Seriously, you muppets want money for this?

Are you kidding me?

I joined SL in 2006 and while it wasn't great it wasn't the shambles it is now. All these forums and websites and JIRA's and blogs dedicated to feedback. Why? Something gets fixed and another three things get broken or something which wasn't an issue before suddenly becomes massively irritating. LL have already proven that, while they love paying lip-service to what people say, they aren't really interested in fixing anything. Roadmaps and wish-lists and all that other vacuous nonsense we're fed; it means nothing. The real roadmap is one we as ordinary users will never get to see.

Not to sound ungrateful or anything but I don't actually care that some developer somewhere is delighted because one of his poxy scripts runs a billionth of a millisecond faster. I don't claim to speak for anyone but for me but the things that matter in SL are interaction, movement, entertainment and fun. The things I've enjoyed doing, with few exceptions, have remained pretty much unchanged over the past three years. I can still skydive, buy stuff, dance, drive, sail, fly and wander around. Lately I even started putting RL money in. I got some land and put in a TV and other stuff. I even bought a few boats (Surfwidow Beaumonts' and Trudeaus' boats rock by the way).

The question I've been asking myself lately is this: "Am I getting value for money from SL"? From the residents I share SL with and from whom I've purchased things that answer is a resounding Yes. There are some fantastically talented people in SL who build everything from houses to boats to televisions and radios. Even when they aren't building the residents inworld are generous, smart, willing to help and the one thing that keeps me coming back.
From SL I'd have to say the answer, putting money in or not, has to be a no. It works just the same as it did three years ago. The issues I experience and which irritate the hell out of me are the same. Quite what it is I get in return for my L$1750 per week tier over having a free account is something I can't quite figure out.

So to hell with it, and paying RL money for something which hardly works regardless of whether you pay or not. I'm going back to how I used to be and putting no more RL cash into SL until it sorts itself out. If this is the best a billion dollar company can do then, frankly, they don't need new money; they need new people! The Great OS Swindle recently executed by LL makes my point for me. People were conned out of tens of thousands of real-world dollars because of some sharp marketing and not so well hidden agendas. The whole thing felt less like social networking and more like social engineering.

They want a roadmap for the future of SL. Here's mine, in no particular order of importance.

1. Stop developing, OK. We don't need more development. We need a grid that works most of the time with features that can be used reliably. Use whatever talent you have at hand to fix broken TP's, close-your-eyes-and-pray sim crossings, vanishing inventory and group chat that responds to some arbitrary but hidden black magic.

2. A search that returns relevant replies would be nice too. I don't care how long the search took to complete if the results are unrelated keyword spam gibberish.

3. Lose the traffic rankings. They're a joke. Very often the malls and sims which make it to the top of the rankings are lagged out and unusable because of the very bots which got them there in the first place.

4. Get rid of campers and bots. While I can't quantify the load they place on servers and network infrastructure it *is* there and is sure as hell makes a difference. Again, I don't claim to speak for anyone else but if someone needs an army of bots to keep their numbers up then their sim is worthless anyway. Shoot it in the head and free up valuable resources we can use for our enjoyment. So no-one came to your Penguin-themed mall that was your dream? Big deal. It won't be missed. Suck it up, move on and quit using bots.

5. Stop arbitrarily logging thousands of people out at once. LL has no idea what any of these people are doing. They could be in competitions, in the middle of buying something, having a difficult or profound conversation with someone (yes LL, despite your best efforts these things do still happen) so the least you can do is provide some warning before you pull the loud handle with such glee.

6. If you're not going to listen to people or can't do anything about their complaints then please stop pretending. A small fortune in tracking software and trendy Web 2.0 blog propaganda could be saved.

7. If you're going to do something can I politely suggest you go ahead and just do it and let us know when it's working? We don't need weeks and months of self-congratulatory posts about how the interlinks between data centres are going to be improved. Improve them, see if the changes are any better then step forward for the applause. A lot of the time you're fixing something you didn't do right in the first place or putting something in place which should have been there from the start. This isn't a glee club or a holiday camp. You aren't employed to post on blogs and be a serial meeting attender. Try going ahead and fixing some of the things which haven't worked properly in three years (or longer) before expecting us to prostrate ourselves on the floor because you deigned to log in.

That's about it.

</rant>

So..

Were you born in 1978?

And who are you calling a muppet?

I know you are, but what am i?!

Very well said Fiona

SL is barely profitable according to what they last said. Not even a multi-million dollar company let alone a billion dollar company (profit wise). Only reason they had money to get to this point was from investors that dumped about 30million to them.

Other than that I don't disagree much. I have been around since 2005 and seen lag get worst every year and computer requirements get heavier. If LL wants to make this a business, education and general entertainment platform they need to make it work on netbooks and other lowend systems that most educators, business's and the general public uses and will be using (netbooks are the next big thing). They are missing their target audience.

very good rant!

I was, actually RL, born in 1978...what's your problem with that year? And Fiona was calling LL managers muppets, not anyone else. If you were responsible for the actions of Linden then we'd expect a better answer. I'm guessing you're not so maybe you'd like to re-read the post with the intention it was given or maybe just leave it alone as your comments aren't adding any value.

I recently have started renting and I'm thinking of pulling the plug too. I can't even get in at the moment, I get logged out every few tps and its highly frustrating. Lets hope someone of value might read this all :I

Darling

The lag is getting worse?

As long as you keep your computer up to the recommended requirements or near, lag is not getting worse. I definitely feel lag is better since 2003, 2004, 2005, through today 2009.

it was a jab at putting numbers in your name.


And what value are adding in your post?


OH HAI this must be the comments that added value to the thread....right?

Rants are posted daily screaming at LL over issues in SL. Search the forums and see that the OP </rant> in one form and another, has already been posted here ad nauseam.

So basically....If you hate it so much. Log out a few months and come back and measure the difference if any at all. If it is still not to your liking, CANCEL.

im laughing

Ok.. So i have been here in SL for a lil over a year and its either they are doing maintenance or we have to download the newer and better viewer... but as I sit here and watch myself not being able to get logged into SL for the 5th time today i ask myself when the hell is SL actually gonna get better... Ive read these posts about you guys being here years and its gotten worse every year.. Ive been here a year and can hardly stand it...

LL you keep saying your making SL better... Can you please do it.. To me its just a fun virtual yahoo and I would like to wak across my island within 5 minutes not 50... thanks so much and good luck my fellow Avies *hugs*...

My problem is I WANT to play but can't. I am up to speed with everything and would love to log in but I can't. I don't want to feed more money into something I can't even use. IF you're happy to pay for something you can't use that's fine, I don't care about your game lol.

In fact no writings here care about how lovely things are for you, this is about wanting to play and not being able to. If you don't like this thread and OP rants then you have the same choice.

Darling

No one said they hated SL. That's just the point but I get the feeling you would rather tangle with people and draw them into a semantic side argument about adding value to posts so I'll let you go on ignoring the points I made about improving SL.

SL needs to improve like they keep saying they are going to do.. right now log ins r dead.. people r dropping like flies off sl and their response on the staus page is...

In world Services Unreliable:
Today, January 18, 2009, 2 minutes ago | Status Desk
Most In world services are at reduced functionality at the moment. Please avoid L$ transactions or handling valuable (no-copy) assets until we post an ALL-CLEAR. Regettably, our ability to broadcast a warning in world is also disabled. Please let your friends know if you’re logged in.


my response NO WAY??? SL... unreliable... SHOCKER

I first joined SL in 04/04 then left for 2 years in 2006... came back last August

The bottom line is LL doesn't give a rat's ass about us, the customers. They never have and they never will. They will never learn that if something isn't broken you don't fix it. Hell they won't even fix bugs that were reported in 2004.

They will continue to add unnecessary bells and whistles and jack prices until such time as only the very rich can afford to be in SL... which it is pretty much that way now anyway.

Upshot is we can either grin (or grind) and try to bear it or just give up completely and tell LL just where to stick it.

In the meantime I will continue to try to log in as I have been doing constantly for the past hour since they seem to take great joy in booting me out everytime something goes wrong without any kind of warning.


Geez... they even have to screw up the first post I've made in years.... way to go LL. Had to edit my post to fix YOUR screwups.

Oh and btw... I've watch the number inworld for the past hour steadily drop from over 65,000 inworld to 34,969 currently. That's a lot of people really ticked off right now.

Now down to 33,926 in 2 minutes....

/me grabs a beer and watches to show.


SL is going through another hiccup phase and that's fine with me. I have seen SL much worse than this. After many months of seeing SL personally improve, I am not so hot-headed anymore because I try to keep informed i.e. by learning how SL actually works and keeping up with their blog. No other company has come forward with a system like this and until someone else can do it better, I just stand back and let LL do what they've got to do.

Concurrent user logins are at an all time high. It is easy to dismiss this as bots (and in the old days, campers) but I happen to think the SL is not losing it's popularity and more and more people are getting into it. Yes, some of you want your little utopian worlds to be up 100% of the time with no other traffic but you're own, but like RL, SL is getting crowded. Either we can all learn to have some patience and make room, or go do something else.

Same old crap whether it's WAR, WoW, LOtRO, SL - same people saying the same thing,

"OMGWTF (INSERT COMPANY NAME HERE) DOES NOT WANTZ OURZ MONIES. DEY HATEZ UZ!!1!!"

Relax people and let the professionals handle it. Do you think they got to where they are by choosing to frack over their customers? No. Did you think SL was going to stay at a comfortable 20-30K user concurrency? No. So seriously relax and let things grow and expand and let what is new technology take its course. This is the first time in known human history that we've had a visual virtual worlds platform. Let's try not to take it for granted, k?

*rolls eyes*


Things growing and expanding too fast is what caused all the problems in the first place. Push push push is what LL has been doing for years and you tell us to relax and not take it for granted??? ROFLMAO!!!!!


Thanks have to go out to the FIC as well since they were the main ones pushing for things that SL was not ready for.

But then what do I know since I'm not a programmer... just some average working stiff that owned a pc shop before Katrina and Rita wiped it out.

Oh and total inworld is now down to 32,792... dropping lies flies....and worse than 1.7 ever was. LOL

Long posts hurt my eyes

My computer is far and away above the required mins and setup better than most being I have a second hard drive running the swap file/virtual memory and SL cache file.

We must not be playing the same SL. In 2005 I could walk across a sim with 30 people in it dancing away in a club with a computer 1/4 the speed and internet connect 1/5th as fast. It took about 10 seconds to load. No where near that today.

HEAR!! HEAR!! This is definately worth repeating.

January 3rd: Logins disabled and/or inworld problems, 14:45 PST, 30 mins

January 4th: Logins disabled and/or inworld problems, 12:15 PST, 4 hours

Janury 5th: Logins disabled and/or inworld problems, 14:30 PST, 30 mins

January 6th: 400 regions down, 09:15 PST, 30 mins

January 6th: Logins disabled and/or inworld problems, 10:30 PST, 30 mins

January 6th: Logins disabled and/or inworld problems, 16:00 PST 15 mins

January 7th: Logins disabled and/or inworld problems, 14:15 PST, 45 mins

January 8th: Logins disabled and/or inworld problems, 13:30 PST, 30 mins

January 10th: Logins disabled and/or inworld problems, 14:00 PST, 1 hour

January 11th: Logins disabled and/or inworld problems, 11:00 PST 3 hours

January 13th: Logins disabled and/or inworld problems, 13:15 PST 30 mins

January 14th: Logins disabled and/or inworld problems, 14:00 PST 1 hour

January 15th: Logins disabled and/or inworld problems, 13:00 PST 45 mins

January 16th: Logins disabled and/or inworld problems, 11:45 PST 10 mins

January 16th: Logins disabled and/or inworld problems, 16:00 PST, 1hour 15 mins

January 17th: Logins disabled and/or inworld problems 15:00 PST, 3 hours

January 18th: Logins disabled and/or inworld problems, 09:15 PST, 7 hours


What is going on there, LL??
Are you serious you want me to pay >50 US-$ each month for your virtual lands, just to read entries like that from above in your status page?
Are you seroius you want me to pay that money in order to "own some land", that I even cannot enter due to "login restricted" and other funny annoyances?

Stop upgrading servers with always new bling-bling-features, stop adding new features to the viewer twice a month and finally start working for grid stability.
And THEN, if you have a stable grid, put some spice and glamour in it.

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!, and nobody really expects to pay money for disabled logins and serious inworld problems.

*Looks at your join date*

OK. Come back in three years when nothing has improved and tell us the still unresolved issues are "just a hiccup" and that it's "fine by you".

To be honest that wasn't even the main point of what I was trying to say. My point is that SL is unchanged whether or not I pay for land and things in-world. The issues are still there. Paying US$50 per month doesn't change a thing except I have a parcel of imaginary land which is subject to the same old crap it was always subject to.

My reasoning is that if things stay the same whether I pay or don't pay I'll not be paying. We'll see how an ever dwindling pool of real-cash focuses their minds.

80 k users online can't be wrong!!! *makes stupid faces*

I don't know, as many problems as SL has, a lot goes well too.
Enough to keep us here, paying for playing/playing for paying, one of those.

I figure they are just bandaiding the current server and it's not holding and they don't really care too much because of the impending server update and will be focusing on that whole new can of worms we get to play audience to.

Why are you looking at peoples join date?

Try mine, I have been in SL 63 months & 25 days. This is just a hiccup. It is fine by me.

Everything will be O.K.. 2008 was relatively smooth compared to the previous years.

2009 is just a rough start.

But by all means throw eggs and rotten and tomato's at LL and claim how SL has not improved in 3 years.

Did you really go there?

Should i link some archived posts for you or will you do the honors?