Stuff getting returned

Since the last update, which I understood was designed to remedy certain issues regarding objects being returned I have noticed, um, 'issues regarding objects being returned'.

On several occasions I have had objects returned when closing the edit window after editing - somewhat vexing when two thirds of a build vanishes and you have to a) find it in inventory, b) spend ages realigning it with the remaining third...

Objects are being returned to me from locations they simply were not in. Today a boat was returned to me from a land-locked parcel in a sim I haven't visited since long before I originally acquired said boat. The boat in question was in fact moored in a completely different sim and wasn't returned by the land owner - because I happen to own that sim, and was off-line when it was returned anyway!

Objects are being returned from my property while I'm off line.

Objects that are being returned are proving to be completely unlinked on re-rez, despite being linked previously.

In addition I have noticed that inventory searches are glacially slow - and a number of recent purchases simply haven't been delivered, or have only been partially delivered - like instructions but no product!

Prior to the update I had encountered very few, if any, return or inventory problems. Since the update it's become a daily occurence.

I was wondering if others are suffering these things, or similar? And if anyone has any idea what's going on?

I've seen this, just a bit - things returned from places they had a right to be and had, in fact been for weeks. A few things mysteriously disappeared - a poster was gone yesterday, and never came back to me; a sailboat disappeared but was in my inventory. It's been so few things I just didn't know if it was me or.... but since you bring itup I know it wasn't me.

I wonder if something is up with the asset server, its taking me a long time to login again today, it was ok this morning, but was this slow last night. Perhaps all these new users is catching up with them, 2,800 online at 2pm sl time but 58,000 inventories to manage

The problem continues - I haven't logged in since Sunday, when I finally got so fed up with the login issues (sticking at 'second life may appear frozen' well over 10 minutes and Windows telling me the application is not responding, I'd say it IS frozen!) that, after several tries, restarting, uninstalling, reinstalling, several more tries, being told by the server I needed an update, allowing it to download and install the version I was already using (!) and STILL not being able to get in, I got so fed up that I simply haven't bothered since - what's the POINT?

However, each day since (Monday and Tuesday thus far), I have received an eMail notification that at least one object that resides on my property, in my sim and has done for weeks, has been returned to me from a location I have not even heard of before!

This is ridiculous. CLEARLY there is some sort of serious problem with the grid, probably the asset server as usual, that is failing to keep accurate track of customer's possessions, returning items unnecessarily and giving inaccurate locations.

Equally clearly this issue, which has been evident since last week, is NOT being remedied.

I'm becoming fed up with LL's manifest inability to deliver what they advertise and charge highly for. I'm becoming fed up with problems such as Sunday's log in fiasco. I am in short becoming fed up, not with SL as such, but with the company which runs it.


The whole system is clearly right on the edge, meanwhile LL continues to advertise the system and attract new customers (interestingly charging them nothing, which is probably as well, but what about those of us who ARE paying?) which is simply excerbating the problem further...

If things continue in this fashion SL is going to slowly fall apart. Personally I have little faith in LL's ability to get their act together and concentrate their efforts on getting the infrastructure they have working properly BEFORE adding any more gizmos and gimicks. I've been asking them to do that since shortly after I joined, when I started to realise how flaky the whole system was, and can't see a great improvement.

It so happens that today is Tier Day for me. Fair enough. I'll cough up one more time. But if I don't see a distinct improvement over the next month then LL might like to consider how many 'Free Account' customers paying $0 into their coffers have contributed to me and my $204.95 walking...

I'm not continuing to pay for something that doesn't work properly!

Expect it to get worse; I'd explain why but it wouldn't really be of much use.

/agreed /signed

... and another $280 plus customer here having the exact same thoughts... lot of revenue going into LL... but what's coming out? I'll leave that answer blank =P

More to the point, WHY overload an already shaky system by recruiting thousands of new 'customers' by handing out free accounts?

Surely anyone with a room temperature IQ could anticipate that this might just push the system over the edge?
Surely anyone with a room temperature IQ could anticipate that this might just push paying customers over the edge?

This is what is so depressing about SL - the people running things just don't seem to be capable of visualising the obvious outcome of their 'brilliant' ideas. OR learning from previous mistakes.

Why?

Just plain stupid?
Too many 'yes men'?
Pressure to make the numbers look good in order to maximise the price when they sell out?

Ah, who cares? Things are as they are, and I for one have had enough. I come here to relax and enjoy myself, and that just isn't happening.

To the problem I had of "objects" showing up in my object list in "about land" hundreds of them...belonging to others...in far away sims...but I clicked return anyway because it was affecting my prim count...

However...those items never were returned to the folks I sent them too...I know cuz they were on line and I asked 'em!

Strange things are happening in my second life...I still love this game...but I wonder if LL has never heard the famous line: Under promise and Over deliver. They do seem to have it backwards.

Among this, there have been a few posts about why things are slow as they have been.

However, there is some stupid "feature" in place now...
I'm not sure for how long...
But it goes something like this (and it was a Message of the Day at one point):

When a parcels limit is breached, by some stretch or another, the older prims in said parcel will be returned.

I've heard of someone's home getting returned because a neigbor breached the limit. And also, note how the ancient boat you mention was returned out of the blue.

I'm not sure I understand in full what that return system is supposed to acheive by deleting things that have been there retroactivly compared to something rezed that should have been allowed by limits in the first place.

Maybe this is a result of people "losing" prims and objects on other's lands... as far as I know, if you try to drag a prim in Edit mode to a full parcel, it wont stop you, same goes for a physical object simply rolling into another parcel.

This, should however, be remedied. I can see complex greifing coming from some sadistic resident.

Well, at least they aren't categorically denying it any longer, that's a step in the right direction... I think.

Nice theory, but I don't see how it applies to my sim with over 5000 unused prims...

I too have had my land showing large numbers of 'alien' prims at times, as many as 82 belonging to one person. Searching the area (with scripted gadgets) has revealed NO unaccounted objects. The 'owner' professes no knowlege of my sim, and doesn't receive the 'objects' when I return them.

Basically the system is screwed. The LL solution - add more (non-paying) members - doesn't seem to be working too well either...

Could it be that something just a tiny bit more imaginative is required? Like finding and rectifying the root cause of these problems?

No. Sorry. Stupid idea. Can't think what made me consider it...

It looks as if perhaps server version 1.6.13 didn't quite do as it was supposed to. That is, depending on what "improved stability of object returns from parcel" was intended to mean. It could be that "stability" means continuing to count objects returned from parcels as still being on those parcels, which could be a possible meaning of "stability" in the sense of "no matter how closely I study it, no matter how I take it apart, no matter how I break it down, it remains consistent".

I wish you were here to see it.

I've had this happen to me...twice. I am the one getting IMs from people I don't know, telling me that I have 100+ prims on their land. Oo

I have yet to get anything when they hit return...

When I bought some land about a week ago there were 500+ prims on the lot but I couldn't see any of them. It was pitch dark though, and I ended up bumping into one or two ramps, but that was it. So I hit return and sure enough, they left, but I've no idea what actually happened to them or if most of them even existed. Also, none of them belonged to the land's previous owner.

Ah, that must be why...pieces of my house just disappear. These are long-standing items, though. Stuff that has been sitting on my land since Feb or March. Utter madness, I say.

The situation isn't getting better.

Last night I had to log in to add a new tennant to my land management group. OK, mistake. After getting him set up and settled in I went to my 'office' and thinking 'well, as I'm here...' put in some lights and an online status device.

The online status device simply vanished after about 30 seconds, no message, no fiddling by me, just there one moment, gone the next! Checked inventory, not in lost and found, not in trash, not in it's original location. Did an inventory search (went away, made coffee, wrote autobiography, came back, inventory still downloading...) nothing!

Then I noticed that a picture placed on the wall last week is gone... Also not in inventory and no announcement received.
I wonder how many thousands od L$ worth of my stuff has gone missing thus far?
This really is becoming intolerable.

It looks very much as if the asset server has completely flipped.

Still it's good to see the announcements that LL realise there is a serious problem and have correcting it in hand...

Ummm, sorry, about that. Delusions brought about by brain malfunction caused by being fed up to the back teeth with this crap!

The Lindens don't regularly read the forums or, seemingly [email]suppport@secondlife.com[/email]. Posting in Hotline to Linden seems to get your post at least scanned by someone for posting violations although not necessarily answered.

I even saw Lee Linden suggesting - incorrectly for about the 50th time - in Technical Issues that a firewall or WiFi or cache clearing was the root of the player's problem yesterday because SL is "not like other MMOGs". I gather he must mean "does not work reliably and getting worse" as "not like" but that is just my conjecture.

The state of SL operation for any player I have spoken to about the matter is as bad as you indicate. Unfortunately, the newest ToS you had to speciously "sign" said something like Lily Tomlin's old "we're the phone company, we don't care, we don't have to" bit from "Laugh-In" with about the same tone.

My interpretation of the myriad postings over the last few months seem to show that whereas mail to [email]philip@secondlife.com[/email] or telephone calls to LL used to at least get attention they now seem to get brushed off as often as not. Even tier level revenues of 1-2 sims don't seem to draw LL interest any longer, so "voting with your wallet" likely won't make much of an impact.

Indeed, it appears to me that unless you either a) are the one or two largest revenue sources or b) have a high profile marketing "partnership" with LL you'll have a vary hard time getting LL to speak with you in a substantive manner. You could 1) simply walk away which won't do much to affect change or 2) engage in a tedious, expensive lawsuit against LL (which you have explicitly agreed not to, so you'd have to challenge the legality of the ToS which is harder still). If you are looking to reduce your personal level of disappointment I recommend (1) if you are looking to avoid a "Pickett's Charge" I recommend against (2). Solutions (a) or (b) are indeed expensive and although will get you listened to may not have much effect as I don't believe LL is fundamentally capable of improving the reliability of SL1. So that pretty much points to (1) as the optimal course.

In case any one thinks the opinion expressed above is mere bitter raging against the machine by some joker who bought into the promise for a couple of hundred bucks a few years ago, you may well be right. You have only my word for it that if I wanted to, I could employ (a) or (b) in order to "be the change", but to my view that would be akin to finding that my new CD player was flakey and thus buying 100,000 more so that I could get the attention of the manufacturer. There is also option c) which would require me to write a set of theses and nail them to the front door of Linden Lab, but that has only seemed to work in once in the last 500 years or so.

*sigh*

There is one further possible solution.

That LL sells out and is taken over by an organisation which has a clue...

Whether anyone who has a clue would actually be interested in clearing up this mess and putting it on it's feet is another matter alltogether of course.

It's so depressing though. Something as unique and full of potential as SL being run into the ground by people who seem to have run out of steam and are just going through the motions to try and keep the money rolling in.

Ah well, hopefully somewhere out there someone else is putting together something smilar and won't make the same mistakes.

Too bad I don't get old Lindens I've spent returned back to me..

Now THAT would be a bug worth seeing!