Woodbury in Kitely Grid

By Bixyl Shuftan

Several years ago, there was a place and a group in Second Life known as "Woodbury." Based on a real-life University of the same name, the location and group soon became highly controversial, gaining a reputation for harboring griefers. Nonhuman avatars were reportedly a target of some of the griefers. Eventually, Linden Lab would shut down the sims and ban many of it's members.

Recently Woodbury would come in the spotlight again after it was revealed JP Laszlo/JPizzers, the former leader of the Trump Organization in Second Life, was now calling himself part of the group, I received a tip that the group had a sim in the Kitely Grid, an OpenSim-based virtual world. So I got onto the world, and found a place with the name on the map. And teleporting over, what I saw confirmed that it was the place.

Sims on Kitely are a bit different than on Second Life as they can be one to sixteen "regions" in size, but still count as a single sim. The Woodbury sim was a full-sized sixteen region sim with a mountain in the northeast, and urban building, much of it Soviet-themed. There was a formation of Russian bombers in the air. There was a sign with the logo that had been on JP's Twitter for several days before she took it down, "Make Woodbury Great Again." There were occasional animeish-looking builds of a girl wearing a Russian-military style cap carrying a bag of chips labeled in Japanese and a bottle of soda. In a couple places were towering space rockets. And there were the occasional statues.

I ran into one man while there. He was friendly enough to show me around, asking only that I not throw insults at anyone or otherwise grief the place. In Voice, he explained that they were in the middle of setting up several years worth of Woodbury builds from Second Life, and it would be at least a few more weeks until the place was finished. He called the mountain an "Indiana Jones" style place with plans for dorms inside. Of the various symbols inside, many were "inside jokes," some he had yet to figure out saying he was somewhat new. In one place was one building he called a representation of the real-life Woodbury University.

Because the place was in the middle of being built, many of what was there was in temporary locations, such as one submarine that was in the air. But he did say once it was finished, it would be a mix of themes with no real restrictions on what could be placed by it's members.

So it seems that the group that had been banned by Second Life has found a new home on another Grid. The one who spoke to me stated they've more or less left Second Life behind, not wanting trouble. But considering Woodbury's reputation, many would be skeptical.

Bixyl Shuftan