The Launch: Hopes, Fears, Desires, Predictions?

What will happen, when SL opens up the gate?

What's the worst that you fear? What's the best that you hope for? Who will come in? Who will leave?

Post here, for quotage in Notes!

My worst fear:

That the world will plumet into Chaos and despair. As we saw with the increase in attacks on other users and other such negative activities when we had a population boom before.

The best I hope for:

That my worst fear isn't realized But aside from that. A more diverse social climate, and better acceptance of certain cultural and social activities.

Who will come in and who will leave:

Well I'm pretty sure many types of people will come in. Most likely at first curious "whats this" type people. Then most likely friends and family of current residents.

People looking for another typical shoot em up leveling and violence oriented game may stay a while and cause some problems, but I think the majority of those will leave as they get bored. The only reason they would stay is if they get what they want, which is bad reactions and responces to their activities.

Just like the class clown or class bully in school, if they get a rise out of people they keep doing it. If they don't they get bored and move on.....

In addition to what I hope for:

That everyone is big enough to let the Bullies, clowns have their fun and let em move on in boredom. Don't exasterbate the issues and make em feel like they need to do more and just ignore em.

I hope:

that the current map will become a small speck on the future map.


I fear:

that the whole thing will be filled with unorganized garbage.

My worst fear:

Liason availability and issues with technical support and customer communication will make the Lindens feel more like gods then regular SL people, and that they will no longer function as friendly as they are now.

Also, that these forums will plummet into disarray, (an example of this happening would be TSO's forums) meaning the occasional liason pop-in to correct or advise will be rare and extreamely far-between, and that the forums would contain more invalid, shallow criticisim of everyone else.

My hopes:

The SL world will continue to grow and prosper, and eventually be more uniformly creative (no splotches of amazing work all in one place and just a cube prim on a piece of land in another). Also, that the LL will continue its AMAZING job of keeping its users happy with a flexible, consistantly updated, product.

Who will come in:
I agree with Charlie on this, if we just ignore the people that we dont want infesting the world with their garbage, they'll go away, creative people will stay, and keep bringing creative people into SL.

-Chris (continuing to be a slave to OmniNet until project completion)

When we go live, I actually don't think much will change. It will be just like when we shifted from alpha to closed beta, then to semi-closed beta, and then to open beta. The world will continue to be the wonderful chaotic jumble of structures and objects that it is today; there will just be more people and more stuff. Occasionally there will be some semblance of order, but it will only be on a sim to sim basis, there will not be some over arching theme that dominates every thing in SL. There are too many people with too many ideas. The only commonality will be the people, and then only that they are people, everything else will be up in the air.

I have no fears for SL. The sense of community will be more like the real world, where you have your friends, your group of people that you hang out and depend on, and then there will be the rest of the world. The one big difference will be that in SL it is totally normal to walk up to a complete stranger and start a conversation because you know at least at some level you have something in common. SL.

Hopes...well that is a little bit tougher. I would say I hope it succeeds, but I don't, I know it will . I guess I only hope that everyone has as much fun as I do.

There are lots of people who need some semblance of order in a game. These people will be the first to leave I think. They cannot seem to grasp that this is just like real life, where you have to/get to decide what you want to do. No one is going to tell you what you have to do, there are no levels to attain, no specific path to follow, and some people want this. SL is like legos, before they started doing all those specific building sets, the lindens gave us a pack of rectangular boxes that connect together and said, 'go have fun!'

I am not sure who will stay. The people who enjoy it and can afford it i suppose.

My greatest fear is unfortunately one which is already starting to manifest before live. That more people will come into the game who are not tolerant of others, and will do everything they can to make sure that they get theirr way with everything. Unfortunately, this is already happening. Harassment, and other problems arise from building what you like on land, just because other people decide they don't like it.

Unfortunately, this is how the world in first life is, and the more people that come in, the more of this will come with them.

I hope? I hope people realize that we're in this game to be free, and to let people build what they please, and be what they please. I think our ultimate goal should be to overcome the things which people can't seem to in 1st life. Possible? Yes, but I have a feeling human nature will prevail in the fear category before the hope.

A very good point that I had not thought about. TSO is definatly not the only game to have this happen to their Forums. EQs forums deteriorated to the point that they went from nearly non modded to heavily moded, to only devs post, to replacing the forum with a website with posts from the devs.

I would be very interested in knowing if the Lindens have a plan for handling the forums and customer care / interaction in the future?

I must weigh-in as the older, non-gamer who just happened to drop by SL one day and then never left.

My prediction? When the doors open, there will be more like me arriving.

My fear? That I'll be forced to find a way to make a living in SL. I don't wanna. Like many here, I'm sure, my RL is very complex and I have a lot of people dependent on me. Here, I'm a happy wanderer. I'm slowly learning to make things, but this is one place I *don't* want to feel a pressure to produce. I hope LL keeps a place for people like me here.

(related thought: can u give us a coupon or business card or something similar we can print out and pass out to others? I've referred a lot of people at work to SL but will never get a referral bonus because my work is not computer-based and we don't email each other, and the workplace is too fast-paced to be exchanging computer links. If I'm lucky, I can manage to scribble secondlife.com on a post-it note.)

My hopes? My hopes are diverse and not well-defined. I hope someday I can fly without bumping into things. I hope I can find a SL personal trainer to teach me things I don't want to spend the time learning on my own. I hope to have 2 or 3 apartments to visit, depending on my mood and a small patch of land to practice building on. I hope the gatherings can be someday lag-free. I hope to learn Photoshop well enough to import boulders for me to sit on. I hope I'm one of the ones to be chosen to be on the Oprah show when she has a show about SL. I hope my friends and family continue to humor me and put up with my having a second life. I hope to someday be able to turn up my speakers when I'm in SL--to have some control over the noises that constantly bombard me when I'm there. I hope to someday be the host of a "splat-fest" where we all fall from the sky and take funny pictures of each other splatting.

Awwwww.... I love the hodge-podge here. I love the open-endedness and you-never-know-what'll-appear-tomorrow-or-next-door chaos. It's a liberating and wondrous thing...

Maggie

After reading the latest New World I no longer have any fears. I know now that I most likely wasted my lifetime membership funds and that the odds of SL prospering is slim and none. I think that article was the worst business decision in the history of a company.

Since the majority of people in the game are 34 and under Male , Hetro, and Christian you decided to create an article that highlighted how SL is does not fit into the norm.

Xavier, in my opinion, the norm sucks. The "norm" is how you get average people between the ages of 13 and 21 to play. How many average people have you seen in SL?

If average people started coming in, we'd have newbie cabins everywhere, nothing would be built but guns, and abuse reports would sky-rocket. Gamers aren't normal people, and neither are most of us in SL. I like it better this way... I've never fit in better anywhere. Keep the "normal" people away...

Hmm... now that I've posted... I guess I should kinda follow format...

Hopes:
SL will become a staple for creative minds to come and utilize their skills and show the world what they can do with a few simple cubes and cylinders. The map will be infinitly larger with groups of all kinds (yes, even a place for the normal people... in a corner somewhere, frightened and alone).

Fears:
Hmmm... I guess I'm afraid that SL will bomb due to a lack of media coverage. No one will know of SL and no one will join. Lindens, we need commercials now... somewhere... anywhere. If they're out there now, heh.. I missed them because I'm on SL, sorry

Who will leave/come in:
I can tell you who will stay.. Those of us who have an IV ported from their computer, so they don't lose their SL fix.

Leaving will be the underfunded and the uncommitted. Neither of these are directly their fault, so... yeah..

Coming in will (hopefully) be people of all backgrounds, from the hardcore gamer, to the person that can't browse the internet without special assistance.

Creativity is bred from differences. I hope SL becomes a pennicle of how much can be done with well placed 1's and 0's.

My hope is that Second Life will always be what it is and more. At present, it's a place where creative people can express themselves and can work and play together and overall, enjoy one another's company.

My fear is that with the prospect of a high-end monthly fee, a good portion of potential users (and current users) may be scared off. There are those who feel that keeping the population down is a good thing, but in order for Second Life to be sustainable, it must have a healthy user base unless I'm grossly underinformed and mistaken about the plan for sustainability. If this were someone like Bill Gates' personal pet project which he intended to invest in regardless of losses, I wouldn't worry at all; it would be infinitely sustainable. However, I don't believe this is the case.

My expectation is that the Linden folk will advertise as necessary in magazines, on G4, etc. to be sure that the word is out there, and that they will be there every step of the way to manage the growth and to ensure that the Second Life experience remains a good one.

I feel as if we're a big family, and I hope this will always be so.

Long live Second Life!

These are excellent-- keep 'em coming! Around Noon tomorrow (PST), I'll cull the best comments and post them for my Friday entry...

My hope - That somehow we can maintain what SL is now... a way above average collection of smart, creative, and kind people.... that open beta isn't just a bubble that will soon burst.

My fear - That as the playerbase grows it will become more like a cross section of the rest of the world... 5% creative and cool people who are worth knowing, and 95% morons you wish would get the hell off your lawn.

My hope and fear are the same:

There will be more users signing up than the current infrastructure can support and the whole thing will grind to a halt.

Add to my hope that I hope there is a "gameplan" in place to cope with this eventuality.

I'd be encouraged to hear that they acquired something like one of these babies:

http://www.transmetazone.com/releaseview.cfm?releaseID=953

Fear: Nobody will show up to the grand reopening of the Atlas Casino!

Hope: Everybody will show up to the grand reopening of the Atlas Casino!

Expectation: A few sims here, a few sims there, a couple celebration events, but nothing really crazy.