From Avination to Second Life

In February 2011, I left Second Life, because of the lack of respect they showed the security and privacy of their customers, permitting the data-mining by the spyware zF RedZone for over a year, despite more and more alarming reports on how it was used to abuse Second Life customers. Linden Lab eventually banned the spyware and its controller, after it was revealed the controller was a convicted Internet fraudster who used the spyware to phish for Second Life passwords among other things, but they refused to take measures to prevent similar systems from continuing operating then or in the future.

I gave up Second Life then, abandoning two full sims, and moved to Avination, hoping it would be a safe haven from similar incidents. I had researched several alternative grids, but Avination seemed the most promising, from a technical perspective. Since it runs on the alpha-stage OpenSim server software, I was expecting technical glitches, and I got them, even a bit more than I had expected.

First it was the asset service disaster, probably resulting from a successful PR campaign bringing in so many new users the servers couldn't keep up, but lost, corrupted and threw especially textures any which way. After a month and a half, in late March, that was somewhat under control though, and life went on with just the occasional sim freezes and crashes, failed teleports and script failures. The latter was expected and quite manageable though.

Early April, the Redgrave / Mimi's Choice debacle struck, where two of the high-profile merchants left Avination over "differences" with the grid owner. Since I didn't know the full story, I gave Avination management the benefit of a doubt about what really happened, despite it didn't make them look good. I was more worried about the editing of the discussion "for legal reasons" and the gaming of it with alts of Avination management, and it did put a dent in my trust for them.

Mid April, Avination lost its PayPal services, and despite they were soon restored, the information about it to the customers left much to be desired.

Early May, the next glitch struck, when Avination management without notice tried to sneak in poorer rezzing performance to improve things for those few venue arrangers who attracted more than a few visitors to their venues. The result was a lot poorer rezzing performance and in-world experience to all the rest of their customers. After heavy criticism, management backed off from that "improvement".

Just a week later, the server upgrade with untested, bleeding edge code changes that sank logins and grid services for the two weeks to come were implemented. Logins were down repeatedly for up to 4 hour stretches, and meanwhile, teleporting, inter-sim messaging and often movement was poor or totally out in-world. That also marked the beginning of an accelerated decrease in region numbers lasting for almost two months.

Early June, Avination management decided to hire the infamous viewer developer JCool / Fractured Crystal to "fix" their viewer, despite him being known for developing copybot viewers and turning Second Life's then most popular viewer Emerald into spyware and a DDoS tool. Despite lasting only a few weeks before being fired again for continued violations of rules and after a public uproar, his appearance marked the beginning of a steep decline in user activity in Avination which is still ongoing.

In the aftermath of the JCool incident, I had a heated e-mail exchange with the Avination grid owner Melanie, where she falsely accused me of having made threats against Avination on my blog, and lied me straight in the face about things I had said according to her. I was prepared to let that pass with the half apology she made about it, even if it took away her last traces of credibility with me. However, four days later, my home sim, which was paid for another three weeks, "accidentally" got deleted from the grid, and my support ticket about it was ignored for 5 days, until I made the issue a public embarrassment for Avination management on their forum.

I got furious over the way Melanie got back at me, disregarding all the other shop owners in the deleted sim who got hit in the process, and Maggie broke down and cried over losing our home and security in Avination like that. We then decided to leave Avination, the weekend 2011-07-09 - 10, abandoning our own sim under construction, despite all the efforts and care we put into it together. Despite it made me feel sick to feed more money to Melanie, I made good on my promise to the others in the sim deleted and eventually restored, and another sim I had also "adopted" after its owner left Avination, probably because of "differences" with Melanie as well, and made a final payment to keep the sims up until late August, despite not having any real illusions about Melanie honoring the payment.

Right after the sim deletion, Melanie threw in another untested upgrade of the servers, wrecking about as much havoc on the grid as the mid-May upgrade did, and which Avination is still fighting to recover from. This time they claimed that much of it was owing to several disks happening to break simultaneous with the upgrade, and another server failing spontaneously at the same time. I'd give that as much credit as the sim deletion and support ticket ignoring just happened to coincide with my brawl with Melanie though.

We lost much in leaving Avination: Our home, our common labor of love in our own sim, Maggie's wonderfully artful and tipsy creations, and a friend who was very dear to us, who also decided to leave Avination after hearing about the way management had acted, but who for personal reasons refused to go back to Second Life. But we also learned a lot, about each other, about Maggie's abilities as a creator, and about what we can achieve when we work together, combining my straight-line perfectionism with her playful tipsiness. Hopefully, I also learned better not to be so naive about others. Where there's smoke, there's fire, and my decision to give Melanie the benefit of a doubt, despite what I already heard about her, was an obvious mistake.

I still dislike Linden Lab's way of managing Second Life, and their way of disregarding their customers, but my experiences in Avination makes going back to Second Life feel like the lesser of two evils, since the other OpenSim alternatives don't offer what I require yet. Fortunately, I still had a premium account and the "free" 512 sqm parcel to go with it in Second Life, so Maggie and me could start creating a new home there, first a simple, bought skybox, but after a couple of days a skybox we built ourselves, and keep improving. A 512 sqm parcel with 117 prims may seem poor after having owned 2 full sims before in Second Life, and a full sim in Avination, but we have the necessities there, and I don't feel like feeding Linden Lab money any more than I felt like keep feeding them to Melanie.

A huge lighthouse

To keep things simple with Maggie's helicopter circling the BDSM island, I built a tower in Doric style this morning, as a kind of "station" at altitude for it. In the afternoon, I modified it some, and added a large fire bowl on its top, making it kind of an ancient lighthouse. The view from there, as well as from the circling helicopters, is great, and I think that it can become a popular attraction on the island. I also cleaned up some in the dungeon, added the new dildo pole I finished yesterday to all the cells and the common dungeon area as well, and added image holders both to the tower and in the to-be art maze.

Later in the evening, Maggie brought me to a place selling houses, garden furniture and full set pools. She was much after the pool furniture, but was almost jumping up and down from wanting the pool itself. I have already been planning for a pool at the to-be club area, but these pools were large. However, if they're mod as it says, I should be able to fix both its size and its looks, to make it fit and blend in better in the environment. We will wait with buying until tomorrow though, to melt and ponder some on it.

Economy:
2011-06-18: uploads -C$550
Avination stats:
2011-06-19 04:14 UTC, 32,633 residents, 7,397 in 30d, 1,006 sims

Real life interference

Some sad real life happenings have prevented me from visiting Avination for a few days, but today I was there as usual, although not in the best of moods. Maggie and I spent the morning chatting, and in the evening she showed me what she and Lena had built while I was gone. Maggie has prettified the sim BDSM quite some more and created a new hammock, while Lena had built a pretty naughty seesaw toy. Those two girls seem to like each other quite some, and I'm glad for that.

Economy:
2011-06-05: -
2011-06-06: rock and grass -C$275
2011-06-07: -
2011-06-08: -
Avination stats:
2011-06-06 04:18 UTC, 30,890 residents, 7,531 in 30d, 1,027 sims
2011-06-07 04:18 UTC, 30,988 residents, 7,468 in 30d, 1,020 sims
2011-06-08 04:15 UTC, 31,066 residents, 7,437 in 30d, 1,013 sims
2011-06-09 04:15 UTC, 31,235 residents, 7,405 in 30d, 1,013 sims

Slow progress

This morning, I spent the time in bed, chatting with Maggie. In the evening, I kept building the railroad until Maggie came, a bit later than usual, and then the sim BDSM messed up, so we decided to restart BDSM and go spend some time together in Sweet Hideout instead, before restarting that one too after we logged out.

Economy:
2011-05-31: upload -C$10, decoration fund for Maggie -C$600
Avination stats:
2011-06-01 04:16 UTC, 30,454 residents, 7,707 in 30d, 1,040 sims

BDSM devices and railroads

Yesterday, I spent much of my time in Avination trying to straighten out one of my old BDSM devices from Second Life, a kind of Spanish horse. Scripting wasn't really on my side, and when I finally got the scripts working, I discovered the sit animation wobbled. I still havn't managed to track down if that's because of the animation itself or something else. Things do work a bit different in Avination compared to Second Life, so just because something worked flawlessly in Second Life doen't mean it does in Avination. Maggie spent much of her time working on a new carrousel, and prettifying the area with greenery and things.

Today, we spent the morning chatting, and in the evening, after shopping some plants and waves with Maggie, I finally took time to raise a ridge on the BDSM island to make room for Maggie to create a dramatic waterfall, plus increasing the size of a little island she wanted to prettify some. I also started laying out the railroad line around the island, so Maggie will be able to adapt her greenery and decorations from the start, instead of having to remake it later. I got a good start, but still have about half of the main line left to lay out.

Economy:
2011-05-29: sale +C$10
2011-05-30: upload -C$10
Avination stats:
2011-05-30 04:16 UTC, 30,241 residents, 7,633 in 30d, 1,041 sims
2011-05-31 04:16 UTC, 30,345 residents, 7,746 in 30d, 1,040 sims


Spanish horse of kind, in the dungeon at the sim BDSM



The sim BDSM, from SW with railroading, landscaping and waterscaping in progress



The pond in the sim BDSM, prettyfied by Maggie

First own sim in Avination

After having discussed things thoroughly with Maggie, looked at possible locations and their possibilities, and at different default island shapes, we agreed on a setup we both liked. So, I bought us our first own sim in Avination this evening. It's a nice and hilly island with curvy waterline with several bays and peninsulas. The location is right next to the Welcome island.

Maggie was more or less standing jumping up and down from frustration while I tried to set it up so we could both be there while the island was still private. The grid suddenly freezing up for both me and her didn't make things one bit easier. Finally I had it all right, including a matching group for the island management, so we could look around the island together. I liked it, and Maggie really fell in love with it. While looking around, I also tested Maggie's crashing some, and finally came up with something that at least seems to reduce her crashing a lot.

After Maggie and I had parted for the night, I couldn't help but logging back in and take some snapshots of our island, and setting up my favourite web radio as music stream from my old sim in Second Life.

Our sim BDSM at (1011,1005), overview

Our sim BDSM at (1011,1005), from SW

Our sim BDSM at (1011,1005), one of the bays and peninsulas

Gifts and planning

Lately, Maggie has gotten a couple of very nice gifts that our friend Lena has created, and I helped some with scripting. They are for erotic role-play, and today we finally found time to try them out properly. They really added some to our interaction, and Maggie really likes them too, both the design and the functions.

Before playing, we also discussed some of the implications with getting our own sim, and e.g. where to place it in this world. Fortunately, we both agreed on the best way to go about it, but I still want some more time to think it through thoroughly.

Unfortunately, most statistics about Avination, that I've collected since February, points to that it loses both sims, activities and people. Many who have been here more or less from the start seems to have had enough and sold, abandoned or cancelled their sims before leaving Avination themselves. Some announce it publicly, other just leave quietly. I feel unsure about investing money, and even more a lot of time and efforts, into Avination under those circumstances, but at the same time I have a strong urge to really get started with creating something more permanent.

Economy:

2011-05-07: clothes -C$425

2011-05-08: -

Avination stats:

2011-05-08 09:45 CET, 27,947 residents, 8,182 in 30d, 1,111 sims

2011-05-09 06:01 CET, 28,077 residents, 8,175 in 30d, 1,116 sims

Places saved

The last few days, I haven't been much in Avination, owing to real-life activities. Sunday, Maggie and I talked with two of the other leasers in Sweet Hideout though, Rosie and scorpio, and we were all as worried about what had happened to the owner trad. scorpio was even planning on leaving Sweet Hideout owing to the uncertainty. I wrote to Avination and explained the situation, requesting to be permitted to pay trad's tier for his two sims while he were away, and to have temporary manager permissions on them until he comes back.

This evening, when I checked the mail, I discovered a mail from Avination about the tier for Sweet Retreat being due 5 days ago already. Fortunately, the sim had not been erased, so I paid the tier immediately and hope the sim will remain online. I also know the tier for Sweet Hideout is due in less than a month now. That was all the information I got from Avination so far. Nothing about trad or the manager permissions.

At least it seems like we will be able to save the sims for the time being now. Sweet Hideout is home for Maggie and me, and also many of the other leasers really like the sims, some having their homes in Sweet Retreat, and not just for the low rent they need to pay.

After I were done with trad's business, sending an IM to him with information about the situation, Maggie and I took a look into Sweet Retreat. She hasn't dared go there for a long time, because she has crashed often there before. This time she survived both the visit and the two accompanying sim border crossings forth and back. We spent quite some time relaxing and chatting in the little nature paradise trad created there.

Economy:

2011-04-24: gift to Maggie -C$25

2011-04-25: sale +C$10

2011-04-26: -

Avination stats:

2011-04-25 10:02 CET, 26,347 residents, 8,626 in 30d, 1,110 sims

2011-04-26 05:41 CET, 26,461 residents, 8,608 in 30d, 1,110 sims

2011-04-27 04:54 CET, 26,597 residents, 8,586 in 30d, 1,115 sims

Major shopping

Both this morning and evening, Maggie and I went shopping. In a way I guess it's a kind of confirmation that we really intend to make Avination our new home. I'm still not certain if Avination will manage to sort out all their present technical problems, but at least I hope.

In the morning, we bought a multi-pose bed for our little house, with both relax, cuddle and sex poses. In the afternoon, we tried it out some... Later in the evening, we went clothes shopping for me. Maggie immediately, by chance or instinct, found a new store with shoes I liked, something I've had major difficulties with before, since I'm a bit picky. In another store, I bought a 8 piece suit, after some discussion with Maggie about colors and such. She also, as a gift, bought me a pair of jeans and a polo shirt, also after some discussion about models and colors regarding the polo shirt. After that, it was late and time for bed, for the first night in our new bed.

Avination still have problems with rezzing shapes, skins and textures, but it actually seems to have improved a little over the last week. Unfortunately Maggie seems to be crashing more now than a couple of weeks ago, but I at least found one more sculpt texture that has been broken for quite some time suddenly becoming correct again.

Economy:

2011-03-18: sales +C$20, hair -C$300

Avination stats:

2011-03-19 07:36 CET, 20,702 residents, 8,720 in 30d, 1,133 sims

Shopping and small talk

This morning, I slept instead of coming to Avination, trying to get rid of the RL infections that have been messing with me for some 3 weeks now. In the evening, Maggie and I first went on some freebie "shopping", ending up with a really nice freebie tuxedo for me, and a lovely gown for her. Later, we greeted our landlord trad, who was busy building again, a museum this time, and met another shop owner in his sim, who also have a lot of shops in other places. It was a nice evening, but we both were tired, so logged off to go to bed rather early.

Economy:

2011-03-14: skin purchase -C$1

Avination stats:

2011-03-15 08:35 CET, 20,060 residents, 8,119 in 30d, 1,142 sims

Fixed and messed up

This morning, Maggie and I went to buy a C$1 skin on a sale for me, which really wasn't bad for that price. I'll need to tweak my facial shape some to make it look quite good though. We looked around some more in the sim and mall, and I found a few things there that may come in handy in the future, even if I didn't buy anything but the skin.

This evening, Avination was quite a mess, again. I couldn't log in, I couldn't TP, I didn't rezz. Also, Avination states they're done with the mess regarding the asset services now, which means that both Maggie and me definitely lost quite a few textures and works in progress. The textures I can live with, because that's just a bit of money and inconvenience to have to upload again, but I feel sorry for Maggie who lost things that she may never be able to re-create.

I have paid the rent for our shops and house for another four weeks now, but if things don't start working better soon, I think it's time to start looking into the alternatives to Avination. The total number of sims went down for the second consecutive day now, and that should be a strong warning to the owners that something is making their paying customers unhappy enough to walk away. Even if the total number of registered users break 20,000 this evening, I think it's not all that much to celebrate, considering that the owners risk having a lot of dissatisfied former customers as "ambassadors" out there.

Economy:

2011-03-13: rent -C$480, sales +C$10

Avination stats:

2011-03-14 06:01 CET, 19,900 residents, 7,954 in 30d, 1,144 sims

An end

Today I ended my presence in Second Life. In less than four hours I tore down and abandoned everything I spent almost four years building up there, dropping assets worth several USD 1,000. But I can't continue endorsing a virtual world where the owners side with racketeers, fully knowingly letting third party spyware run on their servers to collect data being used to intimidate, stalk, harass and grief their customers, in blatant violation of their own Terms of Service and utter contempt of their customers.

Right now, I just feel empty, frustrated, sad. But at the same time, now that I'm done with Second Life, I hopefully will find the time and energy to focus better on Avination, trying to build something up here instead. It will probably take some time before I'm really in the mood for it though.

Economy:

2011-03-07: sales +C$60

Avination stats:

2011-03-07 06:00 CET, 18,614 residents, 6,578 in 30d, 1,146 sims

Me down and out RL

Yesterday and today, I've been in bad shape owing to a RL illness, so I haven't been up to much in Avination.

Yesterday morning, I actually skipped Avination and slept instead. In the evening, Maggie and I played Zyngo, then went to check out some freebie or cheap places she had found, and later went dancing to a place with a DJ for the first time in Avination. It was nice, and I enjoyed the music. What was a bit amusing was that almost everyone in the place had oversized their avatars so they looked like anorectic aliens. My avatar is just above 2 meters, but I was a dwarf there.

Today, we went looking at stores in the morning, and I found some freebie T-shirts and jeans. In the afternoon and evening, I fixed a freebie sign for our shop, another sign for an adboard that Maggie rented for us, wrote an information notecard about our shop, updated our parcel description and published us in in-world search. Later, Maggie and I went a bit crazy, creating some devilish angelic outfits with black wings, halos, fire and shades. But after that, my illness got the better of me, and I needed to leave early.

Economy:

2011-03-03: upload -C$10

2011-03-04: sales +C$40, Zyngo +C$48, advertisement -C$20

Avination stats:

2011-03-04 08:29 CET, 17,529 residents, 5,387 in 30d, 1,121 sims

2011-03-05 09:27 CET, 17,800 residents, 5,690 in 30d, 1,132 sims

Avination, the beginning

This blog will tell some about my experiences in virtual worlds, starting out with the world Avination.

Backlog

• 2011-02-12 : I came to Avination to investigate alternatives to Second Life.
• 2011-02-13 : I was joined by my dear friend Maid, who has been with me in Second Life for 16 months. We explored some and we found our first freebies, me a T-shirt from FYI and a vendor from MLPV. I tweaked my avatar some to make it more to my taste.
• 2011-02-14 : Maid and I explored some in Avination. We found a freebie demo cuff set from Satiated Desires.
• 2011-02-15 : Maid and I explored some in Avination.
• 2011-02-16 : Maid and I explored some in Avination. We found a freebie shelf from Time Engineer, a wall shadow box from Allegro Chan and a cat suit from Fashion Vaher. I decided to get us some money (bought C$ 4000 for USD 16 and gave Maid C$ 1000), rented a shop for Maid and me in the region Sweet Hideout from trad Aeon (C$ 1 for the land and C$ 200 for 4 weeks rent), and created a simple 3-prim fountain for sale there.
• 2011-02-17 : I started creating a 1-prim stellarium, much as a scripting exercise to create a basic and re-usable interaction script (C$ 160 for texture uploads). I rented a small seafront house in the region Sweet Hideout from trad Aeon (C$ 80 for 4 weeks rent).
• 2011-02-18 : I kept working on my stellarium (C$ 10 for texture upload).
• 2011-02-19 : I created a shop sign "Magnuz & Maid", a hole texture, two vase sculpts, a general plant sculpt, 3 flower textures, and 4 2-prim in-world flower arrangements from the latter (C$ 80 for uploads).
• 2011-02-20 : I found freebie jeans from FYI, got the main features of the stellarium script working, and celebrated by letting Maid teach me how to play Zyngo (won C$ 36). My sweet Maid bought me a suit from Rosie Marksman in our home region Sweet Hideout to share some of her winnings, after we had explored Avination some and found the prices in other places rather high.
• 2011-02-21 : I sold my first creation, the simple 3-prim fountain for C$ 10. I rented a main street shop in the region Sweet Hideout from trad Aeon (C$1 for the land and C$ 200 for 4 weeks rent). Maid and I set up a small garden with my stellarium on the roof terrace, moved our things from the first shop to the 1st floor of the new one, and I created a simple 3-prim garden chair.

Summary

Avination is still a young and comparatively small world, even if it's growing rapidly (from 11,000 to 14,000 residents and 850 to 1,000 regions in my first week). It is of course much less rich in content than e.g. Second Life, but many content creators are moving there, or at least have part of their activities there. There are still some technical problems with the platform, but usually nothing that can't be sorted out by re-logging and clearing cache once in a while.

Avination is profiled much as a commercial world. One risk, partly already verified by in-world excursions, is that there is an over-establishment of malls, their owners wanting to make money on the content creators, but also an over-establishment of content creators, compared to the number of buyers. This results in many ambitious but more or less empty malls, and few or no customers in the shops that do exist. Also, both land rentals and content prices are often surprisingly high, considering the low cost of sims (USD 60/month), probably owing to many believing that lack of competition enables them to set their prices with large margins.

There still seems to be a lot of pioneer attitude in Avination, with people on an average more friendly and willing to help out than in e.g. Second Life. Or, that may be because we've just been lucky and run into the right people so far.

Thanks

Melanie Milland, the founder and director of Avination, also a lead developer of the OpenSimulator platform it's based on, for providing a full world which is surprisingly stable considering it's run on what the developers themselves say is a pre-alpha software.

trad Aeon, the creator, owner and manager of mine and Maid's now home region Sweet Hideout and neighboring sims, for creating a very nice environment, offering places to rent for very humane prices, and being an extremely nice and helpful guy.

Ying Inglewood, the owner of FYI, for providing Maid and me with our first useful freebies in her shop FYI, and for leading us to Sweet Hideout, our now home, in the first place.