Ten Points in Favor of Abandoning Second Life

There comes a time when, in the course of participating in an activity, you must weigh the pros and cons of your continued support. The last month has left me with both a bad taste in my mouth and a long list of cons.

A month ago, it was announced that the asset server was sinking under the sheer volume of data residents of this world were dumping on it. A plea went out to clean and reduce our saved objects, specify our trash folders. In the spirit of good citizenship, and the selfish dream to find items more easily in my groaning inventory, I began to organize. This was the start of a month long nightmare.

Granted poor timing was a factor, as in the middle of my spring cleaning the asset server took its first dive, taking a majority of the grid with it. When the simulator I was in came back to life, 18 hours later, I found that the crash had taken half my inventory with it. Everything in my object inventory after “M” was gone.

To anyone who knows me, importance of items starting with the second half of the alphabet should be readily apparent. You can imagine my horror at losing “Roulette”,“Sheep”, “Slots”, “Sex Ball”, and the hundreds of other items that make Schwanson “Schwanson”.

After speaking with no less than 6 Linden officials, via IM, email, and on the phone, working for hours with them to recover my items from old backups, most of the items recovered will not res. I just get an error stating that the object cannot be found.

Well OK, its just objects, and it was a one time glitch, and its not the end of the world. Things can be remade, re bought, replaced. I also brushed off many many hours of downtime on multiple parcels I own or have interest in. My island, which anyone will tell you is the lowest lag / highest sim FPS shopping area in Second Life, has been down for many hours at a time. Our group land in Clyde was down for 18 hours.

Then in a Murphy's law on steroids twist, Linden Lab charges my credit card 42 times the week before Christmas, putting both my family's holiday and my mortgage payment in jeopardy. I was starting to get a bit peeved at this point. To their credit Linden Lab did fix this fairly quickly. A week later though they had more trouble and were unable to charge my normal tier fee.

Today was the icing on the cake. Yesterday I bought a Texas Hold'em table from Mr. Fairplay for $L15,000. I looked forward to logging on today and setting it up and playing a game with friends.

Not only was Second Life down all day, but when I am finally able to log on the table is nowhere to be found, another “glitch” in my inventory. I contacted a Linden, who said they won't be able to even look for it till tomorrow. If the other issues with my inventory are any indication I think I can kiss 15k and my table goodbye.

So lets take a look at my Second Life cons list:

1. Even after a year and a half of opening Second Life is not stable enough to rely on being able to play every day.
2. Our inventories are transient data, its seriously questionable that your data can even be recovered from backups.
3. Even when support is friendly, helpful, and sympathetic to your plight, many hours of working on your issue still not recover data even when they can see it.
4. Second Life cannot even offer the stability level of $5.00 a month web hosting let alone the level of stability you would get from spending $400.00 a month like I do.
5. I have lost some level of trust in their ability to correctly bill me.
6. Promised upgrades to the existing system, such as increased communication with the outside world, improved physics engine, and improving client side lag have been pushed back again and again.
7. I still, a year and a half after the issue was first addressed, cannot use my top of the line ATI graphics card, one of the most popular graphic card companies in the world.
8. Linden favoritism, fickleness, and lack of a focused plan to deal with equipment disparity seem to have had an effect on attempts at commercial enterprise throughout Second Life, especially islands, and alienated a large portion of the population.
9. The promise of Intellectual Property rights for content creators has been trampled on. The lack of adequate controls to prevent reuse and with no ability to guarantee the safety and continued existence of player creations negates it. The glowing PR release that brought many of us into this world a year ago seems little more than that, a marketing scheme.
10. On top of all these issues Linden Lab has announced that they are now dividing their efforts and creating what amounts to a second program, catering to children without seeming care to the fact that the residents are fairly unanimous in the opinion that this world is still half baked.

Schwanson,

I am glad you finally stopped remaining silent about this stuff. I have understand you giving them the benefit of the doubt, but when you told me of your experiences, I was appalled, and my faith in SL was shaken too. I hope that you do remain a part of SL, I can't imagine it without you, but I would not blame you for a moment if you tiered down to nothing and moved on. Excellent post, sorry it had to come to that however

Schwan, I totaly agree with you and the past 4 months posts on the forums have been strewn with multiple threads referencing other players and stupid idle bullshit chatter.

I love SL make no mistake on that and yes I am flustrated on the many points Schwan as pointed out yet the discussions in the forums are about who did this or who did that or who do we flame this week.

If for once a UNITED voice of members of Second Life Raised up a calling to LL and not the TROLLING Voices of repeatitive polls and generalized trollers then maybe just maybe something could be accomplished.

Im sorry for all that has happend to you Schwan, I have been your friend a long time and you would be sorly missed by not only by me but a great many others in SL. I wouldnt fault you however like Cristiano said if you decided to tier down and bail but I would miss you and your humor and sometimes grandious visions we tend to share from time to time.

Folks, if this point hasnt hit home now it never will. Im not speaking for anyone but I feel that SL needs to have several of its ills cured before we can move forward with any other ventures of "NEW WORLDS" or new "Additions"

Unfortunately, Schwan, Cris, myself and a great many others are zizing in the wind when we bring up serious points such as what Schwan has outlined.

I hope you dont Leave Schwan, but if you do my email addy is listed below at least keep in touch my friend.

Shadow.

wow man well said i too an island owner couldnt agree more

This is very upsetting to hear. You seem to have far more patience than I think I would in this case, Schwanson.Um, yeah, I can totally see why you'd feel this way.

I really hope that things happen for you to make you feel better about the time and money you spend in SL, Schwanson. It would be a shame to lose your contributions.

You know, when I read about Second Life, the big deal was about the user-community creating the content and defining the direction and the controls. What fascinated me was the idea of a true virtual world, with real economic and cultural dimensions.

I'm getting the idea that LL is moving differently now, with the teen grid and the education initiative, and a number of other things. I wonder if the recent capital investment infusion involves taking the vision, experience, and technical designs and doing other things, corporate, government, educational, etc. In which case SL becomes both a showcase and a secondary priority.

Or maybe I'm trying to bring sense to a situation where sense does not prevail. I like building, I've met some interesting people. But there's no real economy here because there's no real structure like contracts or regulations or enforcement. And beyond some interesting people and a few interesting events and places to go to, culture seems mostly about virtual sex.

I'm not disappointed yet. I'm just looking for the brave new world. But if someone like Schwanson Schlegal is having these kinds of problems, then it's still way over the horizon.

This is what frightens me the most! I really doubt they can provent kiddies from entering the adult game! Hell they are all over the sl now as it is! What strange is I noticed a owner of one club being a underage user! Can you believe this! SL brags by saying its over 18 years ol! But after hearing the owners voice i was shocked to know even the owners of a club is below 18!

The sad part is that Linden Lab is offering a service, they must be as reliable as possible, like you said. even my 5 dollar a month hosting has more stability than this and have redundant server arrays and backups, and they can give you a 95% uptime or your money back.

I worked so damn hard in SL to get a business going on in there... i have now sales that give me real money every month. but well... who knows maybe i will be able to log in after tomorrow and realize all my inventory is gone, and all i worked for endless hours everyday has gone to hell...

If that happens linden lab can expect a Law Suit from my end and from many more users.

Comon they just received an 8 million dollar founding! i supposed they could've used some of that money to upgrade the servers (if they even have any) and give us the service we pay for everymonth.

so what if SL gives you more freedom over Eve, SWG, or any other MOORPG, the point is that if they cant be reliable enough people will start to leave...

Just think!. How many times have you downloaded an upgrade for SL in the past 2 weeks?. They have peple working there that are not doing their job, and look at the job oportunities... they ask for people with years of experience... and look and what we have here today.

The reason why realeased so many upgrades in a very short time was because someone screwed something in the earlier release and they had to patch it.

I understand humans are prone to make mistakes... but just think about this. They are so amateur that they released a version where all chat messages were white (they forgot to color the ones for objects green) and it took them like 12 hours to release that version... and none of their high qualified people noticed that? it is sad...

But well... inconpetence is punished by the law when they do not do their part in an agreement. if they continue they will be sued, im sure im not the only one that feels this way.

What do you think?

Well if people are sincerely this unhappy call LL and explain what you want to see improved, then follow it up with a letter (maybe even certified) and then if they fail to improve - vote with your pocketbook.

They're not going to manage by Forum discussion.

I'm not unhappy I am however dissapointed. this community is growing so fast and they are not returning the earnings into making it a better place... and in the other hand they want to create a teen second life? C'mon they cant even run one... just imagine two.

i don't know what to think now. these points are nearly the same ones i list to prove my assertion that we're still beta testing code that ll is developing to sell as the first iteration of 3d web server/client software.

i've harped at people about investing large sums of money into this project expecting it to be maintained with any consitency in storage or service. how can it be when it's still being so heavily developed and rewritten? just today i explained that if telehubs disappear and radically change the world, just like tier fees, auctions, massive expansions and private estates did, people who owned very expensive land around them would just have to suck it up like the rest of us have under similar circumstances.

now i feel foolish. this isn't just theoretical hope that ll will release an api and allow us to license server code to build our own sites some time in the future. it's a real story of a real person whose invested so much and lost so much and may pack up and leave for lack of trust and support. i just don't know what to think now.

Ahhh... but those repetative polls and generalized trollers were right, have always been right, and will, in most cases, always be right. The trollers you probably told to "shut up" were right.

These forums are for public discussion, Merwan. No they are not going to manage by discussion, but issues that are raised here often influence decisions that Linden Lab has made. Schwanson has taken the private route of dealing with them, and has been rewarded with nothing. If your only answer is "if you don't like it, vote with your pocketbook and leave", then we are all doomed.

Why dop they say its final when all they are doing is Beta releasing! HOPPING MAD

i tend to disagree. i remain stunned by the fact that ll takes input from it's player base through a web-based forum rather than some sort of inworld system. auctions are conducted using the web as well. what is this collaborative, scriptable 3d software for if the company doesn't use it themselves?

money is exchanged using 2d websites and, now, everybody is starting to shop on the web rather than browsing through inworld stores. what will this collaborative, scriptable 3d software be good for if the residents migrate away from it and don't actually use it anymore?

I'm with you 100% on this Schwan, for months upon months I've been dealing with bugs that make living in Second Life impossible. I can understand that in Beta, we were to test to make sure the bugs were fixed, and all the issues were handled to make the game run as smoothly as possible. But this.. this.. is unheard of, and makes me outraged. What I've been seeing is, continuous bugs being created out of no where, all the time (I feel like I'm still in Beta "and Beta wasn't even THIS bad). Yes I've seen most of what Second Life went through, but bug after bug after bug and bugs continually being ignored by the crew, with all that money that was invested they could had spent it better with fixing them. I'm at the point of utter frustration and disappointment because I simply can't build anymore without encountering bugs. Bugs just simply everywhere I go. And all the money I've invested with this company has given me nothing but a rotten building experience in return. I've given up on reporting bugs because they're just simply ignored like they're not an issue.


I'm also at the point of utter frustration with this company in not being able to handle it efficiently on this scale.

Shit! I don't agree with #1 but... shit that's REAL bad luck and murphy's law on crack! I hope my inventory didn't turn out like yours!

On another note, I don't know what all these "bugs" you people are talking about. Mind you their are alot of known bugs, but something that makes SL trully awfull... like what?! (And no assest server blowing up is not a bug!)

I'm sorry I never had the pleasure of meeting you in game, Schwanson. Your name alone ellicits strong emotions within me I am very sorry to see you come to the same conclusions I've had to make. I've experienced some of the same problems, yet have never complained because I KNEW nothing would be done about it. Been there, done that in other worlds, other virtual realities - no results.

Several weeks ago, as the announcement was made that 8 million had been invested in SL, I predicted to my mentor that the game would turn into just another MMORPG fiasco, as so many others I had to experience during my online-game-life. My comment was met with a frown and a scoff. I'm sorry, Mr. Mentor, but I'm afraid to say I told you so.

I won't lie if I tell you that the past 2 weeks have been extremely frustrating. No, I did not take 2 weeks of vacation to play SL, but it would have been nice if SL had been available to me in my spare time. I was looking forward to it. Instead, I was unable to play for 17 hours total the first time, and I'm sorry to say, it's been more than 24 hours this time. That's "pushing it a bit" won't you agree, Linden family?

I'm not one to hang around lost causes for too long. I'm patient, yes, sometimes beyond the limits of normalcy. But what is enough is enough. Shape up, or I'll ship out. $ 75.00 a month from one little user like me won't make a darn difference, I know........but multiply that by another .......and another...........and another. It's time we are heard. I love this game, nothing would make me quit, but not being able to play it, WILL.

I'm not doomed if LL fails Cris. And my guess is the LL will take care of Schwanson's difficulties and improve their customer support.

Time will tell.

All that needs done is mom or dad thinking its a MMO game handing the credit card over to the youngones and they'll do the rest. Most of what i see is harmless cyberworld fun and feel that the game is mostly harmless to even young people online.They will either run for cover the first time they see a avatar sporting a huge ummmmm p**is or they'll say hey this is so cool till mom or dad walks in and says @&$@&% and very politely shuts them down. Not to say that they should be seeing or hearing what we the adults are up to ... but just they're gonna see what they choose to see or not to see. Any how to be honest Lindenlabs has to (say) they're not going to allow teens in the adult areas but they (Lindenlab) are going to see what the teen market can make for them($$) and we all know the almighty dollar speaks. If so chosen due to the dollar amount Lindenlab will ever so quietly push the adult content out with and or if the teen market works to there advantage.

Cory Linden Vs Capt. of the Titanic


Corey Linden : Quote "Login is back open, but will remain a little slow. "


Capt. of the Titanic : quote " I think wer taking on a little water "

1 out of a 1000 attempts gets in, is not open Cory !

No word/update/feedback in over 6 hours

during the fixing this morning the Billing system had no trouble getting my $125.00 tir money

i would like a $4.16 credit posted to my account for 1 day denile of service.

and a few sets of shwan's used sex balls
Waves,

- never do card tricks in front of people you play poker with

SL downtime Friday morning

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As everyone is no doubt aware by now, our "fix" this morning was not only unsuccessful but seems to have made things even worse. It's possible to login to SL but it's not easy.

We weren't sufficiently prepared for the equipment failure we experienced on Wednesday evening. Our efforts to work around the problem while we got our next-gen setup in place have proven ill-advised. Hopefully we'll be able to have the original equipment repaired AND have the new stuff ready by morning, in which case we'll take SL down again to re-configure.

I apologize to everyone for this.
THIS SUCKS THEY OWE US!

I've also voiced my dismay that they seem unwilling to create an inWorld polling process to get feed back directly from eveyone.


Khamon you don't have to worry about the websites causing inWorld financial ruin. THe vast majority of members shop inWorld and will continue to do so.

Maybe we should just start our own SL. i know programmers here that are way over the lindens.

Have you ever asked a scripting question to a Linden and they are like:

Awww sorry im just a pretty face and donnu cr#p

BTW first time i can document an inventory loss and LL does nothing about it .... out the friggin door i go .. I played one online game for 3yrs very consistantly running 2 accounts the entire time i played and just got bored with it .. but my point is I never ever lost one single item Ingame. What I buy and build ingame is mine to manage but its up to LL to make sure they have a game reliable enough to store online and if not the usual thing with MMORPG's is if its not there you never had it syndrome .. all of them do it ... but wait this (SL) was said by LL to be a progressive and unique gaming experience ?? woops did i say that outloud It is unique I've not had this much downtime on any game so far.