A lesson in futility?

I couldn't think of a good title, but the blog says logins are up again, but I still can't log in... Quite frustrating to say the least.

My question?

Is there ever to be a day when we can expect something good of LL?

LL? Who knows. They already created Second Life, usually keep the servers up and running (and tend to fix them when they are down), and otherwise attempt to foster this metaverse of ours in very difficult boom times.

It's not perfect nor 100% reliable, but I'll take how Second Life is now over, say, all the problems this time last year (when it seemed like most avatars was wearing the fashionable "missing image" outfits, and everyone was in a panic about copybot), or when I was running around, early in my SL time, as a totally invisible (except for prim attachments) avatar, or that stretch where no one had water in their sims, or the "gray goo" attacks of December last that took SL down a whole lotta times.

The something good? It is in the people. It is in the commections you make, the times you share, the love you possess (things I can also tell you, right this moment, can also cause you the more pain and heartbreak than any "object failed to rez" error or other such error). It's in the creations you make, the places you explore, the fun you can have inworld. It's the experiences. That whole "Your World, Your Imagination" thing that makes for a good corporate tagline is where it all is.

Is it perfect? Not even close. Does it have its downtime, bugs, and really annoying "my head is up my butt an I jes found my shoes up in there" type glitches? In abundance. But you stick with it for the things that happen in this shared world, all you can do, and be, and have.

I'm going to be bad here, an say someting dat may rub you the wrong way. Your post says you've been in Second Life since September of 2007. Dat really wasn't very long ago. Maybe Second Life ain't for you, or maybe you jes still need to find your niche here -- I dunno. But if you can't find anyting good, then why stick around? Why even ask?

Mari
(Going through a lot right now, an not at her best)

Wow - Marianne

For reasons I'll keep to myself - I look young here - but I've been around a while, and a lot, and I couldn't have said it better myself.

I think people tend to forget that amongst the few failures with SL, there are a heapload of successes.

RP

I am new. I have found that I like SL.I am just venting a little, that is all.

When can you expect something good from LL? I will tell you. this event will occor approximately three weeks after the inevitable competition siphons off around 15% of thepaying customers, SL businesses begin closing in wholesale numbers and a fllod of land goes back to Ll because the owners couldn't sell it an dhave just walked away.

Then and only then can you expect customer service, communication, grid performance etc., etc.

Sooz

lol

I cant get th hell in either here, I think i'll clean till they fix the problem. Having major withdrawals though. *lits cig , shaking* "I need to get back"

great post marianne, i sometimes get upset when reading all the bad posts on this forum putting down SL when in actuall fact if we didn't like we wouldn't be here

i'd actually like to thank LL in my 2 and a half months of being in SL i'v actually lost a couple of Kg's and i'v stopped drinking every night to the point where i pass out, SL gives me something to do other than watch tv (which hardly ever gets turned on now) i get to have conversations with amazing people and see some of the most beutifull things i would never get to see in real life. i'v also been getting alot of praise for my builds and it makes me feel alot happier about myself

good on ya LL for making such a great place, even with it's tiny flaws i wouldn't change it for anything

cheer up marianne, it'll all work out for the best in the end, trust me

-Crunch

For the record - keep trying - I'm in

One thing you learn as you age is that you create your own destiny. If you look for the negative in things and seek out all that is wrong or bad - then those are the things that you will find. If you seek out the positive and look for the good - those are the things you will find. There is good and bad in everything, which side you see depends on what you want to see.

We usually find what we are looking for, whether or not we are introspective enough to be aware of what we really want within our own hearts.....

The number one good thing LL did is bring us all together. That's a priceless gift and worth the headaches almost any day. There are lots of little things LL does to make the experience better, though, and here's a list of all the improvements I've lived through since joining up 2 years ago:

* Inventory filters. It took me a while to get used to them, but now if I'm in the mood to clear extraneous landmarks or notecards out of my inventory I can almost instantly show all of them and delete to heart's content.

* Recent Items tab. Once you get past a few thousand items in inventory, locating new things can sometimes be a hassle. Even though it's behaved a little funky in the past couple releases, I've found myself using Recent Items exclusively whenever I've gotten something new.

* Box contents show up in Recent Items. For the first couple months after its introduction, Recent Items didn't show the contents of boxes you opened- like if you got a box from SLExchange you'd see that, but if you opened the box and used the Copy to Inventory feature you had to go back into your regular inventory tab to find them. Not anymore!

* Add button on Friends tab. I understood why the 'Add Friend' ability initially only worked if you were face-to-face with the person, but it was often a hassle if there was someone you kept playing offline-IM-tag with. Now the online person can just add you as a friend and you stand a better chance of catching them online.

* Flexi prims. Flexis revolutionized hair and clothing in SL, and although there were some spazzy early creations, the established designers are doing great things with them. This is clearly one of those now-that-i-have-it-i-could-never-live-without-it things.

* Sculpties. I will never have time to learn how to make a sculpted prim. I've accepted that, however I'm so glad the ability's there. It will help us not only build things that were very hard or impossible to achieve with traditional prims, but help us make much more efficient use of our prims.

* Land sale confirmation dialog. I have zero complaints with how this dialog looks or works now. Yeah, I lost a couple parcels to landbots, but it was entirely my fault (looking at the wrong instance of Calc.exe or the wrong cell in Excel). Hell I even got one of those lots back from a botter!

* Open source client. I was really skeptical- and frankly, fearful- when the client went open source, but some folks have done some really imaginative (okay, and devious) things with it, and the community is now actvely involved in bugfixes and feature additions. Overall it's been a good thing.

* Ability to open multiple inventory windows. Honestly, I don't remember when they added this feature. This might have even been possible before I started SL. But since I discovered it, my inventory management's become a ton easier.

* Copy to Inventory. I used to think it was completely idiotic that to open a goddam box you had to a) drag to ground, b) right-click, c) open, d) create a new folder to hold the contents, e) drag the contents to inventory (usually one-by-one because multi-dragging often didn't work). Now we have that lovely Copy to Inventory button that makes the folder and copies the contents in a single click.

* Default touch events. Oh this is wonderful. You can set a box to do all that copy to inventory magic without even opening it now! (Who knows, maybe one day we'll be able to open boxes without rezzing them first. I can dream can't I?) One-touch-sit and buy are great, too.

* Graphics pipeline updates. The very first pipeline update First Look viewer I tried gave me AMAZING performance. There were lots of new bugs, but the FPS was unparallelled. (Also multi-instance on dual core machines was flawless.) Now that the updates have been moved to the main client, performance isn't as good as those first few First Looks I tried, but it's way better than the old client. I just wish the multi-core/multi-instance fixes had carried over as well.

* Remain seated while changing clothes. One of the biggest RP-killers and photography annoyances was how you'd get unseated when adding/removing anything on one of the clothing layers. The ability to remain seated makes things so much more seamless.

* IM logs. I wish it worked a little more consistently (the logs seem to get wiped out pretty easily), but I frequently refer to my IM history from previous sessions with different folks to pick back up on conversations.

* Better prim-maxxing logic. It used to be if a griefer bombarded your parcel with extra prims, SL could actually start returning YOUR items to make room for them. This has for the most part been fixed, as has the logic for temp-on-rez prims. (The latter has caused some headaches for builders, but been better for sim health overall.)

* llRegionSay. While there's potential for abuse, this function would have saved me dozens of headaches in the past, when I wanted to rebroadcast stuff across a sim.

* Point-to-point teleport. If I'm going shopping, I generally welcome a telehub that drops me in the same place every time I go to a sim. But if I'm visiting a residential or recreational area, I'm glad for the freedom to pop in where I want.

* Disable Camera Constraints. OHMYGODTHISCHANGEDMYLIFE.

* Built-in AFK anti-idle. I sometimes avail myself of this when doing RP that involves alts or when in photoshop while remaining online to catch IMs. It's also nice to be able to save folks a few lindens whenever the question "Where do I buy an anti-idler" pops up.

* F1 Help (TENTATIVE): This WOULD be a great feature if the help was fucking searchable. Half the SL forum questions could be answered here if people simply had a quick way to search this. Great idea not-so-great implementation.

* Web tab. This is an underused, under-rated feature. I love my web tab. I've got links to my blogs and even a web-based chat client on mine. I wish you could horizontal-scroll the window, but for the most part I'm very happy with Web tab.

* New icon for multi-selected/coalesced items in inventory. This makes Lost and Found a lot easier to navigate.

* Customizable group roles. If you're a landowner who lets friends/family crash at your place AND you remember the old days when there were you were either "Officer" or "Everyone" and that was it, then you know what a massive improvement the new group tools were.

Resident answer: yeah .... what Marianne and Isablan said

On other forums also I see people tend to post when they feel passionate about something and usually it is negative... because when they are feeling passionate about something positive, they are usually off enjoying themselves and not reading forums!

Other online games have similar problems... lag, difficulty logging in, technical issues... so it's best just to have a good book handy when these things come up.

Crunch, I think it is so great that SL has provided you with motivation to make your life better. Thank you for sharing that, it is good to hear.

Oh, add Joystick Flycam to my list above. It's fantastic for machinima and SL photography. =)

Anyone that has followed my posts here and on third party forums knows that when my patience is exhausted, I've been known to blast the CEO of Linden Lab for various things. That said, I have noticed a sea change in the "attitude" of the response from LL.

When I do business in SL, I'm ever mindful of the fact that my clients have choices, in addition to me simply doing the right thing. Now, *knock on wood*, it appears that the monopolistic LL has begun to manifest the same competitive "please the customer" attitude. They are not perfect with this manifested attitude and never will be. They will NEVER please everyone here, no matter what they do. However, I think Philip and his subordinates have begun to realize that one day they will not be alone in the metaverse. Yes, you do have alternatives. Compared to the bug-riddled Rolls Royce of LL, though, they are mere Cadillacs (or worse).

Hats off to Philip and subordinates for FINALLY starting to manifest the please-the-customer attitude !

Yes, it is really noticeable that they are trying.

Perfect? Not by a long shot. But definitely improving ... especially in the last weeks (new AR system, Concierge team, Billing live chat, blog handling).

For me this question has a very simple answer - they made SL. I have made many friends, learned new skills, and been on the cutting edge of something without having to be a total geek.

For me they already delivered. Everything else is just gravy...

Just venting, I do enjoy SL, and the people I have met. I just get frustrated at times and need to vent a bit.

Take solace in knowing that we all have been frustrated at one time or another. I've come close to quitting several times, the most recent a week ago, but always manage to find some reason to stay.

I have a rather bad temper, and it take a lot of work to keep it in control sometimes, my venting occasionally is how I do this. I probably should get back into writing, that used to help me a lot.