Sad news: 3rd Rock Grid, the third-oldest OpenSim grid, will shut down on May 15th.

To sum the reasons up: Their sysadmin, the only person with access to the grid servers, disappeared. He had modified the server code, but never laid the changes open. Later, one of their techs managed to migrate sims from a dead server to a brand-new one which subsequently only she had access to. She passed away before she could document anything.

With no access to most of the grid servers, administrating the grid has largely become impossible, so the only possible solution is to shut the whole grid down. Whether it’ll be possible to save IARs, OARs or other content from the grid remains to be seen.

Those of you who are looking for legal content for female avatars may want to visit the 3rd Rock Grid Welcome sim as long as they can.

hop://grid.3rdrockgrid.com:8002/Welcome

You’ll land on an octogonal pad. There’s a number of panels along its edges. On the biggest panel in the middle, dark grey with a silvery grey frame around it, there are two smaller, mostly light grey panels. The one on the left reads, “First time users Click here to get to Welcome Freebie Center “First Steps” Tutorials.” Click it, and you’ll be teleported to 497,226,22, right at the entrance of the welcome building for new avatars.

Apart from a newbie “tutorial” walk, you’ll find a lot of avatar content. For female and male avatars. Classic and mesh.

Some of it may be familiar because you’ve seen it elsewhere already, e.g. on a sim based on a Linda Kellie OAR or Klamotto. At least of the mesh clothes, some definitely aren’t clean, and I’m not sure about some of the female layer clothes. But others are definitely legal such as Rhia Bachman’s classic clothes or Dawn Greymyst’s Clutterfly-based clothes. These and some others are actually exclusive to 3rd Rock Grid Welcome, and when the grid shuts down, it’s highly likely that they’ll disappear from the Hypergrid altogether, save for the inventories of what few avatars have picked them up.

Oh, and if you’ve got some time, you may also want to teleport to Navigation Island, right in the middle of the sim (the “nose” of the smiley face), and check out what else 3rd Rock Grid has to offer.