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3rd Rock Grid, one of the oldest grids in OpenSim, is coming back.
The grid shut down in 2024, and many of its former residents found new homes on ZetaWorlds.
But now its original owner and founder, Terry Ford, is bringing it back to life.
Ford began working on the grid back in 2007, and opened it to the public in 2008. By that August, he had rented out 178 regions, and the grid had the first working permissions system and was the also first OpenSim grid with a working economy.
3rd Rock Grid was also the first home of Linda Kelly, a content creator who changed the look-and-feel of OpenSim by giving away a massive amount of free, original, fully licensed content, helping new grid owners outfit their users without violating copyright laws.
“She got her start in OpenSim at 3rd Rock Grid and was a huge part of our early success,” Ford said.
But then his wife passed away and he was forced to step back.
“I just didn’t have the time to devote to the grid back then,” he told Hypergrid Business. He still continued working on the grid in the background, however.
In 2015, he opened a new grid and OpenSim hosting company, DigiWorldz, but still helped out on 3rd Rock. “I continued taking care of the servers, code, etcetera until 2021,” he said. That’s when the new owners of 3rd Rock Grid decided to create a non-profit and move the tech support to a team based in Europe.
When 3rd Rock Grid shut down in 2024, he offered to help out again or to buy the domain back. “But they declined,” he said.
Then the domain came back up for sale last month.
“3rd Rock Grid has meant a lot to me and many others over the years, and with the history and the many firsts, I just had to bring it back,” he said.
So far, Ford has put up three regions — Welcome, Hunter, and Our Town — the same three regions that the grid originally launched with back in 2008.
The Welcome region is open to the public, and can be accessed via hypergrid at grid.3rdrockgrid.com:8002.
“But there’s nothing there yet,” Ford said. “I suspect in a week or two we’ll be ready for new users.”
Ford doesn’t have access to the grid’s content as of the time it closed, but does have 196 old region backups from the 2021 transition.
“I can’t use those backups as the grid wasn’t mine then, but if the past owners agree, and anyone wants to put them back online, I’ll do it,” he says. “But, again, only with permission from the past owners.”
To find out if backups are available, former region owners can contact him directly, he said, at [email protected].
So what’s going to happen to DigiWorldz, Ford’s current grid project? That grid — which currently is the equivalent of 2,535 standard regions in size, with over 13,000 registered users and nearly 2,000 active monthly users — will continue on as it always has.
“It will be business as usual at DigiWorldz,” he said. “3rd Rock Grid isn’t going to be DigiWorldz and DigiWorldz isn’t going to be 3rd Rock. While they will share the internal systems and our new control panel, both grids will be separate legal entities, and each will have its own identity made up of its users. My hope is that some of the old users will return and help to build the future 3rd Rock Grid community. Everyone will be welcome.”
Region pricing information for 3rd Rock Grid isn’t yet available on its website, but on DigiWorldz, regions start at $11 a month for a 25,000-prim standard-size starter region.
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