Why Doesn`t LL Just........

I have heard people say in the past that LL should take the grid down for a looong period of time and remodel it, so to speak, so it can run properly. That, im sure, is out of the question for reasons I feel I don`t have to list & more.

So why doesn`t LL just build a new Second Life on the side, that would eventually replace this unstable mess. It would be built accomodate, with very minor to no problems, the thousands-millions of users that want to/will want to play without all of these constant problems? Then, when its finished and tested and finished, they could release that and we could all transfer over to it.

Is money the issue?
Not enough time to maintain this grid and build another one?
What??

I would think its a logical idea that would save them in the long run, they have even admitted in a recent interview that SL`s hardware is outdated and will not scale to cater to the demand. In the future when LL finally has some real competitors, if the platform proves to be "flawless" many are going to no doubt either leave SL for good and go to where there`s no troubles, or go to the competitors world when SL is experiencing troubles and eventually find themselves there more and more. This is assuming the next big virtual world to come out will not have even half of the problems as SL, and if it does then I guess we will see that a virtual world is just hard to maintain and it`s not *really* LL`s fault afterall.

But really, it may cost some money to get it started of course, but why not do that when it`s pretty obvious just from even reading the forums, that many have their bags packed and are waiting to go.

Oh, they`d also need some lessons in good customer service. As their lack in that department alone is enough to have me running for the next bus.

It takes years to develop a new game engine, and there's no real precedent for the kind of forwards portability necessary to move folks stuff over to a new engine- mostly because the current engine is constantly updating and the future engine would be stuck at one point. So you'd keep bugfixing and keeping the one in use up to date and every time you made a change in the normal one- to improve anything from stability to new features- it would set back the new one weeks or months. It's just not feasible.

So the only way to get a new engine is is to start with a clean grid. No inventories, no content, thousands of Ruths and their unflattened green parcels.

Honestly, the loss of customers from such a move would probably put LL so far into the red that it would collapse- not even counting the costs associated with the development. Remember, SL *just* started making a profit this year- many many years after release.

Oh... I was kind of thinking since they already had this one maybe it would go faster. (lol)



Right, I didn`t mean to transfer all of our things, I understand if they revamped they would probably also redo the mesh templates and such. I just meant we, as humans, could register there and build from scratch.


Yeah, I guess that is true, especially if its going to take years to build the new one.

No, I think Jesse's original idea is a good one; start a brand new SL from scratch, transfer nobody over there until it's perfect or nearly so, then start porting us all over in batches.

Of course, that would mean pulling employees away from fixing the current grid, and having them work on the new one... Hmmm..

So, in other words, never?

not like it ever works right anyways

a lot of ppl wouldnt be happy about starting over, esp if it was deemed unnecessary. imagine if you had built dozens of prefabs you were selling, scores of hairs, clothes, etc. and what of your landholdings? 'starting over' would be suicide for LL.

That was my point though, apart from possibly being able to port over names and land ownership- you wouldn't really be able to port anything else over. No groups. No clothes. No inventories. No flexi hair, no pets, no houses.

It would be a major effort just to get the economy a tenth as saturated as it is now- with all the major produces being forced to start from scratch and many probably just packing up and leaving instead. People spend weeks on rebuilds without even replacing the inventory- what SL is now is a product of it's past.

You could start over again, and at some time it probably will- but it's financial suicide to try to force SL residents to port to a new blank grid with none of the attractions it currently has and start over.

I think the only time LL will start again from scratch is when significant technological advances in functions, animations and graphics are available but can't be accommodated on the current system.

No matter you will still have upgrades and still have bugs to deal with.

I think that's sort of the plan... or had been. I suspect the effort has stalled indefinitely.

Rolling out havoc(>1) and mono would be a serious disruption and require content creators put forth a fair bit of effort to adapt, so a gradual cut-over, likely on a sim by sim basis would make more sense than an all-at-once switch.

For everything else, they're trying to shoe-horn it into the main grid a piece at a time.

There are times when I think of SecondLife as a giant slow-moving ship in deep space... that started it's journey before it was completely built. It's too late to go back to earth for major repairs, it has to go on as best as it can.

At some point someone on Earth may build a better faster ship and come rescue us, in the mean time we've gotta make do.

Its not unnecessary though.

Think about it, once new virtual worlds come out that actually scale and a user can play in peace. A content creator can play assured that the company behind it will back him up when he has his things stolen and resold, etc.. people are going to leave, that alone could be the death of SL within the next few years.

I mean, I would atleast hope people out there creating a virtual world are reading the forums and seeing that lack of customer service from LL is a BIG BIG problem that us users have with the company and that they would strive to make sure their userbase received the best customer care.

Even if the new world had some problems, Where would you rather be?

A. a grid with problems where the owners didnt give a sh*t about you and your support tickets were left opened, unanswered, or prematurely closed for weeks- months.

or

B. a grid with problems but the owners actually responded to your inquiries etc within 24 hours, atleast.

Not all of us have problems. I own my own island have have little to no issues.

As for things being stolen and resold, that is a fact of life and will happen regardless. Follow through with the proper DMCA procedures and does not LL act? It is not LL's fault that openGL textures can be intercepted.

People having their work stolen and sold hasn't spelt the death for the World Wide Web, so why Second Life? On the good ole WWW you can have your credit card and identity stolen, yet people still shop. In SL, it can't even go that far. (unless you willingly give up your info to someone)

I'm not sure what you mean by scale, how many people do you need on your land? Islands can already support 100 if you crank it up (some impact at that # though). The only places with a constant 100 seem to be filled with campers anyway. However, I will say that i'm sure there are some events where it would be great to have more then 100 (or 40) avatars in one place rather then have to make many islands and spread it all across them.

lol


I was actually referring to the constant "grid troubles" like that of earlier today where map was not working, tp wasnt working. And sometimes the grid is even taken down. This is an issue for you, it is an issue for everyone.

Concerning content theft I`m beyond aware its going to always take place, but even filing a DMCA with LL does not guarantee a response or even an action. Not to mention the theif has to have the content rezzed in world or LL will not even do anything. I did not mention the stealing and reselling of ones goods to say "omg look its happening, it should not even happen!" but rather to say that when it comes to that it is most certaintly not LL`s top priority, i would like to be in a world where the owners of it take content theft a bit more seriously, ESPECIALLY if its a "user created world" such as second life.

(Please lets not turn this thread into another content theft debate, though. Perhaps I should never mention that fact again)

I think it could be done. They could do it on the side and invite Second Life users to beta test it (for a free account in the new endeavor)........test it properly (place requirements on the testers to test certain things and how to test properly) Any beta tester who fails to test would be eliminated from the beta program. I'm not talking about the current SL test grid......I'm talking about a completely different grid with no connection to Second Life whatsoever. Once it's built and tested open it up to residents......as a completely different Virtual platform requiring a completely new application for residency. All the nightmares LL has learned from past experiences could be avoided (well, most of them anyway). Of course that assumes the people at Linden Labs do, in fact, learn from their mistakes. I'm not talking about pushing it out next year.......take as long as necessary to get it right for a proper release.

I bet, with LL's experience in virtual worlds, they could attraction enough capital investments to make it happen.........if they can come up with a professional, well thought out business plan. Experienced consultants don't come cheap but worth their wieght in gold if you take their advise seriously........which is what LL needs. They are not business minded in the least bit.......that is their major down fall right now.

There's nothing in the world requiring them not to compete with themselves......in fact it could be quite lucrative in the long run. If one platform starts losing too much money, they can close it. At least they would have something else to offer for residents of the platform being shut down.

Will it happen? Probably not.

Linden Lab can't really make a reliable virtual world because a reliable virtual world would be one that didn't rely on their servers.

They would put themselves out of business if they were to decentralize Second Life and allow people to host their own sims and data.

From LL's investors point of view, it's just about providing a service and making lots of money. They don't care about silly virtual worlds.

well, i would argue it is unnecessary to render all my landholdings null and void. i have many $ worth of land and one way to ensure i never spend another $ on sl is to 'delete' my landholdings. prefab makers, hair makers, clothes makers, scripters, etc probably wouldnt like their entire inventory of merchandise and sl livelihood wiped either, and people that own dozens of islands would be pissed off too. sl would lose pretty much every skilled content maker in world and really the only people that would be happy about starting over are the ppl that had nothing to lose.
if they want to build a second generation engine then fine. but start over? thats the death of sl.

It's easy to forget with all the current problems that several times SL reached the point where it simply worked. Everything important worked just fine. But that's no progress, it's stagnation. Good for the customer, bad for the guy who promised his investors to turn this adult game into the internet of the future and make them richer as Microsoft shareholders.

When I arrived here, everything was great. Minor lag issues on weekends, aside from minor problems one can live with (like prim drift, which is still not fixed). Things became very unstable when LL removed the need to verify accounts via cc or paypal and the user numbers shot through the ceiling, but they managed to pull their act together, fixed the asset server with duct tape and chewing gum and again everything worked.

But it is not meant to be. SL is not meant to simply be a stable, reliable platform. It's a test environment, a continuous beta test for the pipe dream called metaverse. Whenever things are halfway stabilized, the next feature has to be squeezed in, no matter how much it breaks and how many features will have to be removed in order to make the increasing lag halfway bearable. We are paying lab rats, not valued customers that LL would try to satisfy.

Moving to another grid would only make sense if the architecture changed radically.

One way to simplify would be to use huge supercomputers to run each continent, just one gigantic sim each. You would not need to deal with sim crossings or child av's (av's your sim has to deal with from adjacent sims). If I were IBM or Sun that is the way I would go (just dreaming). If I were Intel I would develop a special chip for the physics engine - its work is so mundane and repetitive!

No sense to move if we stay with current architecture. Beta grid testing never shows the faults that the main grid shows. The devs need us to overload the grid so they can see the problems and work on them. Scaling up the numbers seems to be the biggest problem. We used to max out at 5,000, then 10,000, then 25K, and now around 50K.

The virtual world that replaces Second Life wont need customer support. It'll just work.


Internet Explorer just works. We don't all post messages in an Internet Explorer (or Firefox) forum every week complaining about customer service. The thing just works.

Oh, to dream the simple dream! Wouldn't that be GREAT?

The big problem is everyone who has money invested here now in land, businesses etc.
Imagine the fire sale on land, if someone announced a shutdown date?
Nope one way for LL to do it is start a new company, and start fresh with no ties
Another is to use the same land grid but no objects and force everyone to start new AV's
Maybe move AV's across with no inventories.
Then the rush for content will be on as scripters learn the new language, builders & textures are recreated, chaos in growth I guess, everyone needing to pour money in, not enough residents buying anything, new people not interested in blank landscapes, sim owners selling out their rentals as no shops or residents wanting them.

My momma always told me "Can't, can't do nothing" As long as the world says it can't be done, then it can't be done.

How many times have I heard "Linden Labs is inovative.......Second Life is cutting edge technology"? Well, if they truly are then why has this idea been tossed? They (and we) all know they are beating a dead horse here with the present platform.........at some point someone needs to step to the plate and continue with this experiment. It ain't going no where in the direction it is headed now.

Successful businesses always look at the problems they face.........and fix them or change course to eliminate the problems all together. From everything I've heard, many of the major problems LL is facing with SL cannot be fixed (but then, my momma's refrain keeps ringing in my ears ). If that's a fact, then it's time to change directions. Painful? You bet!!! But, if it's necessary then bite the bullet and do it.

SL is not going to last with the present problems plus the new problems on the horizon coming. Someone has to take a hard look at what the facts are.........and do something about it. Or loose your ass (along with everyone who has substaintial real money invested in the game) and close the doors for good. Actually, many virtual worlds that were have done just that.

Linden Lab is a very successful business. They're making lots and lots of money.

I love this analogy!

coco