Second Life Prevails

Pay no heed to the detractors of Second Life who claim its demise is immenent. SL is stronger than ever before. With everyday, new users arrive and clamor to use the platform. With each day new, creating, wonderful products are introduced. Each day, the concurency numbers go up and up.

SL is not in the throes of death. SL is in the early stages of life.

Second Life Prevails!

Are you feeling ok?

Strength through Unity.

Unity through Faith.


Second Life Prevails!

Sounds like Bush speak.

Maybe.

SL's "back-end" is undergoing some serious work - maybe even a total replacement. It's nessesary, but the transition is proving very bumpy. It's screwed quite a few of the games and fun folk have in SL.

SL's formost-end is also undergoing a revamp. The bugs and muckups there have been a pain in the butt for everyone in sl, though perhaps have had less of an impact.

The question is, will they get those sorted before folks come to think of SL not as a game or a platform, but as a joke.

Exactly what I'm thinking. I think LL is preparing for a big push technology-wise and the techs are hard pressed to get key features debugged in time. How else does one explain weekly updating? When I came in updates weren't this frequent, now I'm downloading a new client every week.

LL is gearing for scaling up all right. This is going to get reeeeeeeeaaaaallly bumpy. A lot of things are going to break along the way but we'll have to hold on somehow.

I really wonder how they'll be able to reduce the lag.

i still think yer Phil's Alt

I'm one of the new users and I've been pretty overwhelmed with my first week. The potential is incredible, the creativity of users inspiring. Perhaps some people take SL for granted. It's at the cutting edge of what the web can do, there are bound to be problems. I first started using the internet about twelve years ago. The kind of online virtual reality SL represents was a mere dream then. It's come a long way in a short time!

Unfortunately, in Second Life as in life generally negativity seems to come easier to people than appreciation. We live in a whine culture. Some people even whine about people whining!

Albion

Sounds like furry speak.

If SL is in the early stage of life the company seem hell bent on aborting it. For me SL forums is an essential part of the SL experience. Easy to access and to find out other users opinions. To me SL is a social platform, if it turns into nothing but a business world it's not going to hold my interest for long which pisses me off because I enjoy being here.

Well, the closing of the forums is ment to bring closer and better communcation networks within SL and the community, so you will probably get your wish. Rather you think it will work or not, I'm not going to debate with you though.

If this were true, what's taking so long? A better Second Life could be written from scratch by a professional development team in less time than I have been a user.

A user contacted me today about my exit from Second Life and pointed me in the direction of that competition Phillip seems to lust for:

http://www.myndsparc.com/about.htm

It's not the only one I've heard about recently. Who knows what the future will bring, but I do know it doesn't take four months to plug in an updated version of a physics engine.

I can't say, of course. My assumption is that the back end was based on assumptions that proved utterly off, and that the current work is slow as they pick thier way over the old and try and open it up.

Given the odd managment system in use, I can't see this working to terribly well... messy messy... though I am interested in it as an experiment. Who knows?

It does feel like there's some major restructuring going on here. I don't think the types of bug that have been seen recently would be turning up if that weren't the case.

Checked it out. Based on their vid and writeup and using SL terminology it's going to be lots of individual sims each with its own content and no continuity between sims. The only thing in common would be the development engine.

I don't expect user content to change in their contiguous microverses at the speed SL allows. Because they should either they slow down the content change, limit the amount of content change, or risk really frightening levels of lag.

It's really pretty though and certainly worth a look.

MyndSparc will likely have rules varying per microverse (flexibility).
SL has the contiguous space model (continuity). But down the line SL can adopt the per-private-sim rule variation philosophy and retain continuity elsewhere.

Unless there's some quantum leap improvement in the internet I don't see a full merging of both philosophies, that of SL and that of MyndSparc. That's going to hurt even more because of that anti-net neutrality thing.

One can dream though.

Clubside, people might refer to SL as a joke in their bitchier moments, but that MyndSparc website is so rough I could have done a better job of it. If they're serious about being the engine for a 3D internet and want to be taken seriously then their website ought to reflect that intent. What I saw doesn't.

This is not to say that SL could not be superseded by a more reliable and pervasive technology. Active Worlds ruled the 3D roost for a long time. Then SL came along and blew them out of the water. The same could happen to SL if Linden Labs make the same errors that Active Worlds made. The fact that LL is frantically updating SL seems to imply they have no intention of sitting on their laurels or putting their R&D on hold: the 2 mistakes that cost Active Worlds their lead.

LOL! Nice V spin on it. That was a good movie though, was it not?

You hit the nail on the head, my brother. Second Life truly is awesome.

Oh dear, let me stop pondering the word "clamoring" while reading the thread to react to this post.

OK. Let me get this straight.

Closing the forums is meant to bring closer and better communication networks within SL and the community.

OK. That's a real good one. I'm enjoying it.

Let me guess - the "closer and better communication networks" is supposed to go something like this:

LL communicates with its preferred residents. Some of the rest of us then clamor (sorry) to make friends with them so they may be part of the loop.

Then some people try to be THEIR friends, etc., so on down the line.

I call that the FICyness to end all FICyness: Shut everybody else out and hope they can "network" their way back in, or at least to within seven degrees of a Linden.

Well, I'm sure you would consider that "better," Tren, but I don't.

I do give you points for sheer gall, though.

coco

I so agree!

Everyday more users make more alts and everyday another teen comes into the Main Grid!! SL is alive and growing!

New products in an already glutted market! Yay! More business oriented folks becoming frustrated by permission bugs, rip-offs and crashes!! Yay!

I hope whoever is buying Second Life has enough pull to get a WallMart in-world, cause we could use more creativeness!!

I can't wait to see in which direction this thriving life-form called Second Life evolves!!!

exactly what kind of info would we be privy too should we be in the loop?.. or close to it? Im really interested to know o.O

Interesting point that, 'a social platform'. Sounds a lot better than some of His Highness proclamations - and pretty much hits the nail on the head for me too. Yes, you can do a lot of other stuff in SL, but first and foremost it IS a social platform. People interact in a wide range of ways in SL. That IS the driving force behind SL. Social interaction.

And though the main vehicle is the client, the forums have played an important part. Sadly, with the forums exposing a growing perception that LL isn't doing a good enough job, they have decided they don't want to hear this. And the available inworld communication tools are simply not good enough to take over the forum's job.

As for the notion of using a blog, or network of blogs, to carry the load - that's laughable. Blogs are essentially 'listen to ME' devices. NOT discussion areas.
One is left with the uncomfortable feeling that LL only seeks a medium through which they can engage in easily controllable one way 'communication' (does that sound like propaganda? The 'party line'?), rather than endure the slings and arrows of unrestricted bi-directional communication with their customers.

Insidious shill.