The illusion of choice.

Good day, Dev slaves of SL. I am posting in the hope that you will address the small matter of SL's update function not having a true 'option' about it. Yes, we may now click 'Continue' and bypass any update we wish. But the option is only an illusion when given the fact that the client will not continue to process log-in beyond that point. Kindly fix your code sirs, as I will not update to a defective build, nor use third-party software to access the grid. It is my expectation that a suitable client should be put forth by the service provider. Thank you.

Hmmm I click continue and it logs me in still.

I wonder why yours doesnt. What version are you trying to use?

Release Candidate 1.18.3(2). After clicking continue I can get as far as "Initializing world...", at which point it simply stops. No error, no timeout. I have had this issue confirmed by several others, as well, running different versions of SecondLife's client.

And yes, I have attempted troubleshooting it my self. The following:
Cleared Cache
Logging in to a different location
Adjusted render settings to "Ugly mode".

I do not know exactly where this became broken. I have an older installation which is at version 1.18.0(6), and I am able to log in with it. However it lacks the recent render patches and of course runs very, very slowly as a result.

hmm wish I could help but I still use 1.18.0 I refuse to use the voice UI until they give me back my completely seperate friends, history and im windows.

Ditto, only I use Nicholaz's viewer for 200% increase in stability.

Kamatz stated unwilling to use a third party source.

I've never had a problem clicking through the option and getting in.

My updated "defective" viewer is ok, I no longer stealthcrash on this version or crash every 20minutes, login is fine, you can keep using older viewers, but you will still be suffering the same bugs in 2 years time.

so how is this different than SL as usual?

I know he did, but I wasn't replying to him.

I posted about this in the blog. I notified dan linden of these forced update issues, and he tested it. Linden labs ARE aware of this issue, and it WILL be fixed with the next release.

kamatz, I don't know if this will help you in the mean time or not. Do disk clean up, then defrag. Go in and try to play for an hour then log out and defrag again. I read this on the Nicholaz website and I think that it did help me some. Haven't downloaded the new viewer yet so I don't really know. I used to play on First Look all of the time, but what I did then was download it to a different location on my pc so that I would have both versions available to me so if one was messed up, I could play in the other.

Hell, why not make 1.0,0 available for those the really want to get backward about things, no features, no bugs, all is good, maybe a B&W version in ASCII graphics?

Not being able to connect to the grid does make for a lot less bugs, and significantly reduced griefing

SWEET! TextMode Second Life!
/reference to Textmode Quake
http://webpages.mr.net/bobz/ttyquake/

I also noticed that if you're trying to use the "Release Candidate" viewer, it gives you no real choice but to update every time that they come out with a new RC viewer. Clicking Continue is an absolutely certain path to hanging forever.

I'm on Mac, so the alternative clients are all useless to me. I've kept the old non-voice viewer as a backup route, but I've been trying hard to use the Release Candidate, so I can be aware of any bugs before it becomes our only option.

sounds good to me

problem is that most of all bugs are server side, no matter how many clients they throw at it

good example was the texture number rounding, they threw at least 5 bogus client fixes at it, but in the end it wasnt the client, the client just shuttled off the numbers you typed to the server, where it was rounded off

so unless theres some huge memory leak (which comes and goes with each release anyways), hardware issue, or engine change (phht ya right) the only thing you miss out on with not upgrading your client is (the often half assed, not thought out) features

and im happy i do have a choice now, rather than getting a client with borked features that everyone seems to be hollering about

I had the same problem going from 1.18.3.2 to 1.18.3.3; the auto-updater didn't work; it tried to download 1.18.2 again and install it, which I allowed, but I kept getting the 1.18.3.3 update request, so I just clicked "Continue". It froze, of course, never getting beyond "Initializing World...".

The solution was to manually download and install the latest RC version, which became 1.18.3.4 within minutes of me finishing the 1.18.3.3 install and trying to log in (to find it asking me to update AGAIN). :-/

Anyway.. if you want to continue using the RC, you have to manually download and install the latest version, or go back to the release client (1.18.2).