My Favourite Places in SL: Greater Ireland [I Hardly Knew Ye :( ]

I had a plan in my head the order I was going to do these Favourite Places posts, but circumstances have forced me to bump this one forward.

Greater Ireland (Ireland by the Irish), Built by Derric Foggarty and Jules Artfull, was built over four full sims, and was without a doubt the most realistic location I've ever found on the grid.

The attention to detail in this re-creation of real world locations was astounding. With beautiful lighting effects, believable shadows, and a thoughtful layout, this wonderful location was filled with places to sit (with animations) and enjoy the ambience. An absolute minimum concession was made to the virtual aspect with no garish ad boards, 'floating' signs, or spammy prize chairs. Greater Ireland was clearly created as a labour of love, by people who just wanted to make something beautiful, rather than to make money.

Accommodation was available on the sims, in the form of cottages and shops, after we left Estruda (More on that in a later post), Kitty and I were looking for a new, smaller, place to live. We found a couple of possible locations, but then Kitty found Greater Ireland and fell in love with it. She showed it to me and I agreed, despite only having access to my low powered laptop at the time. Sadly all the cottages were taken, so we had to keep looking, but she registered her interest and we forlornly walked the streets checking rent boxes to see who might be leaving.

A couple of weeks later, we got a cottage, sticking a month's rent into the rent box we were so determined not to lose it now that we'd got it. We started attending events at one of the many pubs on the sims, (The Roisin Dubh, based on a real pub in Ireland.) The results of my whirlwind tour can be found scattered through this post and in the attached picassa album (as well as a few random shots of the Roisin Dubh in my Flickr)

Sadly it wasn't to last. Last week, less than two weeks into our tenancy and during the rolling restarts for software updates to the grid, the Greater Ireland sims went offline, and stayed offline. While I don't know the exact details, It turns out Derric was in Dispute with Linden Labs, with them demanding far too much money for far too little customer service. The difficult decision was made to close the sims permanently. They came back up briefly to allow renters to grab their stuff. I'd been planning on exploring and taking some pictures, but now I was against the clock to capture this place before it was gone for good.


All is not lost however, Derric plans to return with a scaled down replacement elsewhere on the grid. I don't know exactly what his plan is, but I trust him and Jules to make something wonderful, and we've already expressed an interest to take up a rental at the new place wherever and whenever it may be.

Good luck with the future Derric & Jules, and thanks for all your hard work.

A Link to the full album (with 104 pictures) can be found here:

P.S. Note to blogspot, your composition ui is terrible for laying out photos.