Well this sucks: Steelhead City, a cluster of five beautifully designed steampunk-themed sims, are closing at the end of this month, with the owner citing some pretty harsh real life difficulties that make it difficult to support such an expensive sim tier:
It's been a financial burden of over $400/month. I have thought of downsizing but I have been... well been a bit told that if I do that people would leave, people will be upset over it... Like I said, I spend a lot of my own money to keep it maintained. My car is dead and I am looking to purchase a house. It's not an easy choice. Sincerely this is not. But I can't maintain it, my health, my family's health, my finances, and for myself.
This despite the fact that Steelhead tier was helped supported by over two dozen renters:
"I can think of about 30 who were renting one or more lots in Steelhead, homes, businesses, and dance venues," community member Fuzzball Ortega (yes, that's his name) tells me, "And an additional dozen or so regular Friday night visitors during our Friday night dances."
There's some slightly good news to add: "The Citizens of Steelhead City group will remain active, and we'll still be active in Relay for Life of SL. There's more to Steelhead than just the sims," says Ortega.
So be sure to see the sims of Steelhead, Steelhead Boomtown, Steelhead St. Helens, Steelhead Harborside, and Steelhead Nevermoor soon.
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Opensim has became very professiona, most Grids are interconnected and it is just like Second Life, only needs more crowd and more content imports from creators - I pay 50$ per month and have 144 SIMs clustered on a giant city, we can even afford to offer free huge lands and prims to folks that come develop events
Posted by: Carlos Loff | Saturday, September 05, 2015 at 05:30 AM
High tier prices will kill SL. We are watching it happen. Linden Labs is looting SL to fund their next enterprise which will flop. Watch.
Posted by: Warlen Greeves | Saturday, September 05, 2015 at 01:22 PM
Well unlike the haters that are going to bl aim LL over this while bring up tin-foil hat conspiracy's so I'll point a few things out.
1st was you could not own the land but it had to be deeded to the group.
2nd not advertising enough or holding events.
3rd 'Staying isolated while not willing to work with bigger estates that have discounts only hurts the community your trying to protect.
4th if you gotta let go then reach out to other communities that might not only be willing to absorb the estate but let the community stay intact.still not to late!
Posted by: LittleWing | Saturday, September 05, 2015 at 04:18 PM
@Carlos Loff
High Fidelity is replacing it in all aspects including encrypted content protection with a real hypergrid once out of beta.
Open sim has the most concentrated mix of troll toxic personalities i have ever run across and would not recommend it to my worst enemy.
Posted by: LittleWing | Saturday, September 05, 2015 at 04:24 PM
Linden Lab is not to blame for this
Attempts were made earlier in the summer to sell off Steelhead, nobody took up on the offer. More than likely, they didn't take Lunar seriously.
Steelhead has always had a slow summer, usually right after we were done with the Relay For Life season, but picked up around autumn.
There were also personal reasons, along with the financial, that Lunar is closing Steelhead, and trying to sell the sims earlier this summer. Not my place to say what his reasons were. Let's just say that the closing of Steelhead will provide him with some closure of some emotional grief.
He does plan to unlock the account, and build a new community.
Posted by: Fuzzball Ortega | Saturday, September 05, 2015 at 06:57 PM
@Fuzzball
Best wish's & prayers for you all'
Second Life will loss one of it's most special communities that has a big following that's been around for years.not something that can be replaced with anything it would had been a perfect candidate for the new linden portals program'..all 5 regions are special with special people it's very sad my heart reach's out to hug you all.
Posted by: LittleWing | Saturday, September 05, 2015 at 08:15 PM
I hesitated to comment on this, well knowing that adding to the media coverage is not going to help or heal damage.
Since it's rolling anyway, I want to say the positive things. This is an active community that has been doing great for nearly a decade, and will continue to do great. Land is just one part of it. It's not about the land, or the money, or the pixels, or the technology. Any more than life is all about breathing air. Air is necessary, but was never the point of life.
Most of the people running estates lose money at it. Sure, some of us are 'in the black' but make no mistake, doing just about any other endeavour will make more, for less trouble, by about a factor of 10. Running an estate is a labour of love, and a part time job with no vacations, ever.
The fact that people care about Steelhead, says all anyone needs to know about how much effort Lunar put into it, and the community put into it. Well done, and I'll welcome its eventual landed return. However and wherever that may be.
Posted by: Desmond Shang | Saturday, September 05, 2015 at 11:26 PM
It's always a sad event when a community goes away. We are still blessed with our memories and photos.
I, like many others in this thread, believe that LL cannot and must not be blamed for these situations.
This is a lesson to other struggling communities and LittleWing has offered some great suggestions on things that you can do to work a little harder for this wonderful system.
In the end, we all must remember that our monetary sacrifices and our painful struggles in Second Life will be rewarded and celebrated when we finally join the Creator in Sansar.
Posted by: A.J. | Sunday, September 06, 2015 at 10:32 AM
LittleWing - I dont know where you have been at Opensim, I hold lands and small partnerships for content and activities at Kitely, Digiworldz & Aviworlds, it has been several months of pro-active community contacts and collaborations and NO TROLLS IN SIGHT - HF will have a very steep learning curve and I doubt community will explode in there beiond merchants and world creators at Beta
Posted by: Carlos Loff | Monday, September 07, 2015 at 05:24 AM
@ Carlos
Have Some respect! you have a community losing it's home!
right now you have a community that's spent years living together getting uprooted and this story was about them and second life!'not the Carlos Loff fantasy outside of reality way of seeing things.
'stop in trying to sell them a bridge'
A good new home for steelhead might be Sansar depending how it turns out but in the meantime just keeping the community together will be enough of a challenge but they will figure it out they are a family,
You need to check yourself as well, HF is backed by some of the most well known philanthropist in the world' with tens of millions of dollars being spent for an open source virtual world' with it still in alpha and at least 2 years away from leaving beta.
Say what you want' but most readers here are well informed and know better then fall for the poison apple known as open sim.
Posted by: Littlewing | Monday, September 07, 2015 at 07:25 AM
Opensim has became very professiona, most Grids are interconnected and it is just like Second Life, only needs more crowd and more content imports from creators - I pay 50$ per month and have 144 SIMs clustered on a giant city, we can even afford to offer free huge lands and prims to folks that come develop events
Posted by: Carlos Loff | Saturday, September 05, 2015 at 05:30 AM
@Carlos Loff
Really Immature to come into the forum like some ambulance chasing lawyer to try to sell something.did you not understand the losses they are having? is their empathy were you come from in the world?
Barns are no places to raise children.
Posted by: Buffalo | Monday, September 07, 2015 at 07:45 AM
Do any knows how many regions are safely running on open sim after leaving sl?
Posted by: zz bottom | Monday, September 07, 2015 at 08:20 AM
Even with a very proactive grid-owner, I found OpenSim tech in no way to be ready for prime time. Having given up SL for my academic work, I had high hopes since I did not need a community: we just needed a stable sandbox to build a simulation. What we got was laggy, needed grid restarts constantly, and presented very limited options for a game-like experience.
This was paid for out of pocket. That was good, since it was cheap. Perhaps had I a grant for a few million bucks, we could have hired pros and built what we needed in Unity.
So for those needing a robust and stable experience, OpenSim did not, in my experience, prove the answer to SL's ridiculous tier fees.
Sorry to see any community vanish in a virtual world (I was part of Armada long ago), but unless A.J. has tongue firmly in cheek, as I suspect, the fault is partly LL's. They built their economy on an unsustainable and overpriced model of renting server space. They put that ahead of "community."
I'll be avoiding Sansar, HF, and whatever else comes out of the minds, current and former, of the Lab. Poison Apple indeed!
Posted by: Iggy | Tuesday, September 08, 2015 at 08:35 AM
Iggy being back to osgrid last weeks to build on the sandbox and it is working really well, in fact much better i had to tell, then the same on sl.
But i do agree with you when you say one should be careful to trust Linden lab, no matter what we feel after all the past, but we also can not deny the effort that it is doing to remain the leader of virtual worlds and still be the place to be.
And nobody will deny that tiers are still the main reason for Second life to not strive instead of decaying.
Posted by: zz bottom | Tuesday, September 08, 2015 at 10:26 AM
This is a Forum and as a person with my own opinion to share and that griefs for having to abandon SL because of land prices, I just want to leave my point of view - I was dreaming with having a Full Sim instead of a Homestead at SL and droped it because for my walket is too much - What is wrong about sharing another resource where their actual main problem is not present - Land prices - I posted about Opensim because there is a lot of missconception about the state of the art and I think it is usefull other readers may condider their options on Virtual Worlds - If I die today I will be happy so far by having the chance to be now building a 144 SIMs continuous workd for only 50$ a month - Mentioning Opensim makes total sense, specially to invite such a great community
Posted by: Carlos Loff | Tuesday, September 08, 2015 at 10:33 AM