Zindra or Bust!

Today is the day where adult content starts the migration to the new adult mainland, Zindra.  Basically this is what I understand to be happening.  Land owners who have land considered to be “explicit adult content” (more on that later) will head out to Zindra and pick out a plot of land.  This is what land owners have been doing for the past two weeks since Zindra went online.  They need to pick at least three locations, and submit support tickets to Linden Lab three times (I guess one for each land choice).  Support ticket sumbitions start today, Monday June 29th.

The move will mean land owners will have to completely rebuild from scratch.  They will NOT pickup your land and drop it into the new sim already intact.  People who own full mainland sims MAY be able to get it copied over, but I think they may have to pay a fee.  Also,  the old land location will still be avalible so that you can place signs to redirect visitors to the new location for a while, so everyone and update their landmarks.

Land owners who pay full tier for a full sim, but don’t posess a full sims worth of land will likely NOT be given a full sim on the move. My basis of this isn’t from any announcements from Linden Labs, but just my belief.  I think there are many many land owners who fall into this category, since there isn’t a tier between half sim, and a whole sim.  And the fact there are only about 140 sims available in the new mainland Zindra, so I really don’t think Lindens will do this.  Unless they have added more sims since the last time I saw was in Zindra.

As to the definition of what constitutes “explicit adult content” is any public sex area.  So any place where you’ll find random people having sex in the open, they will have to move. This means that simple nudity (strip clubs, nude beaches, etc) don’t qualify under this.  Shops that sell sex beds, and sex poses balls and animations will not be subject to that either, since they are a place of business (yeah it’s always about the money…)  I’m also under the belief that private homes will not be subject to this, unless your home is also located in a public sex area.  There are some areas that are a sort of mix of both where they have shops, dancer and strippers, and a public sex area somewhere tucked in a corner.  My assumption they will have to move, or remove the public sex area.

This won’t happen over night, it’s expected to take months for this to roll out.  Since they are using support tickets to do all of this, it will obviously take time since land owners will have to wait when their number is called.  No one really knows how this will work out.  But we can assume that these areas will lose a lot of traffic since newbies will no longer be able to easily access adult sims, not with out first setting up payment info, or adult verification.  That might sound simple enough, but a lot of people out side of north America tend to have problems getting this set up.  So most users we hang out with now we might not be able to see them again at adult sims.

Becuase this will likely take months, there’s no real telling when the new adult content rules will be enforced, and any remaining land owners who do have “explicit adult content” will be punished.  I have no idea what they will even do to these users.  Ban them, or delete everything from thier parcel, or even give them the chance to move to Zindra.

There’s also question as to what happens to all the left over land left open.  Will it be subject to auctions by the original land owners (not likely since they were given new land in Zindra) or will it be open for people too buy up in a land rush to be auctioned off later.  Also will there be any left over land in Zindra for users to buy up and then auction off?  I’m also assuming that LL plans to add more sims to the adult mainland over time, since 140 sims isn’t that many.

Also as for private land (estate) land owners, they won’t have to move obvioiusly, but thier sims WILL no longer be maked as (Mature) they will become (Adult) if the land is considered “expliciet adult content.”  This also means that thier land will be subject to content filtering in seach, and users will need to be adult verified, or have payment info in order to get there.  Most of that has already occured with private sims since the new 1.23.4 version of the SL viewer was released a couple weeks ago.

Speaking of the SL viewer, you’re NOT required to use it to access the new “Adult” content.  You still need proper verification/payment info on your account, but you don’t need the new viewer.  All the new viewer does is the content filtering.  Also if you are using the new viewer you need to tell it that you DO want to view and access all content PG, Mature, and Adult.

New SL viewer, and Zindra!

I’m not sure why they did this but they changed a few fundamentals in this viewer that’s bugging me. First of all some of the pie menus have been changed around so you might accidentally choose something else.  Clicking on your avatar and going ‘down’ now activates appearance mode, so if you were clicking on an attachment you won’t accidentally click on “detach.”

Also the mini map compass has black letters and you can barely read it now, so you can’t tell which direction you’re facing now.  Arg!

Of course the big deal about this new viewer is the new adult content filters, and restrictions to the new sim classification of “Adult” (adding to the existing PG, and Mature sims we already have).  Which will lead to the adult content being segregated and moved onto a new mainland.  God knows this will be one big fiasco. Friends are calling this the end of SL, and it won’t last for another year.  I hear this every time LL makes a controvierial announcement, and we are still here.  But it would be nice if LL stopped making stupid choices like this, hopefully there won’t be a need for bonehead announcements after this big one has blown over… assuming it ever does considering how long this might take.

What I don’t get is what is actually making land owners move to the new mainland? It’s not like the Lindens can automatically earmark a parcel as “adult” and force them to move to Zindra.  Land owners who believe they have an adult themed area should submit a support ticket for the move, then wait for the Lindens to call their ticket up and help them move. In fact for the next two weeks the new mainland called “Zindra” will be an open house for users fly out and check out and claim spots.  However you DO have use an avatar with either adult verification or billing info on file/used, however you don’t need to use the new 1.23 viewer.

So apparently there won’t be a landgrab like there usually is when a new mainland opens up, allowing for the Lindens to take care of each landowner that wants to move.But that’s my point, the land owners who WANT to move, there’s was nothing said about being FORCED too. The Lindens like to talk about how no one is ever forced to do anything, like Adult Verification was never “forced” on anyone and back then adult themed land owners weren’t forced to flag thier land as adult.  They had to rely on other residents to submit abuse reports if they see adult themed areas that aren’t properly flagged. And NO ONE ever did that!  Even then it’s not like the Lindens automatically lay down the law, they probably have to get many reports about the same land for them to even care. Which supprised the hell out of me, since there are a lot of evil douchebags in SL who could EASILY abuse this and use thier army of alts to send abuse reports about landowners who didn’t properly flag thier land as “adult.”  I’m sure now the same will hold true for this segregation once people find left-over “adult themed” areas still on the older mainlands.  Probably from landowners who don’t login cept maybe one every six months.

As for Zindra it self, you don’t need to use the new 1.23 viewer to access the new mainland. However you DO need to have payment info on file/used, or be adult verified. All of the “adult” filtering is done at the viewer side of things, so using the older viewer, or alternate viewers aren’t required.