Refund or not?

"i was gonna sell some land then i got high, i was gonna rent a store, but then i got high...i pay $$$ a day in tier fees ya wanna know whyyyyy? cus i got high cus i got high cus i got higggghhhhh

you and all other people in the land business are the people that need the refunds or atleast some form of compensation. you have my sympathy Anshe.

Anshe,

My sympathies to you - that sucks, for you, and also for smaller land sellers who may be stuck with tier as well. I hope they do compensate you for some aspect of it. I recognize why they put in that clause, but given the amount of money that not just you but other players are investing in SL, it inconceivable to me that all we would get is an "oops our bad" and that's it. A day outage is one thing - I have not been able to sign in since early Friday.

That's awful, Anshe, and thanks for sharing that information -- you would think it would give some LL executives some pause.

I figure there will be a surge of activity when they get rolling again, I know I will be doing things like paying your rent, buyin your land, etc. again as will others.

I was actually thinking for a time after they put in 1.6 and there were all the inevitable teething pains and this seeming GOM crash from $4.25 to 4.00 that I was finally gaining more confidence in the game. I spent a few weeks trying to tier down, cash out, consolidate, pick up the slack, reduce expenditures etc as did many more. It seemed that a weathering-out period was in play, then it was normalizing.

But I should have remembered that cardinal economic rule in SL: your economy is only as good as the current patch.

I am convinced GOM rates actually track against patch installations and their performance, but I don't really have the time and energy to research it -- somebody who already has all the patch dates and re-patch dates should track it against GOM rates LOL. I bet it will correlate, but in a staggered fashion. Like, a new patch might actually create a surge in investor confidence...but it will be cruelly hoaxed and crashed 7-10 days later.

I was just getting to that point where I was buying on GOM and buying land next to existing land again when BANG this log-in thing borked me for 3 days, making tenants write me in alarm that they can't log in and can't pay, making those who do log in refund because they wonder if they'll be able to log in and enjoy the game again. Well, I can only say I hope to be in it for the long run and weather these rough passages.

I was struck by what was said about how the majority of players actually didn't ask for video, and that was an add-on due to a play to wider markets of those LL hoped to sell to as a "metaverse" thingie that various corporations could use for high-flying corporate retreats, training, producti prototyping, whatever it is they think they'll get out of it.

I already see some of that in SL, and I'm thinking there will come another split in SL life which will be between second-lifers who use this as a game with anonymous avatars they decorate, etc. and meet other anonymous avatars they come to know in a separate space from RL, and those who just use it as a RL hookup like a telephone or video conferencing, who will play their RL rating game with RL publications, university websites, corporate websites, etc. all attached to real people. We'll see a certain surge coming in at some point of RL Important People in Newbie shirts LOL. In fact, the real savvy CEO will figure out that he can pay a summer intern now to work up his av better for the next two months, get it all levelled up and blinged and rated and power-friended so that by the time he arrives with his RL thingie, he will have a tanned, rested, blingy, friendy av that can succeed in the Game of Second Life lol.

LOL, I like the new Cat

There may be 'method in their madness' on this point - at least the downloads of the clients are being staggered over the coming few hours as people try and fail to login rather than everyone trying to login AND download a 20mb client program at the same time in a few hours. Kinda makes sense to me even if it looks a bit poor when you can't login at the end of the process

I'm very frustrated as I'm in the middle of trying to set up a new island and I may be loaning it out for an arts event next weekend. I'm really, really hoping 1.6.5 is going to do the trick and bring some stability. I really think that landowners (especially the Anshe's and other 'barons') should get some sort of rebate as a good will gesture, even if were only a token Linden amount. I appreciate the ToS and that we are entitled to nothing but a gesture like that would be well receiived I think.

I was very pleased to see that the release of 1.6.5 has been brought forwards - it was a much needed statement of commitment.

I hope that in a month or two this will all be a distant unpleasant memory and SL will continue to bring people together in diverse and creative ways.

Zafu

Okay, John ... I'm going to say something too, and please understand that this is not meant to be rude or disrespectful of you or your experience with high-end systems. Instead, I'm drawing upon MY experience with MMORPGs specfically: Dragonrealms, Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, Eve Online, Star Wars Galaxies, City of Heroes, and assorted text-based MUDs/MUCKs from the days before it became all about impressive graphics.

Here's the thing:

First, you mentioned how "a lot of game developers have taken this approach and are no longer in the 'game,'" implying they're no longer around because they failed to refund customers for downtime. However, you failed to name any names, much less cite any evidence -- even circumstantial evidence -- to support your belief that the nameless developers failed because they didn't give refunds. This is important because such a vague yet sweeping claim seems powerful on the surface, yet there's no actual weight to it whatsoever as you presented it. I'd like to know whom these developers are (or were).

Second, much of what you said is not unfamiliar to me from my time on various gaming boards. The "I have worked with X" or "I'm a programmer/business manager/lawyer, and" posts are not unfamiliar to me. Nor are the "I don't pay to be a beta tester" posts, nor even the claims that other games (once again unnamed) "do it better." Most familiar of all is the claim that "X developer's customer service is the worst I've ever seen." All of these things are reoccuring themes that only pitifully addicted virtual-world/virtual-world message board junkies like me have been around long enough to have picked up on ... but nevertheless, they ARE reoccuring. And nothing ever really comes of them.

Please don't misunderstand me -- I'm really on your side. In a just world, the paying customers of SL WOULD get their refunds, and those refunds would accurately reflect exactly how much money they wasted paying for a service that wasn't available. However, the reality is that these developers know that they don't have to because for all the threats of leaving that people will make, when push comes to shove, most won't. They'll complain bitterly, but they'll come back for another fix like the addicts (guilty!) they are. Even if, say, a handful of people actually DID quit over something like this, the money lost on them would probably be more than made up by everyone else staying -- versus, say, how much it would begin to cost to actually have and stick to a policy of refunding customers for downtime. I don't have any hard numbers to support a claim like that ... no ... but if history intends to repeat itself once more, I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for any significant refunds (or really even necessarily any at all).

they usually always release the [patches early before they open up the servers anyway. plus its the amount of people logging in at once that floods the servers, not so much the dl of a 17mb patch.

Lets see...hmm...$9.95 lifetime membership
2 days of no log in...
Roughly 60 years remaining in my life...

That's it! Lindens, you owe me $0.0008! (Better make it Pesos )

Well now, that's missing the point. The people who'd have "deserved" refunds are of course those paying monthly fees. Come on now. Common sense.

we need a "hunt the lindens" event... all the lindens log in and we all load up our favorite push weapons of choice and blast every linden we see until we feel better

Outages suck and make me grumpy but lets remember for those of us who came from There, they shut down service every day at 5:30 and it takes forever and a day to get new products approved not to mention how expensive it is to get to submit get approval plus the cut they take of your sales.