I’m thinking about buying just lindens so that I can rent out a property. However, I’m thinking that buying premium plus might help me budget my lindens better. The only thing is, I’m unlikely to use the other premium plus features - just the weekly linden stipend. Which one should I do? Thanks for any advice.

Do you do new years resolutions at all? I try to and I've had some moderate success with sticking to the online ones at least.

My NYR is to try and be more helpful to new players in SL so they have an easier time doing things

Why is this happening all the time? What do i have to do so her hands don’t go into her body like that?

I'm looking for something that is organized with events, etc, and world building rather than an open dungeon people just go to with people they already know. I like the idea of having a character arc I can work on and interacting with other people in character is the rule more so than the exception.

My character is a gay man, so plus if it is a region that leans heavily towards that.

I've went to the "gor" active regions and can't make heads or tails of them, honestly. It seems really active and organized in the lobby but once you teleport to the regions there's no one there. Bloodlines was likewise very confusing. I also get the sense from the lobby that the default for these regions is that the man is the dominant and the woman is the submissive and I'm not sure my role-play character would fit in there.

For an idea of what I am looking for, the ones I've found thus far that "sort of" fit these parameters but aren't exactly what I am looking for are:

• Romanum (great world building but not kinky enough -- despite its advertisement nothing sexy happens here)
• Slaves of Capua (very sexy, good world building, not as much opportunity for building up a character as I'd like)
• Klangwind (the kinky side is kinda just a small area of a very large region, was looking for an entire region dedicated to this)

Thanks.

Hello, I'm currently using the firestorm beta..but last few days..some hairs or some objects have had an odd blue colour on them..which I've never had before.. its not my windlights..but does anyone know what's happening?

I’ve been trying since yesterday to add my payment info and i keep getting an error message. I’ve never had this issue before. I see they updated their cashier system on the 19th. Is anyone else having an issue adding payment info?

I accepted the invitation to start creating the AI character in SL a few days ago, and was excited by the prospects of being able to train up Bots to a particular character and background for several reasons. In the past I have created dumb bots for medical simulations, and attempted to use an intelligent-ish Alicebot as a base for the characters in the main simulation. I spent hours and hours training characters, which was extremely tedious and time consuming because one had to predict all the things which a human might say in a given situation and then train the robot with suitable responses.

Training a bot with a modern AI interaction, being able to tell it who it was and have it respond appropriately was very attractive, as I have recently built a Roman Villa based on a real world example, and wanted to be able to train characters to populate the villa, both owners and slaves/servants.

Following the instructions I set up an ALT and gave them one of the set personalities. The blurb indicated "Your character begins learning from each interaction right away, continuously evolving and building long-term memory as they engage with you and others."

Except no, it doesn't. The character doesn't seem to have a long-term memory. It forgets everything I tell it from one session to the next. If you want it to be a certain way, you will need to set these up when you set up the bot, it doesn't learn or remember from one session to the next. It is annoyingly talkative, and also extremely buggy. In each instance it has apparently crashed after ten minutes, and has to be rebooted, as it just starts ignoring anything I say and jerking through repetititve movements.

Even if you don't have an interest in developing the character and personality of the AI bot, one of the other suggested uses was to create a companion who could explore with you. But mine seems entirely unable to follow me, even in a simple area.

Anyone else trying this? The answer has to be yes, because I frequently get the message that the online limit has been reached. Am I missing something important? I would welcome the chance to share experiences with someone else who is using the facility.

I'm not tech savvy. Found a really nice historically accurate collar I'd like to wear that is modifiable for scripts. But I can't wrap my head around this open collar thing. Is there something I can buy somewhere that is basically just a thing I can wear that will load all the scripts onto the collar? I'm just looking for basic kinky stuff, nothing too specific. (But would pay more for fancier options)

Hello everybody. I was wondering if there are any cool RP sims still active nowadays? I used to RP a lot in SL a while ago, made a lot of friends but most of them no longer log in and there isn't a single RP sim from my heydays that are active. Bummer. I'm looking mostly for a medieval setting sim, but any will do. Can't be too picky these days. :/

Anyway, cheers! Thanks!

Our annual sober holiday party is tomorrow 12/22 at 3pm SLT. Doesn’t matter if your sobriety is around drink, drugs, food, money or you just have a desire to explore what that all means… we are a fun, happy group who embraces wellness and wholesome activities! Santa will be giving out gifts, the music will be somewhat wacky but that’s okay because we are fond of silly dances (lol). Bring a friend!

IM me in world for an LM anytime tomorrow before the party (Moldylocks Resident).

This post was going to be made on SL Forums but every attempt has been blocked outright. There is no evidence of any reason this would be by fault of our own, but each time gives an "unable to post" with a lock icon. Unfortunately, based on the subject matter, this doesn't bode well if LL is actively attempting to block this content. We have also had at least two known abuse reports filed in regards to this, with nothing coming from it. The posts do appear as if they were made, based on post count, but were instantly blocked from view. We felt it was important to share what we've found and visibly call out a significant problem, especially as supporters of both the idea of, and the regions hosting, skill gaming in SL.

I apologize for this long post, but we wanted to make sure we were thorough.

A group of "skill gaming" players that have extensive knowledge and experience have spent the last few months examining skill gaming within Second Life, triggered by my own interests in it over time and having friends that I've either met outside these regions who also play, as well as some I know that play often whom I met at these regions.  After noticing an unusual shift on a different account after a particularly good day, I began noting that many games that generally provide relatively balanced odds suddenly were giving games that skill wasn't even capable of being a factor.  For instance, games that rely on "joker" or "wild" tiles to provide the skill were outputting few or even literally none, making the game no different than a slot machine based purely and solely on the random numbers provided.  This came after a particular day when the odds were more in my favor and I was up.  Now my odds were drastically down, worse than I had ever seen by a staggering amount especially with how long I've been playing skill games, to a degree that multiple games in a single session simply offered no chance for skill to play a factor, and due to this, scores were so low that even on the lowest level payouts, they would have never beat the required scores.  I reached out to others and asked if they had ever seen something similar, and many of them had their own experiences like this, some in the exact same regions specifically after a session that left them with more winnings than losses.

We began to look into things, keeping track of win/loss rates on average, sharing games, examining if we'd have done anything different in each game to provide the best "skill" outcome, and created a baseline.  These games aren't like blackjack where you can "card count" to increase your odds, but in some ways we acknowledge that if the games play a specific way, skill can be what makes or breaks your games.  We found that our combined average was 1:5 win/loss based upon the same point levels, and that stayed fairly consistent at the start across numerous gaming regions.  On bad days, you'd see up to 1:8-10.  Something stood out though: in certain regions, if a skilled player had better luck, within 24 hours that win/loss rate would drastically decrease.  Recently we witnessed it go lower than 1:30, another at 1:25, and a month ago, one tested this on very low buy-ins at the same point level had reached 1:40+ win/loss.  These odds do not happen naturally but seemingly always appear after a relatively good day.  I would consider these players as much of an expert as you could be in these games, and after we've reviewed these specific games, we feel that even in cases where everyone agrees a person made no mistakes and played ideally, skill was not enough of a factor, if it was even a factor at all.  We don't expect to win every time, obviously, but when those odds shift in such a dramatic level, something feels off.

This is furthered by difficulties with skill gaming regions where these differences in odds appear to correlate with lowering if not outright removing anything that would classify a "skill" portion.  If a game removes any choice from the player, then the game is by definition a game of chance.  We have not seen this exact issue at every sim we've went to, but the path seems almost too consistent to be coincidence.  1:5 average win loss odds for highly skilled players, they win at 1:3 with a particularly good day and outcome, odds suddenly drop to shockingly low numbers within 24 hours with games that are impossible to win even at the lowest level of payouts with the skill portion removed majorly, if not in entirety.  It's even more telling that this does not seem to happen in some regions, but is almost guaranteed to be seen in others.

We've reviewed the skill gaming policy (https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden\_Lab\_Official:Second\_Life\_Skill\_Gaming\_Policy), the gambling policy (https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden\_Lab\_Official:Policy\_Regarding\_Wagering\_in\_Second\_Life), and the authorized regions list (https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden\_Lab\_Official:Second\_Life\_Skill\_Gaming\_Approved\_Participants), and found that this would likely violate both legal requirements for skill gaming, and violate the policies provided.  We've also noted other issues, like the approved participants seems to be out of date, leading us to question if certain investigations of updates have been done.  It's possible that at the time these occurred, the regions listed were within proper limitations and updates may have changed that, but it's clear that these are out of date and should be updated and verified.

Using a breakdown of the most up-to-date rules and laws for online skill gaming, the following tests are generally applied to differentiate between gambling and skill gaming, and often are utilized based upon region/state:

Dominant Factor Test

"The Dominant Factor test generally asks whether the outcome of the game is determined more by the participants’ relative skill rather than by chance events. In other words, things like dice rolls or random number generators should have little impact on determining the outcome of the game under this test. The primary question is whether chance or skill is the dominant or controlling factor in deciding the winner of the contest or game."

After thorough investigation, not only does randomization appear to play more than a little impact, in a rather surprising number of cases, it produces the majority if not entirety of the outcome, especially during perceived odds shifting.

Material Element Test

"The Material Element test focuses on whether chance plays any significant role in determining the outcome of the game. Under this test, it does not matter whether skill plays the overriding or dominant role in deciding the outcome. The game will be deemed gambling if the element of chance plays a meaningful role in who wins the game."

To echo the above sentiment, if anything would lower the presence of skill being involved at all, it would increase the chance by a significant amount, in many ways almost guaranteeing a loss to the player regardless of skill level, payout range, or score to beat.

Any Chance Test

"The Any Chance test evaluates whether chance plays any role whatsoever in determining the outcome. Under this test, if any element of chance affects the outcome, then the game is considered one of chance. For example, the game of Blackjack involves chance card flips and the skill of the player in deciding whether to “hit” or “stand.” Since this game involves at least some chance (the card flips), it likely would not pass the Any Chance test and would be considered gambling. The Any Chance test is the strictest test for classifying skill games and can render wagering on most any game illegal gambling."

Unfortunately, as it's clear, these games would not pass this test naturally.

The breakdown of it is as follows:

• We have documented changes that appears that gaming "odds" may shift to a significant degree if a player has better-than-average odds prior, which may violate both gaming policy and some laws based upon the state or nation, where the skill/chance ratio would need to be consistent
• We have recordings of a surprising number of games during these points where the skill elements at those points may disappear entirely, creating a "random number simulator"/slot machine presentation where no skill of any kind is present
• We documented a consistent drop in skill elements in over 75% of sessions after a player’s strong showing the day prior, based upon the region/game
• We have noted that during these changes, a significant number of games remove so much of the skill portion, at times even entirely, that no amount of skill would present a winning outcome even at the lowest of levels, making them by definition a game of chance
• The approved regions and their games does not appear to be up to date, and may be out of date by a notable amount, which leads to question if any updates to these games and their regions for fair play has happened any time recently
• A number of specific regions appear to have the same "odds shift" that only appears to exist after a player has the odds even slightly in their favor, generally up to or over 5-10x more losses to wins when they never hit those odds at any other time.  These issues seem to persist across multiple machines, which eliminates a "machine payout" theory
• Some regions do not appear to have this issue.  It is possible that this is either from differences in the machines themselves, or they simply aren't maintained.  For the sake of what we are asking, we do not intend to immediately present a whitelist or blacklist of any region, to prevent further problems
• Transparency and consistency is needed for skill gaming to comply with some state and national laws.  If odds shifting is able to inject a much higher amount of chance, offsetting a chance/skill balance, it would not comply with most laws, and would be reclassified as gambling.
• These issues might violate the safe harbor provisions for skill contests under the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA). The UIGEA provides exemptions for certain skill-based contests, but changing odds based on player performance could introduce an element of chance that might jeopardize this exemption
• For the days where odds seem to drastically shift, at no other point for any player had they ever recorded odds to the degree under any circumstance, neither by the rate of change, or the general odds themselves for those sessions
• We are willing to acknowledge it's possible that as some players will shift between machines on the days that players tend to be up could trigger a "payout shift" in machines individually, however if that would change odds between players, that also would likely violate policy and law

While we respect that skill gaming is an often contested topic within Second Life, that many still see as gambling, we feel that if a game is presented fairly with a reasonable skill/chance balance, consistency in odds, and transparency that may be required to bring these games to compliance, it still would fall under the "skill gaming" classification.  However, lately it feels as if there's been too much to call this into question, and hope that our approach as a series of skilled "skill gamers" provides a proper call for more transparency and evaluation.  We are aware that one of our members filed a report on this around a month or so ago, and another has filed one recently, to no response or change.

What we're asking for:

• An up-to-date validation of all games and regions approved under skill gaming, and their compliance both by LL policy and by state, national, and international law
• A requirement for code review that states all updates must have proper validation and approval to comply with policies and laws
• An update to the approved regions and games that match the current state
• Transparency to the skill/chance rates offered by machines, especially if variable or manually set, which also complies with many state, national, and international laws for online skill gaming
• Consideration if not action against regions that are found in gross violation without disclosure to players
• A requirement of consistency in skill game odds, regardless of wins/losses
• While unlikely, requiring a way for a game to determine if too little or even no skill opportunities were even offered would alleviate times where games do fall directly into games of chance and not skill, which would make that game session violate policy, risking the whole of SL Skill Gaming
• An acknowledgment that a difference in points based upon skill does not create a situation where skill is the dominant factor.  Before, when it was player vs player seeking to be the highest score, this may have been a reasonable consideration, but in cases where you are playing against the "house", especially when odds may be changed to favor the owners of the regions, that would likely push many of these games out of any provisions for skill gaming directly into gambling, again based on both LL's policies and state, national, and international law
• An update to the gaming policy that skill allowance may not also be determined significantly by chance, as it could constitute gambling just based on that alone

None of us are seeking any sort of repayment, nor is this coming from a place of retaliation for lost games.  Most of our players see consistency in general play, and those that have lost have accepted it without issue.  The players who worked together to investigate these issues all have made it clear that the money used for skill gaming is not detrimental to their wellbeing, are as close to "experts" as you can be in these various games, and are simply seeking that the expected fairness both by laws and policy would be adhered to.  A casino can't remove the chance for a player to get an ace if they get two blackjacks in a row, nor can they increase the odds of busting if they hit on 14 more than the norm.  Loot crates, online skill gaming, and even online gambling that have these issues have seen regulation, suspension, and even outright banning in the past.  There are other issues we've noticed at some locations but the evidence was inconclusive and we felt this was more significant at this point.  We ask that LL seriously consider requiring these changes to comply with their own policies as well as laws that may be violated, as a group that genuinely supports both the presence of skill gaming, and the regions that offer it.

Thank you.

Trying to find some furry/human hybrid skins, but i'm not able to turn up basically any results on the marketplace. Does any one know any stores that might have that sort of thing? In world or marketplace works, not super picky.

The quote is from Henry Jame's Portrait of a Lady (1880-81). And the dress is from Grasshopper Street.

Looking for places hang out as a human avi veen a long time since ive been on and all my spots are dead

Hey, I'm hoping you can help me. I returned to Secondlife today and I was really lost. Too many buttons to push and it didn't feel user friendly. My name on there is audaciouslady belford. I want to change my outfit and I want to go places where the European club music kicks in. When I started a long time ago, there was a crazy club called Bad Girls. Great way to hear awesome music. I'd like to enjoy the game again. Any suggestions or tips?

I've already gone to the newbie place in London. I'm not into building anything. I want to listen to music, dance, chat with interesting people or simply chill.

Thank you.