Contingency Plan????

http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/02/16/contingency-measures-to-ensure-service-as-second-life-grows/#more-777

So... when will they actually use it?

Now might be a good time!

LLs catch phrase is "In the near future" im sure they will use it eventually, that is if it was ever intended to be used and not just more words to appease the masses

...it just sucks that we are at 37,718 online and I can't rez anything.

OK, it's not just me.

I can't rez anything either. Something is clearly broken somewhere.

Progress, though. It used to be this kind of thing would happen as 30,000 simultaneous online was approached. Nowadays we have to get well over 30,000 before it happens....

I logged in had bad TP issues, coupled with stupid comments as it failed on screen, friends list baulked and couldnt rez a thing so logged off for the night, but i havent got a business as such, to run, in fact this week ive spent very little time in SL as its been such a pain to do things generally.

I would imagine LLs are pushing the amount logged on as far as they can to see if the system starts to breakdown and at what level of logins it does start to break and we are all willing participants in this extended Beta phase. I say willing because we can leave SL at anytime

Glad it's not just me. I have been stuck in one place for almost an hour. I can't tp out of it.

Rezzing? Forget it! 10 minutes or more in some places.

Trying to place inventory items into an object, I managed to put in 3 items over 5-10 minutes at home. Could not teleport out of the sim. Had to fly to the next sim before teleports would work. Getting back took about 6-7 attempts.
Jumping to a public sandbox allowed me to drop all my items into the object in a matter of seconds.

The weirdest part is, the sim is not full, has time dilation of 1.00 dropping to 0.93 occasionally, sim FPS is holding steady at 45 (haven't seen it change once), physics FPS is at 44.7-44.9, agent updates are at 25 per second, pending uploads and downloads are both at 0.
Other people in the same sim are having problems applying textures, rezzing their body shapes, rezzing objects etc, but movement seems fine.

I just IM'd Help:

They said...

The grid is experiencing a heavy load at the moment... try again in a couple hours.

Nice!!

Might want to edit your post Bubba it's a TOS violation to post chat logs.

yeah... but when you rez a non-copy item and it fails... poof... it's gone.

Am on the mainland and not had any issues rezzing or TP'ing today so maybe the problems are localised rather than grid wide.

Just posting what Help said.

At rehearsal today Cowell was absolutely perfect - and it's been a crashy sim lately. I had no problems with teleporting, either, despite the fact that I TPed all over just to read the messages.

You know, I recently went looking for this in the TOS.. I can't find it.. care to point it out?

I have a more charitable guess. I actually think that LL really intended to implement login castes, but as is typical for them, there is a huge abyss between "we ought to do this" and "doing this" (cf. Havok 2, Mono, etc.).

I couldn't find it in the forum guidelines either, but this is their space and they do expunge posted chat logs pretty religiously. Except that chat logs with a Linden seem to be allowed (which I think is a good thing). Put another way, if a Linden acting in an official role is saying things in IM that are not suitable for posting, then woe is us.

My interpretation of the grid lock-down was that it would only be implemented to prevent a total grid meltdown.

Ensuring a functional game experience is not, evidently, enough of a reason to control logins.

To play Devil's advocate, however, there is such a wide variation in resident computer systems that many people can be having problem dealing with the grid load, while other people are doing just fine. At what point in that continuum do you draw the line and say "XX% of residents are having trouble, so no more can get in"?

It doesn't have to be tied to a percentage of users experiencing problems in game.........they know when their servers are struggling. Or, at least, they should know.


edited because I can't type worth a flip today

It's part of Community Standards (http://secondlife.com/corporate/cs.php):

I may send the same message when my Premium comes due next time "My bank account is experiencing a heavy load at the moment. Try again in a couple of weeks."

In my belief, LL is going after sheer numbers to market SL either for sale or as a service for companies who will spend RL money. Fine, I understand this. LL started this SL up and I support their desire to get a return on their considerable investment. The problem they are facing right now is how to continue to increase the numbers w/o decreasing the service to the point that the targeted corporate customers are no longer interested? They may be close to that now, but who knows?

For example: [hypothetical conversation]

LL: Please look us over, everything is working great and we have even added sound to facilitate your conference calls and meetings.

Corporate executive: We can use skyp for the conference calls but sound WOULD be nice. I couldn't log in for quite some time last Friday and when I did, I couldn't teleport. What's going on with that?

LL: Oh..just a temporary glitch. Everything is fine now. Enjoy!

Corp. Ex: Ahhh, the CEO just tried to teleport and his hair and shoes were stuck up his behind. We're not interested, but thank you anyway.


Limiting new accounts and log ins by free users is a great way to deal with this problem, I think. Will LL actually do it? I don't know. Another thing they can do is just give the free users x amount of days to become paid users. If they dont start paying for their accounts in say..30 days or so...buh bye. They probably won't do that though.

Another thing to keep in mind is the fact that we paid users are their lowest priority. LL believes that paying users, especially those who have bought land aren't going to up and leave. We will complain a lot, but they are pretty much impervious to that.

I see no significant changes to the stability/reliability issue until serious competition comes along. Until then, about all we can expect is PR and lip service. WHEN [not if, when] serious competition arrives, things will improve drastically.

I really hope they get the problems fixed, and I think they will but not in the immediate future. As frustrating as it is, its still fun.

Absolutely, The providers are entitled to sell or make whatever they can from their creation. But , before you sell your car, you usually spruce it up and give at least the impression it works properly.

*grins wryly* Even though it might shut down five minutes after you drive it off the lot.

Second Life reminds me of my last car... it would shut down for no apparent reason, usually in the middle of heavy traffic, when I would be on my way to something important. Often times, it would leave me stranded with a couple of panicking or whiny people for a couple of hours, until help arrived. Sometimes, it would leave me stranded by myself in the middle of no where and I'd have to walk to the nearest gas station. A few times, it would chug very, very slowly to the destination, complaining the entire way. The grease monkeys I knew couldn't find the cause, in fact one of them looked at me and said, "Well, from the looks of it, it would cost you more to repair this than a new car is worth." Another suggested a funeral pyre.

I cleaned it up, replace a couple of belts and sold it off... I did wonder what happened to that old thing after that. I guess we just found out, huh? Who knew you could run a grid on an '86 Nissan Sentra?

They simply said they had a contingency plan in place.. they never said they would use it. That would cost them the free users, because they out number us paying users. (By paying, I mean those who also buy their L, not just premium accounts!)