SLCC 2006 Sponsor No Longer Attending

This is true! The DMCA claim I filed against you and your group worked extremely well. I should also state that the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial NoDerivs 2.0 (by-nc-nd) license did wonders in getting all of my written works off your website as well. I just wish I had a trademark stamped on my Fachwerk textures that were pirated by those in Neufreistadt.

Given the direction LL is going with SL, it is critical to protect all your works, both in world and online with the appropriate copyrights. Do not assume that your IP will be respected, even by those you've known for years. Follow this link to learn more:

http://creativecommons.org/

For the record, unlike what some may think, DMCA claims are not "filed" on the forums, but using the appropriate channels. I don't know what happened to yours, Uma, but you may rest assured it never reached us.

It was filled out and faxed to Linden lab according to their instructions on this page here. There was also one drafted up to send to your internet service provider but you thankfully removed my writings voluntarily.

Well my thoughts on LL, SL and copyright law go far beyond the DCMA aspect. There are some pertinent questions about what rights in fact are given, subject to the LL license back we give in the TOS. It may well be found that LL retains copyright and grants users a license. Also It may well be found that LL is the original author since our work is pulished on thier servers.

I don't know any of the answers here, thats why I said its going to take litigation to sort this out. We are in a grey area. LL may not beable to provide the protection it represents. Its all fine and dandy to say they are not a police force, but in point of fact, their rights and responsibilites to the users vis a vis the tos and the sign up agreement have not been litigated.

My real concern though is user retention in the long run. that is the bugbear here.

That was my mission as well Jake, and I hope to revisit it. I am still thinking how best to answer Gwyneth's post because it says a lot about a Second Life that I for one didn't sign up for. I may be a fool for looking at "What is Second Life" and expecting that to be the world I signed up for, but nevertheless I believe it is a concept worth fight for on some level.

I will be posting on some of the issues I planned to cover at the SLCC over the next few days at my new Second Life Home Page portal

http://slhomepage.com

I have already duplicated our current Forums structire over there, and added a couple of other things, so I'm far from "completely out". But I have only logged into the client twice to check on my workers, give them their richly deserved payments for helping complete the combat system in time for the conferece, and was saddened by numerous IMs from people I enjoy chatting with but just didn't have the time or normal excitement factor to stay in-world.

Gwyneth, I also checked out your blog and you touch on a number of the concepts you raised here and I want to take that into account with my reply. I appreciate all the work you did in explaining your take on a "metaverse protocol". I hope to finish my "pondering" tomorrow to help me best reply to you and others who have raised other issues in this thread.

Well Clubville — I must publicly thank you here as well for taking the trouble (and the cost!) to set up a new set of forums.

You don't imagine how encouraged I feel by that. Others are still complaining, and complaining, and grumbling, and fuming. You, on the other hand, are actively doing something instead of crossing your arms and let others do it for you.

I truly congratulate you on your attitude. After this thread, I would really imagine that you would be so discouraged with LL's attitude and SL in general that you would really walk away. And wouldn't you be totally right in doing so?

Not so. Instead, you bring back to the users of SL what they have been complaining (at least here!) more: a brand set of new forums. That's truly the spirit.

At this point, I guess that you'll quickly see the world of Second Life be evenly split among the following two types:

1. The ones who complain, grumble, protest, irritate others, act petulant and childish, cannot see beyond their own navel, are egoistic and egocentric, only wish to capture the limelight (often without any reason for that), and have as their purpose in Second Life to bring about the worst in themselves (either role-playing it or doing it because they can), and making sure everybody else does the same. In short, becoming community destructors with all their strength and power.

2. The ones who actively participate, build up their reputation by creating and maintaining communities, bring innovation to SL, preserve on despite the difficulties and are stubborn enough to go on, gather their strength to create new things even in spite of the difficulties, continue to be strong critics (of LL and SL) without giving up on the platform, encourage intelligent discussion (even if its theme might bother some, either in SL or even RL) which is held on a moderate level, respect others to earn their respect, and genereally speaking, become the ones that push SL forward (even into directions not originally intendedby LL). In short, they become community attractors.

It's quite clear to me that you, Clubville, have definitely gone the way of #2.

For that, I truly thank you very much.

Actually, if you looked around hard enough, this started early last year. It's just starting to complete its final stages.

And I'm sure you'll find me also in the second group. When I made my own announcement six months ago (search Bulletin-Board for D'mala), I was very forthright in stating it would be awhile, and would never fully leave. In fact, I still contribute things here and there, since it gives me interesting things to do while Uru Live ramps up.

But I can never fully leave here. Trying to explain that would take too much space here, but it's still half-typed on the weblog (it's originally being crafted for the MystBlogs aggregate but I think I'll cross-post the link here once its done).

I do wish I could attend SLCC though, but RL constrains me to the immediate area around NJ.

--Alan
:link:

Yes, I do think that I agree with you!

One thing that I find intriguing about SL (and always have) is that aspect of what happens when you provide people with an opportunity to create a "second life" - a whole other persona right down to the clothes and general appearance. Who do we choose to be? Our RL choices (and those are indeed choices) tend to be molded by family, location, how we were raised, etc... But when you take all those things away and allow someone a second life where they can be anything and anyone they choose, why do some people choose to be jerks, whiners, predators, destructors and detractors?

After thinking about this for the past two years I've been in SL, I finally came to the conclusion that the reason that the "perfect society" cannot and will never exist is because you always have a certain number of people who just are jerks. And it is because of the jerks that we have to have laws, regulations, etc... This is why (as much as I admire the principles) Libertarianism will never work as a working societal model, it assumes too much that people are basically good and will do the right thing once regulations that force them into bad behavior are removed. Without getting into politics and hijacking the thread, I believe this to be false after watching what happens when you hand the masses a virtual world with very little regulation and almost no enforcement. The good and productive people do indeed prosper, but are tormented by those that just have a large dose of the jerk streak running through them.

Luckily, those with the compulsion to be asshats seem to be a minority, but as with crime statiscs, it is a small number of really bad criminals responsible for most of the crime and the rest tend to be opportunists with a moral flexibility problem.

You assume that people in SL decide to 'be' something they aren't. A woman plays as a man, a short fat guy plays as a tall muscular Adonis, a 'plain Jane' becomes a sex goddess, shrinking violets become extroverts, assholes become 'Mother Teresa', nice guys become 'evil lords'.

And yes, it happens to some extent. But quite a few play pretty much as they are IRL.

And as for character, well, I must have missed that set of sliders

Behavioural patterns are very difficult to change, chances are people will continue to exhibit the personality traits they bring into SL from RL.

I am coming late to this but i just read it and had to comment.

1) It ain't "short" at all

2) You so completely misunderstand SL it isn't funny.

Other than criticising the base technology over and over again (by comparing it to other games that SL has nothing in common with), your main idea seems to be to have a multiplayer shoot-em-up type game that runs within SL at large.

If you truly don't understand whey that would never work, then you don't understand SL at all.

This is the old "is it a game?" problem IMO. Your viewing SL as just another game (like all the other games you mention and compare it to in your post) when it really isn't. Apples and Oranges.

Just because his understanding doesn't match yours, that doesn't make his incorrect. I believe it is that kind of "certainty" in one's own position that is at to root of all sorts of problems. From local misunderstandings to global conflicts.

Why do so many people take it upon themselves to "correct" other people's understanding of things.

On topic, I do believe the departure of anyone with such passion and knowledge is a terrible loss to us all.

Gwyneth, You generaly set for reasonable arguments, but what a pompous load of horse hockey.

You want to divide the world inot the doers who work hard and the complainers who do nothing but complain because they are lazy. It is exactly that sort of divisive tekki-wikkiati rah rah that I think is the problem with SL. You simply perpetuate the position that people should come to SL to community build, to DO something, and conversely say pish tosh to those who come expecting something to be done for them.

Well guess what, there are plenty of "Doers" who come to SL and work damned hard to ruin it for others. As a platform for greifign and theft of intellectual property, SL 's credentials are impeccable. There are also plenty of us "non-doers" who come to SL to exacpe from hard work, who want SL time to be leisure time, who spend lindens and enable the "doers" to make money.

LL markets heavily to the casual user..they sell it as a place where you can be a rock star..just look at the website. I don't have the time or the inclination to build communities, I don't want to own a sim and run a land business, I don't want to be the gateway for real coroprations to enter the world. I want to come and have fun.
Yes I expect things done for me. If I wanted to work harder and make more money, I'd stay at my job longer. I, and thousands like me, come here to decompress. And guess what, we are told when we sign up that thats what SL is, a place to decompress. Not a platform for commuity development. I expect that LL will take a lead role in that aspect..I expect they will actively facilitate community development, and subsidize people who are building communities. IF LL does not want to assume the role of government, then they need to get out of the way and let someone else do it.

As I see it now, failing to deliver what is promised, failing to protect people from griefing and from IP theft, and now, by closing the forums, failing to make people feel listend to on a gress roots level; all this will make user retention the SL ulcer. Like it or not, SL as the developer sets the tone for the world. Right now the tone is we don't want to do anything, but we don't wnt to give up control either. Doing nothing is often worse than picking a choice and going with it.

I dunno. I rather agree with the gist of what Dianne is saying, but I'd include people who just come here to have fun among the people who "build the community." Not everyone does their part by designing clothes or scripting. Not everyone has the know-how. But even those who come here just to socialize or explore make the place better.

The problem is that SL is a game. Its marketed as a game, and uses game elements to draw in users. As I have said, if somone says SL is a 3-d community development platform, then I would not be here, and neither, I think would most of the 300,000 or so users. For some of you, the platform aspect is wonderful and full of possiblilties, and for others of us, using SL as a platform is a chore. We play SL, because as a game, Sl is unique in concept and possibility. It is a wonderful enviroment to play and has all sorts of possiblitles. All of which are utter squandered by the disadain the "platformers" have for the "gamers."

The problem is that SL is not that good of a platform either, becuse it is tried to preserve some game elements for the casual users..mickey mouse last names, monoploy money, poor physics, and most aggregiously limited ability to administer and protect the IP property rights of people who show up in game, despite marketing itself on the notion that you own the IP rights in stuff your create. the fake last names make enforcement via the courts impossible expensive, and DCMA take down notice is toothless without legal recourse. The ability to contract is serverly limited, because any in world contract is not enforceable.

Thus Sl is directionless at the moment..it is trying to be both a game and a platform, and not really succeeding at either. I suspect for the 60,000 or so actual residents ( as apposed to the number of accounts) as many as 20,000 see SL as a platform and are truly out there trying to develop it. There are about 1500 dedicated griefers, and then there are the rest of us.

Except that recently we're seeing more and more residents who actively participate and care about the community complain grumble and protest about what's happening. Does that make them negative nellies? No. It means they're invested in SL and don't like what's happening. Your post seems to be blowing off people who have genuine concerns. Sorting people into neat, little boxes is very convenient, but doesn't necessarily reflect reality.

Howdy Gwyneth,

Sorry it's taken so long to get back to this, but you have presented a lot of history and future commentary that require me to look at where my original post came from to make a proper response. I have also read your follow-ups and blogs and realize it's best for me to brek down portions of your excellent information and ideas to address them from my perspective. I entered Second Life solely on the "promises" of What is Second Life? and the Fansite Toolkit. I may be a fool for marketing, but combining this information with external articles, images and reviews it appeared to be a working feature set. Once in-world I found that feature set to be realized but not working at a performance rate to realize the options that intrigued me. Rather than exploring the possibility that this marketing material was merely out-of-date and the realities of Linden Lab's direction was best revealed elsewhere (buried in ancient Forum posts, articles, and third party writings such as a few on your blog site that were a couple of years old) I figured they were just going through "growing pains" and I'd see what I could do to help, to achieve "Your World. Your Imagination." on my terms.



I start with this quote because it is a reality that is obvious once in-world, but not the "word on the street" available to non-members through the marketing information. Understanding the root server technologies involved it is obvious how the system could work as prescribed, yet you have demonstrated to me why they have abandoned that direction without telling us, the perspective users, of that change.

Personally the concept of a "social MMO" makes no sense in the larger market. There will always be people interested in meeting and socializing with others like thy can in real life, but without the borders inherent in reality. I can understand the appeal of execrising one's creativity, sharing it with others, and using it as a jumping-off point for conversation. I can also see the use of simplistic "parlor" games as a gethering place for people who wish to spend more time socializing than "action" games seem to demand (I write "seem" because in reality the need for competition doesn't drive everyone who participates in online action games).

You mention "The Sims Online" and There.com as two competing social MMOs that Linden Lab may have looked at when changing their strategy. I wonder if they look at them now, with TSO shutting down and There being a relative failure. Neither of these systems have made the sorts of inroads into the hearts and minds of users who wish to take advantage of 3D worlds that action games have. Ultimately the masses will pick up the phone or use Instant Messaging for basic socializing with others. IRC channels and broad-topic forums are populated by far more people. Not because Second Life isn't known, but because of ease-of-use if the bottom-line is simple socializing.

While I believe Linden Lab or some other enterprising company could deliver a 3D content development platform that would enable non-professionals to create worlds technically on par with the likes of "World of WarCraft" or "Guild Wars", it's not a mandate. The use of prims as building blocks rather than traditional polygons is a clear indicator that ease-of-use to unleash personal creativity is the goal, and an admirable one. I don't believe it is an either/or situation, however. Maybe it is for them, that they don't have the resources or support necessary to employ a team to realize a more technically proficient playground, but it certainly is possible.

In the end I guess my reaction to this part of your reply would be, "I was hoodwinked!" Standing around a world based on years-old technology and typing to other people was not the product I signed up for. It is a limited market at best. Not everyone wants to go around shooting other people, but that is not the limit of online gaming. The word "platform" doesn't appear once in any of the marketing material, but as long as that is a preferred term, I'll once again use the analogy that Xbox Live is a platform. It is a platform that only allows marginal user creativity (Far Cry Instincts and similar games that allow user to create their own worlds for prescribed gameplay), instead requiring companies to deliver that content (both in retail and downloaded forms), but unifying the userbase through Friends lists, voice chat, game invites, messaging and more.

In case you're interested, here's a brief glimpse at the types of user created content available for players of just one customizable game on Xbox Live, "Far Cry Instincts":

http://www.gamerresource.com/showgame.asp?pg=267&detail=browsemaps&type=media&kind=images

There is far more than listed there, but it shows the custom communities that spring up around content creation even on a platform that doesn't make it the bedrock principle. I'm old, I suck, but man do I enjoy running around shooting weapons, chatting with new people using voice and using my online time in the pursuit of more fun and near weekly exciting new developments.

I had wanted to wait for information from the SLCC before addressing this part of your post Gwyneth, and I'm glad I did. I found Cory's keynote to be excellent presentation overall, as it demonstrated his knowledge of connected systems and the direction development was taking. I also confirmed my problem with Second Life: It's not the product that is advertised.

One of the most distressing comments Cory made was in regards to the development going on by Second Life's residents. You mentioned the difficulties LSL scripters have experienced. Cory commented that enough lines of code have been generated by residents equal to Microsoft Office many times over, then cracked a joke about how they wouldn't enjoy that comparison. I understand the "nerd humor" here, and the linux crowd's disdain for Microsoft, but when was the last time you patched Office? I use Word, Outlook and Access daily without updates, getting work done, with powerful features I never touch but am happy to know are there should I need them. Microsoft Office is a product that works and is used by millions daily. Second Life is a product that occasionally works and is used by a few thousand. Who should really be the butt of this joke?

You're right, I found Linden Lab's development team wonting, but not for an unexplainable reason, and for more reasons than them cobbling software libraries together with some additional code under linux. I read the Answers Forum frequently, as well as Current Version Feedback, to see what problem were raised. The answer to the problem of muting Group IMs was indicative of my problem with Linden Lab's ability to deliver software. The problem with muting was revealed as legacy code too deeply ingrained for a "qucik fix". This is either a lie (doubtful) or massive incompetence. No system that does no more than transfer lines of text to a central location and then feed it to multiple clients could be that ingrained without a massive failure of foresight. And the fix should be trivial: if it is that ingrained, leave the legacy code in place and change the hooks for that type of chat to flow through a new system. It's just not a difficult task. Distributed IM systems abound in open source, couldn't one just as easily be shoved into the system if they are loathe to write such trivial code themselves?

The autism you speak of is wholly related to the underlying problem that provoked my original message: faulty marketing. I didn't sign up for a "platform". To repeat again, the word "platform" doesn't appear in any of the sales material (What is Second Life?). So this autism is easily seen as their reaction to changing the rules midstream and not wanting to tell anybody for fear of them pulling their money. Right now many of us are committing our "play money" to develop a product we don't want and we never signed up for. Cory talked about a painful change to XUI, the open XML based user interface library they are now using to ease localization and customization, and for many that's great. It doesn't do me any good standing in a sim bogged down by crippling time dilation. The UI should be the least of their concern. I write this only as a half-hearted joke: could the rush to add support for foreign language interfaces be because now that they've burned so many English-speaking bridges, they need to move on to a new batch of people who have yet to learn that they are about to try a product that isn't what it's advertised to be?

Except for the uBrowser, the technologies you mention at the end of this quote are exactly the ones necessary to even achieve a properly wrking world, even if it isn't one the masses are interested in seeing. Cory's list of out-world APIs are wonderful, if in-world worked. However, many of them seem at odds with Philip's apparent belief that people will come to use a 3D Browser as ubiquitously as the current 2D web. Which is it? If the uBrowser will be so important, what role is Second Life the 3D world playing besides, once again, a low-tech broken 3D version of IRC with Barbie dress-up?

Clubside,

Excellent posts altogether! If I may be so bold, if your posts were the average quality of the content we'd find in these forums, LL would not shut them down :) But alas, we cannot "demand" people to write coherently, consistently, and to a purpose — all we can do is set an example, and getting accused of being "paternalising" and "condescending" when we say that.

In any case, I can only agree with you when you write "This is not the product I've signed for", which is one of the pillars of your argumentation. It is, also, one of the major reasons for most of the people who left SL but explained why they left (either publicly or privately). We hardly can speculate on other reasons for them to leave if they never dropped a message before leaving, so this sadly can only be seen as anedoctal evidence and not an universal fact.

Take a short look at the archives of SL's home page. While the earlier pages have too many errors to be legible, you can still see a trend there on the newer ones. As you go back in time, SL was announced as a "joyful game which you helped to create" (my words). It showed glossy graphics, dynamic people, the design of vehicles and weapons, interviews with business owners. SL was clearly targeted at people wishing to do all content creation like they were used to buy canned from TSO or There.com — and this was LL's target, an audience in the 18-25 age range, mostly male, just like any other MMORPG.

As time went by, it was obvious that this wouldn't work, for the many reasons that you have enumerated. Actually, some groups of residents in late 2004 or early 2005 came up to the then VP of Marketing and offered to do a different site (for free), targetted to a completely different audience. We felt tha the 18-25 age range that wanted a shoot-em-up with skill levels, fast-paced vehicles and guns, would simply be bored by SL and go away; at the same time, the ones using SL professionally for totally different purposes, would be put off by a big, flashy site saying cool things like "you can be whoever you want and build whatever you wish; the parties never end in SL" etc. The corporate customers would simply say: "Oh, it's just a game. Yeah, right." and leave.

It was even suggested that there could be two entry points to Second Life. "Second Life — The Social Game With Dynamic Content" would be one entry point — the one we currently have. "Second Life — The Metaverse Building Platform" would be a different one, addressed to a totally different audience, and with a more serious content. Since most people in that group were starting to do all sorts of RL work using SL and selling the platform to corporate customers as "the new 3D WWW", we desperately needed some support from LL to do that (can you believe that to this very day they still don't have a PowerPoint presentation for the corporate market on SL? :) ). We also understood by the end of 2004 that getting the number of users to grow was naturally LL's first priority, and the flashy site that attracted young adults that were used to things like WoW (or the slowly declining TSO or There.com) was very important for LL. They were apparently reluctant to embrace other uses of their platform in open and in public, although they certainly encouraged those as well.

What changed? Well, on an average day sitting at the Help Island for a few hours, I might get in touch with perhaps a hundred or so new users. 99 of those will have joined because they were attracted to the flashy graphics. Their first two questions are always: "How do I get money?" and "What do I do next?" All of them are assuming that Second Life is a mission-based MMORPG they've just came across, and they expect the same things to be valid in SL as well. If we can extrapolate from the current statistics, about half of the users drop off SL immediately and go back to playing WoW; the rest understands that this is some sort of social 3D MUD and give it a try. But they certainly did not get a single hint from the web side to understand that; they had to figure it out by themselves.

Clearly I have to agree totally to you that the site should reflect more of what Second Life is supposed to be. On the other hand, to be honest, this is one of the ore difficult things to answer: "What is Second Life?" I would suspect that one would get 500,000 different answers, although a few could be grouped together. 1% would even say "it's a cool platform for griefing, since I can build my own sim bombs, yay" :) But far less than 1% would think of Second Life as a serious platform for developing 3D fast-paced action games. Even the very few — like you — who tried that route quickly stumbled upon so many blocks, limitations, the need for workarounds, and such limited playability that they either gave up, or turned to other things that occupied their online time. (After all, programming for its own sake is also fun, even if the result is not the "next" WoW :) )

Your second, equally-strong argument, is that "social MMORPGs have no future". The best argument for that, of course, is showing the quick rise and the successful business model behind all "action MMOGs". One cannot fail to remember City of Heroes, which got 160,000 users in just three weeks when it was launched; and the sustained growth of WoW to around 7 million users is hardly irrefutable as a fact. Add to that the dwindling numbers of users at TSO and There.com — these days at that nagging threshold where they are still profitable enough to turn in a profit, so that they don't get shutdown, but where development has standstilled for ages — and your case seems to be quite strong. We don't even know how well IMVU is faring these days; MMOGchart.com doesn't list it, but it's quite clear from their statistics how things stand these days: "social MMOGs" are just 2.2% of the overall MMOG users, and well over 50% of all users are happily shooting Orcs in World of Warcraft.

So any arguing about "the future of social MMOGs" cannot escape the hard facts: they simply aren't attractive enough to capture people's attention except for a short period (the "novelty" phase).

Naturally, I think that the issue here is that Second Life is not a "social MMOG with user-created content" — but a far different breed. It is certainly social, but the interactions between avatars are far from being at the level of what people expect in a social MMOG (meaning that people have to program from scratch all interactions... there is hardly more than a crippled communication system and 141 default gestures to begin with — contrast that with The Sims 2 22,000 animations for social interaction, even taking into account that The Sims 2 does not have an "online" version like TSO). But it is also a programming environment, designed for amateurs. It's an artistic self-expression medium, predating Dotsoul as a "cyberspace artistic community doing collaborative work" for several years (and SL has better graphics than Dotsoul!). It is also an economy-based society — where the value of the economy can be directly measured by the amount of in-world transactions and converting it to USD through an open exchange (other "games" have to employ heuristics to estimate the value of their respective economies, since most MMOG-creating companies disallow and forbid the exchange of "real money" outside the game — with a few exceptions, like Project Entropia). It's a venue for cyberlearning — the next generation of e-Learning tools in a 3D environment — and for doing seminars, classes, discussions, and presentations. It's a low-cost machinima development platform. And it's probably many other things that neither Linden Lab has ever imagined, nor was attempted before, and nobody ever has suspected about it yet.

If you think about it — and assuming that Linden Lab would have a totally different corporate culture — what of those areas would you invest in?

1. Better action gaming. Well, that would mean targetting WoW as the goal to surpass. Is that likely, for a company without money to do world-wide advertising, and no real content team to speak of? Very likely, Second Life would be one of those many small-time games that reach 20-30,000 users at their peak and quickly disappear after a year or so. If you're a regular reader of MMORPG.org, you'll see that every week a new MMORPG comes out, attracts a few thousand users, peaks at 20-30 users after a year, and then the company goes broke, cannot add further content or fix bugs, and the game disappears. It's a tough market, when you have to compete with giants.
   
   Also, a better pricing model on land. If someone wishes to create a WoW competitor using SL, since one sim can only handle 40 avatars, a 256x256 area, and costs US$195/month, how much would you need to replicate a whole continent, and how much would you need to charge your users? Multiverse got the business model right: deploy it for free, pay a percentage of what you earn from your game back to Multiverse...
   
2. Better social interaction. This is very low cost (ie. replacing the current IM structure with, say, Jabber — LL already abandoned that idea, once more, for unexplainable reasons). But it still would need some developments in all areas: a far easier interface; getting it to run at 60 FPS on very old machines; being able to run it on a small window for the occasional chat, while continuing to work on your computer; and so on. People using social tools want them to be easy, quick, and enjoyable — not slow to the point of dragging your computer down and requiring hardware upgrades just to make sure you can change your appearance without crashing.
   
3. Addressing programming requirements. A new function library. External editors. Better debugging features. Stand-alone servers for testing scripts. No silly limitations and built-in delays that need a lot of time to overcome. Good physics engine. Scripting avatars and avatar clothes... and who knows, a plethora of really needed features... too many to mention...
   
4. Addressing the artistic/3D designer community. This means going all the way to photorealism to the expense of anything else (mostly, playability!). Graphic designers expect photorealism, since that's what they get on things like the professional tools they use. Have both meshes and prims. Complete redesign of the in-world building tools with a "Pro" mode that will turn SL into your own Maya or Blender — or use Maya/Blender as a "sidekick" to SL, and allow SL to import models created there.
   
5. Prepare the environment for better support for the economy. Get ad space on the client; better search facilities; implement secure money transactions, with co-owned "bank accounts" (some of this is actually in the works!); rethink the whole "vendor" system and the impossibility to pre-set things like the price value on items. Then: establish a legal system to give protection to the customers through Better Business Bureaus that have enforceability. Make it possible to draw legal agreements and contracts in-world (the Nota Bene notary system is a first good step, but there is a limit to the numbers of lines you can place on a notecard...). Implement tools to facilitate alternative land-based models (leases, rents, etc.) that are tied-in into the client and not subject to server-side failures.
   
6. Implement HTML in-world and an easier interface for people that just want to attend classes but don't really wish to go all the way through the Orientation Islands just to create an avatar to be present at a one-hour conference. Really, that's all it takes; this is the area where SL requires the least improvements...
   
7. Even better camera support. A way to get a separate viewport. A way to make for smoother movements and camera transitions (current scripts almost get it right). Better animation support, mostly for coordinated animations. And, of course, all the tools required for 4 — photorealism, ray-tracing (even limited support for "mirrors" would be nice), Poser 5 avatars, lip-synching, and who knows what else...

The problem with Linden Lab and Second Life is that they want to address all these areas simultaneously, and since you have users on all of them, how should the work be prioritised in order to make sure that each and every one feels happy? :)

Well, the only possible answer to that is to see where Linden Lab is falling behind, and concentrate on that area. As said, point 6 needs almost no further development (just a better way to get people up to speed), and with 50+ universities working in SL, it's definitely not a negligible amount of users. On the other hand, points 1, 3 and 4 are so far behind the current state of the art, that one wonders if LL will ever catch up with them. In a sense, the argument that "it looks as good as WoW, but lags more, since all content is dynamically generated — you can create your own Orcs!" is, IMO, a possible selling point, specially if you can turn down the preferences to give you WoW-class performance with lower graphics. Currently, SL's technology is falling so fast behind, that no amount of excuses can be given for the bad performance — specially if such simple things as detaching the viewport from the user interface would give everybody a 4x boost on the interface without needing any new algorithms for the renderer, but for some mysterious reason LL's developers are so much in love with their clumsy interface that they refuse to change it... and no, I don't think that the new (announced) model will help much, it will only allow people to "skin" their interface and translate it to their mother language — definitely cool, since other games allow that as well, but not a vast improvement.

What does LL need now to help them decide? Well, a group of people at LL that is full time in world with a computer built in 2004 :) (since they just vaguely listen to their customers who have provided some reports and feedback on all those areas, and usually disregard their comments as "ranting"). Ideally, you'd have 7 staff employees, one for each of the above areas. And they would have to work full time using the client and see where the problems are. They would participate on some resident's projects in each area and understand why things don't work as they should. And then they would be required to use the competitor's products on all those areas, and elaborate weekly reports on what the differences are. "Know your enemy" as Sun Tzu used to say ;) Very important is naturally to give truthful feedback to Philip. Right now, it almost seems that if someone at LL complains (for the same reasons we complain!), they'll be ostracised, or, who knows, even lose their jobs. Instead, this should be made a focus, a priority. Philip really means it when he says that all of LL should spend more time in-world. One cannot but agree. This will give them an idea on where the improvements need to be done, experienced first-hand, and not filtered down by dozens of layers, where one cannot understand if someone is just ranting, complaining, or doing valid and constructive criticism.

That said, I'll stick to one of your major arguments: Linden Lab, please advertise Second Life as it is and not as it you dream it is :) Honesty is something that several customers truly appreciate...

Interesting. I've been posting constructively on these boards for 2 years now. I've never been accused of being condescending. Perhaps it's your delivery.

Great posts by the way Clubside.

Interesting reading. One minor point - I don't think Better Business Bureaus have any sort of "enforcibility" in the real world (unless I'm misunderstanding what you mean).

coco

Ah, I stand corrected, Coco. Thanks for that.

Actually, what I just meant was a rather simple model: a merchant would optionally be able to signal that they were willing to comply with an "Business Ethics" model and display a "seal of approval" so far as they complied with that document; complains ("abuse reports" would be routed towards an arbitration entity.

Exactly how much this model needs "code" to be enforced, or if it is a simple resident-created model, well, that would be up to people to discuss (again — since this happens to be one of the most discussed things in SL...). A purely resident-based model could be achieved by having the merchant place an amount of money in escrow with a SL-based organisation, for instance; again, the problem arises if that organisation is not controlled by anyone...

If you are leaving us Clubside goodluck on wherever your path takes you. Thanks for the sandbox and the sl handbook.

On the other hand, the peak is also spreading out; that is, the non-busy hours are closer to the busy hours in number of users than they used to be. This probably reflects the increasing internationalzation of Second Life, which means more users in time zones other than the four continental US zones. So I suspect that the growth of the peak simultaneous user number somewhat underrepresents the growth in SL usage; the truth lies somewhere between the 5% monthly growth of the peak rate and the 20% growth of the number of registered users.

Easily. A PowerPoint presentation is just too static to give any real taste of what Second Life is about. Machinima presentations (which LL has made) or live demonstrations of the world are much more effective ways of showing what is unique about SL. Besides, PowerPoint is evil.