Hi folks, hope you're all doing well. I've got some updates that will affect everyone, for the best of course.

Before I start, let me just say that the Den has become home to some of the best damn role players in SL, hands down. We've built a culture where our RP is not dependent on combat systems, formed a strong foundation for story-based RP, and greatly diversified groups which, in turn, created a new way to interact with one another.

However, as the community grows, how do we intend to handle the constant instability of SL, influx of newcomers, griefers, OOC disputes, and such? The following information will describe some of the upcoming changes that will address a lot of it while sustaining, if not increasing, our high standards in RP.

Redesigned OOC Floor

This is an important part of the Den. It's primary purpose is to keep newbies away from the main RP area and provide information regarding our rules, RP guidelines and groups. A new room is being added to the OOC floor which will be dedicated to just providing the information listed above. This new layout will disseminate and summarize a lot of the important information embedded in the Welcome Guide.

Revised Applications

I've created specialized apps for several important groups, such as criminals, gangs, police, etc. These new apps will not only test people's knowledge of our RP rules & guides, but reinforce certain concepts that people often are unclear about during RP.

Serious RP'ers shouldn't have a problem spending an extra 5-10 minutes on the application considering the kind of effort and thought most of our community puts into its stories.

New Policies

After poking feedback from gang leaders and players, I've revised the guidelines around "Weapons" and "Combat". While nothing is drastically changed, there are some hardlined rules that will encourage the idea of "creating stories" amongst criminals rather than constant combat which spirals into OOC disputes and powergaming.

More importantly, the application for newcomers strongly reinforces these concepts.

A new role, called "CD Armed Criminal", will be added into the Criminals group. It will become mandatory to attain this role in order to use guns in your RP. Existing criminals will have to submit a very short "app" which basically states the new rules and requires their acknowledgment of it. New RP'ers will have to use the new extended app for Criminals.

Get a Job! (new RP places: Diner & Arcade)

The "minimum wagers" group is going to get an overhaul for the increased types of "jobs" characters can have. We are also rolling out new uniforms to a few places soon (thanks to Nich Shilova). I'll also look into getting uniforms done for the rest of the places.

New RP'ers will find it easier to transition into the community by taking on a these types of roles. The new OOC area will put a special emphasis on this group, highly encouraging characters to get a job in the city somewhere to make ends meet.

Improved Security Measures

With Stu in command of our Security team, we've been actively looking at ways to resolve the influx of newbs (failing to read / follow rules) + griefers. We've invited fresh blood onto the team to better cover various time zones and keep guard of the RP environment.

We also look to our community to report these issues immediately as they arise so that an admin can take care of it swiftly.

Sim Lag

We've had various Lindens come take a look at our sim. They couldn't provide us an explanation other than the fact that we constantly have 40/50+ people in the sim when we experience heavy lag. We are looking at ways to spread the RP out onto adjacent sims...

Don't worry, we've done our homework and monitor the sims' health.

Server issues on LL's side also strongly contributes to the some of the lag you experience.

If you experience crashing, I suggest you take a look in the JIRA tool (on SL's website) and see if you can find something there that others suggest you can do to fix your issue. I've also found that cranking down your draw distance tends to help a lot (Preferences -> Graphics tab -> "Custom" check box -> "Draw Distance" slider)

In conclusion to this long post, I'd like to reiterate that these changes will help maintain our strong commitment to our community's well being and keeping RP standards high. Most changes mentioned above will roll out by the upcoming weekend. Instructions will be provided in group notices.