Is all this normal for an online game/world

I don't have a lot of experience with online games/worlds like SL but after a couple of months experience I have to ask:

- is it normal for such games/worlds to be rushing out every week half-baked ill-thought-out buggy changes to the interface that actually make the game/world harder to use and enjoy?

- is this level of downtime while the managers fix said bugs and repair said "features" normal as well?

Maybe I am just unlucky but I do seem to spend a fair proportion of available time unable to log into this extremely addictive game/world...and when I do I seem to spend a lot jumping up and hitting the ceiling when I want to chat.

Well Mr. Linden himself wants 1,000,000 user LOL.
Cough, sputter, choke, on 9000....

yeah.. one MILLION plus...

Yes this is normal for online worlds, SL is not as bad as others about down times. but as everyone can see SL is getting worse about it.

Is it for a game on the cutting edge of virtual reality. Systems and services that provide them haven't been done before, they will come into unforeseen circumstances often. It's somthing to get used to.

People will grief, as if that will change the situation. LL wants downtime as much as you want a hole in the head. These things are unavoidable, and enivitable.

NO:

What you are experiencing here in SL is not typical of major on-line games.

Fact is that SL is the worst performing major on-line game. No other game comes close to such poor peformance and downtime.

SL is very good compaired to others, You can't compair SL to guildwars sorry.

while I will defend you about shut down times, when FFXI, Lineage 2, and WOW have to shut down, its for a day or so, depends, but keep in mind those 3 games are boasting seriously heavir user traffic

now take sl, down 3 hours here or there, but it's the frequency which causes the uproad

Then leave.

Exscuse me but...what game?
I don't see a "level bar" over my head or anyone elses?
I don't see hordes of MOBS randomly roaming the open fields for you and I to team up and go kill for "Phat lewts".

SL isn't really "A game" even though a lot of people make the mistake of calling it such simply because it is a virtual platform with similiaries akin to the MMO genre games out these days.

If you come to SL thinking you're signing onto a "gaming platform" then you've already set your self up for dissapointment.

That's just my 2 cents.

It is aparent that posters on this thread speak not from recent experience.

you sound like the creepy fat guy whos convinced wrestlings still real and not just gymnastics

No, it's not normal.

But it has been especially bad lately; it wasn't this way when I first joined, and not for a long, long time afterwards.

Then they started doing updates every week, which meant a lot of down time right there. And I think the large numbers of people now on are causing growing pains.

Either that, or the many updates keep having things in them that cause huge problems when large numbers get on.

But no, I have never played another online game that has these kinds of problems so much. Hopefully things will get better.

coco

Is that what you heard? Maybe you should take a look in the mirror bub.

It is also apparent that some posters on this thread love nothing more than to argue, looking for arguments where non-exists.

A personal attack to change the topic perhaps? Assumption about the experience of others is ignornace. That is not the topic on hand.

The topic on hand is if Secondlife goes down more then other online multiplayer games. The answer is, of course it does, it's cutting edge.

Yes very true, but the difference is SL is like 99% user created content. what will cause more issues, then the MMORPGS that are 100% company created content. like Anarchy-Online, SWG, L2, EQ2, WoW, and so on.

SL does very good for what its got to support all of the stuff in world.

Ummm That was not a personal attack.

A hypothetical example of a personal attack would be "Drake, it is apparent from your many postings tonight that you are a jerk"

I was thinking that, too.

oooh that was sharp,

the fact is you're in a virtual reality, your actions are controlled through a input device, and have no footprint to leave in the real world aside from monatary value, you're not bound by the laws of real life, be they physics, biology, or environmental, and yet you claim it's as real as if you step out the door

secondlife if a instant messenger at a different level, it;s a game, the fact I can shoot you and you can laugh about it should tell you it, it's an open ended game is all, you create what you wish with it

etch-e-sketch will let you create anything your possible to with lines, is that more than a childs toy?

Personal as in making an assumption of others is in fact an attack on the state of mind of others. But thanks for the semantics lesson.

I appreciate that SL may be inherently more buggy due to the wider freedom its gives people to write their own scripts and thus have more downtime, but not having played any of the other major online games (or entered any of the other major worlds if you prefer) I have no basis for comparison.

What really makes me wonder is if it's wise for the Lindens to be rushing out every week new changes without adequate testing. Some of the recent ones - like the snapshot function and the changes to the enter key - feel like changes that could only have been designed by someone who never actually enters SL.

And isn't rushing out new changes constantly without testing, aside from the poor design of some of those changes, just likely to introduce more bugs, more downtime etc etc?

Then perhaps I should be more precise:

I have been a hard-core gamer for many years,playing online-games only. I have messed around with many on-line games and I have maxxed leveled several characters in each of the following games:

Diablo
Diablo II
Earth and Beyond
Star Wars Galaxies (non-Jedi)
Everquest II
WOW

Of these games Not One comes anywhere close to the poor game play peformance and downtime of SL

i really find it funny the things some people will citch about and bite each other heads off for.

ok lets start at the beggining. yes second life is down for maintenance more often than most big titles, may i remind people that while SL is imensly popular it is not a big title, it is also not a tried and tested form of program like ragnarok or some other MMOG.

SL is a small and new game that is seeing 3 hours of downtime a week, not good but not bad.

now lets take into a account that this MMOG has its own real world ecanomics, it is try that down time costs everyone L$ but lets ask ourselves what would happen if a bug or expliot was not promptly dealt with (via putting the grid down and fixing it)? we would have this eccanomic system fail utterly for people who use bugs and exploits for profit.

should linden wait around for their monthly update to fix this or jump on it as soon as it is found? i'll take my weekly 3 hours of downtime so i dont loose a 3kL$ object because it was placed and sent to my lost and found folder but never arrived (accually happened just before they took the grid down but with a much less expensive item).

now if linden labs ever gets SL to a point of stability again, i hope they rethink their updates and test the damn things a bit first!

Versus other games? There are games that have a downtime of 5 hours every week at exactly the same time whether or not there is an update. On days with an update it might be down a little longer if there are problems. These games also have additional downtime in the event of troubles.

As for SL's downtime? It's more than the typical MMOG, however, given what SL is I am very surprised that they don't have MORE downtime than they currently do.

As for time between updates? Some of the things added are urgent and important. I would rather have less bugs, but having been a official tester elsewhere and exposed to the update process, the problems LL encounters is actually par for the course.

Now how can all this be par for the course? It's because unlike regular MMOGs, LL's content is never static. Every little object inside the world can be changed. In WoW, when you travel to a dungeon instance every rock, tree, and fence you encounter along the way will be exactly where they were yesterday, last week, a month ago, a year ago. Not the case in SL where an entire area can be different 10 minutes from now.

It's the extreme diversity of content and the extreme possibilities that create all the possible places things can go wrong.

>

there's that old saying ...

if it aint broke, then dont fix it ...

in the short time ive been here
it seems to me SL broke it
and they cant fix it




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