Land we spent our preview Linden on has now vanished

Will the land in Balance and Fame we spent our limited preview Linden on and spent time and resources building be restored?

Also, objects we placed out were not returned.

This effect keeps happening which drains preview avi resources.

Once we drop an object in preview it seems to be gone forever.

Not real polite.

"Testing servers" for all online worlds are not necessarily meant to be "polite." They are meant for testing.

Nothing on the preview grid is safe. If you "lose" something there, big deal. It'll come back when they make another copy of the user database in a week or month or whenever they need to.

yes,its a testing grid but it could be a little more user friendly considering we spend time there and dont have to,and the objects gone in between updates from one snap to another is frustraing. Especially considering we take the time to try and make it a decent place to test and live. try a little consideration and not be so quick to judge everyone by your opinion,I've tested, beta'd and test server'd *many* games, since 81 and this is one of the poorer user provided.

Perhaps the fact there is no consistency in the test grid is a major factor in the poor performance overall of the product. Demonstrates a lack of concern for customers and severe lack of software testing practices. Amply proven with the recent updates that caused more issues than benefits. If Linden labs wants a proper test they need a full scale current grid to test on. Would solve this issue as well as many.

Are you serious? You do realize that a "full scale current grid" is about 4,500 SERVERS, right? You are actually suggesting Linden Lab double their hardware costs just to test?

Did you think that through before posting it, or just not realize what comprises a "full scale current grid"?

Please dont call a software and data warehouse and meta architect a n00b.

think of how much LL needs a backup for when the last rollout fails stranding thousands of customers. yes they NEED it and SHOULD have the CAPITAL to do it. Otherwise LL's butt is hanging out in the wind waiting for a major catastrophe.

Another major void in LL's software quality assurance plan is a formal Beta program wherin people like me and my partner will willingly spend time to condict scripted tests. Instead it appears LL uses a few dedicated employees to randomly test things in preview. Not objective test by a long shot.

I will ignore your obvious lack of respect and your ignorance manifested in your questionable retort since we have never met and you don't know me.

Any respect I may have had for you just died with that self-righteous post. You are no better than anyone here. I have been a Network Administrator for 13 years, working on such large scales as IT Director for Detroit Metro Airport, and I'm still not ignorant enough to post something like that...

While you sit and post about Aaron's lack of knowledge in your abilities, you forget that you know nothing of Aaron either.

I completely agree... the thought of a full-scale testing grid is absurd.

That's hilarious. No MMORPG or other online world has an exact copy of their entire world running just for testing. In case you haven't noticed, this isn't like WoW or Everquest where you have the same world duplicated 50-100 times. WoW has, what? Two test realms? Second Life is one large world. You just can't duplicate a 4,500-server world consisting of billions of objects and terabytes of data just to test.

What you are suggesting Linden Labs do is like suggesting the Earth Simulator Center in Japan have a "spare" $400 million Earth Simulator just for testing purposes. No, they have smaller, less-powerful versions of the Simulator to test code on before putting it on the "real thing."

And LL does have backups, Angela; they can and do restore sims to previous states when required.

There's a big difference in having backups and duplicating all your hardware just for testing purposes. They would never get funding if they did this because it would indicate very bad fiscal responsibility on LL's part.

It's not feasible for them to put up a full-size, parallel grid for testing.

And what happens to the value of the Linden when LL goes bankrupt creating a setup like this? How about tier? Memberships?

Anyone who believes that anything that is constructed/tested in a preview/beta/testing sandbox ought to be persistent across wipes - has a fundamental misunderstanding of the use/nature of a preview/beta/testing sandbox.

Thou Shalt Not Rely On The Persistence Of Scratch Mounts.
Thou Shalt Not Rely On The Persistence Of Scratch Mounts.
Thou Shalt Not Rely On The Persistence Of Scratch Mounts.
Thou Shalt Not Rely On The Persistence Of Scratch Mounts.
Thou Shalt Not Rely On The Persistence Of Scratch Mounts.
Thou Shalt Not Rely On The Persistence Of Scratch Mounts.

I do not think the preview grid's existence is meant to be a load test for the main grid's server code/client code. I think it is a sandbox where features can be tested/learned/debugged, not a model of the fullscale implementation.

That being said - perhaps Linden Labs /should/ build a scale load model of the grid (sixteen servers? Seventeen?) to try and understand the problems they've been experiencing. Full-scale? Uhm, right after we solve the world-wide supply shortage of silicon and ameliorate the impact of the European RoHS legislation and shorten the supply cycle for silicon logic. Aaaand manifest millions of dollars of capital out of nowhere. Rock and a hard place...

why build a load test grid? That is what the main grid is for. Like it or not, the only way to test SL properly is on all its hardware while in use. The preview grid has been historically a collection of outdated servers pulled from the main grid and their performance really dosn't compare to, say a new server, or even one just a year old.

If you don't want the surf to wipe out your sand castle, build it farther inland.

Here ill give you a reason,
in some previews theres is easy ways to duplicate anyones objects/scripts cause of its untested nature and bugs, ok so SL main has bugs to, but nothing as serious as you can find in preview.

Now what would happen if you allowed people to keep what they made in Preview on Main grid?, so no.

Thili: I think the idea was that if you spend money to buy land in the preview grid, when the land was reclaimed in the preview grid, you should get your money back in the preview grid or there should be a new money disbursal in the preview grid... so you could continue to test stuff because that's what the preview grid is for.

I don't think anyone was suggesting that content on the preview grid should be copyable to the main grid.

If you ever need more money in the preview grid, just post a message here in the forums asking for it. Hardly anybody logs into the preview grid, and those that do rarely spend money there. In fact one of the fun things that we like to do is just give all our money to one person and see how large the pot can get.