History: The Road To Bay City Part 2: Enter The Residents

(....continuation from part 1)

Part 2: Enter the residents

Eventually, LindenWorld was to be no more. By December of 2002 or so, Linden Lab was lining up investors to take their idea to a new level. 

The project was re-branded as "Second Life."

As an aside: for a brief moment, "Second Life" could have ended up named "Sansara." Robin Linden suggested the name for this early virtual world, but "Second Life" apparently won out. Of course, now Linden Lab produces a second virtual world of a very similar name -- but I digress!

In the earliest months of 2003, Second Life begun to allow beta residents into the world. Steller Sunshine, who rezzed into existence on the 13th of March, 2002, is widely considered the first Resident of Second Life, and she was followed by many others who got to choose from a select list of last names when cresting their digital persona: Apple, Jones, Sandgrain, Bach, Smith, Leviathan, and more.

One of those early beta participants was Wednesday Grimm.

Wednesday's Second Life rezday is 9 January, 2003 -- nearly a year after Steller's avatar touched digital terra firma, but still well before the end of Second Life's beta in June of 2003.

Working in the Tehama region, Wednesday banded together with many other beta participants on a sizeable project: the first cooperative "themed" build in Second Life.

That build would be Lindenberg.

(Lindenberg, pictured in January 2003, primarily consisting only of its roads and fences at this point)

The name was chosen by its residents, a play on words from the German airship, the Hindenburg, because the city -- much like the airship -- "goes down in flames every night." It's unclear if the name was also a deliberate reference to Linden City from the beta, or simply following what may seem an obvious theme.

Nevertheless, the idea of a grand city was hatched and formed within the Tehama region, not far from a Linden-created path that may have travelled through a handful of those original 16 regions.

Wednesday Grimm was dubbed the mayor of Tehama.

(Lindenberg in February 2003)

The city consisted of a "U" shaped main road, complete with concrete sidewalks and green lampposts. Fairly simple businesses lined the road, owned and operated by many other early beta residents. A newspaper was created, the Lindenberg Times, edited by ramon Kothari and then available at Tehama (220, 117).

While an innovative concept, Lindeberg wasn't without its issues. Perhaps related to the aforementioned fire issues, many complained about the use of rockets around the city, while others wished for the city to be a "no fly zone" to prevent the use of jet packs.

Both were popular in these early, pre "Second Life Server 1.0" times, as both the Lab and its Residents worked with particle effects for the first time, tested physics, and – as one could not yet directly teleport to a location -- used modes of travel such as jet packs.

This all added to the biggest issue in Lindenberg, however, and the one that would eventually lead to its destruction: lag. Ever the issue, in those early days, numerous prims and avatars concentrated in a small area -- for example, a densely-populated city -- could bring a region to a standstill.

Even just 4-5 avatars in one place could bring the area to a crawl.

A month into Lindenberg, and it was already being called a "ghost town" due to lag issues. Some sought to change the layout, adding a central park or pond, setting it up across a "four corner" layout, or even making a "new Lindenberg" as an indoor shopping mall or other form.

Lindenberg didn't last much longer, a short-lived but important part of Second Life's early history, and the first real "city" in those days.

Many parts of Lindenberg ended up boxed and provided at the YaDnI Monde's old "Junkyard," itself now long gone. There are, however, a few other remnants you can spot.

Hunting around Tehama, you can still see the last remnants of that early Linden path that connected the Tehama region to other early areas, such as the Newbie corral in Natoma. It's visible in the above photo in the upper left hand side of the image. You'll see it inworld at http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Tehama/117/98/23.
Be gentle, those prims date back to January 2003.

(A main road in Lindenberg. Many items in this photo were formerly available at YaDnI's Junkyard, including the yellow Bannister, the street lamp, and the sidewalk.)

Finally, look close in that photo at the street lamps along the road: Built by Richard Linden, those lamps would later be revised and used to adorn the streets of the Shermerville suburbs just Northeast of Bay City: perhaps a last final nod to Lindenburg still inworld today.

In Part III, we'll talk about the early Linden "themed community" project, and how one early city changed Second Life forever *while* creating the very "Blue" print for what Bay City would be.

Reporter/ Historian Marianne Mccann

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History: The Road To Bay City Part 1: The Rig

Part I: The Rig

Bay City did not appear out of nowhere, and the roots behind the formation of our little corner of the mainland run deep into the core of Second Life itself. In this series, I want to give you some of the history behind the city by the bay, and the predecessors that led to its existence.

Linden Lab -- really called Linden Research, Inc. -- didn't initially set out to be a company known for virtual worlds. Initially they were busy studying haptics, or methods of providing physical feedback to people using virtual objects.

To learn more about such, this fledgling company then located on Linden Street in San Francisco, created "The Rig," a virtual space that could be navigated around in. Thing is, the virtual space contained in the rig was actually kind of fun.

Before too long, the rig -- and more importantly, the software on it -- started to take further form, eventually morphing into a virtual world of its own. This initial prototype was known as LindenWorld.

LindenWorld had a lot of similarities to what we know now as Second Life, as well as many unusual differences. Terraforming was not the simple tools of today, but was done using actual grenades to blow up parts of the land. An ecosystem existed of rudimentary birds and snake-like "Ators" that roamed the land, reproducing and eating. Avatars were also simple, created out of primitive shapes.

As things developed, it begun to look more like the world we know today. While the ators and birds faded into history, the world started to form. Those early "Primitars" were swapped out for a simple avatar mesh that still lives under the bodies of today. We gained better building and terrain forming tools even as we lost the reactive water of those early days.

Meanwhile, in the heart of LindenWorld was a city, which sat in what is now the Natoma region.

Linden City

Learning Center City

The city was developed in part to test the then very new rendering engine behind LindenWorld, and see how well it could manage a fairly dense environment. The city, with a central park featuring a fountain, a learning center, and a city hall, had no specific name, but was known as Linden Town or Linden City by some of the few on hand.

Linden City is seen in the photo above at night in what may be one of the first snapshots ever taken by a Resident. Steller Sunshine took this shot on her first day inworld, and she was the first non-Linden to visit the grid. Note Peter Linden hovering to the left in the image, as well as the central tower seen in most pictures of Linden City.

The city was erased not long from when LindenWorld became Second Life, replaced by Newbie Corral (our first welcome area), a store named Avatar Central, and the only remaining portion of that first city: the statue of Man that once lived in a square behind City Hall.

City

You can still visit that statue, now living on a hill near Natoma's Ivory Tower of Prims. It remains one of the oldest pieces of content in Second Life, still here long after the rest of the city vanished.

In Part II, we'll explore what happened when early Residents decided to form the very first city in Second Life.

Reporter Historian Marianne McCann

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