Celebrating the Bellisseria One Year Anniversary in Second Life

A whole year has already flown by since Linden Lab revealed the first of the new Premium Linden Homes in Second Life, on the new continent of Bellisseria, and this weekend marks the anniversary with an inworld bash and a great Expo...

It's been a fascinating year watching the development and release of the new Linden homes in Second Life. I remember when I first heard about the new releases back in May (I think) last year. The first batch had been released in April and they were already in hot demand and many were avidly trying to catch one using auto-refresh browser add-ons and staying glued to updates for days on end. I admit, I nearly gave up trying to get one and just as I was about to landed a wonderful houseboat.  I posted my first review about this last June. 

Since then there has been additional releases of new home themes: campers & trailers, Victorian houses, and more recently log homes. It's only been with the latest release of log homes that there is actually a surplus of homes available in Second Life. So that's good news. 

So this weekend there's been some partying going on over at Bellisseria Fairgrounds to celebrate the one year anniversary of the new homes release.

  It's a 3 day event ending on 19th April with live DJ's, dancing, and a  boating event, with a pretty good turnout on the day I attended.

 

The Fairgrounds were nicely decorated (which has always been the case for any event I have attended there) and a great party atmosphere. 

The part I loved the most was the mini Expo about the building of Bellisseria. An area was set up as an open air cinema with a  big screen showing a slideshow about the development of the continent and homes, with some great inside information about how Linden Lab went about it all. There were over 80 slides (and yes I took a screenshot of them all for posterity!!). 

I thought it was a great addition to all the information Linden Lab have given us this past year about how they do things, their reasoning, letting us watch them build etc. 

In addition to this they had on display some of the first ideas for the homes they were going to implement:

You can see the similarity to the current homes in the general style of these, but as you can see from the sign, they scrapped these designs and decided to 'up their game'. I am so glad they did!!! The final versions they have implemented are on the whole sooooo much better in terms of overall design!

I think it lends to an added appreciation for the effort they have put in to the new homes. Having said that, I do quite like the interior of these first drafts, because they are open plan, much like the Meadowbrook homes, whereas the implemented homes are divided up into smaller rooms (except the houseboats and trailers), which for me makes them feel a bit cramped.

 So I do wish they had kept that aspect of the original ideas. 

This was a really fun afternoon. I do love how much has been shared with residents about the development, and I do hope that will continue going forward. It would be great if there was a permanent exhibition like this somewhere so more people could see it. I might just make that request:)

If you haven't visited Bellisseria yet I would recommend taking a trip over. There's a railway and quite a busy community vibe, with cafe's, events, horse riding, boats trips and more going on. Joining the groups Bellisseria Citizens or Bellisseria Events is a good way to find out about what's going on, or visit the Linden Homes forum on the website. 

Keep tuned for news about the next theme to be revealed in the future! I'm off to attend the last day of fun and celebration at the Fairgrounds!:)