One of the first role play combat games I came across in Second Life™ was NoR. So, while I seldom play there now, I have a spot in my heart for NoR. The regions making up NoR are shutting down. People that have stuff in the regions have less than 24 hours to get it out. Drop dead time about 11AM SLT 9/18.
If you know people that play in NoR, let them know. Email them, call them, whatever and let them know the clock is running.
So, what happened? Well… this is a dark role play game. The people involved like drama and confrontation. So… the story I’ve heard sounds plausible. This announcement was posted 9/17 by Bizarre Obscure:
Posted at 2015/09/17 11:13
Fine.. Crisis dictates the pace and out the window goes the plan.
- The short run down of things.
- NoR got pulled from SL due to a pissing contest between Luxa and LL.
- Luxa got blocked by LL due to inactivity a while back
- All Tier was paid to Luxa, as landowners know
- Sic couldn’t pay Tier as Luxa was blocked
- LL refused to simply take the L$ that was on the Luxa account
Staff is working to get Remembrance and 1 or 2 other sims back online in a week or so.
A request has been put in to make the NoR sims accessible again for 24 hours(!), so landowners can pick up their stuff. This will happen in about an hour or so,,, please inform the landowners and residents you know have land and /or stuff placed.
Remembrance will be back with 100% certainty and there is a chance some other sims will be saved as well, we are still working on that. Do pick up your rare and no copy items to be sure they are safe.
Today Remembrance and the associated regions are up. This is temporary. Expect them to go down about 11AM SLT 9/18.
What I think is going on is one of the top people, Luxa, was managing the accounts and holding region ownership. Luxa stopped logging in for some reason. By prior arrangement the team had things working pretty much on automatic and didn’t need to use the account. I’m speculating.
Linden Lab runs pretty much on automatic. Think bureaucracy. Luxa had not logged in for some time and the account got archived. Once archived none of those with control of the account could login with it to fix things. When archived the automatic payments stopped. Regions went past due and on the 14th those regions shut down at the Tuesday grid restart and were not brought backup.
Apparently, from the posts on the forum and to group chat, the problem was no surprise. Whatever process there is for fixing these problems, it didn’t work for NoR managers. They didn’t get it resolved before the regions got shut down.
One of the announcements says:
This is probably the roughest period NoR is going through, we saw it coming, but couldn’t say as opening up the risk that it might be pulled would be suicide by itself. We did prepare though, the Process of making the UCE meter and NoR config global secures our XP, the forum our stories. We WILL be back, I do not give up on NoR! Smaller, different.. but a fresh start. Staff is with me and I hope you as well.
Bizarre Obscure – 9/17
So, they knew it was coming, but couldn’t get it resolved. Think about it. If someone owns a region, and someone else wants the Lab to transfer region ownership to them… and the Lab cannot talk to the current owner, what are they supposed to do? If this was a way to get the lab to transfer ownership, lots of people would be trying it.
So, transferring regions and L$ are a security consideration rich process. One can assume it didn’t go well.
The latest news is:
Thursday,17 Sep 2015 16:30:29 GMT
Not so much [news], as I am just home from work… however… I would like to invite everyone to an information meeting in Dread tomorrow at 12 PM slt.
What is clear so far is that there will be some BIG changes… And though this came sudden, we were not unprepared with the UCE meter.. (aren’t you glad we are global now?). We are working on things and with the Lindens to see what is possible. More news tomorrow.
Bizarre Obscure – 9/17
So, get your stuff and tell your friends. Check into the meeting to see what the next steps are.
NoR Forum – The forum and groups remain active.