Wagner James Au / New World Notes

I pretty much gave up watching/participating in the annual Linden Lab vs. SL user snowball fight years ago, because it inevitably became a lagtastic mess from the very moment the first snowball was fired. But! Watching this year's fight as hosted and streamed by social media goddess Strawberry is actually pretty fun. Lots and lots of flying snowballs and avatars! Actual physics! Halfway decent framerate! (Maybe 30-40MPS?) If you randomly came across this video and didn't know its providence, you might actually first think it's Fortnite, with a wacky new playmode.  (Seriously, check out the screengrab I took of Strawberry jumping like a badass.)

A skeptic's first response might be, "Well sure because they're streaming this from Linden Lab HQ with seriously great broadband". But I believe Strawberry is still based way over on the other side of the continent on the US East Coast. So while the Winter snowball fight has been a holiday tradition for Second Life since 2004 (as I recall),this year's fight might also reflect the best gift that Linden Lab has given to the SL user base this year: Substantially improved performance by migrating the venerable old virtual world to a shiny new Amazon cloud.