Why does LL punish me for their failures?

I was minding my own business when - through no fault of my own - I fell through the ground. I tried to teleport home, but the client hung at 10% of the teleport bar. After waiting a reasonable 5 minutes, I closed the client through a normal window close event (i.e. not task manager) which means that the client had the chance to do its proper cleanup.

The login dialog has odd wording (paraphrasing): "You have been automatically logged out and can't log in again until <time>". This sounds like the login actually succeeded and *then* I was logged out. Why? Can anyone even postulate a reason why they'd do this? Or is the dialog simply misleading?

The dialog is misleading as far as I can tell. Basically it just means wait for 2 or 3 minutes then retry. It took me half an hour to get online last night, and then I was afraid to TP anywhere. Yuck.

Because they are evil, cruel, sadistic, bastards. They're Americans, remember?

Because I crash 90% of the time after tp'ing I have discovered something. I try to log in again immediately. I get the other but similar message, region has begun logout process, try again in a few minutes. I try again immediately and always log in just fine. The message is inaccurate, or sloppy design or a sham.

I would bet that they also have to clean things up server side.. I get this a lot (I crash a lot...) and ususally it just takes a short wait.

Your client software and you may believe that you logged off successfully, but that may not be true with the host/Grid. Whatever you were doing in SL, there probably exists some kind of database that needs to close out your transactions. Keeping you out of the Grid for a certain set time, may be LL way of ensuring those transactions are properly dealt with before letting you back in. It could also be their way throttling back on the number of logins to prevent performance problems.

Believe what you want, or come up with your own WAG (Wild A** Guess). I'm not a DBA and I don't work for LL.

You may want to ask the Lochness Monster.

Yay, too right!

I tend to get that message when my ISP has problems, I now assume that my connection at that time isn't supply sufficient bandwidth and reconnect to try and get a better connection.

Yeah, I hate that. The worst part is, there IS a good reason for it, and it's not just the joy of torture on LL's part. (Of course, they MAY enjoy it ... )

When we get hung out to dry for whatever reason, it's because the server and client are no longer talking. (Arrgh!) It takes them both a while to figure it out. (Arrgh!) When you try to log back in, the system finds out that you're already logged in (gasp!) and starts a cleanup operation to get rid of the "old you". Unfortunately, this mop up is not instantaneous. Meanwhile, it doesn't want to let you in. For one thing, you might meet your doppleganger (GASP!) And for another, the mop up operation just might mop the new you up as well.

I usually try again right away, and sometimes it works. It works more often when I pick a different location to log into (I think).

I find that this is one of the cases where my friends online indicators often don't show everyone who's really ingame, and it's probably a symptom of jumping right in rather than waiting like they say. So, do this at your own risk. Who knows what other evils might lurk, waiting for the over-anxious relogger!

Oh sure, they sound like fun...

Love

There are two different lockout warning messages, and I'm not sure what the difference is, server-side. If the viewer just crashes, I get the "region has begun the logout process, try again in two minutes" (or something like that). The other one is the "punish me" message, which tells the precise time in San Francisco when the servers will deign to hear from me again.

Perhaps when the region still knows about me, I get the first message, and when only my spirit remains in the presence service, I get the second? (That would kinda fit the "wedged whilst teleporting" trigger for the "punish me" version.)

I get the "region has begun the logout process, try again in two minutes" message a lot when it's clearly not true -- I can Yahoo IM a friend who's doing just fine in the region I just vanished from. I ignore this message. If I get it more than once, I log into another region and TP.

I get disconnected a lot, usually every hour or two. When building, save frequently. Less than ideal for romantic encounters.

I have gotten that message. I was able to log in an alt. Other times changing the log in region works to get you in.

Isn't that SWAG (Scientific Wild A.. Guess)

Next time this happens..been happing to me alot latley...log in an alt have that alt IM you and pay 1 dollar. I find a that my main gets stuck in sl so some degree and that helps to push it over the edge so to speak

The fun answer:

Phil & Robin were sitting around, sipping coffee - when they happened to notice Malachi Petunia on their super-secret resident monitoring system (that's also linked into the CIA database). Just for kicks, they thought they'd toy with you like a mouse - and make your teleport process more frustrating than it already is by logging you out - then blocking you from logging in for 10 minutes. Oh, the laughs that were had by all.

The boring answer:

The dialog is misleading. So is the other dialog: "You have been logged out by an administrator." (Which I've received myself when the Isabel sim is having one of its 5x daily fits.)

The sim that runs whatever region you were entering or leaving had a hiccup. It threw you out unexpectedly, and you're stuck in some sort of half-logged-in/half-logged-out state. Apparently, this sort of thing happens often - so often, that they put code in place to put a waiting period in place so the login servers have a chance to sort out whether you're really logged out or not.

As everyone else has noted, this happens to me with some frequency (the "you can't log back in until XX:XX PDT" message). The last time it happened, my wife and I were both in the same location (dancing). So, while I waited for my 2 minute punishment period, I went back to let my wife know I crashed and that I'd be back in a couple of minutes.

I looked on her screen, and there was my avatar, happily still dancing his bad self away on the dance floor. A minute later he poofed and I could log back in when I got back to my computer.

So, I would assume the timeout period is a time for the servers to realize that you've really crashed or exited in some fashion without the sim server knowing it.

I can picture:
Mr, sitting at his PC, avatar dancing with Mrs' avatar. Mrs sat next door watching the couple dancing, IM-ing with hubby.

<Silence>

Mr gets logged out and advised not to login for two minutes. Mr walks into next room, looks at screen still showing him dancing. Taps on screen and shouts, "Oi! wake up!" ... <poof!>

Hmm at one stage I used to crash after every TP and took ages to rez, it turned out to be my ISP throttling my speed.

The delay prevents you meeting yourself when it hasn't logged you out properly.
(meeting yourself would cause a space time paradox)

.. and LL would have to charge you twice for the tier .. see? .. they love us really!!

Okay back to that evil American thing. I think it has more to do with a San Francisco thing then an American thing. Grouping us together is inappropriate, and misleading. Most of us Americans suffer the same type of in-game problems as the rest of the world. Well except that we have that supper secret 1-800 number. Crap…never mind.

You mean she wasn't actually dancing with you but catching a bit of automatic simulator dancing action on the side? =P

I think it is very much the case where the client has lost the connection due to lag, but the simulator doesn't notice. When you attempt to log-in again it thinks to itself "hang on a second, isn't that daft person already here? Lemme check...oh whoops, he shouldn't be erm...quickly, stall him for a bit while I sort out this mess!"

Hey we're not all like that...

And we didn't ALL vote for Bush.