
Ghost: Sure. Parts of our project are in the legal grey area. That won’t stop us from doing what we have set out to do. Unlike Blizzard, EA is not notorious for spending large amounts of money on lawsuits. We’re hoping that they won’t spend the time and money required to shut down a small group of indie developers. I’d also like to point out that what we’re doing is in no way unusual. You can find thousands of private servers for all different types of MMORPGS that have yet to be shut down by the original game developers. What we’re doing, since we’re rebuilding all the code from scratch, actually makes us more legal than the other projects I tell you about. SWGEmu, InWorldz SL, WoWServers, and Lineage Private servers are all examples of similar projects that have been going on for years without running into legal trouble. We’re here for the long term and we are confident that we can avoid any such issues coming from EA.

economic issues

Urizenus: Are you going to allow the open sale of simoleans and rares?
Ghost: I think it is inevitable. People are going to want an advantage in any game. In this case, people are going to want to go back to the standard of living that they were used to when they quit. We’re fortunate to have a very talented development team, which includes the creator of the infamous TSOAuto Maze Bot. We know how to shut down any unfair advantages, so any sales of simoleans and rares will be allowed and not regulated.

red balloon redemption

Urizenus: Last question: am I still kicked out or can I come back when you start up?
Ghost: You have been pardoned by the TSOResoration Development Team. We look forward to seeing you in our server and hope that you will post entertaining TSO news like you did back in the day!
Urizenus: Yay!

Posting the piece while the Herald yacht put in to port to stock up on blood oranges and Cristal – none of that Moët crap here at the Herald – Urizenus chose to use his real life identity (Peter Ludlow of Northwestern University) to discuss similar patterns of emergent behavior across game worlds including The Sims Online, Habbo Hotel, and Second Life.

JLU vigilantes start seeing griefers everywhere

Particularly interesting are the parallels between the Sims Shadow Government paramilitary of TSO Second Life’s Justice League Unlimited. Both groups maintained close contacts with employees of the game company, and utilized those relationships in filing abuse reports against other players. But as Ludlow points out, the game soon turned ugly as the would-be cops go unchecked.

"What perhaps began as a fun exercise in roleplay soon began to go awry. Overzealous Justice League members began abuse reporting heavily, and also began picking fights with unlikely groups within Second Life. For example, the Justice League was banned from Furnation (an area inside Second Life dedicated to players that like to don anthropomorphized animal costumes), because of their excessive vigilantism".

In time, the vigilantes become paranoid and nearly everyone appears to be a griefer.

"It wasn’t just their competitors that were marked as griefers; the Alphaville Herald, which had been reporting on griefers in virtual worlds since 2003, was a griefer media organ in Kalels eyes. The Herald’s editor, an avatar Pixeleen Mistral was therefore also a griefer. Kalel came to falsely believe that Pixeleen was identical with me, and so I must be a griefer too. There were griefers everywhere, it seemed".

Look for this must-read series to continue soon – Cristal and blood oranges never last long on the Herald yacht and the catering staff is already preparing to replenish the galley while Uri uploads part 2 of the series.

by Dr. Ocularis, Herald Book Club

As we survey the broad sweep of the last two and a half millennia of Western culture, several efforts stand out as “Great Books” of this tradition — The Bible, Plato’s Republic, and Aristotle’s Poetics, for example. Is it not time to add to this august list the story of Urizenus Sklar and the Second Life Herald? Well, you may not think so, but pointy headed intellectuals beg to differ! Let’s review the accolades received thus far by The Second Life Herald: the Virtual Tabloid that Witnessed the Dawn of the Metaverse:

• American Association of Publishers, Professional/Scholarly Publishing award for “Best Book in Media and Cultural Studies, 2007” .
• Choice “Outstanding Academic Title, 2008”
• Library Journal “Top Sci-Tech Book, 2007,” (Ranked one of top 39 science books of 2007 and top book in category of Computer Science).

And now, finally, the book appears in paperback so that the masses may partake in cranium expanding properties of this instant classic. Sleep tight tonight, grizzled Oxford Dons, Western Culture has never been in better shape.

Many of you have heard the sad but perhaps inevitable news that TSO will close its doors permanently on August 1. Many Second Lifers began their travels in the metaverse on TSO and this newspaper began there as well as The Alphaville Herald. From the very first weeks of our covering TSO we saw horrendous weaknesses in TSO, and we reported accordingly. However, for my money the best analysis of the failure of TSO was posted here in January of 2004 by a reporter named Kiss. I am reprinting it here with only minor edits. The comments under the original are well worth a read too. –Uri

TSO Failure Analysis

by Kiss

I’m a 44-year-old Manager for a company that develops simulations and software for the military and have been playing TSO since Beta (November ’02). I have never been a member of any of the Mafias, never received or given an enemy link other than to play with my friends, and have pretty much played TSO the way Maxis envisioned it to be played. And yet, I am now going to be reducing my TSO playing time significantly and moving on to other MMOGs. Why am I doing this? Because I hate living in the wimpy environment that TSO has morphed into.

In my opinion, TSO has become a benign elementary school playground populated by totally harmless wannabe bullies who never could actually do anything of any real significance, and an even larger contingent of whiney wimps who have limited online experience crying about their red links.

I thought I would share with you my thoughts on why I consider TSO’s battle with the griefers an abject failure and close with a few random thoughts. One minor thing, many people erroneously lump griefers in the same category as exploiters. They are not. The exploiters (such as the maze bot exploiters) deserved everything Maxis/EA threw at them.

The premise of forced socialization (and only nice socialization at that)

TSO was designed to encourage socialization and dialogue. Will Wright’s approach to encouraging this socialization was to make the most important part of TSO (skilling, making money, etc.) mind-numbingly boring. Sorry Will, it didn’t work. Many people responded by either going afk all the time, or thinking up things to entertain themselves. I’m surprised this surprised the people at Maxis/EA. Who are these clods that couldn’t predict this occurrence? Don’t they have anybody up there with a background in game theory or psychology? Every game has griefers, but TSO abounds with them partially due to the poor game design of TSO.

Maxis/EA considers some of the ideas the players came up with to entertain themselves to be anti-social. These include acting like a fool to get attention, forming Mafias, harassing newbies, scamming, etc. When people are denied other goals to strive for beyond having a house in the top 10 on the list, then they create their own entertainment. Some of the entertainment they dreamed up Maxis considers griefing and has attempted to stomp out in their usual utterly futile and ham-handed way.

Maxis/EA Caters to the Vocal Minority

I should have seen the direction we were heading when Maxis changed the default for the interactions from “accept” to “cancel”. This was implemented in order to combat abuse of afk, weak, and landing sims and was requested by some of the more whiney players on the old message board. The fact that more players opposed it than requested it was ignored. By making that change two things occurred:

1) They stripped away the ability of regular sims to retaliate against rude and obnoxious people by using their mean interactions. All we could do now was leave the lot of the annoying person or boot/ban/ignore them if it was on our lot. The first wave of annoyed real gamers left. The vast majority of them were non-griefers.

2) The so-called griefers had to think up new and more creative ways to cause trouble.

So along came house destruction and tagging. Maxis response to combat the house destroyers was to implement building permission. All this did was to create an environment of mistrust among roomies and owners and forced the griefers to stockpile old sims and become even more creative in worming house wreckers into their targeted homes. Eventually Maxis will foolishly require the “make enemy” interaction an “accept” only function to combat tagging.

These actions (and some others I won?t get into) have not only utterly failed to contain the griefers; it has in my opinion made the situation worse than it ever was. It has succeeded in limiting the play of normal players while forcing the griefers to adapt, improve, and work harder. In essence, Maxis has unwittingly made the game far more fun and challenging for the griefers, and far more restrictive and even more boring for the average Joes. This is why the number of griefers is actually going up while Maxis/EA continues to battle them. More and more regular people are turning to griefing and joining mafias out of desperation to do something challenging in the game.

Eventually somebody at Maxis/EA will wake up and ask two basic questions:

1) Can griefers be beaten?
2) Do we want a grief-free game?

I would maintain that it is almost impossible to beat griefers. They will start a new account if terminated, and find a way around any restriction in the game you implement. The in-game reporting function is pointless and an utter waste of time as the most the griefer gets is suspended or terminated. So what if he is? He just waits a couple of days and is back, or simply starts a new account. Sadly, many of the simple-minded non-gamer sims in TSO consider a three day suspension, or account termination, a punishment. It is not. The fact of the matter is that I can’t do a thing to somebody harassing me now and neither can Maxis in the long run.

Let’s look at question two. Let’s suppose for the sake of argument that Maxis could implement enough restrictions that it finally succeeded in making TSO “grief-free”. I don’t know about you, but I don’t particularly relish the idea of living in a totally benign game without any element of risk or danger whatsoever. I for one have no desire to live on a bumper padded playground, with tons of overly restrictive rules, and MOMIs in every virtual guard tower monitoring our behavior.

I don’t want Utopia! I rebel against the thought of the TSO sandbox becoming filled with nothing but well-behaved morons giving each other cookies on the player message board and IMing different variations of smiley faces back and forth!

Some random thoughts and predictions:

1) If griefers upset you then you probably shouldn’t be playing online games. Do you want TSO to become totally free of risk, danger, and grief? If so, perhaps you should go play Chutes and Ladders instead.

2) The ratio of men/women in TSO will continue getting worse as Maxis makes TSO ever more benign.

3) Maxis has always been overly focused on pleasing the women players of TSO by making everything “nice”? while totally ignoring that by do so they are driving the men out. Like it or not, many women are leaving TSO due to a lack of men. The perfect balance for TSO player retainability would be a one for one ratio.

4) Maxis will never implement new goals that might upset the whiney people. Examples include: Most enemy links; richest sims list; etc. Anything that smacks of competition upsets these people. Indeed, if it were up to them they would have the top 100 lists eliminated entirely.

5) Maxis will continue their inept campaign against griefers with the same dismal results they have accomplished to date ? namely, making things worse.

6) Maxis has announced the dropping of development of blackjack and video poker for TSO. This signals a dearth of future content for TSO.

7) We will never get custom content — one of Will Wright’s highest priorities for TSO.

The biggest mistake Maxis/EA made was going after the teen rating. The idea of using a love bed, or hot kissing a kid makes a lot of us sick. It doesn’t seem to bother Maxis one bit however. By going after the largest possible market they could they mistakenly thought they could improve their sales. In actuality, all they did was make a game that frustrates both teens and adults. TSO would have had higher sales and higher retention rates if TSO had been rated adult only.

9) It will come to light that the number of TSO subscribers may indeed have been 80,000 at one time but that number is significantly lower now.

10) TSO will be shut down this year. The official reason will be “disappointing sales?”. Industry insiders will say the real reason is “Maxis lost control and the griefers killed it”. They are both wrong: Maxis/EA killed it by releasing TSO a year too early, having the wrong concept of what people want in their games, failing to provide enough new content, not understanding how people behave or what bores them, refusing to implement an economy, allowing kids in the game, and attempting to create a benign and boring world totally lacking in goals.

Peter Gilstrap reports in Variety that 20th Century Fox is planning to make a a live-action movie of The Sims, after purchasing the feature rights from Electronic Arts. The script is still being written, and the talent is presently unnamed, but there are some clues in a quote from Rod Humble, who is managing the creative property for Electronic Arts:

“‘The SIMS has done an interactive version of an old story, which is what it’s like to have infinite power and how do you deal with it. Given that that’s an old story, you can imagine how easily that would translate to traditional story telling.”

So is this the story of a game system admin handing out perma-ban to players on a whim? Or a player with an exploit that gives them game god powers? Those stories never have happy endings.

Skeptics will wonder if they really need to go to the theaters to see this sort of thing – isn’t that what we get everyday in SL already? On the other hand, at least movie theaters don’t crash all the time. The Herald is offering Prokofy Neva and Urizenus Sklar to consult on the project – they both have some experience with how EA deals with infinite power in its game.

The Journal of the Business Law Society at the University of Illinois College of Law is running a well documented article on Second Life’s Ginko corporation, which claims to have the equivalent of $475,000 US invested in it but which some have called a ponzi scheme, Meanwhile, Philip Linden has comparedGinko to the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh. Finally, someone is calling out Philip on this outrageous attitude. From the JBLS:

More curious than people’s willingness to give their money to Ginko, is that Linden Lab does not seem to find anything worrisome about the venture. Linden Lab’s CEO and founder, Philip Rosedale, believes that banks can exist within the virtual world of Second Life without regulation. Rosedale likens banks like Ginko to Grameen Bank of Bangladesh which makes small unsecured loans to the very poor to help them start businesses and work their way out of poverty.

Meanwhile, a well placed and reliable Herald source tells us that Ginko is in fact a ponzi scheme. We are not in a position to pronounce on the matter, given the real life legal implications, however we think it is about time for Ginko to show some transparency. Where is the money!? Open the books, and show us where the money has been invested. Is it in other Second Life businesses, or in things like sweet new rides, as our source insists? More to the point, if it *is* a ponzi, will Linden Lab be liable? From the article.

Given Ginko’s complete lack of transparency, if it turned out to be a swindle, it would be very hard for depositors to track down the person or persons behind it. Even if they were found, there is no guarantee that depositors would be able to obtain redress. If this were to occur, it is likely that the depositors would sue Linden Lab for not protecting them from fraud. By not taking efforts to ensure that commercial activity in Second Life is conducted in a transparent manner, Linden Lab is in essence putting their stamp of approval on ventures like Ginko. Linden Lab of course absolves itself of any liability for the actions of Second Life users in its Terms of Service Agreement, but there is no guarantee that the Terms of Service Agreement will hold up in court. If a court determines that Linden Lab is liable for fraudulent activities that take place within Second Life, they may be overwhelmed with suits. To avoid liability, and governmental regulation of the commercial activities within Second Life, Linden Lab should develop rules and policies that ensure commercial transactions between users are transparent and legitimate.

See Virtually Blind for further discussion and an observation that, with yields down 60% in 16 months, it does not look good for Ginko investors.

By Dyerbrook, Dept. of Family Holiday Fun

Yes, home is the place, where…when you have to go there, they have to take you in. Tired of lag, grey squares, missing textures, bots, bits, and bobs? There’s always The Sims Online, home for many of us who write, read, and comment on the Herald.

TSO is where the Herald got its start as the “Alphaville Herald” in fact. It’s a game many long left behind, but in fact, they occasionally sneak back just for the sure joy of having something reliably work, petting that rare dog in inventory that took months of culling to find, and checking the map. Your TSO account probably still works — they keep them forever — and it’s a bargain because they never charge tier there.

SimArts is still on the map; also on the map are those roof artists of the type we find now in SL in places like Jinsil with their giant PLEASE FIX SL; on the TSO map we can now see a neighbourhood called: UPDATEthis GAMEnow! Seems to speak to a lack of erm…content.

Checked my inventory — neither my 3rd OR 4th anniversary presents were there yet despite complaints. But there’s snow on the ground, a fire crackling, the pooltable beckons invitingly with balls that don’t go offworld, and jamming now garners a whopping $3000 simoleons at the best establishments!

Elsewhere in the news…scary to find friends like Jingle I had ages ago *still there* with the balloons still green and “995 days” written on them…wow!

And sad to see Will Wright’s secret alt now missing from the list of sims….: (

“Modeling agency” seems to be the new euphemism for hot-tubbing and “typing suggestive words” which is how Jeff Brown used to describe it–a modeling “show” costs $30,000. Too bad they weren’t online.

The “offbeat” category is so underused since we all left that you can still find Chrestomanci’s Coffee Shop on the list, and SimGallery *still* set to look like that interesting first “mixed-reality mash-up of its time — the Timex Gallery in Westport — a wierd kind of frozen moment, that, eh? Takes a lickin’ and…stops tickin’.

So…if you’re homesick for pet-culling parties over faux mulled cider in the punch bowl; if the desire to have interactions like “give gift” and “jitterbug” and “hot kiss” come for free instead of for $250 a pop, let’s set a time to go to the Old Sim Place and see if we can’t scare some pizza bots or something…

This is Dyerbrook reporting from Alphaville at the Flamingo Court Motel. Challenge Everything!

by Pixeleen Mistral, National Affairs desk
Linden Lab today admitted to performance problems that might have rendered the grid nearly un-usable for at least a few users who wanted to do something other than sit in one place and share lagged-out IM and chat over the last several days. Reports earlier this weekend of repeated sim crashes and surprising lag were apparently acknowledged with a pair of in-world announcements – which were also posted to a no-comments thread on the official Linden blob blog. Evidently the Lab does not feel its interests are well served by accepting customer comments via the blog on the poor performance of the grid – perhaps under the theory that many of the complaints come from those using free accounts to partake of the metaverse’s delights.

The reaction from paying customers the Herald contacted was somewhere between angry and resigned with the consensus being that whenever the number of logged in users approaches 14,000 performance is abysmal. Today the Lab’s Second Life world – regarded by some as an ongoing multi-year beta-test – saw well over 16,000 concurrent logged-in users — with predictable results. Residents who could not teleport to their desired locations amused themselves by collecting screen shots of rare and hard-to-find ‘cannot teleport’ messages – a number of these will be added to the Herald’s special collection of unusual images.[see below the fold]

Robin Linden acknowledged “a combination of problems” that crashed sims and left those parts of the grid that were available in a lag-tastic state. Perhaps most telling was the admission that the Linden network is saturated – could this be seen as tacit admission of the planning/scalability problems which have bedeviled the Linden server gold farms and hobbled the streaming 3D platform provider? There was no word at press time on why the Linden experts on streaming 3D media were unable to predict -or provision- the network bandwidth needed to support a generally acceptable user experience. Perhaps the marketing department has gotten ahead of the technical capabilities of the game? Hard to imagine – but it has been known to happen.

Existing bandwidth and server limits may be a motivation for the Lab’s much touted move to market the Second Life experience in the pacific rim and european markets. If server capacity and bandwidth are constraints on the Lab’s ambitions, maximizing revenue for a relatively fixed investment in servers and networks would be key to improved profitability. Those who have spent significant time in-world over the last few months are well aware that the evening and weekend prime-time for game play in North America consistently brings out the worst in SL. By adding european and pacific time-shifted demand to counterbalance the North American peak loads, the Lindens may maximize the return on their hardware/network investments – and this seems consistent with other actions taken by the San Francisco-based software development firm.

So while paying customers wonder why the system’s performance continues to slide, and free accounts frolic through the blingtard garden of virtual cyber delights, one might imagine network bandwidth dealers rubbing their hands together as Linden Lab is forced into a near-term network upgrade. Over the medium term, look for the Lindens to try to squeeze more profitability out of their network and server farm by emphasizing markets outside of North America.

Anya Ixchel’s interview of Herald founder Urizenus Sklar in SLatenight ends with a shocking revelation – Uri confesses that while in The Sims Online he was a secret part of the Sims Shadow Government – a vigilante group that appointed itself to police the TSO world – and a frequent subject of Herald coverage.

The startling revelations come at the end of the interview when Urizenus admits, “back on TSO I was a stealth member of the SSG (not active on missions, but able to monitor communications), and after Snow White stepped down as Overlord Mia Wallace once invited me to become Overlord”. Evidently, Urizenus assumes that the statute of limitations has expired on his TSO actions – will his defence be that he was just doing whatever it takes to get a story back in the TSO days?

If this was Urizenus getting close to his sources, could this also mean that he would also stoop to joining the W-Hat goons, the libsecondlife h4x0rs, or the Electric Koolaide Sheep? Or are these really the same organization with reciprocal parking privileges?

An investigation is likely as the Herald staff works to establish the true identities of our various alts and expose the web of deceit that could even reach into the newsroom here at the Herald. To get to the bottom of this scandal, the managing editor of the Herald has just assigned Urizenus to investigate himself amd report back if he finds anything amiss – this sort of thing seems to be good enough for the Lindens, so it ought to be good enough for the Herald.