Let's discuss:

WTF??

Anyway, we really should let this wait until after the announcement/move the conversation to a different thread.

OT: I reckon that in it's current state SL has just two purposes: to study how people use this kind of system and what problems occur if you're running it, and to generate money to keep LL going. Personally I feel everything else is secondary to these two things.

That would be lovely if I wasn't paying 50 dollars a month.

Which, if true, is why nobody's told about it. Though, would your rather there was no such thing as SL? It doesn't matter why something's there, as long as it's there.

I might not be inclined to pay so much for it, yes.

And this is my entire complaint. This culling + changes in exture cacheing are really 2 enormous things for both the average player and content providers. We shouldn't HAVE to wait until it goes live. CHanges of this magnitude really should have been put on preview.

Not only that, it's not a *tiny* change, nor is the change to texture caching. It would seem these things have been in the work for a while now. And yet the first we hear of them is that they will be going live in four days?

We don't know that they are huge changes though. It might not be something that necessitates running through preview.

From: Reitsuki Kojima

That would be lovely if I wasn't paying 50 dollars a month.

Many of us have had high hopes for developing our dreams in SL, based on the experience when we first joined, elevated by promises from Linden Labs that led us to stay and invest.

I watch my >$100 per month tier payments flow down the drain month after month, while performance is overall worse than when I joined and made the decision to invest, and promises like HTML on a prim continue to be "Real Soon Now" with no true plan or schedule in sight.

Month by month it becomes ever clearer that the current platform has serious inherent design flaws, but Linden Labs' priorities are on increasing their number of user accounts (including alts, the non-paying, and the rest of us) even though this means further sacrificing the quality of the experience we originally signed up for.

I've finally made the difficult choice and have begun liquidating to eliminate the monthly drain on my personal finances. I will continue to participate, but at this reduced level until I see tangible improvements that meet or exceed the promises made so many months ago.

I sincerely wish the experiment that is SL to succeed and grow into a vital part of the emerging metaverse. It will take something more than the currently visible business model to achieve that dream.

- Jef

Yes, I do, and I also understand why, after hanging out in these forums for a few months, LL wouldn't actually tell us.

Instead, they would slowly spoon feed "solutions" to keep us pacified.

Yep, they sure would. And if you were in their shoes, you might too.

What's your reasoning behind that? I can't see why anyone would intentionally cripple their product (unless, maybe, they were about to release a new version - but unless your users were stupid that'd be a really silly move).

Dead on and well stated this is. Of course the platform is buggy, it's still being very heavily developed and tested. I stopped saying that Second Life is still a Beta project a few months ago because I was running out of forum life points from the beatings. But it is.

Still, that shrinkwrapped, build your own grid, 2.2 version is visible on the horizon. I wonder who'll own the software then?

Why Reitsuki? How will they afford to develop it if we don't pay for it? Plus it provides a lot of fun and entertainment despite the bugs, both socialogical and technological.

Please refer to my first post, Read the first paragraph of what the little bird suggested.

Hmm, I didn't notice that first time I read it. Well, it is possible. I think it's highly unlikely and wouldn't make sense though.

While I agree that LL is sacrificing experience for an increase in users, I think that's because more users puts more stress on the system and it hasn't scaled well. And as I stated before, I believe the attachment culling is going to improve user experience.

I hope you're right about the effect of attachment culling improving user experience. The amount of performance degradation in this past year since I joined is hardly insignificant with the bulk of it occurring in the last quarter, especially since 1.7. I used to have my draw set up around 400 in a good sim and 200 under poor conditions. Now, I can drop to 3-4 fps with draw set to 60 and settings turned low when conditions aren't ideal and nothing to brag about when they're good. I'm not impulsive but I do find myself regularly thinking about tiering down and it's not because I'm bored.

I know of 2 people with annual subscriptions coming due shortly who tiered down to basic over the weekend. I spoke with another friend who I hadn't seen online in ages last night. He commented on the decline in performance since he joined 9 months ago. I can understand that experience needs to be intentionally sacrificed to accomodate more users. However, the reason is not much of a factor when determining the amount I'm willing to pay for "entertainment" which has gotten less enjoyable and more annoying. New land keeps rolling out so I guess this is working for LL but quantity over quality is not working well for me.

So, I've got a question (hypothetical, btw, I'm not suggesting it's a good business model):

Would people rather LL stopped all development on SL1 in order to get SL2 (which, for the case of this argument runs smoothly and loads quickly with twice or more the current users) out as soon as possible rather than continue patching a system that isn't sufficient for the size of it's userbase?

If it took three months? Six? A year?

My answer is yes whatever the time, but then I'm quite happy with the performance as it is for what I do. How about you?