Would the last one to go please switch off the lights

They are models! - models! - not bots! (my bots are in a box 4080m up )


I think that 10% of us being bots is a gross underestimate. On the other hand, the 10% of me that's a bot is my dick - it just stands there doing nothing all day long.

I don't see how sampling a relatively small number of sims can give any sort of reasonable estimate of the percentage. I look at it this way. Bots are 24/7, so the lowest daily concurrency includes pretty much all the bots. The lowest daily concurrency is now ~40,000, so whoever estimated 75% bots must be wrong. That lowest daily concurrency occurs in the UK's early morning - not in the night. So it's a case of knowing which part of the world is awake at at that time and estimating how many people are using SL. It can only be a guess, of course, but I'd estimate that at least half the 40,000 are real people. Certainly it can't be all of the 40,000 because all the bots are in.

For everyone who is looking for people in SL, please go to events. Many, many sims have lots of things going on and enough people around to crash the sims. But these sims tend to be busy around scheduled events. On Etopia we have events just about every day and sometimes more than one event per day. We have anywhere from 4 to about 35 real people at these events. And tbh, that is where all the people are. They are not standing on empty sims waiting to for a greeting from a visitor.

Today on Etopia, I logged on to check on things. I ran into about 6 new people visiting and enjoying the surroudings, saw that about 6 residents were on in their homes or elsewhere on the sims, ran into 3 other folks who were there to check on their shops and that was in about an hour...not bad for noon with no events.

I really think you will "find" whatever you are looking for. If you are looking for empty sims, just tp around to any old sim and yep, they will be empty. If you want to find real people enjoying SL, tp to any number of places having events and I bet you will find all the people who live on the empty sims.

Just my two cents....

/me raises an eyebrow.

10%, huh? Yowser.

Well I dunno where the bot pics are, but you have some awesome shots

I went hunting around my area of main land found 2 SIMS! 2 SIMS yes (2) with owners of 1024m or less with 20 bots on platforms.. when you get there its a 10 second and the other 3 second untill security sends you home .. THIS iS mainland!!! tryed to ar because a (1 of them) 512m lot using 1/2 the sim space for bots is BS!!!

and yes all bots stacked up.. what were they selling? nothing just a LM giver!!!

I had a snap shot but when I tried to DL it it re took as I tped

Want proof?

I've heard much higher estimates of Phil's dick ratio.

(Where *is* Colette, anyway?)

+++

Perhaps ironically, one thing that would bring avatars closer together would be if the cost of land (tier and purchase) were much, much higher. Instead of being spread out over empty sims, folks would cram into much smaller parcels, possibly time-sharing the land, and maybe actually encounter others occasionally.

In contrast, the current model seems to be that people want privacy, except when they want to socialize, so bumping into random dots on the map is going to reveal bots or (rarely) alts of content creators slaving away; even clusters of dots will be bots unless they're at a social venue, in which case some of them may be real humans.

Probably we're now so accustomed to current land costs that people wouldn't readily accept an alternate scenario of very expensive, relatively crowded sims, perhaps with privacy-for-rent full-sim "hotel rooms."

I agree, it really depends on the space and purpose.

Hotel Dare for example is normally very busy as it's a community of artists and designers creating *stuff* and it holds appeal to interact with the visitor.

My sims are always pretty quiet, the only visitors are customers and people who chill out in the parks, so to counter that (it felt lonely)! we started building concept sims, fully interactive spaces that led the user through stories / adventures / - engaging content. Changing regularly they built up large community traffic for Flickr photography. Zero commercial stuff - but was there to raise *profile*. A much better way to get your products aligned / noticed without the use of 50 bots sat on a platform. (I refuse to use do that rubbish).

People need to think of better ways to connect their product to their consumer. All bots do imho is get the person there to only leave if it's rubbish pretty quickly and to also mention how rubbish it was too to their friends.

Recommendation/Viral marketing is best - not bots!

i am finding it is getting pretty boring..i spent the last few days checking out clubs and stores..
most were either empty or had the same exact customers staring at the same exact item they were a week before..
i'm sure they were just trying to really make sure it was the item they wanted..

most of the clubs seemed pretty dead..i found one of my favorite clubs had added camping to it's plan as well which kind of turned my tummy because they had a good mixture for getting traffic..
i'm sure they saw a slip in traffic and panicked to cushion the numbers to keep their spot in places search..

all these campers and all these bots are just sending the message that we are too lazy to talk to people we want spending here or there...

they suck the inspiration out of people that know what it used to be like but at the same time teach new ways to new people..it becomes the norm soon enough...

people are not all stuffed in events at a certain time of the day or in one certain spot..

just saying that it is about events only shows how many are not here doing all the other things sl offers..

i took a tour of the new clubs that are opening and more than half that i went to already had either campers or bots..
not a soul in site but their generators...

when it gets soo boring that we can't find what we are looking for we are going to find a new search engine that has some hope to it..
all this fly by night stuff is gonna do more damage than good..

i don't need LL to tell me what percent are bots and what percent are campers and what percent are active people..
those figures are for people wanting to see actual statistical proof..

if we didn't feel it or know it already we would not be having threads about it..

you want to fix it then boycott who is using bots or systems to generate traffic..
It's easy to see this system works well for LL to cast out huge numbers for new people to come..so traffic won't be going away..
you want bots gone you have to render them useless..
the same goes for camping..
word of mouth goes a long way if everyone is talking about it..

I've heard that rumour too - 100% isn't it ?

That almost assumes that people who use traffic bots make rubbish goods, which is a wrong assumption.

The best ways of connecting people with products for sale are ways that work. There is no single best way at all, or if there is, it certainly isn't recommendation/viral marketing.

OK, what about this for a way to detect bots. Collect the x,y,z coordinates of every alt in every sim and then compare then over a period of several days. If they always stay the same then they're for sure a bot. Maybe I'll try to write a script to go on our Universal Network parcels to measure something like this.

i would say 100% because Phil IS a dick, but somewhere there has to be room for creativity. No matter how much I dislike him, he does make good low-prim furniture.







and it piss me off

lol

I have been around more games than chat rooms, so I may be way off here.


Back in the 80's we played MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons) which were text based games. Play, kill things, meet other people, form groups and all that stuff. If anyone ever came out with a way to do this with graphics, it would be the end of Muds.

There are pleanty out there if you are curious. Just google a few up, maybe find some people you enjoy playing with.

Then came Ultima Online (well, there was Meridian before that but UO is the grande dame of mmorpgs) which was alive and vibrant. It had it's flaws. It was not even 1st person and in a wolrd where 1st person shooters were just taking off. This game would never last. Google it up, have a look, it still has several worlds up and running. Hmm, has it been 20 years? maybe, but I'm not sure.

EverQuest, WoW, EQ2, MiddleEarth online ... I have seen them all have the same "turn out the lights" post but they are still up, running, and even still in development with new content and changes. Each iteration only grows the user base. It does not kill the old one. Even tho the old one will have consolidations from a reduced player base, it still remains alive and active. The exceptions either never had a fondation (Hellgate: London) or are exceedingly rare (TSO).

SL has compitition only in the academic sense right now. It is top dog and the only things even close to it are clones. Will something better come along? Absolutly. Will I leave SL for that one? You bet. but I don't see SL folding up and dieing any time soon. Re-org, buyouts and mergers will happen because there is a lot of money being passed around in SL even if it's only pennies and someone will want to keep their fingers in that pie as long as possible.

Agreed, the tail of these things is extremely long. By that I mean sure we'll hit a peak at some point but then there'll be a slow decline which might take decades before it reaches a point of not being profitable for LL to keep it going. I don't know if we've hit the peak yet. If this were a normal MMO I'd say we're probably about as big as we'll ever get. Of course SL is not quite a normal MMO and who knows what will really happen.

looking at my chat logs, just the total number and not content, since i joined i have averaged meeting over 7.25 per day.

Now take out the few days when i havent been online and the days when i have had "me" time, i think i dont struggle to find people to talk to.

It all depends on where you go. For example - you'll find plenty of live avatars at these places and no bots:

Svarga
Lost Gardens of Apollo
Avillion
The Botanical Gardens

Very true, Jojogirl. Experienced SL users do just that.

Still, the fact that there ARE some real people in SL at some events doesn't alter the fact that the bots continue to take over the landscape as a whole.

For Sale signs are going up on land all around me, as people give up and move out. The clubs next door show lots of green dots...but if you head over there for a good time, you'll be met by the Silence of the Camps.

LL continues to make asinine business decisions and drive their customers, if not away, at least into a frenzy of anger and disgust.

I don't have numbers to counter Zee's "Third Quarter Lies", but my gut feeling is that SL is unraveling at the seams. Slowly. Six or seven months ago, I'd have said the opposite, but not now.

And on top of everything else, for some reason the grid seems to be performing more poorly the last week or so. Textures are slower to rez, chat lag is back, failed tps are back...

'tis true! Heck, sometimes it's hard to find quiet time to build or think an stuff, really.



Ya... I gotta admit, I feel a bit nervous nowadays about SL's future too. I'm not usually the sort to do so, either. Dark Windlight clouds on the horizon. My biggest concern is SL's identity crises. MMORPG or VW? past-time for residents or corporate tool?

Do you think it might be because of the "holidaze" that are about to come? Maybe a lot of people are out shopping ughh in the real world - wait we are in a recession aren’t we? We are doomed!

i just had a friend whos region of 6 sims were given back to LL yesterday because of the whole increase thing..then left sl..had another friend telling me the same story as i told them..they had to pick up their builds because the sims were gonna be gone and if you wanted to save the build to get them before the shut off day..

i don't think this is something that people are just going to be hearing through the grape vine..i think everyone in some way is gonna get a taste of it..

between this and everyone throwing up false traffic signals i do think we are gonna see more leaving..

i mean right now with the way things are..who in their right mind that knows SL well would open a new business?
myself i am in fear of bot increase and people dropping thier sims..it's gonna hit the economy pretty good and it doesn't look like it is gonna slow down anytime soon..

one little change to the search would end bot and camping use for generating traffic and they won't make the change..

this more or less makes me feel LL wants us to leave if you ask me..

I think this thread makes it absolutely clear that LL must act against bots somehow - not because of the search gaming, but because of the social effect. After a few attempts at finding green dots fail, it seems many people are just giving up and quitting - and then there are even fewer real green dots around. It's even worse if you bear in mind that newbies may not even know what a bot is - they wind up leaving thinking that everyone in SL is an idler or an ass who won't talk to them.

The other issues... well, they're just the result of the absense of social engineering on SL. The problem is, you can't really have an absense of social engineering.. you can only have social engineering that you choose not to take control over. And on SL that's heavily in the direction of art and/or sex. Just because you don't take the reins doesn't mean that people are free.

I turned my lights out today. I finally got a land flipper interested in buying my land at half what I paid for it. None of my neighbors even responded to my IM offers to sell it to them cheap. I think they are gone from SL. Most of the people I befriended here don't play anymore. The land is splattered with bots, but few real people. I'm tired of buying flexi dresses to wear at bot-filled bars. It feels like I'm just buying stuff to get ready for the game to begin and it never does.

So, I'm outta here.


However, before I lock the doors and say g'night, I do have a question: how can I pass along all this stuff I have in my inventory? Some is non-transfer. Does that mean there's no way, baby, I can give it to a friend? Or could I sell my AV and account to someone and then they could get all my cool things?


Thanks to all you Forum flashers. I got so much more of a community feeling by reading your wonderful threads than I ever saw inside of SL. If only LL could bring this to SL in-game.

No transfer is exactly that. no transfer is possible.

Selling or giving away an account is also not allowed.

Fantastic way of putting it.