Second Life Forums Archive - Completely disgruntled

Kevin Susenko

Voice Mentor

Join date: 11 Jul 2006

Posts: 198

11-22-2007 06:07

From: Calliope Simon

No. Once again, from the top. The reason that second life is so crappy and unstable is because it was built from the husk of Active/Openworlds, which was a very early version of this whole "virtual world" thing. Lets just put things in perspective...

Active/Openworlds run perfectly well on a powermac 7500 with a 100mhz processor and 32mb RAM.

Lets put things in more perspective:

Second Life has been developing, adding, and "fixing" this base code since its birth. Instead of starting over again with a much more thoroughly tested graphics/world engine, they decided to swipe something that was free anyhow and break it. You'll hear a lot of whining about how you cannot dynamically add content using engines like Quake or Unreal--which is technically true, but its possible to license either one of them to build in dynamic content if you want, and the Thief engine has it built in anyhow.

Second Life developers are not idiots--but neither are they rockstars. The biggest issue (and the thing preventing them from becoming rockstars) is middle and upper management who see the entirety of this monstrosity as a vehicle for the creation of "cool" points and dollars--not as a vehicle for the creation of "fun" for their customers. So they throw the OSX port at ONE developer and tell him to "make it work" while happily signing ultimately worthless contracts with the likes of IBM, Best Buy, Sony, and now various and sundry american television broadcast companies.

Second Life is garbage because of the way Linden Labs is run. It's crap from the very top down to about the middle, and then below that its just extreme and pretty constant frustration. Nice going, lindens.

ActiveWorlds actually doesn't run at all on a Mac, and the reason it runs well on older computers is because it was originally meant to run on Windows 3.1 and their rendering engine hasn't really been updated in almost 8 years now. It doesn't have nearly as many features as SL, and the quality of the graphics is much lower (and physics are non-existent aside from avatar/object collision and even that's basic). That said, it's much more stable than SL, and because there aren't any physics or major server processing, you can run what's AW's equivalent of a "sim" on your own computer.

I'm pretty sure though that SL wasn't built on AW's codebase.

_____________________

Kratax Skillman

Warrior and Dragon

Join date: 30 Nov 2006

Posts: 123

11-22-2007 08:04

From: Laila Kumaki

What shocks me is that somewhere in LL, someone actually seems to think it's almost acceptable to consider it business as usual when basic infrastructure failures impede or entirely prevent players from using SL in for numerous different reasons in numerous separate instances of failure for 5, 7, or more days in a row. Every day in recent memory there has been a significant failure that has made it difficult or impossible to use SL, or has rendered one or more features nearly or entirely unusable. - -

Its true that SL is quite unstable. It crashes once in a while or something doesn't work at all, and many features are annoying. Additionally I have to relog into Windows after couple of hours of SL surfing or my computer and SL experience comes into a bogged down halt.

But I can affect how fast or slow things come to a halt. If I keep graphics settings high and wander around downloading lots of content and rezzing things, then the halt comes sooner. Sadly though, laggyness and bad experiences accumulate too fast even on low settings.

SL has the nature of exploring and trying out things. So there is contradiction here. The more I explore, the more I learn to accomplish. The more I can handle, the more it needs resources - and therefore the more difficult / laggy / buggy / annoying it gets. So at some point I loose interest altogether, because things start to look too slow or bad compared to what I can handle. That is of course catastrophic what comes to usability, playability, etc. Even if SL enables whatever (users create the content), it doesn't enable whatever because the system cannot handle it.

From: Galathir Darkstone

- - As to the side point about instancing, I think that you fail to understand the architecture here. Having instances would be exactly the same load on the servers as having to provide multiple parcels/sims for multiple people. Frankly, if you want to have a forest around your house, the only way it is going to happen is for you to pay for it. Buy a larger plot of land, and protect the forest there. It's that simple. Goodness knows that when I move from my current parcel, I'm going to make damned sure that I have enough space around me that I don't have to stare out the windows at gaudy, ridiculous "land for sale" signs all over the place. As it stands now, I've built a box around my parcel and put a sky texture on it so I don't have to see what my silly neighbors are doing any more.

Having instances might still cause much load to the servers. Except that people could load some content beforehand so the playing speed would be faster. And if the surroundings changed somewhat less frequently, then that would also reduce the server load. You could also limit most of user content into user home instances, not on common roads for example.

I have also suggested that some of the content could be duplicated and served like the data in the internet. That would mean different realms. But a different realm would be a real saviour of the day when you could not otherwise enter a parcel because its full.

I know that there will not be any instance forests at least for a very long time. In my scenario, the whole SL architecture and everything would have to be changed. It would be SL 2 or something else. But I am not going to pay loads of money just for upkeeping a plain virtual forest. Its a lot cheaper somewhere else, though I cannot travel to there with my SL avatar. Plus there is already some common forests in SL, that others are upkeeping, so I can at least visit a virtual forest.

SL as such is now good for _some_ virtual world experiencing. Negative points come from the fact, that there is so much bugs. Of course bugs are understandable in new kinds of endeavors like in virtual world where users can create the whole content. But bugs are bugs anyhow, either LL created or user created or generated from the lack of system resources. So the next architecture should concentrate on things so that there is no system bugs and if users can create bugs then they don't affect the playing experience of the other users.

_____________________

Keep forests as forests

Desmonia Corvale

Registered User

Join date: 12 Oct 2007

Posts: 33

11-22-2007 10:08

The argument continues, scalable, user content, constantly changing etc. etc. etc.!!!!!!

The issue here is not what has been presented as a commercial product, it's how it is presented. Blizzard (WoW) said "what do we know how to do"? The result is the "World of Warcraft" All game companies take stock of their abilities and goals determine a course of action and implement it. Some of them actually can say "you know what; we can't do that"!

The issue with Linden Labs is they don't know what they are doing. They've created a 3 headed dog that is eating at voracious rate and they have no idea how to control it. They are in what I call "panic mode" running here and there fixing breakdowns in the hopes it will stick together long enough to actually sit down and really make a attempt to resolve the issues. Comes to mind the Book and the Movie "Jurassic Park" regarding the "Chaos" theory how small things pile up and cripple a system simply because the system couldn't work correctly in the first place.

As far as making money in SL vs WoW the only difference being in SL you sell your L$ to Linden Labs. In WoW you sell your gold off line to any of the hundreds of Gold Sites. People sell gold on eBay or even sell the whole darn account.

No, the issue is not what, its how do you support what you've made and Linden Labs doesn't have the skill or the resources to handle their creation. I think all "Free" account should become "paid" accounts and stop giving these people a free ride on us!!! We pay to develop our game and our world and they play for free.
Lets pump some cash into Linden Labs so they maybe they can afford to support the community that is supporting them!

Draco18s Majestic

Registered User

Join date: 19 Sep 2005

Posts: 2,744

11-22-2007 22:25

From: Desmonia Corvale

As far as making money in SL vs WoW the only difference being in SL you sell your L$ to Linden Labs.

Actually, you don't. LL just handles the transaction from you to someone else. They don't foot the bill.

Mickey McLuhan

She of the SwissArmy Tail

Join date: 22 Aug 2005

Posts: 1,032

11-23-2007 06:13

From: Desmonia Corvale

As far as making money in SL vs WoW the only difference being in SL you sell your L$ to Linden Labs. In WoW you sell your gold off line to any of the hundreds of Gold Sites. People sell gold on eBay or even sell the whole darn account.

Is that allowed now? I was under the impression (and I could be wrong) that that was frowned upon... or even against the rules. Or am I thinking of Everquest?

I disagree with most of your post because you are again comparing apples and oranges in trying to correlate SL with WoW. They're just completely different things that kinda look the same.

(Plus, I make WAY more money in SL than I ever could in WoW, in less time, and I don't have to do the same thing, over and over and over again)

_____________________

*0.0*

Where there's smoke, there isn't always fire. It might just be a particle display.
-Mari-

Tarak Voss

Meanderer

Join date: 14 Oct 2006

Posts: 330

11-23-2007 06:21

Not worried about who buys or sells Lindens

The basic truth is there - with all the good intentions in the world Linden Labs have got into a flurry, a real chaos - Maybe it is time they either passed it on to a commercial concern who can back it and fund the system with the resources it needs or draw a line in the sand and say until we achieve this particular goal there is no more future development.

What we have now is good and workable - lets not have anymore advancements, lets concentrate on getting what we have working before moving forward.

I don't like the idea of no free members but if the increasing population is the problem then maybe free membership may need to be set to a monthly quota or something - as for free members sponging off paying ones - personally I think that is rubbish (I'm not a free member) - I wonder who is sponging off whom sometimes. You kill free membership and you kill SL if not in body, in spirit.

Completely disgruntled
Kevin Susenko Voice Mentor Join date: 11 Jul 2006 Posts: 198	11-22-2007 06:07 From: Calliope Simon No. Once again, from the top. The reason that second life is so crappy and unstable is because it was built from the husk of Active/Openworlds, which was a very early version of this whole "virtual world" thing. Lets just put things in perspective... Active/Openworlds run perfectly well on a powermac 7500 with a 100mhz processor and 32mb RAM. Lets put things in more perspective: Second Life has been developing, adding, and "fixing" this base code since its birth. Instead of starting over again with a much more thoroughly tested graphics/world engine, they decided to swipe something that was free anyhow and break it. You'll hear a lot of whining about how you cannot dynamically add content using engines like Quake or Unreal--which is technically true, but its possible to license either one of them to build in dynamic content if you want, and the Thief engine has it built in anyhow. Second Life developers are not idiots--but neither are they rockstars. The biggest issue (and the thing preventing them from becoming rockstars) is middle and upper management who see the entirety of this monstrosity as a vehicle for the creation of "cool" points and dollars--not as a vehicle for the creation of "fun" for their customers. So they throw the OSX port at ONE developer and tell him to "make it work" while happily signing ultimately worthless contracts with the likes of IBM, Best Buy, Sony, and now various and sundry american television broadcast companies. Second Life is garbage because of the way Linden Labs is run. It's crap from the very top down to about the middle, and then below that its just extreme and pretty constant frustration. Nice going, lindens. ActiveWorlds actually doesn't run at all on a Mac, and the reason it runs well on older computers is because it was originally meant to run on Windows 3.1 and their rendering engine hasn't really been updated in almost 8 years now. It doesn't have nearly as many features as SL, and the quality of the graphics is much lower (and physics are non-existent aside from avatar/object collision and even that's basic). That said, it's much more stable than SL, and because there aren't any physics or major server processing, you can run what's AW's equivalent of a "sim" on your own computer. I'm pretty sure though that SL wasn't built on AW's codebase. _____________________ CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 (Overclocked - 2.8GHz) \| Mobo: EVGA nForce 680i SLI \| GPU: XFX nVidia GeForce 8800 GTX 768mb GDDR3 \| Memory: 4gb DDR2 PC5300 667MHz Dual Channel \| PSU: Antec Neo HE 550w \| Sound: SoundBlaster X-Fi Xtrememusic \| HDD: 950gb total SATA3 \| OS: Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit
Kratax Skillman Warrior and Dragon Join date: 30 Nov 2006 Posts: 123	11-22-2007 08:04 From: Laila Kumaki What shocks me is that somewhere in LL, someone actually seems to think it's almost acceptable to consider it business as usual when basic infrastructure failures impede or entirely prevent players from using SL in for numerous different reasons in numerous separate instances of failure for 5, 7, or more days in a row. Every day in recent memory there has been a significant failure that has made it difficult or impossible to use SL, or has rendered one or more features nearly or entirely unusable. - - Its true that SL is quite unstable. It crashes once in a while or something doesn't work at all, and many features are annoying. Additionally I have to relog into Windows after couple of hours of SL surfing or my computer and SL experience comes into a bogged down halt. But I can affect how fast or slow things come to a halt. If I keep graphics settings high and wander around downloading lots of content and rezzing things, then the halt comes sooner. Sadly though, laggyness and bad experiences accumulate too fast even on low settings. SL has the nature of exploring and trying out things. So there is contradiction here. The more I explore, the more I learn to accomplish. The more I can handle, the more it needs resources - and therefore the more difficult / laggy / buggy / annoying it gets. So at some point I loose interest altogether, because things start to look too slow or bad compared to what I can handle. That is of course catastrophic what comes to usability, playability, etc. Even if SL enables whatever (users create the content), it doesn't enable whatever because the system cannot handle it. From: Galathir Darkstone - - As to the side point about instancing, I think that you fail to understand the architecture here. Having instances would be exactly the same load on the servers as having to provide multiple parcels/sims for multiple people. Frankly, if you want to have a forest around your house, the only way it is going to happen is for you to pay for it. Buy a larger plot of land, and protect the forest there. It's that simple. Goodness knows that when I move from my current parcel, I'm going to make damned sure that I have enough space around me that I don't have to stare out the windows at gaudy, ridiculous "land for sale" signs all over the place. As it stands now, I've built a box around my parcel and put a sky texture on it so I don't have to see what my silly neighbors are doing any more. Having instances might still cause much load to the servers. Except that people could load some content beforehand so the playing speed would be faster. And if the surroundings changed somewhat less frequently, then that would also reduce the server load. You could also limit most of user content into user home instances, not on common roads for example. I have also suggested that some of the content could be duplicated and served like the data in the internet. That would mean different realms. But a different realm would be a real saviour of the day when you could not otherwise enter a parcel because its full. I know that there will not be any instance forests at least for a very long time. In my scenario, the whole SL architecture and everything would have to be changed. It would be SL 2 or something else. But I am not going to pay loads of money just for upkeeping a plain virtual forest. Its a lot cheaper somewhere else, though I cannot travel to there with my SL avatar. Plus there is already some common forests in SL, that others are upkeeping, so I can at least visit a virtual forest. SL as such is now good for _some_ virtual world experiencing. Negative points come from the fact, that there is so much bugs. Of course bugs are understandable in new kinds of endeavors like in virtual world where users can create the whole content. But bugs are bugs anyhow, either LL created or user created or generated from the lack of system resources. So the next architecture should concentrate on things so that there is no system bugs and if users can create bugs then they don't affect the playing experience of the other users. _____________________ Keep forests as forests
Desmonia Corvale Registered User Join date: 12 Oct 2007 Posts: 33	11-22-2007 10:08 The argument continues, scalable, user content, constantly changing etc. etc. etc.!!!!!! The issue here is not what has been presented as a commercial product, it's how it is presented. Blizzard (WoW) said "what do we know how to do"? The result is the "World of Warcraft" All game companies take stock of their abilities and goals determine a course of action and implement it. Some of them actually can say "you know what; we can't do that"! The issue with Linden Labs is they don't know what they are doing. They've created a 3 headed dog that is eating at voracious rate and they have no idea how to control it. They are in what I call "panic mode" running here and there fixing breakdowns in the hopes it will stick together long enough to actually sit down and really make a attempt to resolve the issues. Comes to mind the Book and the Movie "Jurassic Park" regarding the "Chaos" theory how small things pile up and cripple a system simply because the system couldn't work correctly in the first place. As far as making money in SL vs WoW the only difference being in SL you sell your L$ to Linden Labs. In WoW you sell your gold off line to any of the hundreds of Gold Sites. People sell gold on eBay or even sell the whole darn account. No, the issue is not what, its how do you support what you've made and Linden Labs doesn't have the skill or the resources to handle their creation. I think all "Free" account should become "paid" accounts and stop giving these people a free ride on us!!! We pay to develop our game and our world and they play for free. Lets pump some cash into Linden Labs so they maybe they can afford to support the community that is supporting them!
Draco18s Majestic Registered User Join date: 19 Sep 2005 Posts: 2,744	11-22-2007 22:25 From: Desmonia Corvale As far as making money in SL vs WoW the only difference being in SL you sell your L$ to Linden Labs. Actually, you don't. LL just handles the transaction from you to someone else. They don't foot the bill.
Mickey McLuhan She of the SwissArmy Tail Join date: 22 Aug 2005 Posts: 1,032	11-23-2007 06:13 From: Desmonia Corvale As far as making money in SL vs WoW the only difference being in SL you sell your L$ to Linden Labs. In WoW you sell your gold off line to any of the hundreds of Gold Sites. People sell gold on eBay or even sell the whole darn account. Is that allowed now? I was under the impression (and I could be wrong) that that was frowned upon... or even against the rules. Or am I thinking of Everquest? I disagree with most of your post because you are again comparing apples and oranges in trying to correlate SL with WoW. They're just completely different things that kinda look the same. (Plus, I make WAY more money in SL than I ever could in WoW, in less time, and I don't have to do the same thing, over and over and over again) _____________________ 0.0 Where there's smoke, there isn't always fire. It might just be a particle display. -Mari-
Tarak Voss Meanderer Join date: 14 Oct 2006 Posts: 330	11-23-2007 06:21 Not worried about who buys or sells Lindens The basic truth is there - with all the good intentions in the world Linden Labs have got into a flurry, a real chaos - Maybe it is time they either passed it on to a commercial concern who can back it and fund the system with the resources it needs or draw a line in the sand and say until we achieve this particular goal there is no more future development. What we have now is good and workable - lets not have anymore advancements, lets concentrate on getting what we have working before moving forward. I don't like the idea of no free members but if the increasing population is the problem then maybe free membership may need to be set to a monthly quota or something - as for free members sponging off paying ones - personally I think that is rubbish (I'm not a free member) - I wonder who is sponging off whom sometimes. You kill free membership and you kill SL if not in body, in spirit.

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Completely disgruntled