Serious doubts about LL's technical competancy

I hate it when they spell "incompetency" wrong!

I asked myself.
And I answered:

It appears that the Professionals in LL do not outweigh the Conartists.

I think that most people will realise that this system will have bugs.
That's not the point.
It's not really the bugs that drive people completely mad. It's the way that the buggers treat us that drives us mad.

There is some excuse for having bugs.
There is no excuse for them treating their paying customers with contempt.


Oh, by the way Michael - “Thanks for having too much integrity for one single person”

I DO NOT PAY EXTRA FOR THE "FRIENDS ONLINE" INDICATOR.

I DO NOT *WANT* "FRIENDS ONLINE" NOTIFICATION.

If you want your friends to know that you logged on.. bloody well TELL THEM.

I swear, I feel like I've come home to a house full of 1000 happy puppies all eager to see how my day was... every single time I log in.

The "Can See my online status" thing worked for a while... but now it's broke.
Now ANYONE I've friended can see me log in, whether I flagged them or not.

TURN THE BLASTED @#)%&@#)$*@)$@# ONLINE NOTIFICATION OFF.

PLEASE.... SHOOT IT IN THE @)#%&@#$* HEAD.

Don't get me wrong, I'm fond of my friends... but I'd like to log in to peace and quiet instead.

--
(I don't think I've ever used so much upper case in a post before).

My favorite metaphor is the airplane stuck on the tarmac. Every airline knows that if the pilot simply gets on the intercom and gives the passengers occasional updates with the situation, they will remain calm and seated. Ignore them and after an hour or so, they grumble, unclick their seat belts and start rioting in the aisles.

It's called communicating honestly with your customers. It ain't that hard to do.

Why does this remind me of that bit in Hitchhiker's Guide where the plane hadn't taken off for like 300 years because they were out of lemon scented wipes, and the customers were kept in stasis, and woken up every 50 years to feed them biscuits, and when they did wake up they went totally batty, screaming and yelling?

i am. but its taking time to sell off my remaining land.
i've gone from nearly $400/mo to $40/mo. im almost there.

I sold all of my land. the next step will be to stop paying premium. That will happen in November.

I can't see the point in paying for this anymore. If they decide to start making SL worth it, I will change my mind.

Wow --

THATS why I aquired that new stalker.

I was wondering how she always knew I was online.

Someone I don't even remembering friending, who'd been in my unfriend que and forgottena bout ..

From: <MyRealName>
To: Phil, Robin
Date: 11 May 05

[discussion on why a 7 to 10 month release plan is bad, elided]

Linden Lab, when things are this broken, the only thing that you can do to stem the irritation and alienation of the playerbase is to be broadly open with your customers. Your customers will forgive a lot and even be patient if they know what to expect and when. I'm sure you have internal development milestones, schedule hits and misses and other information. Be forthcoming and your devoted players will stay. Continue having these "heavy load" issues with no explanation ("heavy load" is not an explanation) and no articulated plan and you'll be able to feel the wave of attrition.
...

From: Phil (quoted completely for fairness)
To: <MyRealName>
Date: 12 May 05

Actually we are gunning to fix the database/login load and simulator low FPS lag in the next incremental release (1.7). I'd agree that 7-10 months is WAY too long to wait for fixes. We don't expect 2.0 to solve lag and scaling problems - we expect 1.x to. We want to be moving forward with 2.0 on look and capabilities. SL is growing so fast now that we don't have that much time to improve the scalability of the core systems. Hence the difference in communication.

[note: at the time of this exchange, LL thought there'd be an SL 2.0 ground-up re-write; to my understanding, 2.0 was a pipe dream]

http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/07/25/the-tao-of-linden/

T'was Philly-boy himself that labeled it the "Tao of Linden."

We'd just gone through 06/06/06.. when they opened the flood gates without ANY tools to resolve the issues that came up because of the ease of creating accounts. They had begun shutting down all the more direct means of contacting the Lindens when we needed THEIR help. The grid was spending more time down than up, thanks to the rounds of griefers who had just discovered the endless joy of a very short-lived ban. And LL finally decided that the General Forums were just too much for them, because we had nowhere else to vent the increasing amount of frustration. LL had pretty much handed us the sign that said, "We're NOT listening!"

We weren't in the mood to hear that the Lindens could work on anything they wanted at any time they wanted. We'd been patient with the 'small, new company,' that had a bleeding edge concept.

We knew it would have bugs and that LL, in it's small company, would be hard pressed to get it fixed. But they aren't a small company any more, not really. They are making the decisions that are more inherit with the big companies.. so why shouldn't we hold their product to the same standards that we could a big company's?

Besides, I happen to like to complain. I'd complain about having nothing to complain about!

On a side note: I noticed that when we had all those grid slowdowns and such Friday, it was labeled as "Stabilized," and not, "Resolved." Frontier Linden has learned

Jaysus Joseph and Mary, this is killing me. The sim where my shop is located isn't letting people rez boxes, and the boxes are disappearing from their inventories. Yeah yeah I've requested a region restart but who knows how long THAT will take. In the meantime, I'm stuck with angry customers and future non-customers. Wonderful.

Where's that valium when I need it?

I am trying to say this with deferrential curiousity but will likely fail. Do you have some actual insight into how it works at LL or is this just a guess on your part?

Regardless of any intense accountability, it *appears* to customers as if the Three Stooges are running the show. Put another way, internal management approaches should be none of our business. Because customers get so little information from LL, they need to divine goat entrails or point to the few statements that are published to even theorize about what we might expect next month. If LL were more transparent - as they claim they are or wish to be - then we wouldn't be reduced to "politburo watching" as we do for any glint of information.

Why does anybody give a damn? Because they care about SL prospering; at times it seems the customer passion dwarfs anything LL does or says.

Take it now and go to bed. The restart tomorrow should take care of it.

The recent LL blog post about mistakes had a link to an interesting article about the future grid architecture. This is worth looking at as it has details of how the grid is intended to be configured by the end of 2008. It is very different from now. I'm not talking about the prim-filled world we walk about in shouting 'woot' and making stuff, no, I mean the way SL gets to our RL geeks! The centraliised server bank is likely to be replaced by........... oh! - it gets complicated - so if you want to read more find the blog about mistakes and click the link on 'future grid architecture'.

OK simple pop quiz then given what's been said. At this moment would you prefer the Tao of Linden or the Tao of Google?

/me raises hand for Google

Linden.. because Google will have learned from Linden's mistakes and create a disneyworld. At least here there is some freedom left for 'my world, my imagination.

Linden Lab has made something i like, that i cant get anywhere else. I love SL and i wont be leaving until they make it impossible for me to stay.

Thats why i bitch about it, because i have passion about it. thats why i put up with the 'cons' because the pros are just that much better than anything google, hipihi, entropia.. et al, can offer me. And because of places like the forum, and my friends here.

If i didn't complain, thats the time Lindens should be worried.

imogen

/me grudingly sides with LL. SL Google might be better running with better service, but it wuld bel be the ad infested sanitized wasteland I come to SL to avoid.

Hmmm, interesting, because that ad filled wasteland you come to SL to avoid has actually been mentioned as maybe being incorporated in some ways here.

I know and it will be the reason I pack up and go.

It might not be as bad as you imagine! Jesus everyone can't leave!

Sure they can.

And the next virtual world might pay attention.

I'm not convinced a Google SL would be santitized. Google itself isn't sanitized, and I wouldn't expect that they would sanitize a 3d VR world more than they do Google itself. I would foresee a kind of voluntary opt-in system like the search engine uses (safe searches vs. more uncensored ones) at the user's option with a disclaimer screen like Google uses now.

I think you're right. I think if LL has taught its competition anything it is that like many other market areas, sex sells. Google or anyone else must realise that a virtual DisneyWorld just isn't going to cut it.
Any startup to compete with SL has got their work cut out to attract 100,000 registrations on promises.

on a dark note, google would make integrity/aristotle look like privacy mecca.

Q: When people start leaving in droves, and the sign-up rate drops...which citizens will flourish?

A: The basic account users that create inexpensive, high-quality product and service.