News and Updates

Tonight we have released the much-anticipated new War weapons: the handgun, the sword, and the flamethrower! We’re really excited about this release, and we think these weapons are a ton of fun to play with. We’re also releasing some custom-built structures and items to help you build your battlezone: The Medieval Fortress and The Apocalypse Fortress are two structures custom-designed for Bloodlines War battles, plus we’re releasing our signature Hedge Maze from the ground level of Liquid Designs, so you can set up your own hedge maze base with the Dominion, or just use it to battle your friends! Plus, we have a handful of other old and new accessories featured in the Bloodlines War store that you can use to decorate your battlefield. Check out the Bloodlines War store at Liquid Badlands now!

As we mentioned in our post last week, we’re also releasing new versions of the mines and health serums, so that they are no-transfer. There are still some people out there using exploits to crack permissions on items, and then selling them. So, we have to continue with our updates to make all of our items no-transfer. We hope you were able to use up your current mines and serums over the last week, but if you weren’t, please refer to our post from last week on how to trade them in.

We’d also like to explain some adjustments we’ve made to the damage done by the various war weapons. On most weapons, we’ve scaled all of the damage down a bit, so that fights should start lasting a bit longer. Here’s what you need to know about the adjustments we’ve made:

1. The bare fist now only does 3 damage instead of 5.
2. The claw (Rage) and fang (Thirst) attacks now have the possibility of getting you a one-hit kill, depending on how high your Vital Blood (for the fangs), or Lumens (for the claws) currently are. The higher your vampire or lycan energy is, the more likely it will be that you’ll be able to slash an artery, but you’ve still got to have a bit of luck. If you don’t get a one-hit kill, then damage is based on your distance, and also how lucky you are.
3. The Psionic Blast works the same way as before, but you might find that it does a little less damage than it used to.
4. The  Handgun also has a chance of getting a lethal wound, based on your body count. The higher your body count, the greater the chance you’ll have of getting a head shot, but you’ll still need a bit of luck. If you don’t get a head shot, the damage done is based on some luck and on how far away you were when you fired.
5. The Sword has a chance of getting a lethal wound based on your current health. The higher your current health, the harder you’ll be able to swing when trying to chop an enemy in half. If you don’t score a lethal wound, the damage done is based on luck and how far away you were when you swung.
6. It’s not possible to get a one-hit kill with the flamethrower. The closer you are, the more damage you’ll do.

Thanks to everyone for their support, and we hope you all have a great time playing War!

We get a lot of questions about deactivated blood containers and lumen prisms, so here is some information that will help you understand why your container might be deactivated, and what to do about it.

When a container is deactivated, it means that it may still exist in-world, but will not work. The serial number of that container is marked as deactivated, so any container with that serial number will no longer work. We deactivate containers for several reasons: sometimes when we close a bloodlines account, we deactivate the containers on that account so they can no longer be used.  Sometimes, when someone accidentally breaks their container by pulling the script out of it, or a container gets mangled by a Second Life error, we’ll deactivate that container and replace it. On rare occasions, containers fail to register with our system when they’re first rezzed by the vendors, and in this case, we replace them, but the non-activated version will still exist in the purchaser’s inventory.

Also, it’s still possible to copy no-copy items in Second Life through sim rollbacks, where a sim is rolled back to a previous state, when an item was rezzed, from a present state where the item exists in inventory. Since only the sim is rolled back and not your inventory, the item now exists in two places, and you have two copies of the same container. However, both of these containers will have the same serial number, so it’s not as if you have twice as much blood. There is still the same amount of blood, it can just be accessed through two different containers now. So, if you drink from one copy of a copied container, you’re drinking from all of them. There happens to be a certain 15L tank that’s been deliberately copied thousands of times and handed out to thousands of people. We deactivated this container a long time ago, but people continue to hand out non-working copies of it, and I still get questions every day about why a 15L tank that someone got “as a gift” won’t work. It won’t work because we deactivated it, because it’s a copied container.

Here is a procedure to follow if you get your hands on a deactivated container:

1. Did you buy it directly from the Bloodlines store, and are you the first owner of this container? IM Lyle Maeterlinck, and he will replace it for you.
2. Did you get it from a friend as a gift? Ask your friend about it.
3. Did you purchase it from a blood tank reseller? You might have just gotten taken advantage of, but there’s a chance the seller didn’t know it was deleted. Contact the person you bought it from, tell them it’s deactivated, and hope that they’ll give you a refund or a replacement. But, this would never happen to you, because you follow our procedure of how to buy an aftermarket blood container and would never, ever, buy a blood container without testing it and being certain that it works first, right?

Any time you buy a container from a reseller, we can’t guarantee that container. You have to seek a guarantee from the seller. Here’s why: even if you follow our procedure, and the container you’re buying works, there’s no way for you to know if there’s another copy of that container floating around out there, because copying exploits still exist. If this is the case, there’s a chance that this container will be eventually deactivated as a copy. There is a low chance of this happening, but it is still a risk you should be aware of when buying a blood or lumen container. The only way you’ll get a risk-free guarantee from us is if you buy them from us. If you want a risk-free guarantee and you want to buy from a reseller, you have to get their risk-free guarantee. To buy from us, use the rez vendors in the Bloodlines Thirst Store on Liquid Designs or Liquid East, or the rez vendors in the Bloodlines Rage store on Liquid South.

We’re pleased to announce a release date for the new Bloodlines: War weapons. The Handgun, The Sword, and The Flamethrower will be released one week from today, on Tuesday, August 17th! The Handgun has a ‘silenced’ mode so that you can have a gunfight anywhere in Second Life without rezzing bullets and creating collisions with other residents. You can also use this silenced mode in areas where you don’t have permission to rez objects. Both the bullets and the sword contain blood effects when they make contact with other Bloodlines War players.

We will also be updating the Health Serum and the Mine so that they are no-transfer. We regret having to do this, but there are a small group of residents who have permissions-cracked versions of our transferable items, and sell them at below cost. As a result, we have to update all of our transferable items to be no-transfer, and we will not be releasing any more transferable items. So, you have one week to use up all of your current health serums and mines (a great excuse to create a nice big minefield), because after 8/17/10, they will no longer work. If you still have any mines or health serums left over after this date, you can trade them in for the new versions. If you see residents selling any health serums or mines for very low prices, please don’t buy them, they are counterfeit. We are only able to trade in mines and health serums if you originally purchased them directly from us, and not from a reseller. We can’t guarantee any item that’s purchased from a reseller. You must seek a guarantee from the avatar you’re buying from.

If you need to trade in your items, please observe the following procedure:

1. Items must be placed in a folder, and NAME THE FOLDER WITH YOUR NAME ONLY. To do this, go to your inventory, and select New > Folder. Right-click on the folder and select ‘Rename’, then type your avatar name. Drag and drop your items into this folder.
2. Please don’t name the folder with any text other than your avatar name. Including additional or different text will delay your trade-in.
3. Include a note card with a copy of your transaction history for the purchase. You can get this by logging into your account on Secondlife.com, then going to Account > Transaction history, and copying and pasting the transaction information into the notecard. Drag the note card into the folder with your name on it.
4. Pass the folder to Noire Luminos, but please do not start sending in mines or health serums until after they are deactivated on 8/17/10.

We appreciate everyone’s patience while we worked on the new War Weapons, and for your patience with the item trade-ins. We have more exciting Bloodlines additions that will be released in the coming weeks, so check this blog often for updates.

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!

We banned a handful of avatars from Bloodlines earlier this week, and we wanted to respond to questions about why. There were rumors that we banned the avatars for selling blood, and this is not the case. We banned the avatars for using an exploit to obtain blood for free. We have evidence in our server logs of the actions of these avatars. The records in our database could not have been created by avatars using our system in the way it was intended to be used. Among the avatars who were removed was a prominent blood merchant and many of his alts.

In our server logs, we had many instances of multiple containers being sent fill requests at exactly the same time from the same avatar. In order to do this, the offenders first figured out the channel that the container listens on from the dialog menu. Once you have this channel, you can create an item to chat the “1 L” message on that channel. You can click any number of tanks and give them the fill command, and then have your special prim chat the “1 L” message from a dialog on the channel that the containers are listening on. This gives them all the command at exactly the same time. Because the requests are coming in simultaneously, they all check your blood level simultaneously, and can fill 1L from your veins into multiple containers at once, giving them all 1 L at the same time. This is how you can turn 1L into as many liters as the number of tanks you gave the fill command. This is how many of the large blood banks have been operating. This exploit has now been closed.

We have nothing against selling blood as long as it is legally obtained. There are two legal ways to obtain blood: to drink it from an avatar who has paid for a HUD, and to buy it in a Liquid Designs store in the form of a filled blood container, a blood shot, or a blood bottle. We intend for blood to be sold and traded. That’s why we made the containers in the first place, because we thought it would be fun for people to collect blood and sell it, trade it for other things, or give it as gifts to friends. If we did not intend for blood to be sold or transferred, we wouldn’t just ban people for selling it, we would put in place a technical restriction to prevent it. However, we cannot tolerate blood being illegally obtained through an exploit and sold for personal financial gain.

Everyone should also be aware that we do not guarantee that any items that are not purchased directly from our stores will work. If you bought it from a reseller, that’s fine, but if you want a guarantee, you will have to seek it from the seller. I’ll say that one more time because it’s so important: we can only guarantee items if you buy them directly from Liquid Designs stores or from our official catalogue vendors. If you buy anything from another store or a reseller, we recommend making sure that they have a money-back guarantee on their products. If their products don’t work and you can’t get your money back, we can’t help you. On the other hand, if you buy a product from us, and it doesn’t get delivered or doesn’t work, we will either replace it or refund you. This is the case with the potions, which are soon to be replaced by new versions. If you buy them from us, and we have a valid purchase record for you, of course we guarantee our products and will make sure that you get the product you paid for. This means that if you have potions in inventory that cease to work, and you are the original purchaser, we will replace them with new versions. But if you bought it from another avatar, you will have to seek a refund or replacement from them.

I’d also like to emphasize that we do not ban people for personal or financial reasons. We ban people for violating our explicitly stated terms of service, or the terms of service of Second Life. It has been suggested that we have banned blood sellers for competing with us in blood sales. It’s easy to forget that all blood that is legally obtained is originally purchased from us, either in the form of a tank or a HUD, so it is not really possible for a blood merchant to compete with us without breaking the law. Merchants who operate honestly support and enhance the Bloodlines system. The recent bans are not an attack on blood merchants, it is quite the opposite: they are actually in defense of honest blood merchants.

So, here’s my advice for everyone: if you find an exploit, don’t use it, report it. If you find items being sold for impossibly low prices, don’t buy them, report it. If something seems too good to be true, it is.

To all of the honest players, all we can do is apologize for letting this exploit go for as long as we did. We haven’t been on vacation, we’ve been working on other projects that have demanded our attention. I’m also sorry that you haven’t seen anything new from us for a while. In the next few weeks, we have some very exciting additions to the system coming out, including 3 new War weapons, and 3 new exciting Bloodlines items. We also have a brand new social game unrelated to Bloodlines coming out later this summer that we think will be our most fun game yet. Stay tuned to this blog for updates. Thanks to everyone for your continued support!

There are a large number of potions out there being sold at below-market prices. They are counterfeit. It is not possible to legally obtain an Electrum potion for less than 999L, or any of the other potions for less than 225L if you buy them in a 4-pack. We do not guarantee the operation of any product unless it is purchased directly from one of the Liquid Designs stores and you have a verifiable purchase record with us. Within a matter of days, all potions in inventory will be deactivated, and new potions will be released with no-transfer permissions. For your protection, do not purchase potions anywhere other than directly from a Liquid Designs vendor. If you need potions, we do not recommend buying the large stockpiles of potions being offered by criminals. If you do, we will not be able to help you when they are deactivated.

*** Please note  – if you have purchased your potion from a Bloodlines vendor or catalogue vendor, and we have a transaction record of it, you will be able to trade your discontinued potions in to Noire Luminos for the new version. Also, the new version will allow you to “Offer” the potion to another player to drink (much like offering a bite), so you will still be able to use your stockpiled potions on other players (with their consent, of course) as long as they were purchased from Bloodlines.

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 would like to inform everyone of two new support policies:

1. We will no longer replace lost casks and tanks. If you lose a blood container from your inventory, even if it is through no fault of your own, we can no longer deactivate it and send you a new one. Note that if you give or sell a container to someone else, it will still appear on your page until they rez it in-world. We know that Second Life sometimes eats or mangles inventory items, and we’re very sorry if this happens to you, but we can’t be held responsible for correcting these types of errors. Please be very careful in keeping track of your items. We suggest that you organize your containers into a special folder in your inventory, and write down where you rez your containers and who you hand them to and when. If your containers are missing, try clearing your cache by going to Edit > Preferences > Network, then press the ‘Clear Cache’ button and relog. Also try searching your inventory for the words ‘tank’, ‘cask’, or ‘prism’. We will, however, still replace containers that failed to register when first purchased. If you got a container from somewhere other than our stores, and it is deactivated, go to the person you got it from and ask them about it. We can’t guarantee containers unless purchased directly from us.
2. We will not transfer items, souls, or minions from one avatar to another for any reason other than a gifting error. This means that if you have an alt account who has items on it, and you lose this account for any reason, including deliberately closing it, or getting wrongfully banned by Linden Labs through no fault of your own, we will not transfer the souls, minions, items, or blood to your new account. We recommend that you use only one account and use that account responsibly. The one situation where we will transfer items from one account to another is in the case of a gifting error, where an item goes to you instead of the target avatar when using the gifting function on the main store vendors.

Thanks for your cooperation on the two above policies.

We’d like to invite everyone to join the official Bloodlines groups in Second Life. There are three official groups:

1. The Thirst: Bloodlines
2. The Rage: Bloodlines
3. Bloodlines War

These three groups can be used to discuss anything related to Bloodlines. However, please refrain from advertising events or products, and please be respectful to each other in these groups. Verbal abuse or harassment will not be tolerated.

There are many other Bloodlines groups that have been created for various purposes, and we encourage you to join the other groups if you like them and they enhance your experience. However, please keep in mind that the groups listed above are the only three official groups that are moderated by Bloodlines staff. If you have a question about any other Bloodlines group,  please contact the group owner.

On a personal note, I want to thank everyone who has taken it upon themselves to create and moderate Bloodlines related groups that fulfill a variety of purposes for Bloodlines players. I love to see everyone getting into the game and collaborating and communicating. However, in the interest of simplifying things, I’ve decided to limit my participation to the three official Bloodlines groups listed above. Many people have come to us with their ideas for additional Bloodlines groups and the services they provide. Feel free to create any groups you like related to Bloodlines, but keep in mind that we do not officially endorse any non-official groups.

We updated the Thirst to version 3.3 today. This is a mandatory security update. The new version should be auto-delivered to you. If you don’t receive it, you can receive your update from the update terminals at Liquid East.