I have been a loyal member of the SL community for several months now, but I want to let Linden Labs know that you are dangerously close to losing my business if you don't get your upgrade processes under control.
Each time you roll out an update, things get worse. For every bug fixed, three more pop up. On this latest upgrade the Friends list and online status has completely stopped working (not to mention the ridiculous lag being experienced). During the previous upgrade, right-clicking became nearly unusable, and in order to complete any kind of building project I had to log on and off several times.
In addition to the havoc the updates create, system downtime has been rampant lately. I own land in one particular sim, and last week that entire sim was offline for nearly 8 hours! Add to that the constant fear that with every update my video card may no longer be supported, and I have to ask: What is going on around here? The time required for LL to roll out an update is also excessive. I don't know any other internet company that could schedule regular downtime four or more hours two to three times a month and keep their customers happy.
You guys have GOT to get a handle on your update process, and do a better job of testing. I heard Phillip Linden himself say (on SecondCast) that their preferred method of implementing changes is just to roll them out and see what happens. I'm sorry...but that is total crap. You are asking your paying customers to be beta-testers of your primary product. That kind of rollout is fine for the preview grid, but it doesn't have any place on the regular grid that paid account holders use. Changes need to be tested, retested, and then tested again to make sure they are as rock-solid as possible. You can't just throw a bunch of chaff to the wind and see what lands.
New features are great, but Linden Labs has a very poor track record in delivering them bug free, and without massively affecting other portions of the service. Perhaps this community is a bit more forgiving of the errors because of the great enjoyment we get from participating in SL, but personally, I'm growing very tired of it. I'm sure the LL staff works very hard to constantly improve and shape SL, but please...get control of your update process.