Does this product work anymore?

I have to try several times to log in. Finally I get in.

I log into the Vorago. It never fully draws in.

I port to Natoma, the sim is gone, all I see is water. I log out.

I log in, I'm back in Varney.

I port to Stillman. My avatar appears as a "noob" female avatar, wearing my clothes and tats. My attachments disappear before my eyes, one by one.

I throw up my hands and log out.

I read the new terms of service. Linden Labs offers no guarantee in any way that their product will actually work. I have to think there is a reason for this.

Wtf?

Excuses of being in it's infancy, and other such defenses, are long exhausted. When will this product be stable and work?

Can we roll back to 1.2 or 1.3 or so plz, when it actually seemed to do what the marketing claims it does?

the female AV problem happens to me as well, its just a tp bug it seems. Dotn worry about it. HEre are a few tips to fix that problem:

1. take off all clothes and attachments; when a pop up comes up and says do u want to save the changes done to blah blah blah select Dont Save every time.

2. Wear a diffrent skin than the one ur wearing, and then another popup will come up, select dont save.

3. Do the same in step 2 but with an AV shape and hair

4. Put everything back on and everything should be back to its original state.

It may help u, but it helps me...

Ur other problem with the sim missing, i had the same problem the other day, I jsut relogged and it was fine.

They are minor bugs and is nothing to go off the wall about. Yes sometimes it does get a bit crazy with things happening that shouldnt, but soon enough they will have an update that may fix these problems

Hope i helped.

Good luck

No offense Dave, but I have been a member of SL since early early beta. I am aware of the recommended fixes and so forth, and have thousands of line of script in the world. It is ridiculous that we should have to do all these things simply to be able to walk around.

I heartily disagree that this is "nothing to go off the wall about". I have had my structures damaged, my scripts rendered useless, and now non stop problems with attachments and porting, which is something that a number of my game mechanics depend on. I couldn't even visit my house (probably the oldest build currently in SL) because the sim was gone, and did not come back.

It is, indeed, time that these problems were FIXED. It's not getting better, it's getting worse, with every patch. Defending LL's ongoing introduction of new and unrepaired issues is not helpful at all, I don't buy it. We're not here to pay LL to test the development of a platform to be marketed to developers, but that is exactly what we are doing.

If it sounds aggravated, it is. I'm just tired of not being able to log in and do my thing, and have invested too much time and money in this to simply walk away.

I have not had the problems that many speak of here in the forums, but I do have issues from time to time. SL is innovative and all that and it seems that new features are always being introduced. But, I think a redirection in scope is needed to address stability issues.

If people cant use SL, its no good to anyone. My buddy lives in the sticks and he was excited that he now has DSL available. The first thing he did was download SL because of all the talk I have thrown at him about it. Well, SL doesnt work for him. All his gear meets specs and he has undergone the commmon update all the drivers stuff and it still doesnt work. I see frequent posts by people complaining about it not working. How many people simply just go away and never post about it? I am sure it is much more than post in the forums. Its frustrating for me to tell him, "Well, some people have issues and cant get it to work." I dont know what else to tell him beyond contacting support and they tell him to update his stuff, which he has.

I dont know what it is, but there is more to SL not working than just faulty gear on the users end. I hope that some major attention can be put towards SL stability and simple functionality. Its future depends on it. We dont need advancements when the current platform is not stable enough for basic use.

Just to add my two cents ...

I agree totally that the condition of the game is very frustrating. We should not have to go about all these little workarounds to get something to work that shoudn't be broken in the first place. It is ridiculous to have to jump through so many hoops just to tp somewhere. Not to mention all the times that you just can't TP at all, or end up in a totally different place than you had intended.

The lag and unrepsonsiveness of many sims (including many newer ones) is getting worse by they day. I was the only person in my home sim last night and could hardly walk around the place. The client frame rate was done to 1, with absolutely nothing going on in the sim at the time. I have posted about this in other forums (as many others have) and have filed bug reports. To date I have receieved no response from anyone official. I do however thank the SL residents who have given me suggestions and have added their observations to the threads. Perhaps someone will take notice of the number of people complaining about the same issues and take action.

I know I keep going on and on about these problems, but if we all just stay quiet and accept the problems and all the workarounds, we will never get anything done about them.

At the last town hall they said new hardware was on the way. Be patient.

I think it's mostly to do with the asset server load tcoz. I dunno if a bigger badder server will fix it or not but that's what they say they're going to do. Personally I think it should be several servers with load balancing but I'm sure someone will tell me why this isn't possible and/or too hard.

I'm pretty sure I saw a post in the last few days from Philip somewhere on the forums about how that was the type of system they were moving to when they put the new hardware in.

No offense taken

Not for nothing, but we're heard all of this before. Be patient. Upgrading hardware. New colocation. Etc. In the meantime, the game is spiralling into near unusability.

Maybe they should stop adding new ways to put tattoos on avatars, and address the lag, inability to move around the world, inability to wear attachments, and other issues, that are preventing the game from doing what it is CURRENTLY supposed to do, or has always done until now.

Funny how nobody has drawn the parallel between what is going on with SL and what happened to There. There pulled any guarantee of support or usability from their product, and went into marketing it as a dev platform. Read the LL website, and the new terms of service; LL has pulled any guarantee of stability or usability from the game, and is marketing SL as a platform to developers.

Players are getting left behind on this one folks. How many of us have submitted support or customer service queries and gotten nothing back?

I used to log in and develop 4-5 times per day. Now it's a lot when I log in twice a week.

The bugs are ruining my experience and I'm about to move on to something else.

Wow, I'm actually surprised about all these negative comments. Yes, there are bugs, but...



That quote is a little harsh, IMO. I have experienced some of these bugs (TP not working, attachments disappearing, lag, etc) but it has not ruined my SL experience by any means.

SL is software. Software = bugs. That's just the way it is. I guess it all has to do with expectations going in. I expected growing pains, instability, rollbacks, and crashes from the get go. Why? Because I recognized how bleeding edge this software was and it is bound to run into problems. What software hasn't?

Not to mention all the various hardware combinations that users have, with different driver versions, different BIOS versions, different graphics cards, blah blah blah.

Actually, I am quite impressed at how relatively stable SL is. I know I'll get flamed for saying so, but seriously, it is quite a technological marvel that it can do what it does.

The bugs we see now are minor, IMO. I'm willing to be patient and put up with it. And I've been around since beta as well.

I can completely appreciate the technology involved and the complexity of this game. I was not in beta in this game, but have been in many other online games. I know what growing can do to the stability, I also know what growing too fast can cause.

I totally expect there to be bugs and issues with any software. However, what I do not need to expect or put up with is a total lack of response from the company that owns this software and is making a profit from it. I have filed 3 or 4 bug reports (have lost track now), and have not received any response to them. I also have tried to use live help twice and not even been given a response from my question. An email to support also received no reply. I think the lag, bugs, and stability should be the priority at the moment. Expansion is nice and I realize it means more people can play, and more land fees will be collected. But, this should not come at the expense of the rest of the grid that has already been established.

Popular or not, that is my opinion for what it's worth.

Excellent!

I been around a long time and I am patient with the bugs and problems as well. Like I said, I dont have a lot of issues. But, it is the newer people that wont be so forgiving that I worry about.

I dont like saying bad things about SL, I love it here. But if we all are just quiet and accepting of issues, LL will see no real need to work on them. I meant my comment to be constructive. LL has been amazing in addressing overall community concerns and I hope that continues. We have to let them know when we have troubles.

Sorry, but minor? There are at LEAST a dozen frustrated newbies that can't teleport reporting to Live Help a day.

This isn't counting the messages from established players wondering where their attachments went when they teleport. That's assuming they CAN teleport.

There are MAJOR stability issues. These are not isolated, minor bugs. This is essential infrastructure that 99% of the population of the SL community needs. It's inexcusable.

Would you have trust in your government if, instead of fixing the leaking water mains, the arcing power lines, the frayed telephone lines, and the pothole-ridden roads, they announce a plan to build a new skatepark downtown, instead of using those funds to fix major infrastructure?

LF

Curmudgeon that I am here in the forums, my posts can easily be viewed in a negative sense... kinda goes with the word Curmdgeon doesn't it?

That does not mean to say that I do not see the/any positives.

However I have to agree with preceding comments relating to highlighting the things that may ruin the experience or someone or other. For instance, unless I look out into an empty void sim space I don't get anywhere near the 20-plus fps that some people report as relatively commonl. Even at altitude where there should be few textures and prim pbjects to load, my personal highest fps is only 24 fps. So, my experience with SL is quite different from someone with the "God I wish that was my fps" experience.

Though I have only been a resident since June of this year, the progression of the software is not something I was expecting when I signed up.It has become the expectation since the, however. Still, I did sign up for a stable and usable product. That is the measure of my experience - can I use the product. When the oft-mentioned problems with tp, inventory loading, slow fps, etc., occur, my experience suffers regardless of how I feel about the future of LL or SL itself. I'll repeat that to be sure it's clear.

My experience suffers due to problems with the software.

So I second/third/fourth the comments that known and especially long-standing problems get fixed or at leasta given a higher priority than adding new features. To analogize, manual transmissions came in cars before automatic transmission did. Hand crank engine starting came before electric motor starting.

Fix the basic things...then the nice to haves.. then go for extending the platform... I won't even talk about Havok 2 - seems to be a pipe dream/carrot dangled somewhere out in the future as a sop/pacifier. I'll get excited over it when it gets here and works.

To LL, you have done good work. You can do better. We all deserve it - both the emploees and the residents. I am kinda tired of being used a a pay-to-be-used beta-tester...unfortunately I have an investment here in time and money.. so I am stuck for the near term. I'd like the experience to be better.

One last thought. Those of us who make seemingly negative comments are no less supportive of LL than a lot of other people. We just do it differently.

No, no, no!

Being impressed at stability is akin to a slave being impressed that he was fed.

Stability is a prerequisite. It's pretty much inevitable that all complex software has latent bugs, that's true as well, but in any half-decent product those bugs are LATENT, and as soon as they are discovered they are squashed with point patches.

Bugs in live operational software that persist for week after week and month after month do NOT fall into this category. That just indicates poor QA or poor responsiveness to bug reports, general lack of interest in quality or in the customer, massive under-resourcing, or a different agenda entirely.

Bugs and instabilities need to be fixed, full stop, that shouldn't even be up for debate.

No Tcoz, I'm afraid to say that I don't believe it does work any more. I hold out hope that they'll eventually get some proper QA and get rid of the many problems. The worse it gets, the more I hope it's sharpening their minds on the issue.

As the Liasons frequently say, "Vote with your feet". I have steadfastly held on to my membership and periodically do try to put something visit-worthy in the world, and have often stated my awe of the concept of SL. Being as I've been paying for this product since you could actually pay for it, and actually helped the Lindens and their alts create some of the orignal areas that attracted players in the first place, I have a longer term investment of time and money in this than all but a handful of players. I'd say that's a pretty obvious sign of ongoing support. Don't forget that their marketing says that players have createed First Person Shooters. How many do you know of?

And all I expect it to do is WORK as advertised. Being a critic of the instability of this product is not the same as saying I don't support it. However, a couple of people who I have talked to at a commercial level (I have used SL, when it worked properly, for some interesting RL stuff) that have tried the product wound up saying the the same thing; "This product has been live for how long? I couldn't get it to work!". These are computer professionals too, not 14 year old "where you at" Boost users. In fact, one of these situations was at a business meeting and it was embarassing. "Yes, I reviewed the software you suggested as a possibility for our interactive development. It is beta quality at best." Umm...yeah. Well, they're working on it. Still. I wound up retooling and using Flash.

This all adds up to obvious, straightforward reason to believe that we are being used as ongoing, PAYING testers of a platform that offers no guarantee of support or stability.

Let's put it this way. You go into a store. You grab a box of software, I don't care how revolutionary it is. On the box, it says, "May or may not work. We do not guarantee in any way that it will or will not, and we are under no obligation to our customers to respond to any issues no matter how obviously our fault, and in fact, we probably never will respond", would you buy it?

You would say, "I don't believe it", and put the software back. You might even ask the salesguy, "are they serious?".

Oh and Havok 2...how many times? Please just say, "We have no idea if this will ever happen. Stop asking because all we can tell you is that we don't know, if ever." To be frank, I never really thought it was worth the effort, since the game has obviously gravitated away from sophisticated physical development for all but a miniscule percentage of players. Havok 2 simply wouldn't have a wide enough appeal to the people paying to keep SL in business, so it's not worth the legion bugs and instability it would no doubt introduce. Let's get what's supposed to work working first please.

C'mon LL. You got smart people working there, stop expanding it and grind out those bugs, and get responsive to your player queries. More sims and the ability to make your avatar give the finger means nothing if you can't get to those sims, intact, and move around long enough to flip somebody off.

I believe this thread can be summed up by saying...

Some of us are just about fed up, some of us are patient, we ALL think it should be stable. The only difference is whether we've been waiting too long for it to become so, or whether we are willing to wait a bit longer.


Features;
the features that are available now are more than sufficient for at least a month or two, probably longer, before people start to get a been there done that attitude. Since that's the case devote all your time to improving stability LL. in a month, review. If there is still more demand for improved stability over more features, then keep working on that, otherwise, go back to the feature marathon.