oh no! The Oziversary has been taken over!

"Help!" cried Dorothy. "The Wicked Witch of the West is trying to take over Oz! Will no one helps us defeat this evil plot?"

If you fail to answer Dorothy's call for help then I'm afraid, poor soul, that the Witch already has her claws sunk deep into your heart and you are beyond any help I can offer you - but those still pure of heart listen well.

After one glorious year filled with happiness and golden sunshine, a cloud of gloom is descending over Oz. From Munchkin Land to the great City of Emerald itself plans were being made for a glorious celebration to mark the one year anniversary of Magic of Oz and the good fortune the fair Candy and the gallant Malk have brought to the land. However, the Wicked Witch caught wind of the plans and is now meaning to hijack the celebration, steal all the anniversary gifts for herself, and allow only the flying monkeys to dance at the balls!

We need your help to save the Anniversary Celebration! Starting Monday, October 12th, citizens and friends of Oz alike will join forces to defeat The Witch's evil plans! 21 merchants of Oz have made gifts for those brave enough to battle The Witch. Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, has learned that The Witch intends to capture the Silver Slippers and thus take control of the celebration. Glinda has made an infinite number of copies of the Silver Slippers to hide all over the Magic of Oz sim in order to confuse The Witch.

The fake slippers are of no use to The Witch but if you find a fake pair of slippers and follow the directions hidden in them, Glinda will reward you for helping to increase the Wicked Witch's confusion! The Silver Slipper Hunt will run for the duration of the anniversary celebration, October 12-18, so be sure to find some time to come and help confuse The Witch.

In addition to the Silver Slipper Hunt, there will also be a photo contest, fishing contests with unique items to find and lindens to win, and dancing, dancing, dancing! More informtaion to follow in subsequent posts, but remember Oz is counting on you! Mark your calendars, The Silver Slipper Hunt starts on Monday, October 12 at the Magic of Oz sim! Come and defend Oz from the plots and schemes of The Witch!

(thanks to Elizabeth Tinsley for the write up of the story!)

One Year Oziversary!

The Magic of Oz celebrates its one year anniversary October 12th - 18th with a week long celebration! Events include the Ruby Slipper Hunt, two 7 Seas Fishing tournaments with 3,000L prizes each, Monster Ball and Masquerade Ball with prizes, and a Flickr contest. Don't miss a chance to see a preview of the Ozimals bunnies at the Q & A before the launch!

Stay tuned to this blog for more updates :)

News and Thanks from Oz!

Wow! We are humbled and grateful for the overwhelming positive response to Magic of Oz. I have gotten so many comments on how people have enjoyed the hunt and the sim, and it was truly all I could have hoped for the Grand Opening. Thanks to everyone who came and who continues to come back over and over to visit. In case anyone hasn't heard, we did extend the hunt to Friday at 10 SLT to hopefully give everyone a chance to get all the goodies.

To answer a few questions we are getting - YES, we are planning to expand and YES that does include residential areas. We are very excited about doing the residential sections, especially. Please stay tuned for that - more information coming soon!

I wanted to take a moment to thank some people without whom we could not have had such a wonderful opening. First and foremost among these is our builder, Jenne Dibou. Oz would not be what it is without her work. Jenne brought it to life. She is an extraordinary builder, with amazing talent and vision. We gave her our ideas, showed her some pictures - and she took those and worked her own creative magic to make one of the most beautiful sims I have ever seen in SL. It was as if she plucked exactly what we wanted right out of our heads and made it better than I ever thought it could be. On top of all that, she is SO easy to work with and the sweetest, funniest person you have ever met. The way Oz looks (and the way it performs! Fastest load time on sculpted prims I have EVER seen) is entirely due to her and she is owed all the praise for that. I cannot recommend her highly enough to someone looking for a truly unique build. She also makes all sorts of amazing things besides custom builds - skyboxes, prefab homes, clothing, incredibly detailed accessories, working toy trains, Greek temples, factory buildings, the list goes on and on. Her main store is a wonder and is worth a visit just to see it and take pictures. Careful, there's a creepy clown in there - don't say I didn't warn you! Visit Jenne's store - JD Mechanical Toy Factory here and if you loved our sim, send her a message and let her know.

Her partner in JD Mechanical Toy Factory and kick ass scripter Mandy Marseille was responsible for creating the script that ran the Ruby Slipper Hunt so flawlessly, as well as our other scripted items around the sim. I really believe she can make anything in SL bend to her will - if you need a scripter, I don't think you can do better than Mandy.

Getting the sim ready for the opening was a HUGE task and we had so much help from our friends. We would not have been able to survive that first day without their awesomeness.

Dove Swanson is the owner of Long Awkward Pose (best pose maker evar!) and she helped out in SO many ways. She gave us great advice, made tons of the most adorable poses that are scattered around the sim, donated uber prize packs and stood at the entrance of Oz for goodness knows how long on opening day greeting people and answering questions. I <3 you, you crazy funny chick.

Our friends Winter and Curvy also spent HOURS at the landing point, greeting people and answering questions so that we could keep things running, put out fires and grab a few hours of sleep. To our friends who thought the sim was good enough to post about on their blogs, the ones who donated time or prizes, and the ones who just listened to us complain about stupid shit or how tired we were in chat. I love ALL you bishes and thank you all so much.

To my partner - thank you so much. I don't appreciate you enough.

Ok, now that I've poured sappy sweet love on everyone - some business. We've had a lot of inquiries on store rentals, far more than the few that we have left open. We are planning a store expansion soon so if you could direct all rental inquiries to Magic Scribe, our rental manager - she will add you to the waiting list. We are planning to have regular events that we hope will be as fun as the slipper hunt - some really neat and creative stuff coming down the pipe. Stay tuned and subscribe to our update group (no group slot needed!) to be in on the scoop!

Oh yeah... I make jewelry. Some great new stuff coming that I couldn't get released before the opening - watch this blog for details ;)

The Magic is Almost Here...

Things are getting pretty exciting on our sim, we have an opening date! October 3rd, huzzah :) We did a stress test a few days ago and the response was really positive... we had several nice folks blog about us and lots of people came out just on word of mouth - since we didn't publicize the test at all. We have SO many stunning pictures on our flickr group that people took (http://www.flickr.com/groups/magicofoz/pool/) but our friend Berry did a spectacular picture of the whole sim I wanted to share... (click picture for full view)



Here's some links to the blog posts about the sim:

http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2008/09/off-to-see-the.html

http://juicybomb.com/2008/09/15/magic-of-oz/

http://reflectionsplaza.blogspot.com/2008/09/exclusive-preview.html

http://jdmtf.blogspot.com/2008/09/magic-of-oz.html

That last link is from our FANTASTIC builder's blog. She rox my sox. <3.

We are putting the final touches on the build, setting up our stores, and adding people left and right into our rental areas including Katat0nik, Sn@tch, Juicy, Step Up Poses, and The Laughing Academy. If you are interested in renting a space, contact Candy Cerveau or Malkavyn Eldritch in world or email me at eyecandydesigner@gmail.com. More details on the treasure hunt with exclusive prizes coming up soon =D