Lets all go to THERE!!!!

AAA
BBB
AAB
ABB
ABA

AAAAAGGGHHH!! lmao

I have a free account at the moment, and I understand how frustrated people who have paid for the service must feel. Personally, I am in the process of upgrading my account to premium (they make it such a hassle for anyone outside the USA to have a premium account without using a credit card, it's almost as if they don't want my money!!). I've been on SL for three months now (not long, but long enough to have spied the lay of the land so to speak) and have been impressed by it. Sure, it's been down a few times, but let's face it people, it's a tiny minority of the time really. Okay, so it may look like damn bad luck that it's down at the exact time you want to use it - but what a previous poster said is right, the team at LL will be more frustrated than you. If LL loses customers and goes under you have wasted a few dollars a month, but the programmers loose their livelihoods. So I'm pretty sure they're working as hard as they can to get things up and running. I'm on SL most days and my fiance is on for atleast 8 hours a day (she works on SL full time to make her RL living) and both of us can only recall a couple of times in the last few months when SL has been down (aside from the wednesday update). In the UK right now the weather is fine and the birds are singing - go outside for a bit and get some fresh air. If the weather isn't so good where you are, read a book!! SL will be back up soon I'm sure.

You see, this is the misconception that really ticks me off. My partners kept their accounts going in AW when the three of us moved from there to SL. So I know first hand that over the past two years, they have been and continue to make improvements. Yes for awhile there they stagnated, hence me looking for another place to hang, however its a whole new ballgame going on in Active Worlds now.

(Sidebar to Lightwave: according to my partners all my builds are still there too I had built a whole town, a city too and tons of builds everywhere. The directory I created to have gateways to all of them is still there too - weh cool! I also helped build up DsEden, Gamorah and had my own world, Afriqa for awhile too)

Continuing on to Mr. Brewster:
Remember when avatars couldnt sit down? Well they can now. Remember when the avatars were really pretty much stick figures and the only way you get a decent was to purchase custom from an av creator or get a 3D webpage? Well they've begun to create better avatar meshes and so forth.

I'm not saying Active Worlds is the be all end all - but it IS growing and improving, and at this rate just might overtake some places that seem to be falling apart. I agree with the posters on this thread who say that right now there is nothing else out there like SL.

But just as SL popped up so to will something else that is cutting edge like SL was when it started. And yes that edge is a thin one and SL seems to be slipping right off it. There is still hope at this juncture for those that care, IF and only IF Philip Rosedale starts buckling down and starts making right choices instead of wrong ones.

And what Justin Cline has said he's done, I've done. I tiered down to basic and only come into SL to teach my weekly class at my NCI, and hang out with my partners and friends, and on occasion support my other friends and mentees (hosting events, creating fansites, blogs etc) who unlike myself do not have the luxury of putting SL aside.

The main point of my posts here on my thread is that I feel tyalls frustration. I've been there. I'm only suggesting easing that frustration by either stepping away from the computer and busting out a good book - or revamp your RL and play that game for awhile - or seek out other applications to dabble in while things here are so tenuous.

I'd gotten to the point of hitting my head against the wall so many times that it just wasn't worth it for me to pay to not play and pay to get ignored and pay for an application that in all seriousness (and we all know this deep down inside) could have used at LEAST another year in beta if not two.

So I took myself away from a frustrating situation and moved on, putting my money to good use elsewhere.

But thats just me. Your World, Your Frustrations: Enjoy

you forgot also that on the download page is the ability to run your own server also ll is looking pretty bad each day now

Rappelz just went open beta a few days ago. Its about a 2 hour download with cable. Its something to do and they seem to have a trick for preventing botters.

If anything I'd go back to The Sims Online or back to Age of Empires where there isnt ever an update and if there is you can download it without time down at AOE

I share the sentiments expressed by others in regards to the (increasingly frequent) downtimes.

Believe me when I say that I love and care about SL.

However:

Speaking as a software engineer working in the games industry, I don't expect this technology to be perfect. By the same token, I don't expect it to be dysfunctional either (this game has more downtime than any other MMO I've played -- and I've played quite a few over the last 7 years).

This is not what I feel we should be paying for. If this product was in open Beta, that'd be one thing -- but it's not.

As a matter of principle, I feel LL should reimburse paying customers for the downtimes. It's not a question of the money per se; rather it is about upholding a semblance of professionalism.

This game has been out for what, three years? And in an unsettlingly large number of ways, it smacks of being low-key and low-budget.

Let's get professional guys! FIX IT!! Do what it takes (even if that means doing something that clashes with the 'vision')!

Thanks.

--Igots Noland

Pretentious?
Don't be silly.
'Content' is more accurate.
'Smug', if you want to be rude.
We don't own PCs... aaaaaahhh wonderful!
Byee!
Christi

PS I use a PC at work so I know what I'm talking about.

NO Thank you. I came to here from There.com and have NO desire to return. I suggest if U are not happy here in SL you might want to go to there

bug which caused objects purchased in-world to be fully permissive.

This will be the last straw drawn .
If I find there is products of mine out there with full perms without my permision
I will sell my land that I just got more of a couple days ago in fact and will go basic.

I spent a long time getting my products where they are and if I cant keep my products
secure without someone getting full perms of my products then there is no reason for
me to even create those products.

There.com is a dying game . I was in there about a week ago and there was about
4 others in the plaza other then me

The economy is much better in there.com /// Why ?
Because there are rules in there.com
You create products and pay there.com to make them real and then you post and sell those.

Its more money and yeah sucks you have to follow there rules, But there.com has a
game setting under there nose that could be awsome and they simply just dont do
what the people want.

Games today are way to controlled.

Active worlds is probably one of the most free willed games ive tried.
You can use any texture you want like sl , Unlike there.com.. You can even import
your own terrian if you know how to make the files.
And you can use your own server and serve your own worlds from ftp or server.
There are tons of applications out there that use the AW engine and charge diff fees
so you could even start your own game with AW.

BUT//// Limits on textures last I knew
Poly limits or the engine craps out lol.
Awfull RWX file format god I dont miss that lol.
Not sure if they have lighting or not yet.

Anyway feel free to im me in game and send all the games you know of like sl to me
and id love to check them out.

If Guild Wars was able to create your own spaces id be in heaven lol.

Shame to see Second Life in the shape its in and im afraid there isnt much future
in this game..

Well Im glad to see you really didnt want to go to THERE. I dont either. I LOVE SECOND LIFE!!! With all its problems lately, even when Im in There waiting for SL to come back up, thats pretty much all I do, keep checking to see if its back up lol

So Lindens, if you are reading this, I/WE LOVE SECOND LIFE!!! We might give you alot of grief sometime, well alot of times, but we love ya!!!!

I just tried 'There'.

And wow.. I dont swear much but wow.. 'There' is the ****.



I love SecondLife.

What sort of scripting language does A Tale in the Desert use?

And can I be a robot there if I want to?

Go play World of Warcraft instead of There.
There is full of children.

there sucks :\

i'll stick with SL

So Is World of warcraft!!! Also... it would appear SL is too now. Haha

There is SL without all the customizability, cool people or fun.

So sure, go ahead if you want.

LOL

It appears that way doesn't it?

I had an account in activeworlds...or was it activeworlds. The website is so different.

Yes, I THINK it was activeworlds, I had an account when it was free (did they change back to free?) and used to play it with my RL friends all the time.

I didn't read the whole thread to see if anyone mentioned this, but you could always go to Virtual Laguna Beach - that version is better than the normal version of There (which is not saying a lot, but it is true):

http://www.vlb.mtv.com/

The thing I wonder about that is why MTV picked There over SL for this? The avatars are better here, the look is better... did MTV see the issues going on and decide a quieter but more stable enviorment was better for them?

They probably picked There because from a usability standpoint, There is a lot farther ahead of SL. SL's interface sucks and is horribly outdated - VLB has a modified version of There's easy to use Flash-based interface. You have to think of the target audience - the point is to socialize, buy clothes, and play games. There has much better vehicle physics, the avatars are more fluid, and it is just a lot easier to use. Yes, SL is light years head of it in capabilities - but the most advanced thing is not always the best for everything. I am no fan of There for a lot of reasons, but it was far better suited for the VLB project than SL would have been.

True. I can vouch for the fact that zooming around on a hoverboard or driving a buggy in There is a MUCH smoother experience then just walking in some sims. Lately most sims..

There does have some good points like you mention. It is just the ghost town of online worlds from what I have seen.

Free lifetime membership buddy.. that means I can wait to see if it ever catches on again.

I'm curious - Was VLB a licenced separate instance of There that MTV themselves are running, or a subgrid like the TG/MG linkage SL uses?

I've been of the mind that LL should allow companies to license the codebase, so they can run their own modified, independent grid (including their own backend, asset cluster, etc). Development efforts done by those independent grids could then be merged back into the main SL (like the many half-done features that would probably be completed that way).

Going back to orginal topic, one of the things I've heard about There's upcoming upgrades is the inclusion of what was developed on VLB (which apparently is MUCH better looking overall). The fact that it requires a separate login makes me believe its a licensed, separate instance.

--Alan

Hey Alan, I'd answer your questions (and they're good ones) if I could, but you may want to post a comment to Satchmo Prototype's blog, he was spearheading the VLB in There project for Electric Sheep...http://blogs.electricsheepcompany.com/chris/

There's a lot more info about the project from a development standpoint there as well.