Way back when

Reading back through these threads it makes me think about what SL was like when I joined in July 2004. When:

there were far fewer people and the lag was nothing like it can be today;

when you called Live Help, someone would come to your location, sometimes a Linden, who would help you with your problem;

there were far more Lindens in world who you could chat to and ask advice if you needed it, that sometimes included Philip;

we still had first land and newbies, as I was then, loved having a 512sqm plot for 512L;

of course, there was some down time but usually when LL was going to do an update. I can't recall anything as bad as we have experienced over the last couple of weeks;

The map was really quite small back then and I'm trying to remember if there were any private islands and of course there were nothing like the number of residents we have today. I do recall Anshe Chung was a land baron back then;

we had proper forums, General where we could talk about anything SL related - we used to get heated arguments but still it was fun and LL answers, where you could ask a question of a Linden and mostly got a reply.

a welcome area with mentors to help the newbies, not what it has turned into today;

So that's what I remember, anyone want a roleback lol.

And we had to walk to school in 3 feet of snow!! lol

Seriously, I long for the days when the world was fresh and new and seemed so wide with possiblities.

We've gone from "Your World, Your Imagination" to "Corporate World, Safe for Commerce".

I remember the 1.5 upgrade. It makes this recent series of issues seem like a cakewalk.

Even when I joined a year ago there was only 300,000 members and hardly any lag. sure there were problems and down time but nothing like it is today with almost 10 million members, damn thats a scarey thought to think whats in the future down the road ;O

Hehe no sorry, this platform is absolutely not safe from commerce, far from it

To be safe for commerce, SL would need to have :
- A way to tell whether an item has been actually delivered and when, or discarded/lost and why
- IP rights enforcing
- Contracts with due payments to/from partners, with ways to have someone actually do their job
- Productive ways to earn money (read : not camping)
- And last but not least, ZERO content loss on the creator side and on the customer side

Ah Jillian, you and Ky were my neighbours ) That was back when Uli was a perfect place to live, with Keith Extraordinaire opposite on the mountain and the place was filled with gardens.
Ky built me a cave and a stream. Happy days.

So true Pie lol

Sheena, can't imagine what SL will be like with 10m+ residents. I wonder how many actually still log in.

Perhaps in the way that it never really was "Your World, Your Imagination" and that was just a advertisment tag line to get you as a consumer to start paying LL for thier experiment, "Corporate World, Safe for Commerce" can be LL's way of seeing if the same trick will work on big business.

O wait, it already has...

I remember when Lindens VISITED you when you asked for help. And they would be dressed as bunnies and fluffy things. Wow!! Seems a lifetime ago.
In this present form I think I have seen the MOST changes. It has been quite a ride even if it is just a computer console and a keyboard. Many friends and many adventures. Oh God! I am mellowing!!!!! Hey, long live the Dark Sims!

I remember...

Public Land
Telehubs
Telehub Lag
Telehub Poker
Pre-Custom Animations
Pre-Streaming Video
Pre-Streaming Sound
Regularly Talking w/ Lindens
1-3L per meter land
No Land Tier
No Land auctions
Life before camping chairs
Logging in as the only avatar on the grid, regularly, on any early Sunday morning
Events where 50% or more of logged in residents attended
Events that were actually events
WWIIolers
So many friends come and gone.

That's off the top of my head.

And who could forget....



http://slgriefers.4t.com/index2.html

... when the grid was unusable if more than 14k were logged in...
.... 1.13 (unlucky 13) when the club i worked for disappeared... there was just a rug and a picture frame and a lot of grass...
...1.13 when search was down for a week and i lost all my business regulars.... and my income


... and i have only been here since October '06...

things are not so bad today after all... maybe...

but i haven't downloaded the latest update yet....

imogen

Zomg, this thread is like flypaper to FIC.

I remember when Welcome Areas were full of nice people..
...when 8,000 concurrency provoked zOMGs..
...when flexi-prims didn't exist...
..when trolls were rare enough for most people to ignore without calling a meeting on the issue.

Course, they'd return with an orbiter..
..which was bad because (I remember) push restrict didn't exist..
..but (I remember) Live Help did..
..and (I remember) a Linden would immediately TP to your location and resolve the problem.

I remember sometime around June 6th, they no longer required CC verification..
and (I remember) everything seemed to change, to get more unsettled from that point on.

The total population figure of approx. 160,000 suddenly skyrocketed...
...lots of my friends got alts for the first time..
...even their alts got alts...

Of course, I'm still young (first born Q2 2006) and none of this was THAT long ago at all.

Back when I was a n00b, you could only teleport within a sim's length of your destination if you were lucky, and you had to fly the rest of the way while trying not to get caught by an unrezzed building. We all had non-flexi prim hair and we LIKED it, gosh-darnit. These young whipersnappers today don't know how good they have it!

Let's stop looking back on what is eseentially a game and look forward to exciting changes and a Brave New World

Ooooooohh, tell us another story Grandpa!

O brave new world that has such people in it.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

I remember when, if someone was in the Ahern Welcome Area reciting a word chain like "F---ing Jew", people would stridently object to the sentiment. They would not generally have responded to the one person who did object a few nights ago "The word Jew is not reportable, don't get your panties twisted"

As an F---ing Jew myself, I find Ahern these days to be a cesspool

I remember when we had community standards that people actually understood, practiced, and believed in.

Way back when...

Lag was there - but it was escapable. Lag was simply proportional to how many people you had in one area.

Ghosts! Avatars wouldn't 'disappear' when they logged out: At a busy club - it'd create a twilight-zone sort of effect as the night wore on, and silent avatars would appear frozen in place from where they logged out.

Many of the features folks know & love today didn't exist. The grid was indeed 'cozier' when I was a newbie, but we had fewer choices on what to do, who we could meet, and what we could create.

In order to get back to that cozy feeling, you'd have to pair the grid down to 200 sims, and kick out enough residents to get down to a logged-in population no more than a thousand - as it was in June of 2004.

Be careful what you wish for

i've been in since Feb 2007, and it's always been one things after another, since day one. i only stuck it out so i could play with my RL online friends, and now they've sort of dwindled away from it, and i am still sticking trudging along, since my online friends list is growing.

Yeah. Anyone remember SimCity? Where you zoned and built roads and stuff, and then just when everything was pretty and humming along nicely, Godzilla would traipse through, stomping and burning all in its path? Now, what fun would SL be without analogous occasional injections of entropy?

if only it was 'occasional'.........

We didn't have multiple-select in inventory.

We had very dark foot-shadows.

I remember the days of...

When FIC didn't exist
Voting stations and their familiar nightly ding-ding
Voting stations being gamed
Dwell
Dwell being gamed
Being the sole mermaid with no mermaid clothes or tails available anywhere
No skins
No prim hair
No flex
No streaming audio
No animations except basic Gestures
The first animation balls
When Gestures could contort your avatar into impossible shapes
Creating for the sheer joy of it
Visitors to your land actually stopping to have long conversations with you
Classes and Events where everyone knew, or knew of, everyone else
The infamous Box on the Head and Baby in a Box
When grief meant bereavement
The first land expansion from the old Mainland
The first island
The arrival of snow sims and snowballs
The inception of land barons
The first laggy clubs and casinos
Ghosts with prim jewellery
No hideous bouncey red bars around properties
Art for art's sake
Nightly spontaneous hilarity with precious friends and neighbours
Terraforming nightmares
Your clothes falling off while teleporting to a major event
Dangling over the Sea in eternal suspended flight, thinking 'well this is okay, I AM a mermaid, after all!'
Seeing how many we could cram into a party before grey lag hit
Trying to build, move, or grunt at 2 fps
The flood, the Ark, the Renaissance... err, oh wait, Past Life, sorry

Nice one Myradyl.

For those who think we should look forward and not back, I bet you are young. As you get older, you do look at the past with affection, not that I am ancient lol.

Yes i miss the cozier days of old, when the grid was small and it was a very very new frontier
i remember when if we had 500 people in world we thought it was a very crowded grid,
However,
i still just stand and twirl to watch my flexie hair and skirts because it still thrills me!
i love the water now it amazes me.
i still marvel at teh creativity i see, the amazing builds, the generosity,

i love my friends here, it is the reason i continue to log in no matter how upset i get at LL for whatever it is i am upset about this week.
there is much to embrace about the brave new world, but, there is so much i want to hang onto from teh past