PREFACE: Since this blog post went up, we have had to delete over 10 comments, from the usual trolling vitriol to some of them demanding we kill ourselves. We left one of the more tamer comments actually live on the page.

Planned city roleplay. Thats what Cedar Creek (and a few others) are all about. Unlike New Babbage, which we had a look at last month, Cedar Creek is a fully planned and laid out city, complete with streets, home for rent, and the basic infrastructure that a city needs.

The premise is a simple one. Create a living city, complete with Fire Dept, Hospital, Police, School and other basic amenities and wait for people to move in and start roleplaying. Cedar is by no means the only place doing this, however, it is one of, if not the, best-looking and planned city currently on the grid. The “Town” of Cedar Creek is made up of 14 regions, with the core of the 14 regions being the most densely packed when it comes to housing and businesses. In the north of the town you get into the countryside.

Myself and Lizzy had some experience with this a long time ago, a place called Fox Hollow which was shut down then recently came back from the ashes, so going into this we hoped things would be better.

This time, it was all three of us, Fenella, Liza and Liandra (It’s Lia writing most of this) that decided to move into one of the larger homes with a HUGE garden and settle in to see what the place was all about.

The point of planned cities

Cedar, like Fox Hollow and the other planned cities in Second Life is all about one thing, Role Play. Families or individuals can move into the city, find a job and RP their day to day existence within the RP confines of that town they are staying and roleplaying in. The basics of Cedar Creek is simple, it’s all about the RP, and the very, VERY lengthy covenant governing the what, who, when and why of the Cedar Creek is tailored to the RP side of things.

They have a Fire Department, Police Department, Hospital, School and even a Judicial system complete with lawyers and judges, essentially, they have the basics of a functioning town.

They have rules and laws for everything, even the speed limits of the very well laid out and fully driveable roads that criss-cross each other across practically all of the 14 regions that make up the city. From day to day life, working at the Hospital, working at the Police Department or not working at all and just racing around in your car on the roads out driving practically 3/4ths of the residents who were trying to chase me in their big lumbering police SUV’s, there’s a little something for everyone. However, it’s not all rainbows and sunshine.

The problems of planned RP cities…

All planned cities, especially ones like Cedar Creek have two basic fundamental problems, and one of those problems plagued Cedar Creek so much that Fenella simply had enough and left, leaving myself and Lizzy for the most part staying at the house. The first one is the long-term residents already settled into the place, the “Big Families”. Secondly, it was the entire event’s structure of Cedar itself.

Moving into Cedar, all three of us done the usual you are expected to do, fill out forms for driving licenses, fill out forms for citizenship and then join groups, practically all of the major information needed about that is in the Welcome Center in the middle of the town.

The problem which started to crop up time, and time again was the 3 (or possibly 4) major families and their groups of friends that surround them. They have essentially locked RP within their own group(s), call it a clique, call it scared of outsiders, it’s up to you, but getting into the free-form RP was tough. What makes it even tougher is that you are basically forced into joining Discord to get into the meat and bones of it, with a lot of the RP stuff going on in Discord but not going on in the group chat, which seems a very strange way of doing “Second Life” roleplay, if a lot of it is done outside of SL itself.

Another of the problems when encountering 2 of these big families is being accused of being an “Alt”. This came up a few times in OOC chat and I had to explain what we were all about, then pass on the link to the Muddys Music Cafe voiced advert that the three of us voiced to play on Muddys Radio, even that wasn’t enough so both myself and Lizzy had to get on voice and speak to the person. Even after this it still felt to all three of us that we were being held at arm’s distance and not allowed to get near them or their roleplay. This was the first warning sign for Fenny. The first warning sign for me was when I was driving around in a mock-up MG car from the late 40’s. As I said before, I basically out-drive and outmanoeuvre practically ALL of the Police Department of Cedar. One of them contacted a Moderator and complained I was “Metagaming” by getting out of my car, teleporting to another region, and then driving off. No, I wasn’t, they were just woefully inept at driving in Second Life…

What was the final straw for Fenella, and caused her to walk away, was the events.

The three of us live in the UK, and practically all of the event staff live in the United States. I think you know where this is going. All three of us had to stay up till 2am to take part in any of the major social events which were going on. The house warming party which we held at around 2pm SLT (10PM UK) brought in about 25 people and showed Cedar Creek event organisers that earlier timed events could work, but this is where the other problem crops up…all events have to be run through the events team.

I sent a notecard to one of the events people about the possibility of opening an Irish themed bar, with the three of us running it. No answer. I had to go out of SL and into Discord (again) to get some kind of answer, only to be told that there’s a waiting list. What happened a day later is what caused Lizzy to want to leave as well. A “Family” who moved in about 2 days before I put the request in, and who got on the “waiting list” about 2 to 4 hours after I did…yeah, you guessed it, they were opening their business this evening. Apparently, they know one of the big families of Cedar Creek.

What was the final straw for me, and made me clear out the house, was the picture above. A “Meet & Greet” which was supposed to be a place for new residents to have a chatter, soon descended into another excuse for a couple of the big families to basically blunder in and RP over everything. Fenella said it best…and I quote… “We have been here for a month, and we are still strangers paying for these clowns to have their fun“. She teleported out just after sending that message, probably before she was tempted to type it in chat.

The Churn

If i was an estate manager, the picture above would worry me. The picture up above shows the available houses on the Cedar Creek website. Sometimes there are two pages worth of empty homes, then they fill up, the thing is a few days later another full page of new empty homes appears. There is a worryingly high turnover rate of people moving out and new people moving in which seems to be going on week in and week out.

The issue I’m guessing is the people quitting the place are in the same boat we are in, they are not in the US, or they are in the US but they don’t know any of the big families who rule over Cedar like the Cosa Nostra. A churn as high as this means a LOT of people are leaving, with a bitter taste in their mouths when it comes to Cedar Creek, and that word is already spreading out. Cedar Creek will have a very big problem if this high amount of churn on their rentals keeps up.

Cedar Creek is a no go town if you have several things against you.

1: If you don’t know any of the big families, good luck trying to fit in

2: If you are outside of the United States, well, good luck trying to find a social event to go to.

3: If you are alone (no “family” moving in with you) and you are outside of the US? Just don’t even bother, seriously, just don’t, you are wasting your time and money as Vic Mornington found out after he rented a house in Cedar.

The feeling all three of us are left with, is the vast bulk of Cedar Creek are nothing more than teir whales, paying rent to keep 14 regions going, while a closed set of “families” and their friends use the 14 regions as their playground and complain to moderators if they don’t get their way or can’t catch someone who drives far, FAR better than they will ever be able to. The events team is essentially catering to those families, and everyone outside of the US time zones is left to fend for themselves, throwing money into the pit that is Cedar Creek.

Fox Hollow ultimately fell apart because of a cascade effect of clique families and ever-increasing numbers of people leaving and not enough people moving in.

It’s only a matter of time, possibly less than a year, before that starts to happen to Cedar. Unless the events team, the owners and the “Big Families” treat people outside of the US not as second class citizens of Cedar Creek, but people who deserve the same commitment to events and fair treatment…then the future of Cedar does not look good. As more and more people who are left out in the cold leave, there will be less and less new people moving in, it’s a matter of word of mouth, and plain numbers, it’s as simple as that.

Written by Liandra Aries, Fenella Baily and Liza Blackwood
Pictures by Liandra Aries
Edited by Fenella Baily