Ten Points in Favor of Abandoning Second Life

I told you so!
Catherine Cotton

Schwan, you know that you are my SL brother. I am very sorry to hear of the multiple screwings you have had to endure. Seems to me that some are within reason and acceptable for a developing platform and that some really are not. I would be pissed too if I were in your shoes. I can simply say that I am glad you are staying because I for one would miss you my friend. Plus it would force me to get in my car, drive down there and kick your ass!

I love SL and think that most of you do too. Sometimes it is best to walk away and sometimes it isn’t. Here are some questions all of you can ask yourselves to refine your thoughts:

1. If I leave where will I go?
2. Is leaving SL worth leaving my friends not to mention the time I invested behind and completely starting over?
3. Are the problems I am experiencing serious enough that I can not wait them out?
4. Am I still having fun playing SL?

I for one think that it is a huge mistake for SL to even think about kiddie SL while there are still so many issues with adult SL. Common sense tells me that if they do not concentrate their efforts on the problems at hand then things will only get worse.

That said, I am in it for the long haul. First and foremost, I love SL because of the friends I have like you Schwan. Relationships are what makes this game so much not a game for me as it is truly a “second life” that is intertwined with my “first life” to the extent that I would be profoundly sad to say goodbye to my SL family.

Hopefully LL will get their act together on some of these issues and we can all laugh about “remember when we had to deal with that (fill in the blank) problem and hopefully people will not indeed follow through with their threats to leave and recognize that it will get better in time.

Despite the many threats to do so even people like Catherine find it hard to truly leave as evidence in the post above. My advice is to focus on the people you love and deal with the rest as it comes.

Just want to reiterate...

No Teen Grid until the larger problems have been addressed and staff added.

I'm sorry Robin; but your post is part of the overall problem.

You've already stated no teen grid.

What you haven't stated is the answer to many of Schwan's questions or comments; nor anyone else's for that matter.

There are only so many times during a two-year period that one can take the... "Well, we're new and we're learning..." excuse given.

Yes, we know you are a small company.
Yes, we think we know that you're cutting edge.

And yes, there are many who believe in SL as the ideal.

But after two years, some solidity has got to come into play -- solidity in the software, the communication, the bug notifications and fixes -- and I'm sorry but canned answers just don't cut it. Canned answers to individuals who are paying $200 per month for the "privilege" of being the metauniverse settlers -- they deserve answers. Even if the answer is one that they don't want to hear.

This community has supported, cheered, forgiven, encouraged, and yes, whipped the members of LL into doing more and greater things.

But when the basics aren't working...
When the communication isn't flowing...
The asshat server isn't delivering...
Backups of items can't be restored...
Permissions are still f*** up after TWO years of notification...

What *if* this problem of inventory had occurred to a group of individuals doing an extremely complicated/team-oriented build? "Sorry, but the last work of your group for the last 48 hours has been lost -- but I'm sure the 10 of you can regroup and recreate this quickly."

Then you owe, yes, LL owes their community at least, at the very least an explanation, a description of the problems, why they occurred; and most importantly what has been put into place to insure that this won't happen again (blessings with holy water, virgin priests and hellfire nuns withstanding).

Community loyalty is a two-way street.

This sounds like a one-way deadend at the moment.

This thread is not going anywhere.=)
I too have been thinking of withdrawing my land tier from a full sim to a basic, free lifetime account as of late. I had emailed LL for some info last month regardfing my account and a problem we are having in game, I received no response after 3 emails and two phone calls in which I left messages for support.
After this, and considering the issue I'm dealing with, I find it hard to support LL at this point.
Glad it's not just me.

Crow

Gimme a break, folks.

Sony Online, which has a company of waaay more employees and is backed by the budget of one the hugest multinationals in the world, just went down for 48 hours on the release of EQ2 and nearly lost tonnes of data that it had to hand recover.

I don't think that has ever happened to SL as far as I know.

People need to develop some perspective about what is going on here.

Paypal, which is the fundamental point of survival for MANY businesses on the internet, had several days of outage and all they do is move money back and forth.

I could go on and on about numerous examples of many companies which have had waaaay more outage than SL has ever had and way more data loss and way more 'enterprise class' budgets.

Linden Labs is doing an incredible bang up job and should be given continual kudos for keeping the outage to a minimum.

EQ2 online doesnt have land fees that raise as high as SL and the currency there as of now does not yet have a RL life dollar value. I think you are missing the point.

Not to mention, I think the main complaint here is the overall lack of stability and organization, not necessarily the log in issues or the data loss, while that is an issue, it is just the icing on the cake.

Crow

To quote you... "gimme a break".

I don't go around thanking the Winn Dixie when it opens after a hurricane - they aren't doing it to make things easier for people to survive. They do it for money.

I don't run out and thank the phone company for restoring service when a tree they should have trimmed months ago finally falls on and takes out one of their lines. They are not doing me any favors. I pay for that service.

I certainly haven't ever paid any direct compliments to any of the other software comanies for the software I have paid for and use. They provide products in exchange for my money. I reserve the right to be torqued at them if their products don't provide the services/features that are touted in advertising/company communiques.

"continual kudos" indeed. Gimme a break.

My name is curmudgeon, not cheerleaderbabe.

Well said Tcoz. Even though I don't pay as much as sim owners, I have considered once in a while if the investment (time, effort, monthly fees, etc.) in SL is worth all the hassles and have thought about becoming a nomad once again. This is why I understand the reasons for others to feel the same way and wouldn't blame them for moving on.

As the old economical saying goes... "You pay for what you get."

With EQ2, you pay $15 a month for entertainment -- period.

With SL, you pay for your land, you pay to sell your creative content, you pay to wear clothing, you pay to own a car... You pay for your animations and/or sex balls.

Sorry Blazey, but there's one hell of a difference here.

In any other online game -- the content is provided *for* your basic $15 per month subscription. In SL, not only do you pay for the above, but you're also responsible for creating that "content" or "discontent" as it seems at the moment. There's been peaks and valleys with this software, and *many* have stayed on the bandwagon. Many have quietly picked up their creative talents and said... "Sorry, no... I prefer pounding my own head against the wall, I don't need your assistance."

But you keep right on cheerleading there... We've all cheered to the point that we're hoarse at this very moment.

If SL is to succeed, grow and flourish -- it's a team effort of the end-users and LL. It won't succeed any other way.

It's not just this outage, Blaze. It's the 10 points listed above and MORE.

Maybe you have a pompom covering your eyes.

U know what I did when TSO got boring or made me mad, I stopped playing. Simple thing is, If u have a problem with the way they are doing things, either deal with it or just sit back and let these ppl work. Yes, they had an issue. They prolly couldnt have helped it, how many times have ppl had their phones struck by lightening or computers. Stuff happens O well. I only say this cause I work in a Customer Based job, and day by day, I see ppl saying O I WILL NEVER SHOP HERE AGAIN. Well to me it sounds pretty silly if u wont shop at the #1 electronics store cause u cant get ur way cause of their ingorance or that their nose it too high in the air to notice that u are a human being. Ok Maybe this has nothing to do with the current subject. All I am tryin to say is they are doing ther best. Thats all anyone can do. They are sorry cause u are inconvienced (sp?). They didnt want to charge ur card 42 times. They didnt want the system to blow up. Want me to keep goin cause I can. I experience lots of times when my inventory was missing. I got over it. I think I have had more good times than bad. This prolly has nothing to do with the original post. But it just angers me. I dont mean to be rude to anyone. If I came off rude to some, I am truly sorry. Just have to put my 2 cents in. I LOVE SL AND THE LINDEN'S RULE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! VIVA SL

PS I Pay for an Island as well, so what!

What? For $15 bux a month I get a new user account which I either have to spend 100s of hours levelling or buy stuff from ebay.

Anyone who reads my posts knows that I am certainly never one to 'cheerlead'. I just happen to have over 20 years experience in IT and more than half of that is internet related.

The QOS / Uptime that LL provides is far above average and should be nothing but praised. This is not cheerleading but simple fact.

I tried to read this thread, but was stopped in my tracks by incoherent nonsense such as this. The poster may have had a point somewhere, but it was lost in amongst the complete drivel that characterised the rest of the message. Please, please can we have rules on the forum against posting unintelligible rubbish? The first language of many SL users, and regular forum posters, is not English and they write better English than this.

When you're writing - please spare a thought for those who have to read it.

Now Now, Maybe that was my point, DUH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And I dont, maybe I am slightly retarded, What if, HUH? Now my feelings are hurt. Sometimes I lash out in ramble, when I get SO mad at all the lil things that ppl complain about.

But yes I do have a disability, and I do not appreciate it one bit, Im tryin to function in society just as much as u are, and u slandering me like that is not nice. Wish I could do something about it, but since I have to go to work, and try to do my best I can with this disability to make a living. I wish that u have thought about who was actually typing behind it. See like I said ramble. I cant help it.

*looks into SL profile, Ahhh explains it, is normally RUDE, nice profile*

I didn't want to chime in here, but, perhaps LL is still looking at this thread.

.... It's about time we get local backup. I know, I've asked for this before - and it was pooh-pooh'd, but this was BEFORE people ended up losing half their inventory, several times over.

I don't care if the objects get backed up to encrypted files that we can't edit offline; but the crux of it is this:

If LL won't take responsibility for safeguarding content, as it seems they have not, AT LEAST ALLOW US TO TAKE ACTION TO SAFEGUARD OUR OWN CONTENT.

At this point, we can't even be responsible for our own stuff if we want to be.

When I mentioned this before, it was shot down by people complaining that it'd take dev time away from the new dances/auction/pie-in-the-sky features that they wanted LL to add.

Now, maybe, after a few inventory 'tragedies' around the grid, people may take this request a little bit more seriously.

SL needs SOME facility to back-up inventories.

Often Mentioned by both of us but never responded too...but I agree whole heartedly its time to maybe make a way to criptcally back up inventory on our own Hard drives thus taking the strain off the LL asset server.




Totaly agree...was there and remember it distinctly.



One can only hope but my fingers are crossed at the moment.

This is the internet people...Things happen...People get flamed..It is the sad truth about the internet and about the world...People want peace yet they rebel at everything...It seems to me this thread is now getting out of hand. I have not read all of this tho so I don't kno for sure..I skiped to the end around page 2 to see where you all went with this...The subject was about SL having error...As frustrating this maybe, there is no way to be error free. Take it from a intermediat C++ programmer. I have alot of errors and bugs in my programs I make on my own(private practice). Most I do not know about util it happens and are very hard to find and fix.No error is put there delibreatly. These errors and the one you ran into are called runtime error..one of the hardest errors to find and most programs have billions of lines of code and searching them could take weeks if not months! I do believe SL debuggers are trying to fix the error your running into and all errors anyone has run into. I must stress again how much code there could be in the programming of sl and there servers..God just thinking about what they must tackle frightins me...Think of it this way..Your the client side program...and they have also a server side program.Figureing out what program is the problem is like trying to find one needle that might be in two haystacks. It blows my mind to even think of this since I am used to a single side program and defeintly not a internet/network program.

My point to all this is give it time,you really do not understand what your asking the SL staff.I can bet all my SL account that the largest script in sl is not even 20% the size of the code for sl it self.

My second point is why is everyone is this godforsaken earth so ..rude and mean to everyone. No matter what color/race/religin/state/country/mental state everyone is in, we all are in one same place,LIFE. Why must we flame each other? And why must we be sorta pregidis (sp?) to the youth? I think it is great for to allow teens into another part of sl(it gets my 17 year old brother off my back...and from off my computer...but since now hearing that minors are not allowed AT ALL in sl...he will not be using it anymore...he can just watch.)


Yes I am very new. As a matter of a fact I am new to being 18, just turned it 12/11 and it took alot of covincing to get my mother to use her CC online..But i have been DIEING to play this and I am finailly able to.

This is a considerably big post for a first post ever for me.


ps. the best thing to do against flaming is to ignore it...So if you plan on flaming me...Don't waste your computer energy.

Good-day and see you all in SL hopefully.
And to be honest..The over charging should never have happend since good programming practice would to be to leave that shit up the website or what not.I would have sued SL from the start if i was charged 40+ time...I have reletives that are lawers? Want a #?

Pe@ce,
Hero <---------
(I wanted this | as a username but in the sign up prosses my computer froze and next time i sign up it said hero was taken...I just got a email saying that SL saw that i was in the middle of signing up and reserved my SN...now what do I do? Everything has problesms I agree on that.)

Firstly, nice assumption! You'll do well here on the forums, waltzing in and deciding for us all what we know or dont know and setting us all straight like that.

I think there are more than a few people here qualified to know what we are asking of LL. For one thing, SL has a very high proportion of professional programmers amongst its residents.

And in fact, all we're really asking is that it works as advertised. Which it doesn't. So what we'd really like is for them to try fixing bugs before adding yet-another-crappy-feature.

Secondly, I would think that the largest script in SL is prolly not even a fraction of 1% of the size of the code for SL. So what? Is your point simply that there is a lot of code? Phew, glad you told us! I'm sure that we'll all be wiser for that.

As for being rude, maybe we're just sick of the next person in line swaggering into the forums and telling us we don't know what we're talking about and should all chill out. Some of us have been waiting well over a year and have pumped thousands of dollars into supporting LL, and sometimes it just feels like a bit of a kick in the teeth when they spend their time adding more gloss, dross and crap instead of fixing year old bugs, or not seeming to care when people contact support with a problem, or being totally inconsistent in the way they deal with people, or just burying their heads in the sand when big issues are highlighted.



Yup. Good way to get yourself taken seriously; just flippantly tell people that you'll choose to ignore them or not based upon the way they respond to you. But don't worry, cuz given your own writing style, I doubt many people will even bother to read your post in the first place.

p.s. I have relatives that are English teachers. Want a #?

Again, Mr. Blaze "I'm in IT and have a brain" -- we're talking about MORE than just uptime in this thread.

Uptime is but a small portion of the problem -- it does absolutely NO GOOD to have the servers and network up and running if the asshat server can't deliver the goods during the login process. The asshat server has been having this problem for, um, six or seven months now?

In other words, Mr. IT -- there are far more problems in this thread that is being discussed rather than just uptime.

I wonder if the LL people also call it the asshat server at this point.

Jebus...you sound like my wife!

Yeah, I heard you're under so much stress of late that you've had very little uptime yourself without the help of a) stuffed fluffy sheep in black lingere and b) a little toss of the blue pill called viagra.



*muah*

And look closely. I am not your wife. I don't have curly hair. ))))

I know english, I am just use to the internet slang that I have been using since 13 years old. Your post is not flaming because it has a point, I did asume what you know. Please forgive me, I forgot that I am not talking on the teenage boards that I am use to and the naiveness of them. I was just posting a FYI. If the errors are a year old then I am wrong and the Dev team is slacking off or not paying attention to the errors. So far I have only had a long login time for SL. It stays at "Preparing Inventory" for about 4-5 minutes sometimes. Other then that I have not noticed anything wrong....yet.

Pfft. You're no fun. You're supposed to rise to the bait, not agree! But you're right. That was not a flame. You'd know if I was flaming you

That was me being heavily sarcastic. And if you stick around the forums, you'll find out thats pretty much all I do