Soulbound in Bloodlines

Second lifers that role play as vampires is pretty popular. There are many tools in the game that cater to these creatures of the night. One of which, called Bloodlines was the first to catch my attention. This role playing game is the largest and fastest spreading in the SL world, and is subjected to much controversy.

I did my research, stopped by the store, and talked to people that played it. I soon got sour tastes in the objective of the game, primarily focused on the soul concept, which I believe is the root of the problem.

The game works like a tree system. A victim's soul is rewarded to the first biter after that victim buys a Bloodlines HUD. A Bloodlines player gets credit through souls they claim and that of their minions, thus climb up the vampire ranks. The higher your total soul is, the higher your rank will be as well as your generation. And here is the frustrating part of the game: Getting souls in anyway possible to rank up.

To improve their soul count, a Bloodliner must sell the game! Trick someone, be honest, or even buy it as a gift. Vampires have flirted and teased horny idiots on sex sims. "Hey baby, we'll make love if you buy this HUD for me...pwwwease." Some poor fool will fall for it and spend the 599L, seductress gets a new soul, and horny idiot is left with blue balls. But it's not always this skeezy. Some are actually intrested in buying the HUD, maybe found out about the game through a bite 'n run, and are recruited by the many vampires hanging around the Bloodlines store.

And here is where the real blood lust begins! They know if you hadn't bought the HUD so expect to get many tells asking you to be a vampire. Feel special! Vamps are on the lookout for you! Why? They want your soul =) They want you to buy the HUD!

It's marketing genius! The creators of Bloodlines, Liquid Designs, introduced a game where the primary goal is to evidently SELL the HUD, thus rewarding you with souls to make you Vampire royalty. Imagine! All these people who are obsessed with climbing the ranks, work to SELL the product for the creators! Free labor!

So fine...some people enjoy selling the game and recruiting people to their clan, and they have fun! Many are interested in adding people to their clan, and they'd be lucky if they found wonderful friendships. As said above, you can expect people to talk to you about Bloodlines at the Liquid Designs store or in Gothic themed environments.

However, there have been many complaints where the thirst has leaked onto sims where vampires simply do not fit. The game's scan ability can work anywhere at anytime. Gardens, farms, beaches, neko nurseries, you name it. Does it seem fit for a Bloodlines vampire to sell this game at a couture botique?

Nah, and chances are most Bloodliners know this and 'hunt' in more fitting areas. Unfortunately, the poor folks in these non-vamp places are still subjected to the effects of Bloodlines, in ways of a 'bite.' The bites with the HUD work anywhere as well, at least they will prompt a victim for an animation. Ideally, a Bloodliner will say hello to a fresh victim ("wanna be a vampire?") or do some sort of role play before biting, but there are thousands of incidents where no communication is initiated and a bite is prompted. But when people say "yes" to a bite, they will receive a package about Bloodlines and also will have their name listed on their website. There was no indication that your name will show up on a database, and this feature upsets many people in Second Life who were victims of a leech bite. One person had to go through so much frustration and trouble with Liquid Designs to have their name removed from the website.

Speaking of these leech bites, let's say some vamp bit someone who eventually became interested in playing the game. They'll go to the Bloodlines store where the vampires are lurking for a new soul or clan member and they'll find that person. Often do leech bite victims hang around the store contemplating on the game. Some vampires will actually be good and help that person out, even buy them the HUD and potion (wormwood potion must be drank to return the soul to your body after you buy the HUD, thus making your soul available to the vampire showing interest in you). In fact, I was told that a vampire spent about $40 on HUDs for people! Good God.

Any online RP game, I use "RP" so lightly here, will go through many patches and improvement over time. The creators introduced the garlic necklace that will ward off vampires completely when activated. It is free at least. Some say that it will remove the name from their website, but others say it won't. Another is an apple, found at the Eternal Orchard, that will restore humanity. Many vampires have relations with humans who are their source of blood, also known as a Blood Doll. The most recent change is an 14 day protection shield for new avatars. They may participate in Bloodlines if they buy the HUD, but they cannot recieve a bite without a HUD until they are 14 days old. Thus the need for hunting fresh victims for blood can be decreased, but Bloodliners will still hunt people to sell the game to for the sake of soul count!

Several sim owners have to deal with this sort of spam from vampires. Especially sims with Gothic items or themes. No one wants their customers harassed. Wouldn't you find it annoying if someone were to sell you a car when you're out to buy milk?

You can often see ban signs and warnings everywhere, not for vampires...for Bloodlines! But signs may not be enough. Many sim owners are opting for a complete restriction of the HUD on their property. In other words, the creators of Bloodlines must provide a free script to sim owners to disallow the use of the Bloodlines HUD. At least! Ideally, sims should install a script to allow the use of Bloodlines exactly like the DCS2 HUD. However, I don't think we will see that incorporated unless Linden Labs personally restricted Liquid Designs.

On a brighter side, if the whole soul concept was ignored, the game would be fun without causing pain and frustration for both sides. Granted, if you can forget about the frustration of soul searching and ignore the ranks, then the HUD is neat to have for bite, fang, and other cool animations. I still have it in my inventory for certain role plays ;) Bloodliners that are focused on selling thus often forgetting their role play as vampires,deeply saddens me. Some Bloodliners that I had light acquaintances with are always busy hunting...all they will do when they log on. But people will play how they seem fit. Some people are goal driven, some get off on bites, and some like to beat a dead bloodless horse.

Pleasure Island

The recent entry from the official Second Life blog discusses upcoming changes in adult content. They hope to control the adult content with three steps. First is to separate the adult content from the mainland in hopes sex sensitive avatars won't accidentally stumble upon a big giant penis and ruin their SL experince. Second is to filter out adult content in searches, and last is to verify accounts as adults.

Currently most of the sims are flagged as mature, however many do not have offensive content. At least in my opinion. I agree that there needs to be a distinction, in regards for search filtering, between a night club and a free sex farm. Both of these are intended for adults, but for different reasons. The night club may allow swearing and have alcohol everywhere, which will require a flag to weed out kids. But the only available rating is M for both of these places. Also, combat places share the M tag, which also flood the search pool. So right now we have a plethora of M rated sims for an extremely wide range of reasons. Hopefully a new rating system will be implemented to help us search sims with ease.

However, I do not feel that sims need to be moved for no matter how offensive. With a better rating and account verification, a wandering sim can be warned about the content they're entering. Something perhaps they can set in preferences. There are a lot of traffic in these hardcore places, and redirecting into one zone will not be good. If all of these sexy places were shipped to a far away island, I would imagine the lag would be atrocious.

Naturally, the community is in uproar at the though of being moved to a 'ghetto' to cater to new accounts. Some have suggested that new avatars will have their own continent to play in until they get verified. I too am upset that people will be pushed around, especially since the adult market makes a huge impact on L and population. Hopefully these changes won't be as severe as we may fear.

Evicted Already? Stock Up on Long Underwear

I should of figured it was too good to be true. I was informed by my landlord yesterday that she will not continue to run the sim of Dolorosa. So that means, all Dolorosa tenants have about two weeks left on the sim and need to find a new home. I owned about a 16K large plot of land and paid 2K/week for 937 prims. It was a sim of four parcels, two of my neighbors followed the theme, the other put up a commercial lot for high prim houses.

The reason she will stop running the sim is because of teleportation issues. I never had a problem teleporting to my lot, in fact it loads very nicely. I have to wonder if any of my neighbors or their guests (*ahem* customers) had difficulty. -_-

Second Life will be Second Life. Wonderful one day and surprises you the next. Teleport issues seemed to be a common bug, unlike the long underwear glitch. As we know, most flexi skirts have panties of the same color that is needed to be worn underneath to avoid 'butt clipping.' However, some pants and socks are ignoring the alpha map and thus covering the entire leg from toe to hip. This is incredibly annoying for dresses and affected a good chunk of my wardrobe. Apparently it's happening with Nvidea cards, probably with a new driver, but still shouldn't even be a lasting issue in a software that features digital fashion. I'm weary to go shopping, fear of what will happen in the image to the left. All the under pants turned to leggings that aren't meant to even go past the skirt. Ruined my closet. Sometimes, I just want to punch a baby through a wall of Nekos.

Studio 54

Tonight started a bit drab for me on the grid. On slow nights I search through events with high expectations. Lots of places were busy tonight with the usual dancing and spamming. Unlike stores, I have yet to build up a list of hangouts to fit my liking.

Being a shy chick with not much to say in a new spot, I randomly troll profiles while dancing and see what picks someone might have. I noticed someone was a member of a club group for Studio 54. Familiar with the name, I had to teleport and see what the SL version was like. When I first landed, Guns and Roses was playing. Thought 'all right this is a good sign.'

Stepping in, I was amazed by the decor. I can't emphasize how annoyed I am with clubs that look as if Vegas threw up on the grid. Not Studio 54. No tacky obstructions and the right touch of lighting. The club has a classy feel and wasn't overwhelmed with lagging scripts and decor.

There are several dance animations packed in three orbs. The clubs I previously visited normally had a limited set which often resulted in the entire dance floor in perfect sync. Silly. I have two favorites dances in my inventory to avoid awkward animations provided by some clubs. Fortunately, in Studio 54, I didn't need to use my own animations as their orbs include a wide variety of dances to match the music. Speaking of, the DJ's choice of music was right up my alley. It was a great mix of rock which matched the night's particular theme.

There was an event running during the time of my visit, and at the moment have no idea what it's like during non-events. The club tonight was filled with bodies and was tons of fun and can't wait for the next event!

Teleport to Studio 54