News and Updates

UPDATE 3.17.13:

The Pub Crawl starts today! You can now go directly to pub crawl locations by pressing the Haunt button on your HUD and selecting ‘Pub Crawl’. This will give you 6 randomly selected locations that are part of the Bloodlines Pub Crawl. We also have a listing of participating Pub Crawl locations on the Bloodlines website. Also, DON’T FORGET TO VOTE FOR YOUR FAVORITE LOCATIONS! You can vote for your favorite haunts by logging into the Bloodlines website, and pushing the ‘vote’ button on the profiles of your favorite Haunts! Get out there and try some Vital Blood, Moonshine, or Cider at your favorite Bloodlines Haunts!

UPDATE  3.13.13:

Prize Announcement – In addition to winning a 20L tank of Blood (or Lumens), the 3 best bars will get a banner which will rotate on the Bloodlines home page for 3 weeks (1st place) 2 weeks (2nd place) and 1 week (3rd place).

PREVIOUSLY:

We’re excited to announce an official grid-wide Bloodlines Event – The Pub Crawl! It will start on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17th 2013, and run for 1 week.

The Pub Crawl is an event for bars in Second Life. Anyone owning a Bloodlines Haunt can opt-in, and anyone with a HUD will be able to participate in the crawl.

What specifically does this mean for Bloodlines players? It means during that week we’ll be connecting participating Haunts up via the website and the HUDs, so that you can easily travel from bar to bar, and meet up for a drink with people while discovering new Bloodlines-friendly locations. It also means you may have a chance to hang out with Mars Bracken and Lyle Maeterlinck, who will be on the crawl as well.

For Haunt owners, this event means a chance to get your bar or club on the map! The Crawl will provide an influx of new visitors, as well as give you a chance to network with other Bloodlines friendly locations. Players will be able to vote on their favorite Bars, and prizes will be awarded at the end. Also, Lyle and Mars may visit your bar during the event and share with you a bottle of Vital, Moonshine or Cider, and chat about Bloodlines.

Getting involved is simple:

Bar Owners – If you already have a Haunt, just log into your profile, Edit Haunts, and opt-in via the radio button for Official Bloodlines Events. Lyle and Mars (and everyone else participating) will be picking bars to visit based on 1) The photo in the Haunt profile and 2) The Haunt description text, so be sure to put in as much inspiration as you can!

Bloodlines players – On March 17th, The Pub Crawl will automatically generate locations in your HUD, under the Haunt button. We’ll also make it clear on the website which locations are participating, so you should be able to easily find the next hot location to crawl to!

Greetings everyone! We’ve added some new updates to the Haunt system that we’re very excited about. We’ve already updated the web profiles, and if you own a Haunt you’ll be receiving an updater shortly. Just rez it on the same sim as your haunt, click it, and select ‘update’.

Included in the Update:

1. For haunt owners:
– Ability to activate / deactivate your haunt from your edit haunt profile
– Ability to add managers to your haunt who can add, edit, delete events, and update your haunt profile.
– We fixed a couple of issues, like the 16 avatar sensor limit, and added options for how visitors on your haunt are counted. Just go to settings > area type, and select ‘region’, ‘parcel’, or proximity, and that’s how your haunt will count visitors. For the proximity mode, you can set the range up to 96m.
– Also, if you accidentally mess up the textures on your Haunt, you can go to settings > reset textures to reset them to default.

2. For Haunt visitors:
-You can now show your support for haunts by setting them as ‘favorites’ on the website, and they’ll show on your profile!

Thanks to everyone who had the great suggestions for these features!

This week Bloodlines is running a contest to hear your most memorable Turning stories. It could be your turning, or one you were present at and witnessed, and it can be either Lycan or Vampire. This time around we prefer “factual” stories; we promise to do more fantasy / RP stories later!

We’ll be awarding 1st, 2nd and 3rd place prizes, so take a trip down memory lane and tell us your story in 400 words or less. Please include your name in the notecard, and the title of your story.

How to Enter

1) Write out your story on a notecard, along with your name and the Title
2) Submit the notecard at one of our Contest Drop Boxes:

Bloodlines Contest Drop Box   Bloodlines South Contest Drop Box

Contest Rules

Time: The contest will run for 1 week, ending on March 1st, 2013.

Judging: Entries will be judged by Mars Bracken, Lyle Maeterlinck and Noire Luminos.

Criteria: We’ll be considering tone, narrative structure (beginning, middle, end), and of course grammar and spelling will be taken into account.

Prizes

– Top 7 entries will be immortalized in the Contest section of our Bloodlines Wiki.
– 3rd place entry will win a full 100L Lumen Tank or 10L Blood Tank
– 2nd place entry will win a full 150 Lumen Tank or 15L Blood Tank
– 1st Place entry will win a full 200 Lumen Tank (or 20L Blood Tank) and a Bloodlines Haunt Destination System, along with a Vial of Mars Bracken’s Lumens or Blood, depending on what the winner wishes.

For any questions, contact Noire Luminos or a Bloodlines Liaison.

Happy Hunting!

Noire Luminos, Lyle Maeterlinck, & Mars Bracken

UPDATE 3.4.13

The winners have been announced! You can find them listed on the Bloodlines Facebook page, and on the Bloodlines Wiki.

This week Bloodlines is running a contest to see who can take the best photo of a Lycan scene! So get your fur on, go to the most picturesque spot you know in SL, and snap a photo. Your options are wide open – hunting, fighting, running in a pack – it’s up to you.

The contest is free to enter, and you may enter as many times as you like (as long as each photo is different).

.:[ How to Enter]:.

1) Take a photo of a lycan in SL
2) Put the texture in a notecard, along with your name and the Title of the photo
3) Submit the notecard at the Drop Box:

Bloodlines Contest Drop Box

.:[ Contest Rules:]:.

Time: The contest will run for 1 week, ending on February 16th, 2013.

Judging: Entries will be judged by Mars Bracken, Lyle Maeterlinck and Noire Luminos.

Criteria: Entries will be judged based on the overall image, but some things to consider might be setting, lighting, , and the avatars involved. Photoshopping is acceptable.

.:[ Prizes:]:.

– Top 7 entries will be hung in picture frames on Bloodlines property, in the Lycan Temple, until the next contest begins.
– 3rd place entry will win a full 100L Lumen Tank
– 2nd place entry will win a full 150 Lumen Tank
– 1st Place entry will win a full 200 Lumen Tank and a Bloodlines Haunt Destination System

For any questions, contact Noire Luminos or a Bloodlines Liaison.

Happy Hunting!

Noire Luminos, Lyle Maeterlinck, & Mars Bracken

UPDATE 2.19.13

The winners have been announced! You can find them listed on the Bloodlines Facebook page, and on the Bloodlines Wiki, and hanging in-world in our Lycan Temple.

This week Bloodlines is running a contest to see who can take the best Vampire Bite Photo! So get your favorite animation, go to the most picturesque spot you know in SL, and snap a photo of you sinking your fangs into the victim of your choice.

The contest is free to enter, and you may enter as many times as you like (as long as each photo is different).

.:[ How to Enter]:.

1) Take a photo of a Vampire Bite occurring in SL
2) Put the texture in a notecard, along with your name and the Title of the photo
3) Submit the notecard at the Drop Box:

Bloodlines Contest Drop Box

.:[ Contest Rules ]:.

The contest will run for 1 week, ending at Noon SL time on January 30th, 2013. Entries will be judged by Mars Bracken, Lyle Maeterlinck and Noire Luminos. Entries will be judged based on the overall image, but some things to consider might be background, lighting, the bite pose, and the avatars involved. Photoshopping is acceptable.

.:[ Prizes ]:.

– Top 7 entries will be hung in picture frames on Bloodlines property, in the Vampire Temple, until the next contest begins.
– 3rd place entry will win a full 10L Blood Tank
– 2nd place entry will win a full 15L Blood Tank
– 1st Place entry will win a full 20L Blood Tank and a Bloodlines Haunt Destination System

For any questions, contact Noire Luminos or a Bloodlines Liaison. Also, We will be running a separate contest for best Lycan Attack later, so please only Vampire Bite photos this time around.

The way the Bloodlines vendors, website, and HUDs interact with the “Resident” surname have been updated today. When using vendors and attempting to gift to an avatar with the last name of Resident, you no longer have to type both names, you can type just their first user name and it should find them. On the website, we have scrubbed the last name “Resident” from all the profiles and listings, and searches can be made using just the first name of these new avatars. All HUD functions that deal with avatar names, IE lieging, can be done now by typing just the first name of any avatar with a Resident last name. In all these cases, however, typing both first and last names still works.

We hope that makes things a little easier to deal with, and makes our newer players feel less stigma towards their status as souls and Minions.

The new potions are on sale now. They are no-transfer, but the Wormwood, Hemlock, and Electrum have an option to allow you to use the potion on another player (with their consent). As such, the potions should do exactly what you’re used to, but with the added benefit that you don’t have to gift or lend money to another player to purchase a potion, which will have the added side effect of less potion scamming by new players. The Nightshade and the Wolfsbane won’t work on another player, you can only drink it yourself.

The old potions are deactivated. As stated in a a previous post, this is to prevent the counterfeits floating around out there from spoiling the game. We are doing a potion trade-in – but *only* for those potions purchased directly from Bloodlines stores or official catalogue vendors. If you have a stockpile of potions that qualify, here is the procedure for trading them in:

1) Create a new folder and name it ” <Your Name> + Potion Trade ”

2) Put your stockpile of potions in the folder

3) Pass the folder to Noire Luminos

Once Noire receives your folder, she will put it in the queue for a trade in. Trades will happen first-come, first-serve, so please be patient as there may be many folders ahead of yours in the cue. Noire will get to them as quickly as possible. When she gets to your folder, Noire will check to see how many potions you have purchased from Bloodlines (minus those that you have been recorded as “drank” in the database) and she will return your folder to you with the according number of potions in it. In other words, please don’t bother passing Noire a folder full of potions that you purchased from a third party or potion bank, because Noire will just pass them back to you.

Finally, thank you for your patience during this transition. We are excited to be moving on to getting some new items released very soon!

Currently Second Life is having some serious issues! We are receiving reports about avatars rezzing casks, tanks, and prisms in-world and having them returned mangled or broken. We strongly suggest holding off on rezzing no-copy items until the Lindens say the coast is clear; you can follow the progress of the bugs on the Linden status blog here: http://status.secondlifegrid.net/.

We have recently updated our vendor system, and that includes the Catalogue vendors. The new vendors are much less laggy (on average by half, sometimes more depending on the sim). Your old catalogue vendors will continue to work, however we strongly advise converting to the new version. Ideally the new lower-lag versions will result in less undelivered sales, as well as a less laggy sim for you and your clan.

The updated vendors are available now, and depending on which one you own you may be able to get a Redelivery from one of our Update Terminals. If not, they are still just 1 Linden, for sale to the left of either the Thirst, Rage or WAR main vendors on the respective sims.

One note however – the Catalogue Vendors now only can be rezzed by those with payment info on file. (Purchases can still be made by people with no payment info, however). This is a change aimed at allowing us to track and deal with the occasional shady activities that people attempt in regards to the catalogue vendors. It’s a rare occurrence, but something we take seriously so as to protect the integrity of the system and the games. We understand this change will negatively affect those who are unable to file payment info with Linden Labs, and we apologize. We are hopeful that some of the new developments that LL has underway in regards to transaction tracking may allow us to loosen restrictions like this on Catalogue Vendor usage in the future, but until then we have to put certain safeguards in place.

For those of you negatively impacted by this, however, we do have a slight silver lining to offer. As a result of updating the vendor system, we’ve reduced lag on our home sims (Bloodlines East, West, South, and Badlands). So making the trip there when necessary should be slightly less arduous.

Once again, we hope the new Catalogue Vendors create less lag and redelivery issues for you. Thanks for your patience. Happy hunting!

Today we’re happy to announce “The Blood Shot”. The shot is a glass of blood containing .25 Liters of fresh vital blood. The Blood Shot can be sipped slowly or ‘shot’ all at once. They’re transferrable, which makes them great for a social gathering, club, or gift to a thirsty clan member close to destruction. 

As with our other blood containers like the Tanks and Bottles, for security reasons the Blood Shot has to be rezzed on our own sims prior to sale, so unfortunately we can’t put them in the catalogue vendors at this time. They are currently available at the Sanguinus Keep sim here, as well as at The Haunt vampire bar on the dock in the Bloodlines East RP area.