Logins restricted

It sounds like database though rather than the system not handling the volume - as there s nothing else to do right now it's certainly worth speculating wildly

You have EXACTLY proved my point. NO value at all.

Nuff said.

Oh please, not this tired old argument again. Answer: People who pay LL are customers of LL. People who don't pay LL are NOT customers of LL. They are customers of whoever they pay.

No, but I used to. Substantially more than that in fact.


Well aren't you special?


Nobody's forcing you to. You choose to. And you do get benefits for it that I don't. Mainland ownership, enhanced support services, stipend, to name the top three.

Oh, and by the way, there is a login throttling mechanism in place which on rare occasions, perhaps even today, throttles basic account logins in favor of premium accounts.

If more benefits for maintaining a premium account is what you're after, then petition Linden Lab for more benefits. Why should I be penalized? It doesn't make sense, and at least the way you're presenting the complaint, it reads as pretentious and offensive.

Personal opinion, the different between a Premium account and a non premium account...one decides to hand over $72 or more to LL for 300L a week, the other decides to hand $72 or more to LL for however much a Linden is going for at the moment. I found I got more for my money just buying the lindens and renting land than being premium. No other perks in reality, but if it makes anyone feel better thinking so thats ok by me too =P

In this particular instance though, no one at all was getting in...so no, us wicked lil "free loaders" were not logging in happy as a clam while paying members had to stand outside at the gate. Status page says its fixed, I havent tried logging in yet, figured I might get trampled on the way in =)

It's not about overbooking, Margie. We've seen concurrency this high at times without problems. They did something to their code a while back that has destabilized things, and when it goes awry, LL puts the grid into lockdown until it stabilizes. All of us get logged off, lifetime members, premium accounts, and otherwise.

Now, out of curiosity.... what do you expect them to do?

Do you really think that LL should kick non-premium members off the grid to make way for you? If so, that's a monumental sense of entitlement you have. The idea of closing logins to non-premium members at times is one thing that has been discussed and evidently is implemented at times (unlike today, which was a total closing of the gates). But actually ejecting them from the grid in the middle of whatever they are doing to suit your whim is bad business.

(And before you point fingers, I'm a premium member paying hefty mainland tier every month.)

Verified...


Verified that it's there and it's doing something..
However, I've been a premium account land holder for over 18 months now.
Sooo... either the throttling doesn't take into account ones membership status, or there's over 51k of pure premium accounts inworld right now.

Also wondering why they throttle it now at 51k when I was online last night no problem with over 60k online.
and

I don't use SL that much these days, partially because I'm busy a lot of the time IRL, partially because when I DO get the time, what time I do have to get in is blighted on every occasion by various 'asset server/database' issues.

This has been going on for some six months now, and steadily worsening over time - until we reach the situation today with 51k online and 'restricted' logins.

Well, I pay a lot of money (estate fees), compared to any other online entertainment, to, not only secure an estate for my use, but, in case LL has forgotten, USE SL and specifically be able to log on demand.

IF anyone from LL actually looks at this forum - which I somehow doubt, seeing poor old Phil and his boys couldn't handle 'all the negativity' and retreated to their propaganda station (sorry, blog) - they might care to note that failing to provide services paid for is NOT the optimum way to retain customers.

I could gild the lily a bit by suggesting that, as they obviously can't maintain a stable, or even functional, system, they might care to ensure that customers with the greatest expenditure should get the best service - when this happens, and I don't doubt it will again, KICK the freeloaders, KICK inactive AVs (campers).

The 'asset server/database' issue has been with us for YEARS to a greater or lesser extent. This is without a doubt the worst example I've yet seen of LL's inability to manage it. Isn't it about time that some technical expertise, some professional expertise, was bought in to resolve the ongoing issues once and for all?

I for one can't see much point in paying premium prices for a distinctly non-premium service.

In fact I might as well ditch the estate, and downgrade to 'freeloader' status as far as I can see.

One wonders about SL's future viability if enough of us whose expenditure represents LL's income follow the same path?

whew, all the -real- people decided to log in and overload the grid for once!! ;0

Ok I'm in

Feel free to drop round mine and continue ranting

True.

But on the best airlines, the captain cheers everyone up by saying that the crash is due to the aircraft having a mild depression. Goodness me - and everyone dies laughing.

This sounds reasonable, as long as you're willing to simplify it to the extent that facts are unimportant.

Follow the money. (Thanks Desmond)

In the case of non-premium accounts, who pay other Residents for land, products or services, consider that the providers of those products and services who are premium account holders do in fact pay Linden Lab. In many cases, considerable sums of money. Without that base of non-premium customers, they don't get paid, and neither does Linden Lab.

Non premium account holders also purchase a considerable volume of currency via Lindex. This directly equates to revenue for Linden Lab.

Non premium account holders also contribute to the concurrency numbers, which, love it or hate it, is of paramount value to Linden Lab.

So we are actually quite valuable, and do actually contribute a great deal to the economy in general, and specifically to Linden Lab in the form of various revenue streams and marketing benchmarks.

I think the "restricted logins" is ancient terminology meaning "Lindens only".

Although the asset server is not to be trusted, for some reason the concurrency numbers seem to be considered reliable; that's quite unwarranted given the platform stability.

I didn't get logged off.

There would actually be a premium benefit to having a first class seat in a crashing plane.
Because you are up near the front, you die sooner than the economy classes. Those poor suckers have to live for a bit longer full of rage at that asshole captain who was twittering on about headaches and slight colds.

Um, no, there isn't. Everyone states this as FACT, when it was nothing more than an idea floated at a Town Hall. There has been NO indication that LL has EVER limited log-ins to Premium members only, and NO indication that they actually plan to do so.

I think they should do SOMEthing to prevent "direct paying" customers from being denied access to the service, yes. It's the same old debate about supporting LL or supporting the economy. Fact remains, non-premiums dont pay LL much more money then they would already be getting. They pay other residents and buy lindens, yes, but the huge majority of LL's funding comes from land sales and tier.
Yes it is a sense of entitlement, especially when there's hundreds/thousands of bots online eating up login spots. I dont see why, during times like this, that they can't scan for AV's that haven't moved in days, or for ones that have been online for days and force a logoff to keep a certain amount of reserved login spots open.

It was more than an idea floated at a townhall, it was blogged about, and represented as "implemented". Sometime when I feel like it, I'll go back and find it.

The blog posting in which LL talked of a plan to restrict logins selectively is is my sig
February 2007 it was.

http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/02/16/contingency-measures-to-ensure-service-as-second-life-grows/

They never implemented that.

The current restrictions are in no way related to that either.
The idea of restricting logins was to be do it proactively in advance of overload causing problems.

What LL are doing now is waiting until the thing collapses and then restricting logins.
Until they actually do something concrete to fix the problem, they should be restricting logins to something under 60000 or the high 50000s

Yes, I just found it myself:

"When you open your log-in screen and see in the upper right hand corner Grid Status: Restricted, you’ll know that only those Second Life Residents who have transacted with Linden Lab either by being a premium account holder, owning land, or purchasing currency on the LindeX, will be able to log-in. Residents who are in Second Life when this occurs will only be affected if they log-out and want to return before the grid returns to normal status."

This has never happened, even when they should have implemented this policy.

So I do stand corrected. There is a policy, mentioned by Robin Linden. That has never been used.

Still, the NPIOF folks sure get their knickers in a twist over something that has NEVER HAPPENED!!

Quite honestly, it isn't the NPIOF folks who tend to get their knickers in a twist, is it?

What they OUGHT to do is pop up a simple blue box dialog. "Click the 'OK' button within the next 30 seconds to stay logged in". And anyone who doesn't respond gets booted. That way all the real people get to stay in and all the bots get logged off.

Sometimes the simplest ideas...

*grins*

My group has a 4096m on the edge of the Linden protected Korean Channel. The land is set to allow anyone to rezz so that they can sail or fly over the 30 Linden sims.

Our neighbour in the parcel has a club and a camping system.
The system has anti-idle and anti-bot options turned off.
It's generally set for 30 campers, but turned down to 20 when the owners want to party.
The sim is generally full or near full.

When I eventually got logged in after the latest problems, I noticed on the Map that the sim was the usual mass of green dots. However there was also a cluster of dots in the Linden sim beside the club. I TPed over to have a look.
Those dots in the Linden sim were definitely bots. They were stuck in that contorted horizontal pose so common in bots I come across in odd places. Poor things. They couldn't get into the full sim.

I have ARed the place for Excessive consumption of sim resources, but I don't have any confidence in LL taking action.
I'll just have to wait for the thing to die. They do eventually.
In between that club dying and the next one starting, maybe my group and the community at large will be able to take advantage of the boat rezzing facility.

First, you have to show that "direct paying" customers were in fact "denied access" to the service, in deference to "non direct paying customers". There is no evidence of that in today's outage, or any outage in my recollection since I've been here. Please provide evidence.

Indeed it is. Let's get down to brass tacks though. It's not about supporting Linden Lab vs supporting the economy, it's about the very real and tangible ways in which non-premium Residents support Linden Lab by supporting the Resident economy.



I single this statement out simply to point out that you've not established this "fact". You rely on the readers' assumption that the fact is established, and remains so.



Basic account holders don't pay Linden Lab as much money as the more heavily invested premium account holders do. This is demonstrably true. However, Basic account holders do pay a tier to private estate owners which is relatively competitive with the tier that those estate owners pay Linden Lab. In most cases, even slightly higher, as value is added to private estate dealings. Fraudulent and immoral activities aside, people generally get a better deal renting land from a private estate owner than they do renting mainland from Linden Lab. The land that is rented still is a revenue source for the Lab.



It is a false sense of entitlement. This time you cite numbers. "hundreds/thousands" of bots. Which is it? Hundreds or thousands? You don't see why they can't scan for avatars that haven't moved in days because you have no idea what it would take to record and track such data.