Landowning and risk, stop whining!

I have said it twice before, and I will say it once again:

Second Life is a complex interaction of a number of systems. It is an Internet venture. Anyone who invests in lots of land should realize the high risk involved.

I'm tired of hearing the whining. Second Life is an experiment. Should it succeed and become the Metaverse, the payoff will be enormous for developers and pioneers that are here today. High risk, high potential reward. Don't gamble big and then complain when you realize it isn't a guaranteed payoff.

Linden Lab, while it has talented staff, is all of a few dozen people. Considering what has been done, I continue to be amazed. The solution is to continue to grow the staff, and LL announced in October that this was in the gameplan. Maybe the pace isn't fast enough, and maybe it is.

In any event, if you are nervous because you have invested a lot of money in SL, perhaps you should reconsider the risks involve, and chill out a bit. Reporting errors helps, complaining doesn't.

edit: This is meant with all due respect - many people complaining are talented, wonderful individuals who are just frustrated.

Hiro I normally agree with just about everything you say in these forums, but I don't view Seccond Life as an experiment. When you're asked, or even when you volunteer to be a part of an "experiment," you are compensated for your time. Here it's vice versa.

So while I agree with everything you said just now ("calm down," "there are risks," etc.), I don't agree this is an experiment any longer. BETA was the "experiment" part. Now we're (pretty much) all paying customers. I didn't volunteer to get hooked on this technology and spend $75-$200 a month on an experiment.

So while I agree with everything you said just now ("calm down," "there are risks," etc.), I don't agree this is an experiment any longer. BETA was the "experiment" part. Now we're (pretty much) all paying customers. I didn't volunteer to get hooked on this technology and spend $75-$200 a month on an experiment.[/QUOTE]


The bitter, spoiled, annoyed that i couldn't get in sl until 1am, and now none of my friends are online, part of me totaly agrees with you aaron. We are paying customers, we bought a service. I am tired of crashes ( my computer crashes on average 3 times an hr) I'm tired of grids going down, and im really tired of hearing the way the lindens handle griefers, banning the victim, and so forth. I have had my own encounter with a griefer on my land, and got no support from the linden i imed. I am dissappointed, and sad that playing this game, causes as much stress as it does entertainment.

That being said, i find it hard to just give up on the whole SL experaince just yet. I have built reletionships, my own little community, i like this game, this world. I know there is so much to running sl that i don't understand, so i have been patient, and have held my tongue.


LOL what is my point?? I dunno, i guess i have mixed feelings about all this, im really sorry some lindens ignore us, but some try very hard to help us. I am sorry that the grid is unstable and unpredictable, but i know (i hope anyway) that linden lab is staffed with capable ppl. They will get this. =) *crosses fingers*

I honestly believe I will never not be in Second Life in some manner for as long as it is. It's too fun, bugs, crashes, downtime, castrophic failure and all.

Aaron,
No one forces you to pay $75 - $200 month. Obviously, you know this.

But there is a misconception people have. People see Second Life as the end product. However, time and time again Linden Lab has stated that Second Life's goal is the Metaverse. If Second Life were compared to the Internet in progression, I would put it as an early 90's Internet:
- Great flexibility is available, but potential has barely been scratched
- Many requested integrated features have not yet been implemented (in the Internet's case in the early 90's - streaming video, webmail, vector graphics, etc etc - all had not yet been done in web browsers)
- Not yet reached the business world at large because the potential for commerce is still low
- Periods of downtime occaisionally

So really, I see Second Life as the Metaverse Experiment. It's on it's way, but there's still a whole lot of things that need to happen between here and there.

The risk for landowners is high. This risk should be weighed. Buyer beware.

The beta may have been the end of the conceptual experimentation, as the premise behind SL solidified and the world finally went public, but the technological experimentation can never end, or the world will stagnate. The only question is whether or not that experimentation should take place in full view of the public. I think that the last few releases have demonstrated the need for extended testing before releases are implemented on the main grid.

However, SL's experimental status (or the lack thereof) is really irrelevant. This wasn't a case of yet another update that went south, but rather an isolated accident that brought the house down. It is a sad fact of life that any system wrought by man is prone to catastrophe. That is the simple truth.

I believe that Linden Lab's Second Life platform is both: there are indeed experimental technologies that have to be worked out as they're built on top, as the recent downtime and technical difficulties have indicated, but there is also a foundation of what should be established solidity. As it continues to get built higher and higher, it's gonna be like a game of Jenga because some of the lower pieces will inevitably have to be rearranged, and hopefully the whole tower will never fall.

In hindsight, it'll look way easier. All these great advances do . . . points on the timeline.

I don't aggree with your analogy of this being or not being the end product ... this makes no sense what so ever .... the game should be a great deal more stable being out for 1 1/2 years.As far as Potential barely been scratched the first thing that has to happen is stability.No one has been forced to spend 75-100$ a month but the underlying theme here is that I for one feel in a way duped. They (LL) say its a wonderful game .. come try it out ... well I am trying it out and have found major challenges of which I really hope will be worked out. Oh and BTW where is the buyer beware posted on the secondlife website ? I'm just glad I'm just a plain ordinary account holder If not happy i simply stop paying my 10 bucks a month and its off to try something else as i have done in the past.

Do you know what the word "Metaverse" refers to? It is a term Neal Stephenson used in the book "Snow Crash" to represent a world-wide 3-D Internet. This is where Linden Lab has stated that they are steering Second Life towards. That's why I say it's not an end product. More like an intermediate product.


Fair enough, can you explain why?

Consider this is a 1-day outage. When I was in Everquest, even after 3 years systemwide outages would occur upwards of a day. That was Sony Online Entertainment, a multinational corporation with much greater resources than Linden Lab. On top of that, Second Life has several layers of complexity above any other MMO - dynamic, streaming, player-authored content. I think the fact that it is this stable is a wonder.

No one has done what Linden Lab has done and is doing. This is a learning process for everyone.


I agree.


Well, how wonderful Second Life is, I suppose, is subjective. I don't, however, think that Linden Lab has ever made any kind of 99% uptime promise that would make me feel "duped" when outages happen. Perhaps that's just my experience with computers; plenty of people have less-than-realistic expectations about computers and don't hesitate to complain when computer stuffs don't perform miracles.


Buyer beware is for anything you buy; it doesn't need to be explicit on everything.
Had Second Life been promised as super-stable, that'd be another story. You'll notice the websites have been decidedly absent of, "Our grid has been tried and true to be unbreakable" kind of promotion.

Buyer beware is for anything you buy; it doesn't need to be explicit on everything.
Had Second Life been promised as super-stable, that'd be another story. You'll notice the websites have been decidedly absent of, "Our grid has been tried and true to be unbreakable" kind of promotion.[/QUOTE]
On this point i totally disagree. I read what i can and try to decipher what has been said. Now I know I'vehaven't been promised anything I'm simply saying If this is the norm then It needs serious help. I never said SL is or was represented as super stable. Yes things are going to happen I'm just saying in the short time I've playeSL there have been and are major issues that I really would've like to have known about. I never said they promised me a rose garden. I'm just asking for some form of stability is all. As for Buyer beware well If i buy a faulty product I should be able to get a refund but here I get what if I buy a faulty product ? and rest assured it is faulty. Where did I say it should be super stable and unbreakable ? Please quote me on that one. Oh and as far as SOE they have a reputation that procceeds them. I played DAOC for over 3yrs and never saw the issues there like they have here... are they the same game .. no ... I am just saying SL needs bigtime help and am simply stating my observations from a new SL players point of view.

In 11 months of SL, I've seen non-patch related downtimes all of a handful of times. Perhaps it's from perspective, but hearing that this somehow does not have even "some form of stability" sounds to me like you're setting a very high standard.

Hiro, I couldn't agree with you more.

It is a high-risk venture with possible high rewards down the line, but probably not. It's compelling and interesting nonetheless. There is a lot to learn from it.

I used to spend $125 or so a month on TSO for all my accounts and got nowhere near the flexibility and compelling projects possible in SL. The fact is, TSO was down a lot less though, it seemed to have a sturdier structure precisely because it didn't have the customized content. It was more democratic and more accessible in the sense that everyone had the same set of features to work with. But obviously SL has more actual and potential than any other game out there.

I do view it as a game, however, it's not really a metaverse yet. It's a game precisely because it is a big gamble, like a high-stakes game of Texas Hold -Em.

And TSO is now deader than elvis because of the lack of features and custom content. I was bored silly my last month in TSO I could never be bored in SL

Second Life is marvelous. I usually find it stable, reliable and dependable. I've been here more than nine months now, and the vast majority of my experience in that time has been painless.

There has been some degredation of performance lately, culminating in this debacle. I am finding this especially frustrating because these latest problems started half an hour before the Fundraising Thingie kicked off, and I hadn't been able to finish setting it up.

The Fundraising Thingie has now been going on for three and a half hours. It is unlikely now I will be able to keep my pledge of being in SL for 24 hours solid, though I will try, how long can I physically stay awake?

I'm naturally annoyed and frustrated that these login issues have coincided with the Fundraising Thingie-- and are losing the DEC the monies from sponsor money, donations and dwell. I'm also facing a long New Year alone in my cold house.

So forgive me if I whine, complain, or bitch: I think I have cause to.

Let's see...

One by one...

Metaverse, schmetaverse. I didn't come here for a metaverse or a psuedo-philosophical lesson by wannabe-world-changers or leftist-liberal techno-apologists.

Once a business, any business, puts a product on the market, it is opening itself up to criticism for any and all reasons conceivable under the sun. Guess what? Most of the complaints I have heard posted on these forums since I joined in June are well-documented and pretty-much justified. Promises made explicitly and implicitly and explicitly broken by LL are the single largest source of customer complaints from what I see. Customer expectations are relatively realistic here - not pie in the sky 100% utopian.

As for whining, bitching, moaning and/or complaining.... this thread is, as usual, one of a series/group of pointless suck-ups routinely evidenced here in the forums. Such thread always seem to originate from a handful of people who seem to see their roles in life as instigators/cheerleaders for positivism. Personally, I see them as "head in the sand" ostriches who don't seem to view reality like the majority of the world.

No one forces anyone to pay to be here. That's correct heroboy. But guess what. There is a "contract" as soon as money is exchanged. Right now, the contract is very much weighted towards favoring LL, not the customers. Customers are bannable without recourse/explanation. Outages can be called at the whim of LL. Bug reports and abuse reports can and apparently are routinely ignored/not responded to. Complain? Cheerlead? I know which is more realistic to me. I live in the real world, not the suck up world.

Since I joined in June, the number of patches seems to have INCREASED, not decreased. The amount of customer complaints I see in the forums has INCREASED, not decreased. The type of complaints has stayed the same ---- so it's not a question of a larger population. The problems evident have not been addressed. Buyer beware my ass!

Finally, your "heroic" interpretation of "how I see SL" is about as worthless as anyone else's (except mine) to me. It just irritates me more because of the condescending manner in which you routinely couch it. That's not an attack - that's absolute honesty.

To quote Jack Nicholson's response to Shirley MacLain in "Terms of Endearment" when he was prodding her to have a drink and she asked "Why?";

"To kill the bug that crawled up your ass."

Nod's your way.. ty.. and add to that the 5 mil thay got too.

MI (be here in the back..lol)RAGE

happynew year enjoy it w. ppl you love.

WEll, why don't you crawl up it and grab it for me?

Hand me a meathook.

Nah.. but I will offer you a flashlight and "hero's" assistance as a guide.

*8mil

Don't you mean "Fleshlight"? Thanks, but I will pass. Spelunking in there may reveal the reason you are the way you are and I dunno that I want to know. Not to mention you may like it.

You know, if what Hiro writes irks you to the point where you're getting your knickers in a knot on a holiday over it maybe you should just refrain from reading what he posts.

Or take Jack's advice.

Or not and just stay bitter and hold grudges against people for posting opinions which in no way decide any policy or future direction for LL.

Hurry Korg, I have to go to the liquor store and get some insecticide!

Not bitter. Don't hold grudges.
Basically, I say what is on my mind with little desire or reason to qualify them --- oh wait, I do that in real life too - so don't accuse me of acting here unlike I would in real life.

As for "no way to decide ...for LL", THANK YOU for essentially restating my continuing rationale for being irked at certain people's posts. Just because one is an "oldbie" doesn't mean his/her opinion is any more or less valuabe or insightful than anyone else's. That is routinely illustrated on these forums. In the case of the hero in question, the essence of the collected posts, having used them for a "statistical analysis of pointless rhetoric" paper I am preparing for a communciations conference using a text-parsing program written by one fo the foremost rhetorical analysts involved in computer-analysis of speech patterns, it's pretty obvious that I am not alone in sensing a perpetual air of condescension, a strategic use of words to "bolster one's position/to appear in/as-an authority" and to listen to one's own "voice".

Consequently, Nolan.... I have no reason to try to fight with you. Fight with yourself. As you suggest, if he is entitled to his misbegotten opinion and is entitled to express it, so am I. You too for that matter. Funny thing is, if I were to weight your opinion and his together, I think a butterfly's wing would weigh more as far as influence on me.

Congratulations, Korg, you've sucessfully made a post that completely fails to get any sembelence of a point across! Cheers!

EDIT: In reference to your first one.