Welcome to RyconFox

     So I hear OsGrid was down this past weekend due to server issues. This got me thinking about things and recalled a conversation I had with a friend last week about what needed to be done to bring stability to Second Life like clones. As it stands there's currently 3 major players in this "let's make the best virtual grid ever" game. You have Second Life, OsGrid, and InWorldz. You also have smaller grids poping up all the time and are offline just as quickly as they came. People from these grids who think they can hack it and host their own sim get a rude awaking with setup - download the server, open ports in your router, add the exceptions to firewall software, and hope everything goes good. The problem is 90% of these people either own computers who can't handle running both a server and a client at the same time or have internet that lets them host a sim, but can't invite any friends to come visit. I admit I'm better off then most. I pay for 100/100 true fibre optic internet and almost all the computers in the house are either quad-core or octo-core.

     Back to the conversation with my friend. We were discussing what we thought needed  to be done about these smaller grids that keep poping up everywhere and how to effectively bring people to InWorldz and keep them there. Most that come to InWorldz end up leaving the first day or a few days after. Why? Some have said they were tricked into visiting because it was better then Second Life and more stable then OsGrid. Once there, they realize InWorldz feels exactly like a clone of Second Life. To an extend their right. InWorldz is largely based off of OsGrid, which uses Opensim,which is a release of the Second Life software. The major differences being Second Life and InWorldz are closed non-hypergrid systems where as OsGrid is open, allowing anyone and everyone who wants to start up a server connect without much issue. The problem with being out in the open however is anyone can hypergrid to your server, steal your content, and go back to their grid where your objects now show up as theirs.

     Back before I'd even heard of InWorldz I'd hosted a 2x2 off my quad-core laptop and another 2 sims on a dual-core laptop in OsGrid. I had the then idea to create a furry hang out spot but as time wore on, it was evident why most things don't work in OsGrid. It wasn't until I'd downgraded to a single sim did furs start to visit and they came from their own personal grids, not from within OsGrid itself. Just walking around the mainland mall showed evidence that no one goes there. There's shops everywhere because there's no money system so it's all free.. but in the hour and a half i spent there, no one visited or passed by me. No one was on radar, leading one to conclude that OsGrid's a dead grid. I admit part of InWorldz are the same however, there's structure here. I was able to find people here within five minutes of creating an account. There were close to 200 active people on grid for the 4th of July(bots in InWorldz are scripts, not alts).

     The ideal solution would be to see OsGrid and all of those smaller grids go. Let the big dogs play.
Ever since their major server crash a few years back that saw Kitely, InWorldz, and other grids lend them money to get back and running, they've become a liability. Running on borrowed time before the next major crash ends them permanantly. It was just last year that French grid New World Grid finally called it quits and they were more along then most grids.


It's time to clean house.
Matt

     Man oh man has it been a fun few weeks. After I became DJ for Kicking Country, the sim owner decided to change the layout of the sim(which I was cool with) putting down 24 shops people count rent. Then decided to remove the race track on Xanadu Lake and put down an additional 24 shops people could rent. In the midst of that, the sim owner put Kicking Country in the middle of Xanadu Lake and gave me the center of Xanadu Plaza where I put up a Furry/Neko Welcome center with an additional club upstairs.
     Scrapping wise I could swear the summer brings out everyone who wants to get rid of stuff but doesn't want to lift a finger to deliver it or work with you. That and everyone wants to get rid of their CDs. Was also recently told that Best Buy has decided to stop taking CRTs for free, which I knew would happen sooner or later as Best Buy's in the market to make money. Doesn't matter to me as I don't accept CRTs no matter how good, how bad, or how many of them you have. Was talking to Upstate Shredding's staff about things and found out that some big shot from Canada came down and underhandedly bought Metallico, even though Ben had the majority shares. A lawsuit against this company was launched and they settled that this company would stay owner of Metallico but Ben would be allowed to keep his shares. Either way it made the stock price jump to over $10/share.
     Also learned Roth Steele was purchased by the city of Syracuse this past week. Their going to spend the money required to cleanup the mess Roth left behind and use the land for the Destiny USA Project that was proposed 5 years ago. I personally would love to see the project completed, as the setup looks nice(saw an overview image once). Also this week a company stepped in to save Great Northern Mall(which is good) and their going to try and bring the mall back to it's former glory so the business partner from the previous company can get paid(something like 65mil).

Fun stuff.
Stay Frosty Everyone,
Matt

Yep I'm a DJ in InWorldz, and my in-world daughter Sage is my host. I'd give away who she is in real life but she'd kill me so enjoy this picture of the club instead. My set's will be every friday from 7-9pm PST and if you can't make it in-world, we'll be using the FOUSE Radio stream so you can take the stream on the go or listen on your pc.

-Matt

    Been thinking long and hard since coming to InWorldz about how to best transfer over what the Fur Valleys is and what it means. My interpretation of the valleys is a collection of sims named after a animal with the name valley after it to provide a place for furs to do what they do best. If you look back into the history of the valleys, it started with one sim in the Chung Estates of SL and became it's own sim after disagreements. Since renting a fairly large parcel from Calia Estates, I decided to wonder over to their main office and discovered the sim I rent on is apart of a set of sailable sims right off the mainland called The Crystal Sea. This is a collection of 55 sims right off the Eastern part of the Mainland. I see this as the opportunity the valleys has been looking for.

    The idea would be to raise enough IZ to buy up the sims but keep them in the Calia Estates and have then renamed after an animal, and thereby renaming The Crystal Sea to The Fur Valleys. This would look good on both parties because it would show that Calia Estates is Fur/Neko friendly, and would provide a home for the valleys. Now comes the fun part: raising IZ to make it happen. By looking at the rental boards, it would take 192,000IZ to rent out a sim per month(roughly $350/mo). The valleys would start on Jersey and once that sim is rented out and becomes sustainable, I'd move on to Glenan as Crystal Pass is non-livable but is sailable. I don't expect anyone to jump on board with this unless their willing to toss cash at this to create a community. I believe the road's been pained, -Matt

After a talk with the wife, we decided to put some money down on a parcel in InWorldz. For those that come from Second Life or grids like it, this is worth it. Parcel's a 16,368m2 w/11,239 prims for $20/mo. Even started work on a cabin(yes, that's a mesh cabin). Cabin weighs in at 51 LI which isn't that bad when you have 11,000+ prims to play with lol.
  

Since coming to InWorldz a friend of the wife and mine works real close with RFL. So much so he gave me a house so I have a place I can set a home point to(instead of the back of the Gashapon shop). Enjoy the pix. -Ry

New project on the board as I slowly buy up the open shops in Xanadu Plaza: Freelance Real Estate. This shop will be set up to have estate listings throughout InWorldz. To the best of my knowledge no one else does it and I don't believe it breaks any TOS or agreements. I figured it would give me something to do as I think of product to shove into my Gashapon machines. -Rycon

     Yeah I know what I said but after posting what I posted and thought about it some more, having the Gashapon shop on it's own blog helps me when it comes to posting about new products and the like. Speaking of which, I have 2 shop spaces open next to me I'm trying to decide what to do with em. I either want to put a real estate office in one which will feature plots of land up for rent throughout InWorldz, and another type of shop in the other or two different types of shops or something... reply here and tell me what should go in there. It's an effort to make the mall look full as it's currently empty HOWEVER the sim owner has not endored nor supports this move but I'm sure would appreciate it. -Rycon

    Yep, I did it: I finally went avatar hunting in InWorldz(had to ditch the starter bunny, the ao was driving me nuts) and came across someone who ported over the Wingless avatars so I'm a fox again(I feel like myself again lol). I've also gone ahead and moved the Gashapon SL/IW! blog over here so I can keep them updated without cluttering up my blogger window.

    I've considered InWorldz to be my second home with Second Life being my first. I have the eventual goal of bringing 3, maybe 4 regions online to kickstart The Fur Valleys: InWorldz! to do our valleys in SL proud. I believe if it can be started here, it can become a huge success. The sims would be set up how the original valleys were set up with Fox Valley being the HQ/Welcome Center/Rental Agency, and most of everything else was residential. The only catch this time is the regions are going to cost $75/ea vs $1,000/ea and the upkeep is going to be $75/mo vs $300/mo. I'll also have the option to either bring online a full 45,000 region or regions with less prims like how the openspaces were, so this is going to be a nice venture. Only thing standing in my way is, you guessed it: funding. I have a page set up on GoFundMe for $400. What exactly will $400 do? $400 will bring 5 regions online for a month or 2 regions online for 2 months. I probably could've planned it out to pay for 5 regions for at least 6mos but that's a tad pricy at $2,250. I've also had the idea of bringing in people to be beneficiaries however, no one wants anything to do with anything. I've also had the idea of starting with one region and expand once rent levels off but that's been trying also. For now the plan is to get product into the Gashapon store, get it open, and save up profits from that to either later buy an estate from someone or cash the Izzies in to bring the sims online as the rate coming and going right now is $5=2500iz, so using that as a guide, I'd need $400 or 200,000iz.

In the meantime, enjoy the pics of me in the Wingless and image of the shop.

    Good Morning everyone, I sit here this morning contemplating the valleys final project: my last contribution. To those that know me and my avatar Rycon Bamaisin, I dabble in opensim alot as it's an alternative to build and do whatever I want without issue. Recently I was brought aside by one of the folks I relay with in SL and told about another virtual world that has everything OsGrid has and most of what SL has. Those that really know me know I like to be thorough and won't jump at something just to do it, so I started comparing InWorldz to Second Life and the differences are staggering.

        1. In SL a full 256x256 region contains a max of 15,000 prims whereas in Inworldz, a full
            256x256 region contains a max of 45,000 prims.

        2. In SL a full region costs $1,000 to set up and $300/mo to run. In InWorldz a full region costs
            $0 to set up and $75/mo to run.

        3.The exchange rate in SL fluxuates depending on how cheap or forgiving LL wants to be. In
            Inworldz the exchange rate is stable.

        4. In SL there use to be a discount applied to sim owners if they were able to bring people in,
            then got rid of it. In InWorldz, this discount still exists.

        5. In SL all the official bodies are close-minded and not willing to help anyone just to help
            anyone. In InWorldz, everyone around you is helpful and full of information.

        6. In SL uploads cost L$10/ea and mesh price is calculated. In Inworlds all uploads are free.


        This is why my contribution to the fur valleys will be done in stages where each stage somehow fundraises $750 to bring 10 regions online(there were 37 in the origional lineup). This will also help jump start the furry fandom in InWorldz where a fandom has yet to exist or survive. In doing this I would also attempt to bring origional valley owners Mako, Wolphin, and Foxkin over to make them valley owners as the price of regions and amount of prims per region should be exciting enough, but you never know. I'd also like to point out that if anyone steps forward and pruchases a region(s) or has an existing region that wants to joint the valleys, there would be a set of rules everyone would have to follow. These rules would become the Fur Valley Rules and all regions that make up the valleys would have to follow them.

    In creating the valleys, each region owner would become a valley owner and admins would become valley admins to further create the community aspect. Valley Owners would come together weekly to discuss things going on the valleys much like how community elders would come together to discuss things going on in their community. I was teetering on wither or not the regions should have the closed off island look that use to be there or have a more communial look like Bay City. Either way the valleys would be home to furs and nekos only but anyone could come and visit(wither a fur or neko is a region owner or not).

    I foresee several creative minds going to work scripting, sculpting, and building. Fox Valley would become the HQ for the valleys and would contain a welcome center, rental agency, and beach club spot for FOUSE radio. It would also start a snake of commercial properties that would start at Fox Valley and go down into Rabbit Valley. Furry Park would once again become the sandbox for the valleys. Cub Conclave/Kit Estates would reestablish the Cubfur area that use to exist there and would include a rp school and adoption center.

    This is where I stand. It's obvious it will only be a matter of time till all the major groups leave SL and I don't want to be left without an out. InWorldz has so much to offer. Yes alot of things we would have to remake or rescript but since uploads are free, remaking stuff should be that much easier. If anyone wishes to help contribute, please let me know by sending donations to paypal logansryche at gmail dot com with the subject line of Fur Valleys IW Donation.

Thanks everyone, Matt