All Good Things Come To An End

I purchased, and grandfathered a sim in October. With it’s service fees, land costs, moving the sim, builder fees, and scripter fees, as well as various other pieces... Mhirdrun cost over $3,000.00. It took over 6 months to get built once we started shopping for builders. Rent was free, and dice were rolled. We had 96 people simultaneously on the sim at it's peak (including the person who witnessed it), a few weeks after we opened.

 

Rent was free, or near enough, but the rentals ultimately were not numerous enough, or spacious enough for what people really wanted, and changes to the sim couldn't be made quickly enough to support what people wanted. We had a fifteen day hiatus of the builder on two occasions -- which were legitimately deserved --, and the primary scripter already on contract who had sole access to the HUD systems likewise on hiatus.

 

Whether it was fortresses, faction-bases, or anything else for that matter: We couldn’t provide it fast enough to keep up with the demands of a flowing RP environment that was larger than we had ever anticipated -- and this only raised tensions until there was not one, but several tipping points.

 

People said SL was dead. It isn't. Ultimately, people -- the owner included -- are imperfect. Old rivalries exist, and everyone was almost always talking about everyone else’s alts, and past histories on the Mhirdrun sim. You can't force people to get along. We had trolls. We had sim crashers, we had unpopular security features, we had unpopular bans, and all the problems that always plague a large sim.

 

We made effort to try to create rules that avoided breaking the fiction, but it’s ultimately come to my attention that players in general need more OOC cooperation (even benign meta-gaming) and OOC communication than I was willing to recognize when the rules and mission statements of the sim were made.

 

Over time, permissive IC rules and strict OOC rules allowed some of these rivalries to fester, both inside and outside the staff. Disagreements existed often on how to correct them, and neither direction was having a huge impact on it. At times, I sided with one side, or another when I saw abuses that needed to be addressed -- and role-played almost not at all on the sim I had spent thousands of dollars upon. My highest level character in Mhirdrun was level 3.

 

We accepted no donations. This is a gift I, personally, gave for free and had virtually no time to enjoy myself.

 

Ultimately, Mhirdrun was, not unlike Llorkh, a victim of its own success, staff in-fighting fueled by understaffing, and inexperience in managing large and diverse crowds that came primarily from three separate genres: seeking faction warfare, adventure, and social/political intrigue.  Each of these groups wanted very different things from Mhirdrun in an environment that had initially been designed for something far smaller scale.. But what finished the sim was my own inability to cope with the conflict early on, making myself largely absent from operations early on, because I simply couldn’t handle the massive -- often reasonable, often unreasonable -- demands of the player base, and the staff.
 

My take-away, primarily, is that for the most part, I was too-hands off, in the rules, in the management, and only got involved once things were too far gone for small fixes. These changes I made were intrusive, and ultimately caused as much, or more damage than the problem itself, after it had been allowed to fester.

 

So as we close this chapter: Rezzing has been turned off. Rentals are being frozen but not ended -- you can keep your house until the sim closes as long as you refresh it; though if it lapses, no one else will be able to take or transfer it. All bans have been lifted. If your objects are copied, there is no reason to peel them; as they’ll eventually be returned or deleted. Those who want to take pictures of the build, or use it for art projects in the limited time remaining may take pictures for their scrap books.

 

I am deeply humbled and in awe of the amount of effort and work that players put into their backgrounds, their RP, and the overwhelming number of groups, factions, businesses, and organizations that made up Mhirdrun.

 

As with Llorkh: I am not sad that it is over.  I am happy that it (Mhirdrun) happened.

 

I will continue to enforce all sim rules until the sim closes, but I am relieving my staff of responsibility to the sim, effective immediately. Those who wish to stay onboard until it closes, to answer player questions frankly -- with or without spin -- or to guard against trolls in the closing days may remain -- but they are under no obligation as I announce the official closing of the sim.

 

I cannot thank each of you enough for your participation, and your interest in Mhirdrun; players and staff... But it was one of the greatest honors of my Second Life to serve SL’s RP community and to bring everyone together for a big Hoo-ah. Those of you who knew me while it was under construction, knew I was describing it as my last ride on SL before, what many people described as its inevitable collapse.

Given it was so much more successful than I expected it to be initially, it has led me to re-evaluate what is possible within Second Life even currently and I hope, if nothing else, I’ve given some inspiration and ideas to future sim owners and sim-builders, and I hope that they can learn from my own mistakes -- both in Second Life, and potentially in project Sansar.

 

As always? I wish everyone the best and hope you all find exactly what you’re looking for from SL’s RP community. I’m keeping the sim open for a few weeks till I figure out what I want to build or have built next. Probably something private. Like a large house.

Maybe in a few years, I’ll try something new.

 

Respectfully yours,

           - Phiona Mercy, Administrator and Sim Owner of Mhirdrun