Island Oasis Updates
We at Island Oasis have been very
busy working on enhancements and improvements.
Just over the past three months, we have developed and implemented three
major features designed to simplify, provide convenience, and generally enhance
the member experience here in Island Oasis.
Currency System
The majority of the month of
March was spent developing and testing our own internal currency system. This feature was implemented on April 7th
2012 and has been running without issue since.
Until the 7th of April, Island Oasis was utilizing VirWoX
OMC’s as our primary currency solution.
This solution was more than sufficient initially when we launched the
grid back in March of 2011. First and
foremost, it was easy to implement and was a free service. At the time, choosing VirWoX was a “no-brainer”. However, over the course of the following
year and as our rate of growth began to accelerate, it became clear that
utilizing a third party for our primary currency system was not going to
work.
Our decision to go with our own
currency solution in favor of using a third party service was based on a few
different factors. First, considering
that we are a commercial grid and a large number of our members are content
creators, we did not want to inhibit their ability to hit the ground running so
to speak by requiring them to complete a second registration process in order
to buy and sell content. Second, many of
our members found the registration process for VirWoX to be cumbersome, time
consuming, and often times they would encounter technical difficulties
although, much of the encountered issues were brought on by user errors during
the registration process. Nonetheless, many found it discouraging. Consequently, many would simply give up or
not even bother trying. Others simply refused to use the currency system
because it was separate and disconnected from the core grid functionality. Of course, we also had many members register
without any issues at all; it was hit and miss depending on independent
circumstances. Additionally, it became increasingly clear that the amount of
time required by our staff to assist those who did encounter problems was
becoming too great. We simply would not
be able to keep up with the demand to provide assistance to all existing and
incoming members.
Our currency system is fully
integrated with the core software and functions identically to currency systems
on other commercial grids such as InWorldz, Avination, and SL. Our currency is called Paolino’s and its
symbol is P$. We will be, in the very
near future, working with VirWoX to provide secondary services for our members
for things such as currency transport i.e. moving P$’s to other grids, and
converting currency to many other local real world currencies.
In addition to considering the
factors FOR moving to an internal currency system, we also took into
consideration all of the risk factors that come along with such a move. Based on some blogs and articles that we’ve
read both on Hypergrid Business and other sources, including an excellent
article written by the founders of InWorldz; we implemented safeguards and
safety precautions to protect the integrity of our system in addition to
protecting the interests of our members.
This includes, putting proper system checks in place to counter certain
“bugs” that we found in the Hippo and Imprudence viewers relating to
money. Another precaution was to follow
the advice found in the aforementioned article by the folks at InWorldz and process
all cash our requests manually. This
allows for an audit process to take place before the currency ever leaves the
grid to reduce fraud.
In the end, operating and hosting
our own internal currency system gives us full control over the system and
provides us with the ability to provide a higher level and more immediate support
to our members. Our members are not
required to complete a secondary registration process in order to purchase or
sell content in world. We feel that this
is the ideal scenario for our residents and allows them to focus on what is
important to them.
Online Marketplace
My partner and I have had more
than a few residents ask about, or request that we implement an online
marketplace similar to what you would find on SL’s web site. Considering that, at the time, we were still
utilizing VirWoX as our currency solution and not to mention the in-world
delivery limitations of the opensim software, the prospect of implementing such
a feature in Island Oasis was next to impossible. That all changed when we rolled out our
internal currency system. With that
implementation came the ability for us to fully integrate the exchange of in
world currency from one member to another via the web site. Thus allowing our members to use P$’s to buy
in world content rather than having to use a third party solution such as
PayPal. Also, we worked hard to find a
viable solution to the “delivery” problem.
After that obstacle was overcome, it was full speed ahead into the
development and testing phases. I am
happy to say that our online marketplace went live on May 4th
2012. Similar to other online
marketplaces that I’ve used in the past, our marketplace allows for searching,
filtering by category, price, and permission settings. All purchases are made via our in world
currency (P$) and the purchased item is delivered directly to your logged in
avatar.
Region Manager
Almost since the beginning of
Island Oasis, back in March of 2011, we have had region owners ask if we have a
system that will allow them to do their own region restarts, shutdowns, and
launches. On April 15th 2012,
Island Oasis implemented the “Region Manager” which allows all of our region
owners to do just that. Not only to just
do restarts but, also do a full shut down, and launch a region that is not
running. All of this can be done from
our web site. No special software or
downloads necessary.
