Lyle Maeterlinck
Lyle Maeterlinck, co-creator of Bloodlines, will be helping to host the Second Life Vampire Forums today from 9am to 4pm as part of “Vampires in Second Life: A Resident-H
The Moonshine
We’re excited to announce a surprise release today of the Lumen shot, which we’re calling ‘The Moonshine‘. It comes in a stylish bar glass with an iron base and a crescent moon printed on the bottom of the glass. Just like the ever popular Blood Shot, the Moonshine can be sipped or shot. You can get one at the various hangouts around the Liquid sims, or stock up on them and offer them to your guests at your bar or castle!
The Moonshine is available now in the following places:
We hope you enjoy this fun new product!
Recently, we proposed a set of rules for Bloodlines War Dominion bases that would apply to any bases that wished to be a part of the public stats on the website. The purpose of this was to attempt to make the stats meaningful by making sure that all of the ranked bases were playing by a minimum basic set of standards. We released a poll that asked players for feedback on these rules. The rules included guidelines for using land controls (bans) for protecting a base. We had suggested a system where players would be able to mark bases as not complying with the final global rules, and then could be inspected by base inspectors that would manage which bases can be in the public stats.
The problem at the root of this effort is the conflict between the flexibility and control that Second Life offers, and the desire to have many bases meaningfully compete with each other in a global ranking. We have come to the conclusion that the level of restriction we would have to put in place in order to put ranked bases on equal footing would be too limiting of the freedom you currently have with setting up bases, and that we would not be able to adequately enforce these restrictions anyway. Also, we would not be able to investigate and resolve disputes over local bans. This means that you could defend your base using individual bans (as many people have done), and there really isn’t anything we can do about it.
What this means is that we will not be able to have a truly meaningful global ranking that compares Dominion bases to each other. So, there will be some changes with the stats displayed on war.slbloodlines.com. The global Strongholds ranking has been removed, and instead, durations that the bases were held by various armies has been moved to the individual Dominion pages. Bases will no longer be competing against each other for how long they can be held by a specific army, but instead, two armies can compete against each other to capture the same base and see how long each of them can hold it for. The system will effectively consider all bases to be privately held and managed by local rules. To put it another way, each base will have its own individual stats that you can compete for. The Strongholds list has been replaced by the ‘Battlezones’ list, representing the most popular bases. Bases that are set up to be impossible to take probably won’t be near the top of this list. As the system currently stands, it provides incentives to make your base as difficult to take as possible. We believe the new system will give armies incentives to work together to set up bases and local rules that are fair and fun to play.
If someone bans you from their land, we can do nothing to intervene, and we suggest you contact them to work it out, or just go somewhere else. There can be no such thing as an “unfair banning”, as a land owner can ban you from their land for any reason, or for no reason at all.
An additional change that some of you have noticed is that we are now throttling pylon captures to one per second. For a long time, certain people have set up bases to “game” the system to get as many pylon capture points as possible, by putting all of their pylons in a row on alternating channels, and running up and down the row, in some cases capturing five or more pylons per second.
We have seen enormous creativity and ingenuity devoted to designing interesting Dominion bases, and we are grateful to everyone who has genuinely supported the system with their efforts, and we hope you will support this effort to keep the game fun, and the stats meaningful. Thanks for everyone’s input and comments that help us continue to improve Liquid games. Feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions or thoughts you would like to share.
Office hours are on for this Friday:
Last time, our entire office hours were spent on questions about Bloodlines War. So, we may need to have a separate office hours scheduled just for War, or do alternate weeks for War. Either way, we think we would like to devote this week’s hours to non-War issues. Let us know what you think. We hope to see you all there!
Office hours are on for this Friday:
We hope to see you all there!
Today we released the following updates:
All weapons were updated to prevent multiple attachments in Second Life viewer 2. The Handgun and the HUD were updated for greater reliability on hits, and to fix the issue with targets getting transferred from other targeted weapons. In 24 hours, we will disable the current versions of all of these items, and it will be required for you to have an update. Provided you have a valid purchase record for the item, the update will be automatically delivered to you when you wear the item.
One new feature in the War HUD is the ability for army commanders to transfer their armies to other soldiers within their army. This can be done by going to Settings > Army > New Commander. The new commander must be a registered, active Bloodlines War player, and must currently be in your army. This is useful for transferring your army to a new owner, while keeping the same army stats.
We’re also excited to announce that the War HUD now has support for the Liquid Designs Accounts feature, which allows you to register an account to log into the War website at http://war.slbloodlines.com. We’ll be announcing more about what this will allow you to do in the near future. For now, you can create your account by going to Settings > Account > Register on your Bloodlines War HUD. If you already own the Bloodlines Blood or Lumen Scan, you already have an account, and you can use the same credentials to log into the War website.
For now, the only authenticated feature on the War website is a poll regarding new standardized rules for all Dominion Bases. Read the proposed rules here. At the bottom of the rules, you can log in and take a poll to state your opinion on the rules. These rules are not currently in effect, and won’t go into effect until after the end of the poll. Please keep in mind that these rules are only for public bases, or bases listed in the stats on the website. You can have a private base that isn’t listed, and have whatever local rules you want. The intention of these rules is to make the stats more meaningful by making sure that all ranked bases are following a minimum set of standards. We look forward to hearing your comments on these proposed rules.
Very soon, we will be announcing more about the accounts feature on war.slbloodlines.com, but we hope to allow players to have more customized profiles and to use the website to connect to other players. Thanks for playing Bloodlines War!
Office hours are on for this Friday:
We hope to see you all there!
Official Bloodlines items are not currently sold on the Second Life Marketplace. The only items that Liquid Designs currently sells on the marketplace are Crypt items, and can be found here. An old copied version of the Thirst is currently being sold on the marketplace for L$850. It is a deactivated copy, and will not work. Do not buy it! You can buy official Bloodlines items in the stores on the following regions: Liquid Designs, Liquid East, Liquid Badlands, Liquid South, and Liquid Frontier.
We’re currently working on updates to the war items, and on the community features that we mentioned in the meetings over the last two weeks, so we won’t be holding office hours tomorrow afternoon. However, we hope to pick up office hours again next week at Liquid Frontier. In the meantime, you can contact us directly in-world with any questions you have.
Last Friday, several dozen Bloodlines players joined us for our first weekly office hours at Liquid Frontier. We really enjoyed talking to everyone, and we’re sorry if we weren’t able to get to your question. We’ll be doing it again this week, at the same time and place:
Last week, not everyone who wanted to come was able to get on the sim, so if you want to attend, be sure to get there early. For future meetings, we will try to put in place a system so that more people can attend, and that the question / answer cycle can be more organized. These sessions are a work in progress, thanks for bearing with us while we find the best way to approach it, and as always, your suggestions are welcome.
Here is a brief run-down on some of the top questions and requests that were brought up at last week’s meeting:
If you have a question, join us this Friday!
