Is it time to move on.

Well the running of SL as been a real pain this weekend.
Today Monday I'm getting real bad abuse, but I can't file an Abuse Report, the system does not work.
In SL I can't Teleport
Searches just say Waiting.
The blog does not list these problems, where it does it gives info. to say they have been dealt with.
Does everyone at Linden have the weekend off?

So I'm asking myself is it time to move on from SL.

Best Regards
June

PS
If it is volume of users that the system can't cope with then why don't Linden cut the numbers to those that willing to pay. Guess those that do pay are very cross.

Oh June, don't leave. Sure SL has been a pain in the ass, and I am sorry that you are experiencing abuse. But lets look on the bright side, maybe things will get better.

Love, Hugs, Kisses, and a whole lot of wishes,
Jez

This is the most recent blog entry...it does list all the issues you mentioned.



http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/07/29/gridwide-slowdowns/

Yes, the Lindens do take weekends off.
And, while it's always easy, it's not fair to blame non-premium account holders for all your woes. They also spend money in SL - it just goes to fellow residents, not the Lindens. Who looks foolish now?

I think she was just throwing up a suggestion as to how they could cut the numbers if the issues are due to too many people being logged in rather than saying that it's the fault of non-premium account holders.

I agree with your point about non-premium account holders though, they can put a lot of money into the economy so I'd agree that it would be unfair to ditch them.

I'm not meaning to blame the non-subscribers, I'm one anyway.
But should it be a due to w/e volume then a fix is needed and quick.

Of course the best way would be for SL to be made to be able to cope, alternative a way to limit numbers that are in and thus give good working.

If the way was to be subscribers only I would subscribe. (I have no need at this time to be a subscriber so I'm not.)

Yes some of the free members do spend L$, but I bet most Profiles say "No payment Information Recieved", I think this will mean they not put real money in to spend.

Love
June

i think it's safe to say this particular problem has nothing to do with users online...for the times of day this affected, it was actually at nearly half-capacity (20-25k users, compared to the typical 40k+), and all due to so many people not being able to log in.
no, there's something else gone wrong server-side it seems

That suggestion has been kicking around since I return to SL - I totally agree that we should basically restrict SL to a fee paying audience (also guaranteeing to some extent age issue relief).I have met so many freeloaders in past few weeks. Who then get abusive when I tell them to stop panhandling (a free game for them BUT I pay my way).

This is not true. You don't have to have payment info filed with LL to buy lindens. You can buy them on SLExchange.

I am not premium but I pay rent on land totalling a quarter of a sim. I know someone who has half a sim with 'no payment info on file'. Often people have different accounts for their business and social avs with the business one feeding the other.

Yes there are probably a lot of people who have never put any money in but a lot of these are also making money from business which keeps the economy moving.

Anyway, I don't think the problems at this moment are the number of people online, it has been higher without falling over like now.

Well, if you go around accusing people of panhandling, no wonder they abuse you. I have lots of free account friends who rent land (from other residents), are shopaholics (putting money into the pockets of other residents) and who are builders and creators.
Perhaps they dislike the idea of paying for services they are never able to count on.
And they complain a lot less than premium account holders.

Lag was worse than I've ever experienced this weekend! Parcels are loading at a snail's pace (Took well over ten minutes for one particular shop to come up), even in my home SIM where I've owned prperty for over a year I was waiting unbelievably long periods to come up. Add to that the fact that you can't TP, search, or (as suggested from Linden) shop because the system is overloaded OR build (prim drift is getting beyond rediculous, I've had to texutre thing 4 or 5 times to take only to find out that after I've boxed them, that they've reverted) and what's the point? Seriously, a "platform" where you can't build, shop, explore, or hang out? What good is it really. I hope they fix things quick. It's getting easier and easier not to log in at all. Second life is becoming like a bad relationship where you love the idea of it more than the actual. You remember when it used to be good and wonder if the magic can ever be recaptured and hold on in the end because of all you've invested.

LL, PLEASE FIX SL B/4 IT'S TOO LATE! It's nearly impssible to stay in a relationship in which you're treated badly. I'm already seeing friends and neighbors start to whittle down to almost never online so SL is starting to be a very lonely place at time too.

SL - Imagine the Possibilities...beacuse imagining them is becoming about the only thing one can do effectively in SL~

what im curious to know is how much better would sl run if the following was to happen:

get rid of all info in the database for all accounts that never left orientation island say from 6months and longer ago

any account that was never completely accessed like all the ones that people tried to start and couldnt complete

all the alts people tried to start and it wouldnt accept credit card info so they made the free accounts instead

i bet that would take away hundreds of thousands of accounts that would lessen the database load and personally i think it would make sl run better

i know sl has talked about doing it but i dont think they ever did it

Obviously the OP referred to the panhandlers as such because they were begging for money, not to be a name caller. Between this account and my original one I've been here over a year and have seen plenty of this behavior. In my experience it always ends the same when you say no: a stream of abuse...

Yes, we premium members do "complain" and for precisely the reason you're sneering at: we are paying for a service and thus expect to get said service. When we don't we tend to get a bit cranky.

Let's say you went to Target and bought an item and when you got that item home it didn't work as advertised. Wouldn't you contact customer service to try to get the merchandise exchanged or get a refund? That's all we premiums are doing when "complaining", trying to get LL to give us what we paid good money for.

I don't hold a premium account for several reasons. mainly cause LL pissed me off once to often.. still pay 300$ / month for our sim. So don't blame it on the people who have no payment info on their profile. never know who they are or what they do in SL.

And that's what I find to be so stunningly ill-conceived. They don't shut the grid down over the weekends...so they'd better make sure they're adequately staffed to deal with difficulties during that time.

Running a virtual world seven-days a week, calls for some non-traditional scheduling...especially for one that's now as globally populated as SL.

It's becoming more and more obvious that LL needs to revise their business operations plan to take account for the fact that they're now responsible for a 24/7 environment...and staff their facilities accordingly.

The Lindens take weekends off? That's weird, I put in a support ticket on Saturday and a Linden emailed me with the solution on Sunday. Maybe they reduce staff on weekends. Even if they did take weekends off, can you blame them? When Saturday rolls around I'm sure many LL employees want to be as far away from SL as they possibly can. Based upon some the extreme responses to relatively minor issues, I can't say I blame them.

My suggestion is that if SL becomes inoperable for a time go for a walk, read a book, watch a movie, call a friend, workout, or spend time with your family. Really.

It's likely they reduce staff on weekends, not eliminate it. The issue started on Saturday but really only snowballed into oblivion lateish Sunday night, which is the darkest time of the week in terms of getting tech support. My guess is that while the staff that was involved did their best to try to ascertain what was at issue, they really needed to have the regulars come in on Monday to really begin to resolve things. Late Sunday night is really the worst time for something bad to happen, really, in terms of staff availability.

The grid has been very stable the last 3 to 4 months at least compared to the first 4 months of the year. It's been very glitchy that last few days but it was like this for weeks earlier in the year so overall I think LL have done a good job in improving performance this year and they have employed additional people and devoting additional resources to fixing the existing issues as previously stated at the town hall meeting a few months back. I admit there are still allot of existing problems that affect peoples day to day play but i cannot remember the last time I logged out of SL to go play something else because of performance issues and this was a regular occurance the end of last year.

My advice to the OP is stick it out, if things are still this bad this time next week then re-address your commitment to SL but a few days grid meltdown here and there should be anticipated and expected.

If you are the type of person who expects perfection or even above acceptable service and performance 24/7 then SL isn't the place for you. You've got to roll with the punches in SL, search was screwed yesterday, i sold a tenth of what I normally do on a Sunday and it cost me a hundred bucks, but i'll have a good day sometime next month and will make up the difference. It's the way of the world and you've got to learn to roll with the punches and be patient if you want to have an enjoyable game here.

Just FYI there are 2 JIRA issues related to this topic:

The first here is a meta-issue, which basically says "fix all the current bugs before moving on with big new features!" That's this one:

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-267


And then this one talks about restricting the grid when it gets bad to premium account members (different arguments in the comments)...

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-87

So I take it you enjoy people begging or demanding money from you because they don't have any inworld.

That is generalizing... Enough none-payment info do have money and spend it. And not all are abusive.

Morwen.

No, I ignore them.

ohhh well .... never mind.

I DO think that the premium account holders SHOULD receive a premium service, unfortunately we ALL receive a bad service so that sort of puts us all on a level,

Restricting access wouldnt really solve any issues as the grid issues are so in depth. LL says that it has problems with various servers etc.
I see the problem belong almost ENTIRELY with the database. There are a LOT of obsolete accounts that have never completed as stated earlier but I think LL like having them there as it makes them seem popular without having the load. But if we look at a lot of large corporations they EASILY have 40k employees with large home directories, public shares, mailboxes etc.

The main tech issue is scaleability, They throw land at the grid becasue its a revinew stream for both sales and tier.....but the database (most like mysql seeing its all a linux based system) is in a pretty unstable state. The enviroment at the data center isnt that stable either with power outages etc.

I can only liken the current system as a house .... with each new sim being added to the grid as a lean too shed on the main house with more and more relitives comming to stay and everyone using the same kitchen and toilet. At some point the cupoards will fall off the wall and the drainage will cease to function. The system has grown to a point that it needs to dragged down and rebuilt from the ground up ... but how do you do that on a living breathing system, I know from my experience its very difficult, with industry having weekends...SL is 24/7. So what do we do...

Well I would look at a complete rebuild of the main grid and database... remove ALL obsolete accounts first ... then unused for 6 months. I also think that rather than replace older servers on existing land they are proberly using those resources to get new sims out for more tier and auction costs.
The infrastructure is in a state of poor health and allthough i am sure LL will resolve these problems there is no yardstick to gauge.... there is no likewise system regardless of what folk would like to believe. The competitors systems from the likes of Sony are crippled with functionality far removed from that of SL with fixed world enviroments, minimum flexibility. So heres the choice..... stick with LL and weather the formitive years, hopefully you wont loose too much or go with another and loose all the things that are being complained abourt ... i.e inventory... things not rezzing.

As a final note..... free accounts

There IS no such thing as free ... only those that live off the payments of others
So I suggest 2 seperate clients .....
1. The free client that is subsidised by advertisments but otherwise normal
2. The premium client that has full functionality but no adverts

This is the only way that SL will survive a freebie mentality and allthough I understand that many many users do contribute to the game in a LOT of ways there HAS to be bennefits of being premiumother than removing access to those that cant afford or as stated before "pan handlers" bottom line is that if LL decide to let people stay in SL for free then it should be subsidised by sombebody OTHER than the premium acocunt holders.

Marty

I'm all for premium members having better access to support but "non premium accounts" can use estate land, save the $6USD a month they'd be paying to LL and still contribute plenty to the world here. The lines can be a bit blurry on this issue.