Ambrosia Dance Club

by Phil F. Kearny

Three Years ago today, Dec 29 2006, I opened the doors to my new club on a tiny lot of Mainland in Sabra Sim. At the time Second Life consisted mostly of Casinos, nude beaches and strip clubs. I decided to try my hand at making an upscale gentleman’s club. The Ambrosia Dancers at the time were of course strippers and often went down to their birthday suits. Some of them may or may not have engaged in slightly more scandalous activities.

Then something happened. It was becoming obvious that we had more women than men visiting to hang out and dance to music and the magic that is Ambrosia started to form. The Gentleman’s club had become a dance club where people met, listened and danced to hot djs and had a great time. More and more couples began to appear. The Strippers became hostesses and entertainers in their own right. The Mall took shape with more and more designers coming aboard with quality stores. We began to feature live artists on a weekly basis. And people started to notice.

And what emerged from the whole experiment is a venue that is gaining steam with each passing day. Now located on a full estate, Ambrosia encompasses an entire world of entertainment and fashion. At Ambrosia we made a commitment to never use methods to cheat the system such as bots or campers. We have always stayed true to our goal of winning one costumer at a time and providing a quality venue with the best DJ’s, Live Artists and Designers in the virtual world.

Over time the look of the club has changed several times, as have the avatars. Some of the old school Ambrosians are still with us after 3 years, many are long gone. Many times a person will leave SL for a year or longer and on their return find everything in Second Life that they remembered is gone. This is when they come back like a salmon to the one place that is still left in their landmarks folder.

It’s been a fun three years. And we look forward to a brighter future. Thanks to all the Staff and Ambrosians for making Ambrosia what it is today.

The Holidays are so hectic and it’s nice to get away and take a bit of a vacation. Todays’ travels take us to Wyoming. Now Wyoming at this time of year is a bit chilly. It’s much more enjoyable to visit it in the warmer summer months unless you are an avid snowmobiler or ice salesman. But thanks to Second Life we can visit it whenever we please and not have to wear snowshoes.

Enter the sim, cross a lush field of prairie grass and you can almost hear the grasshoppers as you wade through a sea of living prims and arrive at the Old Faithful Lodge in Yellowstone. Out front the most famous geyser in the world belches forth water particles as if on a script. Wait, it is on a script.

Walk into the lodge and be presented with a faithful replica of the actual interior . It’s a little devoid of furniture which is a shame. A few rocking chairs would have been a nice touch to make it more true to the original. They did include a piano however. Perhaps there is a prim shortage.

My favourite part of the Sim is hopping on the train and visiting other parts of Wyoming as well. You can ride with a bunch of friends or be the Engineer and feed coal to the steam engine.

On the other side of the sim I scaled the Devil’s Tower which you might remember from the movie “Close Encounters of the Third Kind“. Richard Dreyfuss made a scale model out of mashed potatoes. Imagine if he had access to Second Life.

I finish off my day in Wyoming with a rodeo show. I have been to rodeos before but I was never a participlant. Just from riding the prim version I don’t believe i ever want to be. I think my hair flew off at the 4 second mark!

This is a beautiful peaceful sim in which to relax, hang out by the Green River and generally chill. The actual name of the sim is Wyoming Entrepreneur and as far as i can make out is an educational sim created under the aegis of the University of Wyoming to support business in Second Life and includes a conference center with a with multimedia presentation. But this in no way detracts from the beauty of the sim as you can see by the photographs. I highly recommend a visit to Wyoming by all Ambrosians.

Here is your ride.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Wyoming%20Entrepreneur/30/135/24

There are fewer bots on the grid for sure. The numbers for traffic ratings for clubs have dropped dramatically. Whereas traffic ratings over 100000 were once commonplace, it is now unusual for a club to surpass 75000. Some venues, however, continue to pad their numbers though the use of scripted entities. They are just getting more clever about it. Some are just blatent. Today I would like to feature an example of both; a place called ZAPP club.

Well, the bikini-clad babe is certainly fetching. They advertise themselves as “THE ZAPP CLUB ..WHERE REAL LIFE Djs PLAY DON’T SETTLE FOR SECOND BEST.” Ok Great. So, if you are so great why is your entire sim filled with scripted agents? (Bots) As you can see by the visitor counter, there were 411 visitors for the day. That should yield a traffic rating of about 15000. Todays traffic rating – 49,186. How is it possible?

They fill the Store with bots who sit there day after day without moving. They dont rez since they are manipulated by a software program. They don’t even bother to call them models.

These tactics are so blatent and out in the open. As far as I can tell, the Lindens just overlook it. Its obvious to anyone that this is Traffic Gaming. These are not real avatars enjoying the grid. This is a drain on server resources. How would you like to be one of the other 3 estate owners sharing space on a server with this? On the other hand, bots are much less of a burden on the servers than real people since they don’t do anything but sit around all day and bring up the traffic numbers so the venue goes higher in the search places ranking.

According to the MiniMap there were 44 avatars in the sim but I could only count 32. Where are the other 12? The answer lies 3500 meters above the club. I zoomed right past it the first time because, well the box that they are hiding in is really invisible. This is quite a piece of work since it totally blends in to the sky completely masking the subterfuge contained within. No match for the Bot hunter however. A quick right click and edit reveals that it is called a “Hide A Box 15″ with a dozen bots inside.

Will the Lindens take action against this? Who knows. It is just irritating when the staff at Ambrosia and other legitimate clubs work so hard to generate genuine traffic and cheaters like this are rewarded with high traffic ratings. I suppose life would get boring for the Bot Hunter if they all went away. So, raise your glass up high and let’s give a hearty FU to the cheating dooshbags at ZAPP Club. Maybe you can even tell the Lindens with an abuse report what you think of clubs that use Bots to lure in newcomers.