I am going to step on toes....

This post is a bit extremist, so just take it as an opinion/suggestion, and nothing more.

I was being shot at by a newbie in an area with push limitation. He wanted to know why his gun wasn't killing me. I told him that SL wasn't a shooting game, and this totally confused him. He DIDN'T KNOW that you aren't supposed to shoot people in SL.

Time to wake up, Lindens. Having a TOS and Community Standards simply isn't good enough. No one is forced to read them. How hard would it be to have some simple pointers pop up when a new resident starts SL for the first time? Something along the lines of "Hey, SL is not a shooting game. If you get free weapons, ask for directions to a combat area, don't just shoot anyone walking around."

Since it's fairly obvious that 75% of all new residents are underage, it's also fair to assume they don't have the mental capacity to understand that MMO != FPS. The signup process is developed to *encourage* users to get on SL as fast as possible without paying any attention whatsoever to any TOS or Community Standards.

My suggestion is to simply make any sort of weaponry ILLEGAL in SL, regardless of purpose, push-scripted or not. No combat sims, no "safe" weapons, hell, don't even allow simple decorations that look like weapons. Yes, I understand the economic impact, the impracticality of forcing everyone to delete their weapons, etc. The point is, SL is no longer a mature game, and majority of users are not capable of handling it in a mature way. Even though it's the fault of the Lindens, I say it's time to have our rights taken away and to have unfair restrictions placed upon us, because SL is simply an immature realm full of immature people.

As the original poster said, welcome to 2006.

Actually, I disagree with that figure. I think the number of underage residents is probably closer to the 10-20% mark -- and some of them have been here since before 6/6/06. I could be wrong, but I'd almost guarantee your 75% number is wrong.


So how would you dictate to builders what their objects look like? If you want to get technical, a car can be a weapon. So can a plane or helicopter. I don't think the Lindens want to start down the slippery slope of dictating what we can and cannot build. It will become very vague and very slippery very quickly.

It would be much easier (comparatively) to allow residents to turn OFF push, so that being shot is purely a matter of individual choice. In fact, make OFF the default toggle on new avatars and if you want to be pushed by weapons you have to Edit -> Preferences to turn it back on. That would go farther in making a statement as to what the Lindens see as the nature of SL than outlawing prims that look like guns.