Remember me? I’m the one who gets bored of blogging more often than you change underwear. Which I’m willing to bet isn’t often, you filthy monkeys.

I’m popping up to reflect on the year that has been and to ponder what’s next.

The year kicked off with a bang in January as Linden Lab announced they had pounced upon both XStreetSL and OnRez marketplaces. In a single, united thought, the Second Life residents thought to themselves “Ah feck.. they’re gonna screw that up”.

April saw the announcement that we can only buy the equipment needed to screw like bunnies from a new Adult region called Zindra. But we can screw like bunnies wherever we want.. except at Ahern, because the newbies try to join in. It’s like watching an 65 year old virgin trying to work out where it goes before knowing how it works. Not that I’d know anything about that..

July saw the furore around copybots kick off as everyone and their mother went berserk over an application which in the end turned out to be completely harmless. Linden Lab caught up a month later with their Content Management Roadplan. Three years late there, guys, but it’s nice to see you’re starting to catch on. Residents looked at it and thought “Yay!”. Four months on they’re looking at it and thinking “Hang on a jiminy-cricket second..”

Then as blogs attempting to aid the content creator’s cause inadvertently advertised the names of copybot clients to anyone who knew how to use a keyboard and Google, the third-party client came under scrutiny from Linden Lab, as they released a series of guidelines for developers to adhere to. The grid’s biggest third party client, GreenLifeEmerald, stuck up their middle finger and went back to the important viewer function of making breasts bounce.

September saw possibly the biggest news story of the year as StrokerSerpentine et al took on Big Daddy and filed class action, baby. It’s sort of likepump action, except nobody’s really looking at where the barrel is pointing. It might hit the right guy, but it could wind up blowing all our heads off before we worked out what just happened.

Phillip Linden jumped ship in October and founded a company called “Love Machine”, which I’m 86% sure is about to shake the SL escorting industry.

Linden Lab also successfully pissed off a bunch of SL creators by removing all feasibility to put freebies and dollarbies on XStreetSL. Apparently they think freebies might hurt the SL economy.. where the hell did they get a twisted, effed-up idea like that from?!

Oh, and they scrapped mentors. But nobody cared.

So what’s in store for 2010?

Well first up is going to be Second Life 2.0. Which I’m not allowed to talk about, so I’m useless in that respect. There’s a lot of talk about mesh-imports though, which is going to change Second Life in pretty much the same waysculpties did. And everyone will kick off about how much they hate the look of the new viewer before they actually realise (28 days later) that it’s actually much better. And that the zombies are all dead now.

Linden Lab could be about to bring in the Emerald team too, a story I pondered on Metaversally Speaking some months back after hearing a rumour. I hear a lot of rumours.. you can learn a lot by reading between lines, ya know.

The Lab is also going to link your SL balance directly to the XStreetSLbalance, which means those of you who use XSL as a makeshift savings account are going to get a surprise when you log in one day. Don’t blow it all on hookers at once though.. you got the whole year to rocks your socks off.

The Lab will likely get around to dissolving Teen Grid in 2010 too. They’ve effectively removed any real incentive to be there, as well as the ability to join if you live outside America. Which is apparently quite a lot of people. The plan is to bring the residents from TSL onto the Main Grid and let them roam PG area. The grid will cry foul and scream about how they want to get away from kids.. right up until they realise that the adult population stirring up meaningless daily dramas are far more childish than kid on TSL.

And they’re going to with scripts. Nobody really seems to know what they’re going to do, but it’s either going to be awesome, or absolutely all hell is about to break loose. But seeing as Mono was implemented without the West Coast plunging into darkness, I’m remaining quietly optimistic.

The old inventory cap limits rumour is doing its rounds again. Nobody I’ve spoken to in Linden Lab seem to know why its popped up this time, so we can probably assume it was a slow news day for someone.

Overall for the year, I think Linden Lab are going to concentrate on re-attracting commercial elements to their Enterprise Grids (Sorry kids, but you ain’t putting enough dough in Big Daddy’s cocaine fund) and come up with a couple more big and unpopular (but necessary) changes to retain sustainability to the grid. Don’t ask me what they are, but it’s what they hinted at SLCC’09.

I’ve got a gut feeling that there may be new building tools in the works, and that Linden Lab may well look at making them Premium Account only features – lets face it: it’s not like Premium Accounts are glowing with incentives at the moment. A two tier system with added bonus features for Premium Accounts makes sense for Linden Lab to monetise on residents.

And I reckon Linden Lab may raise their head from the media hole they dug for themselves. Despite a pretty poor report from the BBC this year, they know its time they started controlling their media coverage, rather than letting it control them. And seeing as World of Warcraft got Mr T to be their frontman, why shouldn’t SL have a leading Z-lebrity too on primetime TV? My money is one a similar sort of character to Mr T, but less aggressive and with more botox.. I am, of course, talking about David Hasslehoff.

In other news, Open Sim grids and Blue Mars won’t come even close to touching Second Life again this year. They’re still too far off.

Finally, it’s worth noting that Second Life residents have become notorious for bitching about every other thing that the Lab does. Now, they can’t seem to move a finger without a small army looking to crucify them. But you know what? Nobody’s ever done this before. They’re the first to be running a user-generated content world and we often forget that – we expect them to be some sort of God-like figures who have all the answers, when in fact, they’re trying to work these problems out.

So step back, take a breath, and put the pitchfork back in the shed. Hurting Big Daddy’s only going to lead to you hurting yourself.