Brief Background:
City of Phoenix has developed into a moderately popular role-play environment, averaging out at around 20 avatars during daytime and peak hours. The environment began after City of Decatur closed, and opened in late May 2012 when many of the owners and managers for Decatur transferred over.
Look and Feel (3 – Mediocre Quality):
Utilizing many prefabs with what appears to be a lack of planning, the city feels poorly conceived. The layout is completely different than what I’ve seen previously, and if more time went into using higher quality prefabs (or better even, custom buildings) the city would look a whole lot better. Many of the textures are unrealistic and don’t help in immersing one to the environment.
The Role-play (3 – Mediocre Quality):
Role-play in the city is casual, but not metered-based, which for some will come as a benefit. Role-play is on par with other casual role-play environments, providing a mix of light paragraph role-play, and ‘text-based’ role-play.
The Management (3 – Mediocre Quality):
Unlike many other environments, the City of Phoenix management appear to be more open to critique and suggestions, and take these into consideration more so than similar environments. In one YouTube video, Kolby Nissondorf, an estate manager for the City of Phoenix boasted the cities “community feel” and “family” as being something that they provide to the role-play community and something that other environments fail to provide in a Q&A video. I disagree that a community feel, and family is something new to the role-play community as it’s something that I’ve seen people doing many times over–that said, it’s interesting to see a role-play environment take a more open approach. I look forward to seeing if they keep that up in the future.
Online Presence (2 – OK Quality):
City of Phoenix’s online presence stretches through an online forum (which at the time of this review is down), a Twitter feed, and a YouTube page. The management appear to be less active on these social mediums as they were when the city was initially opened.
Overall (2.7 – OK to Mediocre Quality):
All-in-all, the City of Phoenix is providing what many environments have provided in the past, a casual role-play environment, struggling to find their place between casual and paragraph-based role-play. It’s nice to see the management take on an open approach and would be promising to see them take on the task of improving the look and feel of the environment.
Additional Information:
Regions: Vingolf, Nordhaven
Region Ratings: Moderate (Mature)
Roleplay Style: Casual Roleplay, Paragraph Roleplay, Turn-based Role-play
Voice: Disabled
by Caitlin Phenomena
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I should make note that the statement of the owners and management of Decatur being transferred to Phoenix is not correct. There is new management, and the Estate Managers, ( while some are the same,) we do have new ones as well. We are indeed to open to suggestions and critique, and I applaud Caitlin’s review of the city. While we tried to make a quality environment for the RPer to come and enjoy themselves, we will certainly take a look at what we can do to improve the overall quality of the region. We appreciate the people who come to the City of Phoenix to RP, and all suggestions from them. It may take a little time for us to improve somethings, as we do have our hands full with many tasks, however we will do our best to provide the best quality RP region for you
Thank you for the review, and we hope that our score improves with time, and effort from us 
I don’t think my previous comment posted so I am reposting
I first would like to applaud Caitlin for her unbiased, and honest opinion of the City of Phoenix. It is true that we are open to suggestions and critique from our members, and non-members alike. We strive to provide a quality RP region for everyone to come and enjoy. We do, in fact, hope to improve the quality of some builds, but we feel that we have provided a semi-unique experience with including our “old town” area of the region. I for one am glad some of these opinions have come to light, and will be presenting them to the Management team of the City of Phoenix for a review. I would like to mention one correction, however, about a statement in the review. It is not true that the ownership and management of the City of Decatur has simply made a new city. While there are some of the members of the old management team, we have lots of fresh faces, and ideas, as well as a completely different and unique ownership of the City of Phoenix. The City of Phoenix is in no way, shape, or form associated with the City of Decatur. That being said, I would implore you all to come experience the City of Phoenix, and feel free to provide the management staff with any comments, suggestions or ideas that you feel are pertinent to the improvement of the overall quality of the regions. Thank you for the review, and we hope to see you all there soon. 
ok, maybe my previous comment did make it here, lol Sorry about that
It wasn’t my intent to imply that the City of Phoenix was simply the City of Decatur under a new name or without new management. I will however add a note to the post to add clarity to the message I was attempt to convey. I appreciate your comment.
One thing I wasn’t very happy with in Phoenix, which actually caused me to leave, was the price of a Driver’s License. I applied, and got accepted into the Police Department a few days before it was open for roleplay, and I eventually got the notice that I couldn’t drive until I got a license. So I thought, “Alright, fair enough.” I went to the DMV next door to the police station, where I found out a drivers license costs, if i remember correctly, $150L. Now, I’m not a huge fan of paying for licenses in the first place since it is pretty much required unless you don’t want to drive anywhere, but $150L is just ridiculous. My job there as a police officer would involve a lot of driving, so that made me leave the department, and eventually leave the sim entirely. I have the L$ to pay for it, but I’d rather that $150L go to something useful that I can use for a while instead of just a license to use in one sim, that for all we know could be closing in a few weeks, then it’s just a waste of money and a useless texture with your name and picture on it.
In this, as well as any sim, having to pay for a license is a major turn off, especially if it’s $100L+. The most I previously paid for a license was $20L, and in many other places, it was just a free notecard to fill out, hand to an admin, and they give you the texture with your license, because it was required to have.
I don’t think it’s right to have to pay, especially as much as you would have to in Phoenix, to purchase an essentially useless texture that required to have if you’d like to drive; same goes for other sims.
Anyway, a very well written and thought out review, that’s just my two cents on Phoenix; It’s the license that killed it for me.
Very sorry you feel that way over the driving license fee.
However since introducing the driving license for the city we have sold over 80 driving licenses.
Most people do not have any issue with paying for it as they understand that the money remaining after textures uploads assists to support the sim tier costs.
Its also an interesting part of roleplay for the police department being able to do vehicle checks on our database.
Also remember that L$150 is only around $0.60 USD, hardly a great ammount when you take into account that everything else for roleplay is provided free of charge.
For those with limited finances we do provide a free bike hire service, which of course is also the city doing its bit for the enviroment
Also to add – a majority of established role-play sims charge much more than L$150 for a driver permit. I can remember sims that had traffic from 40-50k that charged anywhere from L$1500/month to L$750/week. Sims are expensive to run and those types of fees should merely be considered donations to help keep your RP places up and running.
Well I’d sure hope the money goes to supporting the sim costs (: ! I’m well aware how much sims cost; I’ve seen many sims fail due to lack of funding. I just think there are plenty of other, more useful places that money could be made off of rather than a drivers license. I know I’m speaking for a very small group, but there’s some of us that may not have, or like to put too much money into Second Life, and that’s unfortunately what ruined Phoenix for me. I would think that charging a little extra rent for residences or businesses would be better, because you are getting the same amount of money (Maybe even more), and it would also lower the cost of a driver’s permit, allowing more opportunities for people who may not have a ton of money on Second Life for whatever reason. These opportunities including the Police Department, Fire Department, taxi service, or just driving on their own to get around.
The legal definition of a donation basically narrowed it down to simplest terms as a gift. If this gift is required only to allow you more opportunities within the sim, then I feel it isn’t much of a gift. It’s more like paying $0.99 to upgrade a free smartphone app to get rid of advertisements and get more levels; Nobody really wants to pay for it, but it just makes your experience more enjoyable. You’re required to pay to be allowed this opportunity. As I’ve said, the fact that you have to pay, I don’t care about. I just find your particular price pretty high, when the average cost I’ve seen is somewhere between $5L and $30L. I don’t know what you currently charger for rentals, I haven’t been on the sim in weeks, but would it seriously hurt to charge a little more on rentals and take away the cost of something as small as a driving permit?
I understand this is something that’s most likely not going to be considered, probably not even going to be brought up at all, but it’s something to think about. There are plenty of good RP’ers who may not have a ton of money on here, or they’d like to see it go somewhere more useful or interactive. I’m sure there are plenty of other people who are turned off by Phoenix because of this cost. Like I’ve said, I’m a big Fire/EMS/Police Role player. I can do none of those Phoenix because I can’t afford license, so there’s really no use for me to come to Phoenix anymore.
Again, I know it’s not going to be brought up or considered at all, and in the back of your mind your probably really just want to tell me to “Grow up” or say “Nobody’s asking you to come to Phoenix”, but I just want to get that point across. I understand you’ve had ample amounts of people purchasing these, and it’s probably been a decent money maker for you, but it could also easily be a big turn off to visitors or citizens of Phoenix.
Thank you for your support Joe.
Good point, well made