WTF is going on we demand answers!

classic inapropriate historical comment

NEW COKE

Crystal Pepsi!

Coke made one huge mistake and learned from it. I don't see a learning curve here. Or if there is one, it's curving in the wrong direction.

That's totally helpful

learned it too well - they are afraid to replace diet coke with Coke Zero becuase of stuff like that.

lol

hehe yeah - least they kept regualr pepsi still.

wasnt there also a Pepsi Clear at one time? had Sammy Hagar doing the "jingle"?

Why is no one mentioning the broken texture picker? It's a huge PITA for we builders. Lindens should fix the broken stuff before continually pushing out new publishes.

I think they see the curve, but the power steering has failed.

Because I quit using the stupid thing when it became faster to just drag the image I want from my inventory onto the texture box. *sigh* And supposedly they've fixed it as often as the fixed the Group IMs staying closed after you've closed them.

Hey, I actually liked Pepsi Crystal, just as much as I like the regular recipe! And Pepsi Clear was the overseas name of it

At least Coke got smart enough to get rid of the new recipe when enough people complained. I think LL never studied much history....

Are you saying that LL needs to get rid of SL because too many people complain?

Just new stuff that makes the old stuff less fun

No, they need to go back to the original recipe! Good customer service and limited entry (for a while until things are under control!)

Although the rate it's going, they might be better off just rolling out SL 2.0 and letting us transfer there!

You answered yourself. All the other platforms either don't have content creation or extremly limited versions of it.

What do I want from an alternate platform?
- Unlimited content ceration. Not the developer programs that these newer platforms are doing. Yes SL has a lot of crap, but there is a lot of good stuff made by people who started out by making crap. Making content should not be limited to people who start out already knowing how to create. If you do, all you have is a squeaky clean world, where the residents have no stake, and little to no innovation. If SL closed content creation to just the developers group everything would look like the bland corporation isles. I'd rather wade through crap to find a dancing cow that makes me laugh then to log into a bland world.

- Ability to create animations. Well... that's what I make and I have yet to see another platform offer this at all. I'm also pretty sure that LL has cornered the market on scripting. Where is the fun of making cool stuff if you can't make it do cool things?

- Currency exchange.

- Stability. Or at the very least a company that understands that stability is more important in the scheme of things then whatever new shiny they feel like working on instead. I pay $195 a month for my isle and haven't been able to do anything on it for over 24 hours now. That is more then just wrong.

- Updating that doesn't break the few already working stuff. I've been here for 3 years now and LL still hasn't figured out how to fix 1 thing without breaking 2. Most people give the excuse that it's new technology and other BS, but the fact of the matter is is that they wrote the code and have been working with it for long enough to understand how it works.

SL is a lot more complicated (and not a game) but the closest I can compare it to is other MMOs. From my experience, during beta and the first part of release is pretty bad but usually within a few months they start working the kinks out and updates stop breaking already working stuff. Actually when this happens, I usually laugh and tell SL update horror stories.

SL has been out for 4 years and by now we shouldn't still be living through this. Not to mention the fact that many times they wait months to fix what they broke.

- Scalibility. Or even at the very least a company who makes it scalible BEFORE they open the floodgates. I do not understand how the hell they didn't know all this was going to happen before and during the massive PR rush to get millions of signups. I do not feel sorry for LL at all about the issues happening, as it was their own mistake.

- Customer Service. I actually don't think I've ever seen worse customer service. Every single problem I've ever had, I've had to fight to get past the wall of "it's your fault" support. I seriously spent months trying to get support for my laptop that SL wouldn't read the video card drivers correctly. Every single issue I had was always closed for having an unsupported video card, even though it was supported. I had to sit through months of 40fps for 10min then drop to 1fps for 5min before someone actually believed me through proof of my dxdiag. Finally ended it with "it's a bug" that still hasn't been fixed a year later. You'd think that concierge would be better, but they just respond "it's your fault" quicker. Brand new empty sim and textures keep snapping back? "It's your connection."

I want a company that doesn't put all the fault on the user and will admit mistakes. Every single bad thing that happens LL pushes it off as they aren't responsible and are actually the victims. With an attitude like that, it's no wonder they make the same mistakes over and over again.

People who will respect their customer base, espeically those of us who have hung on for years. I'm tired of being talked down to by LL as if we all are a bunch of morons. I'm tired of all this bloody double speak and the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing. I'm tired of never answering questions. I'm tired of LL touting content creators in the press then turing around and treating us like insignificant bugs to be ignored. This is not saying bow down to every single grievience, but listen to the customer base and take thoughtfull steps in order to keep us as customers.

I have seen an increasing amount of people over the past 3 years say the same thing: as soon as something better comes along, I will leave. Personally I see that as a partial threat and partial truth. I don't really believe that most of us want to see SL fail, but just want a program that works more often then not. If LL doesn't shape up prior to a real competitor coming out, there will be an eventual mass exodus. It will start as people trying out the new platform and most of those will be the disgruntled content creators. Next will be creating content in both platforms until the only presense they have in SL will just be a store they never update.

A few fanbois will stay and uninformed new residents will join, but the damage will be done. Without something better, the few who do leave are rarely missed as someone new is always there waiting to step into the spotlight. There are only a very small amount (Starax for example) who really are irreplaceable. The difference being is that a new platform will be a lot easier for those salavating for greatness to compete at the starting line. While we will see those try to take the place of those who left, if the competition is that much better, they will only be shooting themselves in the foot.

A year or so ago there was a lot of buzz around about competitors. Saddly that never panned out, but I do remember LL's (Philip actually) smug response of being able to "out update any new company." I think many will agree that they will take working updates that happen fewer then weekly broken ones. This not even remotly understanding the userbase and the "we can do no wrong" attitude will be the eventual downfall. Sometimes I want a good competitor to come out only to knock LL off their high horse to see the laggy and bugged filled mess they've made.

I'll be honest. I think that LL is trying to take on the position of being nothing more than an ISP without having a farking clue what that means in terms of customer service and development.

They don't realize that I can contact my ISP at ANY TIME and expect them to get their servers up and running again in a reasonable time period. Also, they tend to credit the time lost to unintentional outages at the end of the billing cycle. Plus, they don't simply lose things! They have loads of backups, sometimes hourly which allow them to salvage a website that goes down due to corruption or other issues.

Even if the issue I am calling them about, they don't make it sound like it's my fault. They cheerfully suggest what I 'might try' that might fix the problem so I can have my access running smoothly. They also explain why it worked so I can avoid calling again. Part of customer service is going to be educating the customer, not all of us are going to fully understand the manual or 'get it' until it's explained in a different way to us!