Speaking up for Second Life

I'm going to speak up for Second Life because every time there is an issue or a problem everyone is critical, including me. I don't think that it hurts to remember this is an amazing program where people from all over the world come together to interact, make friends, and even fall in love.

I am still awed by the flexi prims, the movement on them sometimes is just divine and makes you want to twirly round to look at it. Not only do we have new and amazing things to explore in some updates but we also have a platform that allows us to explore our creativity, an outlet for it that some of us may never have had before. We discover talents and abilities we might not have used or been able to explore in other areas of our lives.

When you think about it 3d chat like second life enables us to build a world community and reach out to one another in a way that lets territories, oceans and frontiers fall away. Maybe being able to interact with one another like this will help people grow from people of here and there into people of the world and give us a better understanding of each other or at least the realisation that we are all just folks and not three headed devils out to take over the known world and destroy each others territory. Maybe that is idealistic but who knows, perhaps a paltform like Second Life does help us take a few steps across cultural divides.

We mustn't forget that LL have created an amazing platform for us to play in and even run businesses. It is quite remarkable when you think about it that many people are even making a career out of second life shops. I can't think of anywhere else on the net, in a single platform, where this has been done on such a scale.

To conclude, LL stuff up sometimes but they are trying all the time to update and expand a program that is already pretty amazing and there will be stuff ups along the road. There will be things we don't like. I don't like the new snapshot but perhaps they will improve upon it, learning from the things we like as 'consumers' of LL and things we don't. But if you think about it, if Sl was never updated we'd all moan about that too and complain it was stagnant and not moving forward. I used to play in another 3d chat that was never upgraded and it is slowly dying like an old dinosaur with only a few hundred residents because any expansion is too little too late.

A huge problem recently has been theft and cheating. This is a terrible thing for those who create and can be soul destroying when you have worked for hours on something only to have someone else steal it and sell it off, sometimes for a higher price than you placed on it yourself. I am sure that LL find this as big of a problem and would like to find ways to help us content creators but we also have to remember that the thieves seem to use software that is beyond LL's control in their thievery. The people at fault are the cheaters, not the platform. Another area of development that we are offered could be ways to stop 3rd party programs being used alongside Second Life or some sort of IP banning systems of those found cheating in this way. I would like to see LL explore these avenues when they are giving us beautiful lights and new fangled snapshots but I can't criticise them for the actions of people that are largely beyond their control.

My last word is to LL, we know that you are a dedicated team who want to expand the possibilities of this incredible program and applaud you for it. But please before you surge ahead to those incredible things, find ways to fix the problems that the trails of updates leave in their wake. The rezzing issue, prims that pop back when you are working on them, the lag, prim drift etc. With each new update the rezzing issues and lag get worse and ultimately these issues need to be fixed. Not all of your customers can afford a state of the art computer so please don't forget them as you grow. You need to find ways to overcome these issues so that the majority of people can continue to play, an empty grid with wonderful things in it that takes a month to rez and you can't move in the lag is no fun for you, or for the people of the world who'd like to carry on playing.

Thanks!

wipe your nose

Other MMOGs:

Login ... Ok, where do we hunt today? Chris is still looking for a Zipper Bear card and we need to level Xander.

SL:

Login ... ok, what will I do today? *looks at huge list of options*

SL is cheaper than all the big name MMOGs and is infinitely more intellectually stimulating than passing through the XP/leveling grinder. In other Worlds you explore the world created by the publisher and eventually you come to world's end where there's nothing new to see anymore. In SL, there's always something new to see, always something new to make. In other MMOGs you have to level up or kill countless monsters to get special stuff. Here? Make it.

In Ragnarok Online I pined that I didn't like it that my cape was tan. I wanted something bluish. Here I can change my attire to anything, I can change my self to anything. Where else does that happen?

The price for this is that the software is (expectedly) unstable. I'm ok with the downtimes and bugs we've been experiencing only because I really expect that those things can happen in this kind of environment.

It's still a good deal.

I am fairly new to SL. Yes it is an amazing program, yes I have fallen in love with someone on here (Yes yes I know I am an Idiot) And I personally find the down time annoying. None of the upgrades have made it any better. But I also realize that they are tring to make it a better than before. People need to calm down. If they wanted to be dicks about it they could start charging for EVERYONE that wanted to join, not just premium members. They could shut it down as well, amongst a multitude of other things. So shut up chill out and give em a break, they are tring to make the experiance better for us all!

When your paying $195 USD a month and laying out $1295 USD per island, and are trying to run a business, you expect better service and proper testing before the releases.


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"Nobody looks good with brown lipstick on."
-- Frank Zappa

Amen; starting to believe it foolishness to invest that kind of money into this game now.

Uncertainty is on high, we are losing money for lost sales during all of this down time. Etc etc

I do Leah on both counts and but what good does moaning do? We all have a choice not to do these things if we don't want to so you have to take the bumps along with the smooth. Yes the down time effects business but without Sl there would be no business anyway.

SL do have the preview grid for testing but there are always going to be things that happen when they put it on the main grid because of the sheer expanse of the game.

For 'brown' comments from others, sorry I'm English. Je ne comprends pas.

Sigh; true. But if SL is going to boast about those who have made livings off of the game and open that possibility to all, they should atleast try to be a bit more stable than they`ve been. Dont ya think?

Hmm thats a lot of money to shell out for something you are not sure will work all the time. Deal is, you decided to buy the island and pay the land tier, full well knowing, the game has issues. It's always going to have issues. Either chalk it up and move on, or sell the island. I really can't stand ppl who complain about this crap.

In an ideal world yes. But is your world ideal? Mine isn't. In an ideal world my cat wouldn't be getting older, I'd have a slimmer ass and we wouldn't have to pay for utilities like gas and electricty.

That's the stupidest thing I ever read. Second Life sells itself as a place you can do business in. That's like saying we can't get pissed at a mall because without the mall, we wouldn't have a place to put our store. Of COURSE we can, if we're paying money and they sold that mall as a good place to do business, then if they keep having to close it at weird hours to deal with issues, it's not a good mall and not complaining (moaning) only gives the impression that they should keep doing as they are doing.

You actually complained about a problem the same way i ask for a raise in real, start off with some good old fashioned ass kissing, but by the time the Lidens got to your second paragraph they were poping champagne corks, and prolly missed the meat of your post.

That bug you speak of could well put SL on its ass, why would i create anything that could be stolen and exploited for someone elses use and profit ?? why i ask you ?? i think you make a VERY important point here, of all the bugs ive seen, and why it worked before and not now, kinda thing, that one is by far the worst for an income generating game.

I can only hope that LL is working to repair this one faster than the minor exploit they have the grid down for now...

Am sure it has a sweet smell as well

This is getting old and quickly. The service is a lot like cable internet or even worse satilite internet. Both of them have more hype than service.

Yawn, wonder if the next FS might have avatars? Probally not but it would be nice

Seconded!

rofl. You don`t agree they should =try= to be more stable than they`ve been?

Wow.

A sad fact of life is that some people are never happy and like to vent in the forums instead of looking to help effect constructive changes to Second Life I agree with you in what you have just said, but then i also look at the big picture while many others continue to enjoy wearing blinkers as it makes them feeel good when they belittle something or some one else, I often wonder if they are as angry in RL as they are on the forums no wonder the world has so many problems with so many angry people around

Lets focus on the positives for a change and if Second Lifes is so Sh*t for you players that are complaining, theres many other VR worlds to try, i have a list for those that want to leave but none are a patch on here

But the thing is- is that when a lot of us bought these SIMs, land etc, the grid seemed a lot more stable. Then, with each update, it just got worse and worse. I must admit it never seemed to STAY 'worse' but this time..i`m at a loss of words.

I understand the pain you feel but also part of the business is understanding the medium your business will run in.

I started free. Assessed. After experiencing all the ups and downs for 3 months, decided that Premium would be ok, so I upgraded.

We know how unstable the medium is. The amount we risk should take that into consideration. SL wasn't made primarily as a way for us to do business, it just so happens we can do business.

None of our complaints will change the fact that the medium is experimental, groundbreaking, and unstable. That's the way SL started, and that's how I expect it to remain for at least a few more years down the line.

That's the state of technology today.

Agreed. If I had to have guessed say, back in Feb or March, whether or not to expand, I would have done so. In fact, based on previous performance, I did do a minor expansion to my premium account and teir (which I kinda regret now). Lord only know how I'd feel if I was paying a thousand or more :/ I appreciate this bug needed to be fixed, but don't appreciate how these issues have gotten so amazingly common in the last month or two.

Before I post anymore in this thread, because sometimes my typing questions comes across as rude, I must say that this is a serious question.


I understand what you are saying, but before this update I know there were some minor things we knew of that would have been nice if they fixed it. The game still seemed to run smooth and it felt like a safe place to introduce your business to. With this new update, it seems like it came crashing down, I am not sure if its safe for me to rez objects on my sim anymore out of fear all the work will be gone one day when I log in- because of this my "free" first month of the sim is being wasted with all of the down time....DID sl test this new update correctly?? If so i`m misunderstanding how they missed all of these problems?

I read someone saying something along the lines of "The new update worked fine in the preview grid, then when they introduced it to the main grid everything went haywire"... Who is doing testing on the preview grid? us, or the lindens? If this statement is true then they need to find a new platform to do a THUROUGH testing on.

Quite frankly I feel like theyre just throwing these updates out to us and hoping it goes right. This time it caused a disaster. Admittedly, i have not been playing for *too* long so I do not claim to know the history of SLs ups and downs, for all I know the game could be back up and running stable tomorrow. But regardless of that, the grief and loss this new update caused...loss that apparently can not be recovered, was not worth the release. MANY have lost confidence in the game.


Again I say- perhaps its foolishness now to invest USD in the game, I do enjoy this game...alot. So instead of my partner and I dishing out around 500 USD on sims and stores a month, perhaps we should rid ourselves of it and go back to treating the game as a simple little hobby.

This may be true, suppose the only way to make our point is with our dollars or lack of them.
I might of bought a sim but there is a fundamental problem. The problem is a lack of control for the money. Linden Labs has final word on all things including hours of operation or non operation. It is not worth the cost.

BRAVO SACHI!

Everyday I am here I find something new. SL pushes the creative envelope in us all. I am completely amazed at the entire site. Not to mention, as you said, joining people from all over the world the way it should be.

So a few bumps along the way should be accepted by us all and we should thank LL for their dedication.

After four years of working in eCommerce, stability is the last thing I expect.

Servers going down, software bugs (which always seem to happen when no one is around who can fix it), server upgrades that aren't, hacking, fraud, laws changing, the list is long.

Running a business (online, on SL, or in RL) carries risks ... many you know about, some you don't.

Not to say that you can't complain about it, just that excessive complaining is .... excessive.

If you find it's not worth the cost, then do what a good businessman would do.

People may wonder why I never lose my head in complaining to LL. It's because I do understand the ramifications of what SL stands for from a technology perspective.

Complaining will not get anywhere not because LL doesn't listen. They do, and they try to keep things good. Complaining will not get anywhere only because it's not a matter of management. We and Linden Lab ride a pitching and bucking dragon. This dragon is magical and takes us to places others only dream about, but to get there, we have to put up with its bucking. The dragon listens to no-one's complaints, not ours, and not those of the Lindens either. The Lindens have a small amount of control over this dragon, but the dragon is tempermental.

That is how technology of this sort should be viewed. You are on the forefront of something new. Put up with the earthquakes, storms, and the bucking ride.

Or stay on the ground.