News and Updates

There have always been rumors going around the Bloodlines community about various things, and the vast majority of you have learned not to believe everything you hear. However, we thought we might post this handy flowchart that you can use to determine whether a given rumor is true or false. In general, we recommend being skeptical about anything that you hear out there, and remember that the more shocking the rumor is, the greater the likelihood that it is false.

Now, here are a few things that are true:

1. We’re already working on making gacha machines with new custom texture packs for Series 5 tanks and prisms, Soul Reapers, Rampage Claws, and Spikes. The textures will be collectible and tradeable.We’re also planning on making some upgrades to our vendor system and affiliate vendors.
2. We’re going to be releasing a searchable listing of souls in the abyss, so you can find them and hunt them down!
3. We’re going to be releasing more information on the website so you can track activity on containers, including drinks, siphons, coffin / sarcophagus sends, transfers and sales.

There’s more news on the way, stay tuned to this blog for all official updates.

Many of you are now aware that Linden Labs has announced that they have begun to build a new virtual world. Understandably, some of you have expressed some apprehension about this new virtual world, and there have been a lot of questions about what place Bloodlines will have in it. Will Bloodlines exist in the new virtual world, and if so, will your current Bloodlines account carry over? These are questions we cannot possibly answer yet, as we know next to nothing about the new virtual world. The Next Web claims that a beta version is expected in 2015, with a 2016 launch. We would like to point out that these launch dates are probably extremely optimistic and aggressive, and that it is next to impossible to determine how long it will actually take to build something like this. So, regardless of what the situation is with the new virtual world, it is something you will not have to worry about for at least a couple of years.

We would like to correct a few misconceptions. It has been announced in various places that the new virtual world will not be compatible with Second Life, and what has actually been said is that it will not necessarily be compatible with Second Life, meaning it might be, it might not, but they’re not making any guarantees. They are just prioritizing the strength of the new virtual world over compatibility. That means some things might not be compatible. But, Ebbe Altberg has stated, ‘A lot of what you have will be possible to move across…’.

Regarding Bloodlines compatibility, there are many possibilities. It’s possible that Bloodlines will simply stay in Second Life only for as long as it exists, it’s possible that Bloodlines will span both virtual worlds, and that we will be able to transfer Bloodlines accounts over to accounts on the new world on request, it’s possible that we will make an entirely new game on the new platform, and it’s also possible that this new virtual world will never even be released. Right now, there just isn’t enough information to know what is going to happen.

We are dedicated to making sure the Bloodlines community keeps thriving and growing. Each of you are a part of the future of Bloodlines, and you make this community what it is. It just doesn’t make sense to make assumptions about the future of Bloodlines and Second Life based on a few slivers of information, and then base your investment in the community on those assumptions. No one knows what the future of Bloodlines will be, but that has always been the case. The real future of Bloodlines and of Second Life is up to each of us. Liquid Designs has every intention of continuing to invest time and resources in Second Life. We have lots of new updates coming out soon, including mesh prisms and cider barrels, and updates to the soul reaper and spike, and much more. We hope you will join us!

A few links with more info:

• More Information on Second Life 2.0
• Linden Lab Building Second Life 2
• Lab: “We’re not giving up on Second Life”
• Statement from Firestorm Viewer

Presently Seeking: Teachers from all time zones, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. (Note: This is strictly non-profit; it is a volunteer position only.)

Don’t forget: We need teachers for War also!!

All languages welcome!

Please contact Rhage Terasaur, Allegra Sawson or any Bloodlines Liaison for the official Teacher Application!

We will begin teacher reviews (our version of interviews) on June 15th.

We look forward to classes beginning on July 14th! Please contact any Bloodlines Liaison to be added to the official Bloodlines University group!

Update: This is a clarification of the procedure you need to follow every single day if you want to make sure you get the Determined achievement. YES, you really do need to follow this procedure every day!

1. BEFORE you log in: look at your achievements on your profile on the Bloodlines website and look at your Determined count. If you already had it loaded, make sure you reload the page to make sure you see the most recent count.
2. When you log in and wear your Bloodlines HUD, make sure that you see the message in local chat “You have been checked in with the Bloodlines system.” If you don’t, detach and reattach your HUD until you do.
3. Check the website again by reloading the page with your achievement stats, and make sure your number has counted up. If not, go back to step 2 and repeat.

Original post follows:

We receive many support requests regarding the Determined achievement, and I wanted to address some concerns with this achievement. For a while, we’ve been resetting this achievement for various people who requested it who believed that they didn’t miss a day logging in and that their achievement didn’t update correctly, and we’ve been resetting it for people on the honor system. But, because of the level of competition that has emerged for this achievement, and because of the volume of these requests we’re receiving, we are no longer able to reset this achievement on request. We have thoroughly tested this achievement, and we know that it is operating correctly, and it works for the vast majority of people.

How Determined Works

When you wear your HUD, the on_rez event in a script in your HUD sends a request to the Bloodlines system letting it know that you’ve worn your HUD. When the system receives this request, it will check your determined achievement, which records the date and time of the last time you wore your HUD. If the last time you wore your HUD was yesterday, it updates the time to today, and gives you a +1 on the achievement. If the date of the last wear is before yesterday, it will reset your achievement to 1 day. For example, today is May 2. If you wear your HUD today, the system will check and see if your determined date is May 1. If so, you will get +1. If it is April 30 or before, it will be reset to 1. The date cutoffs are in Second Life (US Pacific) time. In order to keep up with the achievement, you need to log in once during each Second Life day. You will need to pay attention to this if you are in a different time zone.

Here is an example of how being in a different time zone could cause you to miss a day on this achievement. Say you’re on GMT time (currently SL +7 hours), and you log in at 6am local time on April 30th, the system would record you as having logged in at 11pm on 4/29, which would be the current SL time/date. Then, you don’t log in again until May 1st at 6pm local time, the system sees you logging in on May 1 at 11AM SL time. Even though you have logged in once during two consecutive days local time, there were 36 hours between logins, and one entire SL day (April 30, which started at 7AM on 5/1 local time, and ended at 7AM on 5/2 local time) where the system did not receive a login from you.

There are also other things that can go wrong. If you attach your HUD in a no-script area, the signal will not be sent to our system, and your achievement will not be recorded. The signal will also not be sent f you are already wearing your HUD when you log in, and you log into a no-script area. There are also conceivably problems with the login signal being sent from the sim you’re on, due to lag, or other issues. This achievement also won’t work for you if you leave your avatar logged in all the time without logging in / out.

If you are competing for this achievement:

1. Make sure you are wearing the current version of the HUD. If you don’t have the current version, you will get a message telling you that an update is available when you wear your HUD.
2. Make sure that no more than 24 hours passes between times that you wear your HUD. You can stay logged into SL all the time, but you will need to reattach your HUD every 24 hours.
3. When you log in, make sure you see the message “You have been checked in with the Bloodlines system…” in your local chat window. If you don’t see this message, you were not checked in. You will have to detach and re-wear your HUD.
4. After you log in, look at your determined achievement, and make sure it counted up to where you expect it to be, +1 since yesterday. You might also want to check it before you log in, just to be sure of where it should be. You can view your achievements by going to your Bloodlines profile on the website and clicking on the link “View Progress” next to your achievements.
   1. If your achievement did not count up, please try detaching and reattaching your HUD.
5. If you are sure you have followed all of the above, and you believe there is genuinely an error with your achievement, please send the following to Lyle Maeterlinck:
   1. Your local chat log showing the message from your HUD “You have been checked in…”, with the date and time that you got this message.
   2. You will need to send this to me on the day that it isn’t counting up, where your count shows the amount from your login from the day before, or else I won’t be able to help you.

Listen up all you cool chicks and far out dudes. Bloodlines is hosting the grooviest party in town. All you need to do is show up, we will take care of the rest. Free love and free prizes, man.

Date and Time: August 23rd 4:00-7:00pm

Location: The Lycan Plaza

Introducing The Valerian Potion! We often hear from members of the Bloodlines community that they regret certain attacks that appear on their profile, or wish to forget certain names off of their profile. The Valerian Potion is an herbal tonic that can purify your blood and lumens by removing the attacks of a selected person from your history. It can be reversed by drinking the potion again. Valerian has the magical properties of turning negative things into positive things. If you have a negative ghost flowing through your veins, Valerian will help you to release it. For more information, see the Valerian Potion page.

We would like to give everyone a heads-up that we are preparing to finally make some much-requested updates to the Bloodlines stats. We are adding two new stats pages, one for Hybrids, and one for Humans.

This means that if you are currently a Hybrid (both embraced and enraged), and you are currently in the Vampire or Lycan stats for Generation or Royalty, you will be moved to the Hybrid stats. This means that instead of only two players being Generation 1, now there will be three. This also opens up two more slots in Generation 2, four more in Generation 3, eight more in Generation 4, etc. If you are a Hybrid currently in the Vampire stats and want to stay there, you will need to drink the Wolfsbane potion, and if you are currently a Hybrid in the Lycan stats and want to stay there, you will need to drink the Nightshade potion. You don’t have to do this yet. As we get closer to launching these changes, we will let you know exactly when it is going to happen.

For Humans, this means you finally get your own Bloodlines homepage and separate stats. We’re adding rankings for Cider Wealth and total amount of humanity converted into blood or lumens.

We’re also going to be making some updates to the site to make them easier to navigate and access on mobile devices.

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!

We’ve made some updates to the way events are scheduled for Haunts, and added a new events calendar for Haunts to the site. The new rules for Haunt events are:

1. Events cannot have a start date more than 24 hours in the past, when the event is created or edited.
2. Events that last more than 24 hours are marked as ‘ongoing’ events, and are listed in a separate calendar: the ongoing events calendar. Ongoing events are for things like hunts, contests.
3. No event can last more than 30 days. Any events currently listed that were longer than 30 days have been truncated to last 30 days. Some people have listed events that go many years into the future. Please don’t do ridiculous things like this, or we will delete your event entirely. Party 24/7/365 is not an event!

In addition, we’ve made an easier way to browse events with the new events calendar and ongoing events calendar. You can also quickly find events happening today on the Haunts landing page.

The Bloodlines Hunt, presented by Hunts R Us, is going on now!  At dozens of Bloodlines-friendly locations throughout Second Life, you can find over 150 prizes worth over 30,000 lindens! You can get the hunt HUD at the vendor at Liquid Designs region. The vendor looks like a coffin with an apple in it near the landing point. There are prizes from Bloodlines and The Crypt available on each of the Liquid sims: Liquid Designs, Liquid East, Liquid South, Liquid Badlands, and Liquid Frontier!