Wookey Project Corp. Buys Sansar

Linden Lab announced today that the virtual world of Sansar has been sold to The Wookey Project Corporation.

In their online statement about themselves Wookey says:

PUTTING ONLINE POWER BACK INTO YOUR HANDS 

Wookey started from our own experience. Just like you, we saw the limitations of flat, one-dimensional internet interaction. With each experience, the frustration grew. It’s evident that algorithms are telling me what it wants, not hearing what I need.

What if we could create online experiences that were unbiased and arranged by relevance to us, not by advertisers or bias of company? We realized, with the right team and the right investors, we can.

Wookey was born. We endeavor to create a new generation of online AR/VR experiences that allows users the power of collaborative interaction through knowledge immersion.

That sounds rather exciting, doesn't it? Perhaps I should not give up my Sansar account yet.

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P.S. This might be a good time to rebut all the many rumors that The BMcM Corporation had any interest in acquiring Sansar. (The fact that it was the only shareholder of the company who was disseminating the rumors did not help either, but how does one tell a laird to STFU?)

A Message From Our Dear Ebbe

I hope you all got this wonderful email from our darling Ebbe Linden.

Ebbe Altberg, aka Ebbe Linden, sexy as hell in scruff

Dear Second Life Residents,

It’s been an exciting summer at Linden Lab. Second Life celebrated its 14th anniversary, and shortly thereafter we also opened Sansar's creator beta to the world. In addition, we are 

thrilled to announce a set of investments into Second Life and its communities that will include enhancements to our engineering support, customer support, billing systems and upgrades, and customer acquisition outreach. In all, we’ve budgeted many millions (USD, not L$...) in the coming year to make SL even better, and we’ll keep everyone up to date on improvements as they roll out (or sooner).

This summer’s milestones have given us all another opportunity to reflect on just how strong the Second Life community is, what an incredible history SL has had so far, and what an amazing future lies ahead for the virtual world and its Residents.

For more than 14 years, you’ve created memorable experiences, diverse communities, close relationships, thriving economies, engaging art, exciting events, and amazing creations of all kinds. You’ve made the world, and we’re proud to provide the platform and tools that help you to do so. We at Linden continue to be impressed by what we witness from Residents every day, and we want you to know that we share that commitment to and love for Second Life.

Here are a few of the things you can look forward to soon:

• We are hard at work upgrading all of the SL infrastructure and moving it to the cloud, which will bring a wealth of opportunities to Residents near and far, and allow us, among many other things, to make SL more performant for Residents across the world from us. It may also allow us to introduce new products with more flexible pricing. 
• We’re working on several features to increase the value of Premium subscriptions. Most recently we gave Premium members priority access to near-full events, and shortly, we’ll be ready to unveil another bit of exciting news for subscribers. 
• We're building out a series of great extensions to Windlight (code name: EEP!), which will give value, flexibility, and new marketability to land, and will make Windlight settings tradeable assets. 
• We have an extension to the animation system in the works (code name: Animesh) that will allow non-avatar objects to use more powerful and efficient skeletal animations the way avatars can today, and even more changes planned for creators and merchants later in the year. 
• We’ve also got new experiences and events coming. An exciting new grid-wide gaming experience is coming soon! The team can’t wait to share the details with you in just a few days. Also in the works for this fall is an updated Halloween Haunted Tour, with new spooktacular events to celebrate. Not to mention, we’re turning 15 next year - SL15B, baby! That’s an incredible milestone and we are looking forward to collaborating with you to produce an amazing celebration. 

Long live Second Life and long live the creative process in the amazing worlds that you've trail-blazed! Thank you for filling SL with your creations and communities all of these past 14+ years, and here’s to many, many more together.

Best,

Ebbe Linden, CEO & the Second Life Team

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Well, what can one say after that breathtaking declaration of love, other than "We love you right back, Ebbe baby, and the SecondLife Team too!💗💗💗"

I hope you all noticed the remark about "amazing creations of all kinds", which we all know must certainly include my fashion-forward and spectacular "The Jester's Hat"! Nothing else comes to mind really so it must be Linden-lingo for Bock's creation.

It is also good to know that the Lab is going to keep on investing in, working with and improving SecondLife despite the doomsday prophets who for a long time have been crowing about how the Lab will lose all interest in SecondLife once Sansar is launched.

Sansar Beta Opens to the Public

Today I was told that Sansar had been opened for the general inquisitive public, so I of course had to try it out.

I managed to successfully create an account and then logged in. I took a long while until everything was in place and I found myself standing on top of people three-deep. More than I had gotten the idea to try it out it would seem.

Bock at the Zen Garden in Sansar

One important thing to remember is that this game is primarily intended for those with an Occulus setup. They get more information on the screen and can do things you cannot do without the Occulus. I couldn't do mush once I was logged in and had managed to extricate myself from the others enough so I could move around. There was a great deal of lag too,

I could talk, but I couldn't see the names of anyone of those around me so I didn't know if I knew then. At another place ("experience") named 114 (something) created by Draxtor, I listened in to a conversation between a Linden representative and a woman and as far as I understand the launch of the beta had been successful with only a few minor glitches.

As far as I understand there are - at least as yet - no intention of connecting the two worlds, except possibly through Marketplace. So two worlds, two accounts.

Later I was contacted by a friendly guy named Colt, who said he recognized my name from SecondLife. So we had a nice chat. After a while I felt really tired of being back to 2007 and feeling like a noob - although I can see there is a great potential - so I logged. We'll see how much and how often I visit again, maybe this is something directed mainly at the very young gamers. I am not a gamer, I am a venerable, old, resident.

LL Launches Preview of Sansar This Summer (Update)

Linden Lab has announced that it is going to let skilled content creators to be among the first to preview and work in Sansar. The preview version is - after some delay - to be launched during the summer of 2017.

Sansar is supposedly an improved and much more advanced version of SecondLife and is said to be based on a completely new and powerful platform.

For more information please visit: www.sansar.com.

Those of us that aren't skilled content creators can meanwhile enjoy the official preview video from YouTube.


Update
This is a comment from Lee McKay on Google+. I think it is very informative and would like to share it with you.

A couple things to note about Sansar:
1) There is no connected world like with Second Life. It's all separate "experiences". You can only log into one "experience" at a time. So for example, you want to go to a club or community, you log into that specific thing. If you want to go somewhere else, you log out and back into the other place, or at least back to a menu. Don't look for "world map" or teleporting from place to place. It's not there.
2) Experiences can be instanced. So you might go to your favorite club, but be in a different "instance" of that club than your friends, and therefore you won't even see them there. You wouldn't even see the DJ or staff if they aren't in the same instance as you. Certainly this gets around the user limits, but spoils much of the reason for being there in the first place.
3) Sansar is "usable" on a computer and monitor, but is aimed at VR gear and headsets. Most of us SL'ers will probably never have the stuff to use it properly.
Even by Linden's own admission, it isn't mean to be Second Life 2.0. It's something else entirely, aimed more at the younger generation of gamers. It operates more like the things they are used to.

Update 2

Lee McKay+Bock McMillan And not meant to be negative in any way. I'm sure Sansar will be a fun experience for those that it will appeal to. I'm just not sure that will be us old time SL'ers. :)

Bock McMillan Not to worry, +Lee McKay it didn't come off as negative at all, just constructive information