Old Timers Fading Fast

*laughs* I am not in need of cheer, perfectly fine. My humour seems to have missed the spot again though *sighs*

My hardware couldn't be better actually - I just got an upgrade and SL runs very nicely at the highest settings for me at the moment, though I admit to not having logged on today yet. I have heard there are some severe grid problems today.

To pique my interest?

Tough call.

Maybe HDR Lighting & shading?

Be able to make transparencies on avatars?

Better mapping for skins.

Import Meshes from other 3D software (within limits)

Adding the ability to smell, touch & taste?

God what is wrong with you people???

Yes things go wrong- but OMG!!! Look at what we have! How can you possibly not be in love with every second, every minute?? Such beauty, such amazing things - and people made this!! For anyone to share! Really- go complain to god if u believe, for how sucky RL can be-

Tonight I walked in the caves of dragons! I soared to heights I should not even be able to breathe- I shared time and space with someone I love-
Good grief what does it take to please u people?

What wows me and resparks my interest is not so much technical aspects of the game or especially lovely sims or such, but the people in SL. Everything would have become stale by now if there weren't wonderful, crazy, lovable, unbearable, outrageous, sexy people here that make SL a world instead of a "game". And every day there are new ones.....

I am still around and always will be.

What exactly defines one as an 'old timer'?

These days I get the feeling people consider it anyone who's been here more then a six months.

I tend to thnk of 2004 and back to the Dawn of Time as the Ancients (It just sounds cool in my head). I think of 2005 to '07 as old, '08 are dedicated and well on their way to sticking it out. Any '09's are still New Kids On The Block to me -

Still over all- rezz date doesn't matter one whit as far as learning our world. I met an '04 not long ago that didn't understand how to rezz a prim- he had just made an account and forgot about til a couple months ago - there are some totaly new off the island folks that bring a lot of RL experience they can apply to content creation and some gifted folks for whom it is all clear as crystal from day one-

I agree, but the question wasn't how long does it take to learn or appreciate this platform, it was why can't SL retain the interest of the majority of people who have been here the longest?

My answer was that it is not the amazing wonders of SL that have alienated those of my "generation" but rather the idiots that run platform and their dismissive attitude towards the majority of their customers.

I love SL. But my spark for it has been diminished by LL's hamfisted management of the platform. What it would take to rekindle that spark has nothing to do with shiny new features but would certainly benefit from renewed commitment and consideration from LL towards its residents.

I'm not an old timer, but my interest in SL waxes and ebbs periodically, as I am sure many others experience as well. Here are a few thoughts of mine on various topics kicked around in this thread:

Sometimes I have to step back and remind myself that it's supposed to be my leisure time, i.e., fun. About a year ago I took a short break because I had lost sight of that. When I came back, I made a conscious decision to reorder my priorities in SL and I've had a lot more fun since then.

My advice to someone looking for something to do besides being an SL consumer - and I'm not knocking being an SL consumer, it's a lot of fun, but some folks complain that it gets dull after a while - is to try to find an activity that interests you and meshes well with your RL skills.

For example, hosting parties and DJing was the best choice for me, because I am naturally friendly (most of the time), I love music, and I have an unusual music collection that I enjoy sharing with other people. And I have for the most part had a great time doing this sort of thing in SL.

Building or clothes designing would have been a bad choice for me, because I've never been graphically inclined, and would have had to develop too many skills in areas I've never explored before in order to get good enough at it to take pride in what I did.

Lately I've been doing some scripting, which I'd tried before but never really threw myself into. This time I had a particular problem in mind which I tackled systematically, breaking it into small, manageable pieces and working up to the finished script with all the functionality I needed for my project. It was very satisfying and built my confidence to take on more scripting challenges in the future. But I couldn't have done it without a particular inspiration - in my case, adding very desirable functionality to a commercial product my girlfriend is designing.

For those of you who say you can't learn from classes or from self-guided tutorials - well, I am skeptical of that, because I am sure you have lots of skills that you acquired in school or on your own without one-on-one hand-holding spoon-feeding instruction. But if you really feel you need that kind of personal attention to learn SL skills, then I think you reasonably need to expect to pay for it. Neither LL nor most in-world services (unless you are lucky enough to find a skilled and patient friend to help you) can realistically offer free one-on-one personal tutoring to every person who would like it.

Living in the paradise is indeed quite nice but it gets to be a drag after a while when the owners keep coming 'round and poking you in the eye.

I hate getting old and now I'm getting old on SL too?

I am with you on this one. I am "old" enough in SL to remember believing that LL actually gave a crap about its residents. Unfortunately I haven't been able to believe in LL for a VERY long time now. Honestly it hurts.

As I said before, I'm not an oldbie, and I still enjoy SL after a year-and-a-half in it.

But I don't really expect that I'll still be enthralled by it when I've been here 4 or 5 years. Very few of my enthusiasm/hobby/interest type things last that long. And I think a lot of people are like that.

I see a lot of handwringing over older folks losing interest in SL and it really does puzzle me sometimes. It's not necessarily a harbinger of doom if some people who have been doing something for five years find they are tired of it and ready to move on to doing something else.

I'm not saying LL hasn't screwed some things up or that some old timers don't have justifiable reasons to be sad and disillusioned. At the same time, though, some people have been here for five years and are still going strong. Moreover, lots of new people are doing amazing things with the platform and creating and innovating brilliantly; new designers are cropping up every day with content that is beautiful and inspired.

SL and LL have changed since the old days; that's just a fact. LL may do a bunch of things wrong, but even so, it's not a given that keeping every single person who has been here a long time should necessarily be a priority. The way SL has grown, it can never, ever again be what it was back when there was just a handful of users. Maybe it's better for everyone if the people who resent having to adjust to what SL is *now*, and who don't like what it is now as much as they liked what it used to be, do in fact move on.

For me, I just took my first NCI class and plan to take more. I don't build (no patience) and Will said its harder building using mousepad from laptop. That definitely contributes to the no patience part. So I purchased a wireless mouse in case I get inspired from one of those classes to try.

I really miss the casinos. Not for the gambling but for the social engagement. You would have all sorts of avies sitting around just gabbing away. It was an entertaining form of camping.

I wish they made estate ownership less expensive or at least eliminate the requirement of owning a sim to get a homestead. I can see the grimacing look on some faces. That would seriously spark my interest.

I would certainly be interested in owning more mainland, but again tier, tier tier.

Yeah that's the impression I got when M. said that the pioneers of this platform were obsolete. But thanks for pointing the fact out to me again that I should not be wasting my time here anymore. I guess thats the real reason my spark can't be re-ignited; that one little fact keeps popping up.

SL has such a hard time retaining new users and such a hard time retaining long-time users, no wonder LL is just out to get as much money from the folks here right now as possible.

I guess the LL mission statement of "...It's our mission to connect us all to an online world that advances the human condition." meant as long as you could do that and get out with a profit in 5 years or less.

... fading...

... fading...


But still here. I've always prefered my faded jeans to my shiny new ones anyway.

I have not lost my spark really. Just my beliefs that LL gives a darn. SO no I am not going anywhere ty.

To many amazing things have happened to me and my family in our years in SL to ever walk away entirely.

I remember you telling the story of your family here before. There is absolutely nowhere you could go and replace that!!!

SL Rocks!
LL Sucks!

Will continue to be here though. Sense of discovery is still here with me everyday and there are always new people looking to learn what we can teach.

The town will never be the same.

After the Tangiers,
the big corporations took it all over.

Today it looks like Disneyland.
And while the kids
play cardboard pirates...
Mommy and Daddy drop the house payments
and Junior's college money...
on the poker slots.

In the old days, dealers knew your name,
what you drank, what you played.
Today, it's like checkin'
into an airport.
And if you order room service,
you're lucky if you get it by Thursday.

Today it's all gone.
You got a whale show up
with four million in a suitcase...
and some eighteen-year-old hotel school kid is
gonna want his social security number.

After the Teamsters
got knocked out of the box...
the corporations tore down practically
every one of the old casinos.
And where did the money come
from to rebuild the Pyramids?
Junk bonds.

But in the end, I wound up
right back where I started.
I could still pick winners...
and I could still make money
for all kinds of people back home.
And why mess up a good thing?
And that's that.



.

Mine is probably lame, but Sim level Windlight....

I like to design concepts and wish I could design lighting directly rather than a link to a xml file for every visitor.

I love Second Life.

Sssssh! Get yourself an alt.

But don't forget to thank all those folks who helped you make your newbie av look sh!t hot.


That's not lame at all. I demand sim level Windlight!


Ahhhhh ...

I been online for 14 years now, and with anything from the first chat rooms to online games, people get excited when the come into something new, the get addicted, they log in all the time, but as time moves on, they start getting bored with the same things they loved when the first logged on, why many game companies make expansion packs, to keep interest in their products, SL doesn't have a expansion pack, I been on SL for over two years, The Sims Online was my first mmog experience, then I moved on to Star Wars Galaxies, then WOW, then I came here, but I started getting bored in all of them over time.

And that is the case with so many, usually from what I seen after two years is when you start seeing turnaround, older players drop off, and new players take over, and the cycle keeps going, till the game eventually comes to a close, I still log on to SL due to the fact it is free for the most part, unless you want to buy things, but even if you spend say 4 bucks a month that is still a lot cheaper than the standard $15 a month like with WOW(unless you want own virtual land on SL), and if I don't want to spend 4 bucks a month, I don't have too, though if I had to pay for SL, pretty good chance I would have started making plans to leave eventually or sooner.

It's a good movie Angel but you might wanna give attribution

I think some of the oldbies probably dropped out along the way because they went through a lot of the birthing pangs of Second Life's new existence. Maybe if life changes for them and they need a hobby such as this one, they will return.