IMPORTANT: This site remains online purely for archival purposes and is closed to all posting activity.

Please see our new site for current information: http://elfclanvr.grouply.com

IF YOUR ACCOUNT IS SHOWING SUSPENDED: Don't worry about it.  This site is archival.  Simply join the new blogsite listed above.

 

Again, THIS SITE IS NO LONGER ACTIVE. It is here for archival purposes only. 

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VIDEOS BY KONI LANZIUS
Shapeshifter Blue
Fyrefly: Eternity
Warhammer 40k vs Droids
The Crash
BattleMace!
Dragon Fights!
Ork Drum Circle

OTHER VIDEOS
FuzzNutz! from our friends at Raglan Shire
Star Wars Mistakes by Oona

7-20-2010
Ning (this blogsite) has closed ad-paid services and has started charging heavy fees ($240 a year) for blog services. Elf Clan has migrated to a new bogsite http://elfclan.zonkk.com and has left this blogsite in an "archival" format (which does not incur such excessive fees). There is a wealth of historical information and posts here, but all new posting will be at the Zonkk site.

6-25-2010
Linden Lab laid off 30% of their workforce this month. Shortly following, Mark Kingdon was replaced as CEO of Linden Lab, Philip Rosedale stepping back in as "interim CEO". What this means for Linden Lab is anyone's guess, but many are breathing a sigh of relief that a blatant profiteer like Kingdon is no longer in the driver's seat. Will Rosedale be any better? I have serious doubts we will see any major improvements on Second Life... or that Rosedale will be able to stop its eventually and foreseeable crash into a brick wall. We will know better in 6 months to a year whether Philip shows a lick of sense and learned a harsh lesson from the last 3 years... or whether it will still be Linden business-as-usual (translated: profit gouge as much as possible and customer welfare / needs / wishes be hanged).

4-1-2010
Recent announcements by Linden Lab have set a lot of teeth on edge. Plans to prevent users from backing up their own builds if they contain components by other creators (such as public domain textures, megaprims and sculpt maps) as of April 30 are of course proving very unpopular (just how unpopular remains to be seen. Lawsuit time?). Release of a very user-unfriendly, cumbersome and buggy "Viewer 2.0" has customers barking in anger. We're not seeing much good come out of Linden Lab at this time. Predictions of implosion are widespread.

2-7-2010
The release of Snowglobe Viewer 1.3.1 has finally brought about the switch from UDP to HTTP texture protocol, greatly speeding up the loading of textures on SL. It's still not perfect, but a move in the right direction. This is a major issue that after more than 6 years of texture loading problems, we are glad to finally see corrected. Unfortunately, there are still major areas in which this hasn't been implemented-- and texture tracking (so as to prevent redundant loading) is still not corrected.

11-17-2009
THE YEAR IN RECAP
Linden Lab profiteering in the case of Open Space sims (trying to raise their prices by 67%) forced the shutdown of 6 of our 8 sims.

This month Eldar Peter Lioncourt added ElvenDream, his own personal building sim that allows public access. It is a beautiful sim with a garden setting, surrounded by sailing waters.

Elf Clan just celebrated its fifth anniversary with two days of head-to-toe events. Members report having a wonderful time. Thanks to our Greeters for their efforts.

4-29-2009
Elf Clan has decided to expand to an external grid, Reaction Grid. We will host additional, low-cost rental lands there. Time to stop putting all our eggs in the Second Life basket. We had tried Open Life grid but the company proved to be abusive and untrustworthy. Reaction Grid is an all-PG grid that seems almost tailor-made for our group needs. We are starting with 4 sims there, with hopes for significant expansion in the near future.

4-26-2009
Current State of SL
Haven't posted here in a while because well, things were just too much in a jumble and forgot this section was here. LOL. I'll try to keep this better updated

Linden Lab decided to raise the price of Open Space sims by 67%. Their claims for doing so proved to be bogus. As a result, as of mid-Feburary 2009 more than 5,500 OS sims shut down operation. The company seems to have no compassion or concern for the thousands of people they are hurting. LL responded by removing publicly available tracking stats on sim ownership and user participation. These are apparently the desperate acts of a company that doesn't wish the consequences of its decisions to be known to the general public.

User Balpien Hammerer discovered an internal, self-created Denial of Service attack on LL's own computers, caused by user cache failing and requesting reloading of the same textures over and over again. This has caused serious impact on system asset servers and heavily degrading sim performance.

New releases are performing worse than those before them. Some have claimed that it's almost as if Linden Lab is intentionally sabotaging the grid, trying to force people to abandon their sims. IMO, they're just plain incompetent. I have never seen such a poorly performing platform-- or poorly performing software with years-long bugs. Not trying to stomp LL; just being factual. Performance is degrading on a montly basis.

The discovery of "ghosted scripts" has caused great impact on sim performance-- scripts that continue to exist and operate even when their host prims have been deleted. Sim script performance times are increasing greatly (on ElvenMyst it has jumped from around 15 to 19.9). Similar reports from all over the grid.

Future prognosis for SL at this time is not good. Management seems to be continuing to tred the same "failure path" and ignoring (even denying) continued system degradation. Worse, they continue to blame users for what are clearly management/coder issues. At this time, based on current evidence, I predict the demise of LL and SL (at least in its current form) within a year... likely much sooner.

10-25-2008
* CLIENT VIEWER 1.21 is busted. The texture edit box is taking a minute or more to open, with numerous people reporting crashes at that point. It is slowing down building horribly. Users are also reporting excessive lag and choppy movement across the board. THE FIX: Revert to version 1.20.17. Performance is much more stable.

* TYPING SOUNDS and animations are being turned off by many people. This is a personal choice. However, please be aware that the typing sound and animation are designed to let other people know you are currently communicating. In RL we can hear your voice and see your lips move. Not so on SL. Nullifying the typing function may result in people walking away while you're in the middle of "talking"-- because there is nothing to indicate you're typing. Solution: turn the defaults back on, or use a scripted type replacer to indicate you are communicating.

* LOGIN PROBLEMS. Many are experiencing difficulty logging in due to the changes in SL. Possible solution: Go to the EDIT drop down menu at the top left of your login screen and choose PREFERENCES/GRAPHICS. Move the graphics slider all the way to the left (LOW). This will set graphics requirements to minimum. Upon entering the game, you may then click the CUSTOM box to set graphics to your personal preferences, according to the abilities of your graphics card and computer system.

* REDUCE LAG Everyone suffers from lag from time to time. If you're experiencing regular lag, you can disable clouds. Clouds take a great deal of graphic rendering time. To disable clouds during any session, press Ctrl-Alt-Shift-(minus).