Needs to be said...

I LOVE THE LINDENS!

(I'll say anything if it helps to get things working right again!)


But seriously, despite my complaints about the way the last outage was handled, I do appreciate the way the Lindens are always upfront with us, and always manage to find the time to keep us informed.

That is a very rare quality, and it is one that is appreciated.

Ah well It's never enough I feel Its better to vent frustration than to keep it bottled up I don't mean to be offensive I just try to be honest is all.

I know how it is fixing server software/hardware issues, at least from a (l)unix perspective... Had a couple of 90 hr. weeks babysitting a thrashing server. GO LINDENS.

Not including my ~4 month break from SL that has just recently passed, I believe I can be counted as a "longterm" player. I, for one, have not seen login downtime of this magnitude before. Im certain LL is working as much as they possibly can to fix this though. Contrary to what seems to be the primary fear, data loss isnt as common as it is portrayed. The reaction of the community to it quite nicely parallels mass media's reaction to a plane crash; it happens very rarely, but when it does, its a BIG thing.
==Chris

Roberta's got the right of it - most companies today would deny deny deny to avoid any potential "legal liabilities" or any number of other equally BS defenses.

That LL is willing to step up and say that not only did the system go down, and why, and what they're doing to fix it, AND to apologize so quickly (and humbly), is a mark of integrity. They've got my vote!

Production issues stink - hang in there guys, (and save the champagne for when the grid's up!)

-Pandaron Codesmith

I think the main point though William, is that there are many, many other threads on the forum already where you can go and voice your frustration. This was meant to be a positive thread for a morale boost to the Lindens while they are working through their issues. No one here is saying there isn't some serious work to be done, we are only showing our support that we believe the Lindens are doing all that they can right now.

Due to the fact that there are so many threads you could posts your frustrations on, and yet you choose to post them into a thread meant for positive discussion only, it unfortunatly turns your posts into Troll type posts, even if that is not what you meant to happen.

I also forgot to thank the Lindens for my Favorite Coach they gave me for Christmas.

And all the Winter Fest Freebies. And for the Neat Props I got at that Neverland Thing. I never finished it but i got a cool Crown and staff to wear when i am Flying around on my Magic Carpet. ANd i also got this sexy Cop and Robber outfit when i want a lil RPG. heheheheh

This Game is Amazing..Period.

I also want to thank the lindens for their support in My Events and making that neat Event Reporter they update also.

I think the lindens do alot. And yes I know i pay for it. But I am satisfied. I am also not as upset Cause I am at work anyhow and I am at the Forums during this time anyway. I did miss my own Event last night cause I could not get on and was trying so hard I forgot I could just cancel it on the website I created it on. Thes Forums also are something the Lindens give us, yes?

Live Help in game ROCKS! Never ever failed. I know people who complain about things in game and when i ask "Did you try live Help" they say "Hell NO, I am not using that..I am no newbie" Yet they still complain. I even got answers for people using live help and they thanked me immensly not knowing live Help gave me that.

I think the Lindens are smart people and KNow the venting here is jsut people wanting what they love. I mean it must be flattering in a way to know that their game can turn people into raving lunatics. Like it is crack or something! LOL

Yeah, I totally agree!
The reason why people complain is because SL is sooooo cool. Otherwise, no one would be on here, they'd just quit silently.

It's my favorite app. You guys have done a terrific job.

If I ever complain, it's mostly out of fear that SL will die.
I want to be in-world 10 years from now!!!

That's how much this Thing of Ours rocks. Thanks for building it, LL!

I have to give it to the Linden's. With all the pressure and BS going on all day yesturday and the night before they kept their composure and fixed the situation as fast as humanly possible. Yeah, it is a bummer when SL is down but hey shit happens. It's not like Lindens set out to intentionally shut SL down. So for all of you that spent all day in forums bitching and complaining about the Lindens why not put yourself in their shoes. Would you want people whining like a bunch of babies about something you had no control over.

BTW....if you couldn't find anything else to do yesturday then bitch in forums all day then I feel sad for you.

I'm with you on that thought

ill bump to this LL needs support when its down, not kicking.

SL is probably large enough that ppl on top make decisions and the little ones underneathhave to fix all the problems and listen to the whinings.

thanks little ppl.

big lindens- are your underlings being squeezed from above and below?


--who has been in oppressed peon dealing with cranky customers spot before

The curmudgeonly perspective....
There ARE issues.
People have a right to be upset and to express their feelings.
People/customers have invested time and money (and in some cases egos) in making SL what it is.
LL employees are just that - employees. Now that does not mean they haven't invested their own time (by default being an employee paid to actually do so), effort (see previous) and ego (hey, most appear to be at least somewhat human).

Still, I don't go running around praising, patting on the back, or even bitching about Microsoft (the later my father's semi-favortire hobby) when things go right, wrong or maintain the status quo.

Thank LL for doing what I expect from any company I pay money for providing a service/entertainment? Not my way.
Understand they basically screwed the pooch on this one and are getting what they sowed (in terms of criticism both justified and not-quite-so)? Somewhat.
Empathize with their "pain"? Not a chance as far as "empathy for the coroporation" goes. As for towards the grid monkeys, coders, etc.... not really though I remember the feelings I had when my own code crashed.... and crashed publicly and unexpectedly. But feel bad for them? Not really.

Like I said, it's the curmudgeonly perspective.

I didn't get "what I wanted for Xmas" - a stable SL... I don't really expect it for 2005. But I have enough of a masochistic streak in me to keep coming back for some reason.

Korg, I understand and agree with most of your points. My frustration with the complaining stems from; a) People posting repeatedly about it. Complain and then move on. Ranting all day about something that is beyond your control is not a productive use of time. b) People entering positive threads to further their complaint. I rarely use the word, but I view that as trolling.

I also noticed that the larger portion of the complainers were fairly new to SL. If anyone should be going off the deep end it should be those players who stand to lose a lot in sales or dwell. I am NOT saying that no new players stood to lose anything, just pointing out that there were dozens of first time posters in here who joined in the last two months posting complaints repeatedly, and posting complaints in threads that were started to promote understanding with respect to the issue.

Nolan, I actually quoted you not to "pick" on your sentiment or that of the "positive vibes crew". Rather, I posted solely to express my own perspective as a "balance" to others and together with yours, which references an a third, pretty much seems to cover the gamut.

I am not outraged at the outage. Indeed, until I logged on today, I was unaware of it because I actually hadn't tried to log on after the "un)scheduled emergency downtime" began yesterday. I took advantage of the opportunity ot do the things others said and did some real life things I had been putting off (due ot illness and too much SL time).

Still, upon my return to the forums, what did I find? The same old, same old... SL forums in disarray from oldbies and newbies alike over SL-status and "apparent" piss-poor planning/operations. My post is an expression of my perspective that I don't expect anythig "good" from LL any more than I do from any other company.

I do, however, expect the service I pay for. If they cannot live up to their implicit and explicit promises, then it seems perhaps they should retreat, retrench via repreogramming, and restart ==== or acknowledge this is actually still beta software. Failing that, I have no simpathy for "the corporation" and very little for the employees. The employees are paid to do their jobs - that simple. I have no sympathy for people paid to do difficult jobs - no one forces them to take such jobs or to stay in them. Instead, my sympaties lie primarily with those who are being taken advantage of - those who pay real money for services not provided, for those who have been lied to directly by corporate representatives, for people who find and report bugs and yet are told that the problems are "on your end"/not in our software.

So, as much as that makes/brands me a "curmudgeon", that is the post I made.... the reference to you/including a quote of your post was actually almost an afterthought on my part.

No insult intended.

None taken.

I do disagree that they are taking advantage of people though. To take advantage, this would have to have been intentional or misleading, niether of which applies here, IMHO. If they are taking advantage of anyone, then it's in the sense that this is what businesses do and isn't it to be expected that if people have money to spend, someone's going to be there to offer them products? Which leads us to the downtime again. I also have a VOIP phone, it is very unreliable at times. I could complain constantly that they have issues, but instead I choose to email them, let them know that I have problems, and let them fix it. The reason I do not cancel (this applies to SL for me as well) is because I like to support the cutting edge of technology. SL is something that hasn't been tried before, therefore we will see problems that haven't occurred in other games/VR environments. Is SL perfect? No. Do I curse the lag and other issues? Yes. Am I upset that Schwan has had this horrible sequence of misfortunes and am I worried it could happen to me or another SLer? Yes. Are there other issues, such as the addition of a teen grid and the manner with which disciplinary action is handled, that I am unhappy with? Yes. Do I let it ruin my day? No.

As far as the sympathy issue goes, it's in my nature. I do not empathize or sympathize with people because I think I may gain something from them. I was accused of that last night and I will confess that did set me off a bit. I am about the furthest thing from a Linden suck up in SL.

I guess here is where you and I must agree to disagree.

LL does not promote this as beta software. As such, there is an implicit agreement that for X dollars paid by customer A, coporate entity LL will provide Y service. Now, lately there have been numerous threads, comments and documentation (including statements by Philip and in TownHalls) that LL has not lived up to its responsibility of knowing its own system ---- "duh, we were wrong and it IS our software that is causing different sims to run at differen fps's, not necessarily resident-created content." THAT is a public admission of corporate entities having been disingenuous - or ignorant - of their own product. That it is new, untried elsewhere, or whatever other rhetoric you care to use is NOT my concern or even relevant to me. Promising a servce, offering it as a commerical product "protected" from criticism by a legalistic TOS bunch of rhetorical gobbledygook just proves that I am (in my own mind at least) completely justified in not elevating my "respect for LL" above that of any other corporation I ever deal with. LL has already proven itself, as a corporate entity, to be willing to play the rhetorical and somewhat unethical games that its "monopoly on THIS product/service" provides - including apparently lying/beig disingenuous, getting paying customers to test its product for free and altering the terms of the TOS after the fact, etc.

THAT is what I mean by taking advantage of people. Your definition apparently differs.

(For comparison, Microsoft - the arch-enemy of so many people - does not take advantage of me. I get almost exactly what I pay for... The products may be overpriced, somewhat buggy, and they may be somewhat intrusive with their registration/activation schemes, but I have yet to have any of their products actually quit working for me... nor AOL when I had/used that. Yes, those are different products/corporations/services.... Don't get hung up on the specifics. We're talking the relationship between corporate entities/representatives and customers here. I had no sympathy for any of their "growing pains" either.)

For william

1st... look at my join date
2nd... I can assure you nothing this big has ever happened.
3rd... Use the "enter" key.
4th... Hearsay (what you "heard" "old" players say) does give you the right to come ranting\trolling about what you "heard" and start acting like you've been around for a long time NOT MAKE your opinion.
5th... Car dearlerships != SL!
6th... Don't highjack and post BS that you "heard" (see #4) on a support post!

I figure that one or more side effects of all of this is showing our character as people and where we stand, and hopefully, what we stand to learn from adversity.

Redundant whining hurts -- if the Lindens are already working on the problems and quietly going "We know, we know!" it not unlike whipping and berating a circus animal to perform tricks of greater magnitude. They are already under pressure, and it says more about the quality of the people making these jabs than it will of the Lindens. Ah yes, we do expect so much, and with such an openended adventure, who wouldn't? But the Lindens DO know. Maybe some of them wish there was a giant MUTE button they could enact so they could concentrate better, but the flipside is that there is still positive discussion on here, stabbing out like beams of light from the murky mudswamps o' blahblahblah.

On that note, don't let an Architect-sized (of The Matrix: Reloaded fame) blather of eye-rolling words confuzzle you: what needs to be done needs to be done, and if there's going to be criticism, it should be constructively focused on the problems and not Linden-bashing.

Besides, this will look small in hindsight. Maybe even a little laughable. "Hey, remember that time just before New Year's '05 when Second Life went kaplunk? LOL, crazy times dude, crazy times." Especially when there's a worse problem down the road, which inevitably happens -- but life is like that. Everyone has problems, each one of us deals with them in our own way............

tThe Lindens are doing there best I'm sure.

*Passes out emergency computer trouble kits consisting of prepackaged food, extra pens and paper, a change of clothing, a spair pair of plier, a diagnostic tool with more blinking lights than useful functions, and a very large fire axe.*

For the sake of my own bordem, I hope this repair goes smoother than any of mine have this year.