Emily Orr has a plangent tribute to the Second Life steampunk sim Aramada Breakaway, which is soon going away from the SL grid. "All has been done to save it, but there is just too much empty land," announced the owner. However, he added: "There will be an end of Armada party on Saturday 26 from 7-9pm SLT and everyone is invited!" Click here to teleport there.
Here's Emily on what this loss means:
In these harsh economic times, we must adapt or sink; and it's not news in the least to hear of another store closing, another sim disappearing. But this one is especially poignant, because it wasn't just another cookie-cutter mall plot. The entire sim was water-based, and every tenant and shopkeeper was parked on a boat, a ship, an airship, in a hot air balloon--the sense I always got was, whatever they could scavenge that could float or fly
Looking back on my old posts, I've blogged about Breakaway since at least 2009, when it played host to epic ironclad battles at sea. The virtual space will soon be gone, but the stories that emerged from it will remain. Click here to make some more of your own before it's too late.
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A shame, that. For the better part of a year, I RPed there as a crazed and monster-haunted bookseller. Try to do *that* in a violence-focused "game."
Sorry to see Armada go. My rent was good too, at "the white ship." I love China Mieville's fiction, and it was fun to RP in a community of fellow China-heads.
Posted by: Iggy | Friday, January 25, 2013 at 02:20 PM
Out of curiosity, I went to the sim because I've never heard of it. I'm going to guesstimate that the sim hasn't changed since 2009. Dated textures, dated sculpts, the flames are just old looking, it looked like 2009. Could be a reason?
Posted by: 2013 | Friday, January 25, 2013 at 03:09 PM
As a huge Mieville fan I was at Armada once, and only once. I expected spectacular builds and distressed dark textures, a recommended skysetting by the admins, much smoke, an altogether lifely and vibrant community of fellow Chinaheads. Freaks, mutations, sick avies.
Nothing of that was to be found during the half hour I spent rummaging thru the various ships. The whole sim seemed very sterile and I was just bored with nothing to do. Didn't even feel inspired to snap some photos.
I guess this general lack of atmosphere turned away many visitors and in the end is responsible for Armada Breakaway's downfall.
Posted by: Orcs | Saturday, January 26, 2013 at 01:47 AM
This is the only region in the past few weeks of the sim deathwatch posts that I'd heard of, and visited once or twice.
It's not really my cup of tea, me not being into heavy roleplay but I thought it was interesting.
Personally I think what hurt Armada most is what I call the "consolidation" in the steamlands in the past couple of years.
When times were somewhat better, many steamlanders owned parcels in several steampunk estates, as an example one might own a parcel in Steelhead, Caledon, Babbage, Winterfell AND Armada. But when times get tough people concentrate and downsized their holdings to their favorite region, which usually wasn't Armada.
I'm saddened to see it go.
Posted by: CronoCloud Creeggan | Saturday, January 26, 2013 at 09:29 AM
Roleplying sims make much more sense on open sims grids.
And sim onweers and players already found that!
Posted by: ZZ Bottom | Monday, January 28, 2013 at 05:03 AM