Thank You Lindens...

But I've just explained why that figure is not accurate. It's nowhere near $11USD because downtime so far is nowhere near (not even "around" 52 days a year. The grid is not down for twenty-four hours once a week (anywhere near twelve is unusual when you *include* update time), and updates don't come every week anyway. The post-patch downtime of the past two weeks is pretty unique too...so 52 days I think is a bad figure. Try halving it...maybe even more than halving it...and let's use something like $3-5 USD as an amount instead.

I also don't believe anybody is using the TOS to excuse the service levels. 99.9% uptime statistics for other internet services generally relate to WWW packages, which rely on tried and tested web server technology, much of which has been in development for over a decade. LL's client/server software is very new, fast evolving, and cutting edge by comparison, and TBH, I expected this kind of regular downtime because it occurred during my trial period, before I even went premium. (Forgive me, *updates* occurred during that period...and I've come to expect that the post-patch downtime really is rare...it just might not seem like that when it happened two weeks on the trot.)

Kind of hoping this thread doesn't spin out of control. I mean all of that with the best of intentions...and am genuinely interested in (and respect) your POV.

It seems to me that they start the update process early (7AM PST) so that if problems *do* occur, they have a whole working day to spend fixing them. 2PM-5PM PST would surely have resulted in overtime being paid to developers last night for example...assuming all the required developers hadn't made other plans for their evening...and would have been available anyway.

In fact, there is a provision for compensation for service interruptions, with certain conditions.

From this page: http://secondlife.com/corporate/billing.php

"6. Under certain circumstances, you may receive service credit for unscheduled downtime.

You will be eligible to receive Service Credit toward recurring service fees (e.g. monthly account fees, 90 Day account fees, annual account fees, and Land Use Fees) for Unscheduled Downtime. "Unscheduled Downtime" is an unplanned or unscheduled interruption in Service availability for a period of at least twenty-four (24) hours during which you are unable to access the Service. Unscheduled Downtime is measured from the end of the time the Service is 100% unreachable for a period of at least twenty-four (24) hours until Service is once again restored. The following are excluded from the calculation of Unscheduled Downtime: (i) scheduled maintenance downtime; (ii) problems outside of our Service (upstream providers, or your inbound connection) not affecting 100% loss to our Service; (iii) interruptions or failure of Service caused by you or your representatives (including inaccurate configuration, third-party software, abuse or over-utilization of resources, hacked servers, attacks, exploits, or server hardware failures); and (iv) causes beyond Linden Lab's reasonable control and occurring without Linden Lab's fault or negligence, including natural disasters, wars, terrorist acts, riots or other violent upheaval, governmental restrictions and actions, and performance failures of a third party outside Linden Lab's control. The amount of any Service Credit will be based on the pro rata percentage of Unscheduled Downtime during your billing cycle (e.g., if there is 1 day of Unscheduled Downtime in a 30-day month for your monthly account, you will receive a Service Credit for 1/30th of your recurring service fees). Any Service Credit will be credited to you during your next billing cycle."

Thanks for being prompt about getting problems in SL resolved cuz all virtual environments have bugs, lets face it. And as you strive to improve they are going to pop up. At least you not only TRY but DO push on to fix them and get our little SL-addicted avvies back on the grid

Thankyou for the way you handle tech support. Once again, prompt responses are a good sign of customer-care and I truely appreciate it.

Thankyou for creating SL where i've never had so much online fun in my life.

Thankyou for not being TURBINE!!!! Stay away from their games folks..they SUCK big time not only in performance but in customer relations.

Thanks....

You just hit the nail square on the head. As much as i love SL (wouldn't have come back to it as soon as i could, if i didn't), i do think that a potentially gamebreaking (introducing new and sometimes bad bugs) update a week is a bit of an overkill.
The problem isn't limited to the actual update, but extends to the aftershocks that such updates tend to bring along, meaning that in the end for many people SL won't run completely smoothly for a couple days. If this happens once a month it's for sure acceptable. If it happens once a week it begins to get a bit annoying.
I wouldn't really mind a slower evolution cycle to have a more stable gaming experience. In the end slower updates would allow for more time for testing, wich i honestly feel being a little of a lacking departement at LL.
Most MMORPG have a regular update cycle of 2 months, even considering the everchanging and open ended nature of SL i doubt that going under an update cycle of 1 month is really needed or warranted.
Just my two L$...

Note that the first section of the TOS also defines "The Service" as "the software provided to you by Linden Lab (collectively, the "Linden Software" and the online environments that support the service, including without limitation access to the websites and services available from the domain and subdomains of http://secondlife.com (the "Websites". The Websites and Linden Software collectively constitute the "Service" as used in this Agreement."

So, according to their TOS, as long as it is possible to browse to the URL secondlife.com, they don't actually have to compensate users for downtime at all.....

I think you could be right.

Heck Im not thanking them for to much, I pay for a service and expect quality. Same as they would if the shoe was on the other foot..

Uhmm, I'll thank the orginial creator. And I'll thank hmmm... hmm... gawd this is hard... the poor lindens that have to answer me on the online help thingy.. they really deserve lots of credit for putting up with me