A Long Time Resident of SL Speaks

Dear SL Residents,

I have been a community member in SL since January of 2004. I have seen many changes in SL. There were very few sims when I first arrived, and everyone pretty much knew everyone. The Linden helpers were out in full force and adding all newbies to THEIR calling card list. On any given day, you could call up a Linden helper if you needed anything or just to say HI. It was great fun, trust me!!!

I have seen many changes over these last 3 1/2 years. So many times when a major upgrade was initiated, there were problems and bugs (i.e., log-ins and teleports would not work, texure problems, etc.) With each upgrade that had been initiated, the problems with those upgrades became worse. I have stayed with SL, because generally in the early days they have corrected the problem in a day or two, and most issues fixed within an hour or two.

In the time I have been here however, I have seen less and less communication come from the powers that be. I also feel like many of you do, that our "Linden Friends" do not listen. It does feel like the RL money we spend here each month, week, and day mean nothing, but to be put in the bank of those who are profiting big time from this virtual world.

I have tried to bring people to SL from TSO, only for them to leave shortly after to go back. Now granted, TSO is a really lame place compared to SL, but from what my friends have told me, "At least it is stable, I can log in every day, and do what I want."

This latest upgrade that forced the voice on SL residents feels simply like a ploy for the upper echelon to get more customers with ads talking about RL voice in a virtual world. We as residents were told in the Linden blogs ONLY what they thought we wanted to hear. The residents were told that the voice communication program would be on other servers. However, THOSE servers still have to work in conjuntion with the servers we log onto on any given sim. Thus, the MAJOR problems we have had, simply have to have been caused by the "forced on us" voice communication program.

I am the most unhappy with SL, than I have been in my 3 1/2 years. I also feel as many of you do, that my time and my RL money are more important than dealing with the issues that have come up recently.

The virtual community that we had in SL, is going down, and I feel for the residents who have lost so much of their time and RL dollars in SL. All of the talk of SL being a place to have a RL business, a SL chance for so many, is just not going to happen in the future. The big businesses that SL adminstrators believe would spend money in SL, is just not going to happen. They will see the numbers of residents keep dwindling, like I believe they have been.

I urge everyone to write, not here in this forum, but to the those in charge of SL. Send them an email, let us be heard by others than those that just read this forum. I have spent less and less time on SL in these last few weeks. If we can come together and let those on the top know of our frustrations, maybe the "developers" will quit forcing the residents to deal with bells and whistles, that the majority does not want and focus on what the majority of residents really want.

I believe that just as in a democracy, we as residents who have businesses and/or spend money in SL should have a vote and a say in what we believe. After all, isn't the customer supposed to be first?

Thanks for listening.

Kathy Dayton

P.S. There are other companies working on a virtual world as I write this, SL will not always have the market on Virtual Worlds.

I dont think I could have said it any better Kathy. Bravo gal! The only other advice I may want to mention is the fact that these posts sometimes fall on deaf ears. Let's really make our voices heard by contacting Linden Labs directly!

Linden Lab
945 Battery Street
San Francisco, CA 94111

phone (415) 243-9000
fax (415) 243-9045

Ask for Philip Rosedale

The question is, if this performance disaster has anything to do with adding voice to the grid, would they even tell us?

Im sure not as long as they can avoid it.

Well written commentary Kathy.

i'm pretty sure its due to the new voice servers and interfacing with the rest of the grid. On that note although I'm sticking around SL I just reopened an account to some online games I play and have various underachiever characters is mothballs. Just cause I want to be able to move effortlessly for awhile. MOving in SL feels like im always moving against a galeforce wind even though I have upgraded all my computer to have 4 gigs or ram and a large newer video card and basically have no trouble with bandwidth at all its almost a strugle to move even though its just moving an avatar. I have a yearning to move around in an environment that draws at the speed that I move and that doestn't feel i'm moving against some kind of force just to get across a sim.

I also ordered a newer mmorpg (now that I have upgraded) and signed up for more betas..

I will always be around in SL its great for me when I have a need just to be goofy or create, but any of the activities or combat simes its just to much work to actually interact with the world around me (when I can see it half the time you stand and wait for it to rez and can go make a full course meal and have it still rezzing when you return..)

also the level of scamming taking place is leaving me with new level of unfun at times. I have a hard time standing by watching others get burned and efforts to have stuff dealt with leave you feeling totally powerless. Heck I even got banned from slexchange because i dared to say something about all the obvious rip offs and asked them to do something. Nothing worse then begging someone to do something about a situation via email and on their forums only to have them talk down to you tell you that you are a nasty person and ban you for asking them to do the right thing. Many people have become numb on many issues I hate seeing that and I thank goodness that I am still affected even at the age of 43 when i see people being hurt!

I have only been in SL just over a year not the 3 and 1/2 years of the OP, but her post is just as easily applied to that short period of time.

It seems that the slide into oblivion has been going on for a long time and in recents months has accelerated, which is a sad commentary on Linden Research and their employees.

It would be a fruitless effort to try and place the blame on any one particular thing that LR has done or not done that is the cause, but I would suggest that Philip Rosedale's "Tao of Linden" would be a good place to start.

Might be good for a small research company model, but it "does not scale" to an international service business model where the sucess or failure of the business depends on the goodwill of the customers or clients of that business.

I wonder if Rosedale has yet to crawl out of his parents basement and still thinks that he is playing some kind of game.

Usual disclaimer:It is only my opinion. ymmv.

Since I have been round just as long as the post, I feel that I can comment.

I remember the "good old days" also. I remember when getting 5000 people to log on at any time was considered excessive. Do I wish for those days again? At times. One of the biggest things that I miss is the personal connection I felt with the Lindens. I could call them up, or e-mail them, or do whatever and expect to hear back from them within hours. At the time, I am not sure what I expected to happen in the future. Th future sound great! I couldn't wait for it to come.

Now let's jump 3.5 years into the future. What have I seen? I have seen the advent of the Lindex, the shutting down of GOM. I have seen the end of the Telehub system and direct TP. I have seen the exchange rate go from a guessing game to something that is pretty easy to guess what the value would be next week. I have seen the introduction of the Flexie, the sculptie, voice, and soon to come windlight. Communications have become so much easier with the introduction of commands like llHTTPRequest. Plus there were number of other improvements over this time. Ghosting is pretty much a thing of the past. There were a number of other crashes and other slowdowns that have been fixed. We have been given the open source client, with a promise of open sourcing parts of the servers also.

However, it has not all been good and glowing. We were given a new rendering engine that really hasn't lived up to what was expected. There are still a number of things that we have been waiting for. Mono, a new physics engine, and things like speedtree. I remember the great updates that were 1.5 and 1.7. I remember not being able to log in for days after some of them. Lag has gotten worse, and it seems that even through grid wide crashes have been fixed, having limited access to sims is still a problem.

During this time we have seen an explosion of everything SL. The number of people, the amount of land, the number of businesses, the number of beautiful builds, and even the number of Lindens. Office hours are now a regular thing to see around the grid. But at the same time I have also seen the fall of things like the town halls.

Over the last 3.5 years so much has changed it is sometimes hard to think that this is the same Second Life I started so long ago. I have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly when it comes to the updates of the viewer and sims. We have new features, we have new bugs. We have new fixes for old bugs, we are still waiting for some to be fixed. The personal touch that was there with the Lindens is gone. But with the from 2000 residents to 40,000 logged on at any time, it was going to happen. Is this a better Second Life then when I started? I don't know. Parts have improved, where others have gotten worse. Even if I am not 100% happy with what has changed and what I see today, I still have the hope that SL will be one day greater than it is today.

Very well written Kathy Dayton thank you!!
I still think the only way to get them to listen is to sopt paying them a dime down grade to the free accounts make sure you have no tier never buy from the LindeX just SLX..better prices anyway. Calling them even if ya have to call collect over seas should work but it really does have to be alot of people costing LL alot of money before they will listen at all

Any alternatives to Second Life?
Love
June

Not at the present time. It's, as they say, the only game in town, but for how much longer.

When the next virtual world come along, if it has basically the same features running on a stable base and has decent Customer Service and SL still hasn't got it, all the shiny pretties in the world aren't going to save it.

LL's perfomance in both areas, in just the past year, doesn't bode well for SL.

Only my opinion. ymmv

OMG someone who's been here longer then me!!! O.o I hardly ever see that anymore. greetings fellow veteran. XD

Like a couple others here i have also signed up for many beta games. I've tested building engines too. Hopefully one day we will have something better then SL when it comes to diversity, yet is stable. Some people may blow smoke at what I'm saying now but I've also been here for over 3 years and i see how SL is falling apart slowly every change. It could be much much better. Half life 2 kicks it's ass in video quality, and stability. All that SL has which keeps me here is a rich diverse community, and the fact that i can lend my hand in shaping the world. Still there are many things that interrupt this such as software crashes (server and client). Those of you who are complaining about things now, and have a rez date from this year, don't really know how bad it's really been.

Likely outcome of this =

Frontline staff with a ton of extra work to do answering mails from people instead of working on all the things you all complain about being unanswered.

That is all. Been there, done that, had the 8 hour days without breaks to deal with all the influx of contact - admittedly a lot earlier in my career.

This is not the way.

I empathise I really do but you know what, I'd have been here all that time ago if I had had the resources to be able to. I never even got to play TSO although I played the Sims enough. I also killed plenty of threads in the Sims Resource forum ... if any of you remember a grumpy looking platypus avatar then I have just outed myself.

Really, this is a BUSINESS. And yes, I do pour money and time and love into it, I am not a freeloader.

I think big businesses will have more serious concerns about risk and security - Gartner have warned about the security risks inherant in virtual worlds to RL businesses today.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security/0,1000000189,39288496,00.htm

I'm inclined to fully agree with you. You make some great points Kathy, and you have a gift for gab.

I've been in SL for a few years myself. I'm well aware that it has been a roller coaster up and down for the majority of us. Personally, I've been extremely lucky, and have never lost even a single Linden or piece of inventory.

It seems however that many of you have had more lows than highs (especially recently). I can only tell you that I feel for you. I honestly hope SL can get their act together, and stabilize the grid.

I’m really hoping there is a method to their madness. I do not want to see a degradation of Second Life—I truly want to see it flourish.

I wish it well. I know I can be difficult sometimes (I’m an optimist), but I’m with you guys all the way, and will write up a letter addressed to “the lab.”

The 12th of this month brings me to my first SL birthday. In one year there has been so much obvious change. I remember clearly the concurrent logins being 7-8k at the most. The only thing that stopped me being here earlier was the lack of a credit card (not all over 18's have them).

Back then i marveled at the community, the friendship of many toward one another, the sheer scope of the whole thing. It had its problems with lag then, and to even be allowing 45k of people in, things improved.

The problems started with the advertising campaign, it was welcomed by some, but it did something to the core fabric of second life. I dont mean that the newcomers caused the major problem, alot of talent and some good people have come into second life since that campaign, what really started to screw things up was linden labs themselves. You could see it in every blog entry, every statement, even in world, they started to become drunk with power.

Beforehand they had pride in what they were creating with us all, we all did. Since then they have become greedy and ignorant. There is little doubt in peoples minds why we now have voice. There was never a huge torrent of users wanting this feature. Agreed for the people that want it, its a great feature and second life is about giving the tools people want to be more creative, productive and make the platform that little more rounded.

This though i think is the straw that broke the camels back. It seems to me a feature that linden labs decided they wanted, in their eyes to make second life that little more dominant, to bring more people into second life, big business with lots of cash who cant/wont type to eachother and need to use a microphone.

It pains me to see the true veterans, most of them who would give their right arm to teach you how to build something, script something, help you with the pitfalls of starting your own business, these people are now saying they have or are losing faith in something which was once a shared dream.

Linden labs dont read these posts im sure, but one thing i do know, they are failing us now, and failing us bigtime, the death knell now is another platform of similar scope or more taking a large chunk of the userbase, and sadly for linden labs and this community i dont think we have much longer to wait.

Please fix second life before the true spirit of the world is lost, and veterans.....thankyou so much for what you created in the past, it allowed the younger av's amongst us to share the dream and see all your wonderful creations, lets just hope we can show you our creations and dreams in the future.

I think LL do read these posts ... but you are right. There are less and less people willing to help others out. I do miss that aspect of things, I help people all the time and usually the outcome is not even a thank you.

Meh. It's worth it for the one person you can see 'get it'. Maybe that 1,000,000 sun was the marker ... I too remember 'OMG there's SIX THOUSAND people on here!!!!'

haha o yes.......9k now in second life.........OMG they roared, good times, and more to come i hope, but it wont be linden labs who provide that solid framework, it will be the community, the veterans that keep it together.....please keep around for our sakes, you were the pioneers, the pilgrims and the future

I have to agree. Pulling out voice right now would be like putting your foot into the pool and realizing how cold the water is, then pulling it back out and forget about it. What would that accomplish? We would never learn to swim.

Of course i may not like some of the things that came with voice chat, but it's clear to me that LL doesn't care what we want. I do like the voice chat part, but the revamp of the chat window horrifies me beyond mortal comprehension.

OKay,
I havent been around for more then 6 months but this is a excellent thread for a change. It is still kinda bitching at LL for the current issues but yeah, it's what needs to be done.

I came to Sl about 6 months ago to have a break from VBS1 development. Now, VBS is a military combat simulator for the serious games market and is used by the USMC and ADF besides others to train staff, soldiers etc.

Anyway, at that time SL was covered quite a lot in the media over here and I thought this could be a interesting change to scenario design and add-on creation in VBS.

In the last 6 months I had some good and some bad times in SL. Took me ages to get prims into my head compared to 3DSM ro Oxygen and plain texture apply over gizmo mapping. Got ripped off by sim owners we build for, had the one or other nice SL relation and moved from a little plaza owner to a sim owner. The last 3 months I have spend a lot of time into the design of our sim (Paradise Heights AG) to shape it and make it work as we had in mind. And I'm very pleased with the outcome. Actually so pleased that I play with the idea of getting another sim docked very soon to extend PH past of what it is now.

Though recent events make me re-think this idea. Not only because I recently got VBS2 (www.vbs2.com) from the creators and I do some scenario design again at the moment for the ADF but also the current situation makes me wonder what will be in 2-3 months.

So I think LL really needs to hear their residents or more will soon do what I have done and actually downgrade their "playing" AV to a basic account just to make a point. And I'm also kind of sick hearing every day of the "no liability" frase that people throw around when it is about the responsibility LL as service provider has to their customers. This might hold up in Cali or Texas but sure wont hold up in other courts and I believe sooner or later some people who have invested some "real large" ammounts into SL will let LL feel this too. Or even a collective lawsuit by it's residents will wake them up.

Whatever, somethings have to change or LL wont prevail. As mentioned before other game developers don't sleep and got their own engines too and sooner or later someone else will jump on this market with a simular world that runs better. Only hope it's not EA...LOL.

Thanks for stating this so clearly, Kathy.

First Life. No matter how good SL is, it still Second life.

The OP has made a very poignant statement. When I arrived 8 months ago, I had no knowledge of SL. After i committed to pPremium a week later, I started reading all the hype articles and almost all focused exclusively on the profit angle. No offense to Ansche and the few others , but I was getting sick of seeing their names in every article. Inworld seemed friendlier too for some reason. Forum complaints were usually about technical issues, or some social mishap. Now beyond the increase in technical issues, what are the biggest explosive topics. Money. people being ripedoff, people thinking they've been ripped off, people whining they haven't become millionaires after their first week. As LL has obviously shifted it's focus on profit and commercial advancement, that has become the focus of many members, especially newer ones it seems. It's obvious that Linden has changed the direction SL is headed on, which may be a natural evolution as some think, but in my opinion they are not well equipped , at least at this point, to guide it, both from a business or technical standpoint.

From the other perspective: I just joined and have found many many people willing to take the time to help me. I have never meet anyone named Linden, and didn't even know there were people called Lindens (just money called lindens). And by the way, what is this advertising thing you speak of? Even after joining Second Life and having it at the forefront of my mind, I haven't seen anything anywhere mentioning Second Life (except for the articles mentioned in the forums). Is it the media articles that people mean by advertising? Did LL pay reporters to write about it? Actually, I came to Second Life after reading about it in that Wiki thingie. Did they write that article in Wiki? That's frowned upon.

Oh, and I did try asking real questions in the forum (calling cards? saving pictures to your hard drive that you have stuck in SL?), and/or tried to revive older threads about great places to see in SL.

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