Reader Submitted Commentary: "The Many Faces of Linden Lab"

 

I have been on Second Life for close to 15 years now.  I have been here through the deforming teleports, the iffy, sim crossings, the constant red clouds.  Over the years, the people at Linden Lab have worked on many of these issues and have reduced if not eliminated many of them.  Sim crossing, with vehicles, is still hazardous however. I have no idea why they can't seem to fix that issue, most other video games have no such problem.

I remember when they had actual Lindens hangout with the people that inhabited their world, listening to what we said about Second Life. What was good, bad, needed work, etc.  That kind of feedback in valuable. They stopped doing that to save money, they said, and service has suffered.

I can understand why Linden Lab stopped gambling, on Second Life years ago and just recently Gatchas. US and state gov'ts breathing down your neck, is great incentive to deal with it.  The issue I have was the way they dealt with it.  It was a major PR disaster in both cases.  With gambling, people lost so much money they had invested, in SL, they got really upset, and left SL, never to return.  The player base of SL has never recovered.

Their biggest fiasco has been Sansar.  No one asked for this, nor wanted it. Linden Lab failed to take into account that we would NOT be able to take with us years and thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of sims, avatars, clothes, no copy items, custom items, etc, to  their new grid. That was a non starter. No one was willing to toss away all their accumulated inventory, to move to a new sim. That would be madness.  LL really didn't think that one through. Instead, all that time and money could have been better spent on improving their existing grid, Second Life!

Another issue is the two-faced handling of content creators.  Linden Lab loves the lindens they get from players buying, the items these creators, Spending hours building items like avatars, furniture, homes, clothes, misc, whatever you heart desires. How many of these talented creators have left SL, because LL doesn't care that their creations get copybotted and sold by the offenders. Complain the LL, you get deaf ears.  Going after the copybotters is WORK!

Linden Lab, instead of trying to figure new ways to wring more money out of your existing player base, you might work at making it more attractive to actually WANT to play Second Life.  Build your player base.  The more new folks you can get to play the game, the more might actually like it, and start spending money..

My final bitch at Linden Lab, is a big one, and I can see ZERO EXCUSE for it.  If your Second Life account gets hacked, instead of LL going after the offender that HACKED you, YOU are treated as the criminal, get your account banned and they REFUSE to help you get your account back, no matter what info you supply. Then when you create a new account, they ban that one too, SACRILEGE!  LL wakeup and smell the coffee!  We play your game, we pay your bills, start treating us with respect!

Rita Mariner
 

Rolling Restart Issues Trouble Second Life

In Second Life's early years, it was common for the entire Grid to be taken offline and the residents having to leave for a while so the Lindens could fix glitches. These days, things are much better with most residents having to face rolling restarts about once a week. But earlier this week, things began to go wrong. Starting on early Tuesday morning, people in some places found themselves unable to go back to some sims. This included Cyfir (Cyfiremmerich), whom couldn't get back to his home.

Read Cyfir's article in Design.

SLife and Times: Instant Judgement Misconceptions

You may have come across them before, people whom when Second Life is mentioned think it's weird. But a few of you may have run into someone who thinks it's more than that, but downright mentally toxic. And then there are those inworld whom will have nothing to do with a particular group of residents, such as those in furred avatars, because of one incident with one errant individual that gave them the impression every single person with his kind of appearance acts like him. Some time ago, I had a confrontation with one of the former, and recently a talk with one of the latter.

Read more in People.

"SL13B Rights and Wrongs"

KT Burnett (KayT Resident), whom recently started a new Second Life blog "The Digitized," posted a commentary "SLB13: Right and Wrong" about what she felt what went well, and sometimes better, with the Birthday celebration, and a few things that could be improved on.

Among the pluses were the freebies and always having greeters at the Welcome area, separating the event into a busy week of events for those who love activity and crowds, and a more relaxed week (which in the past was as short as a couple days) in which residents could leisurely explore the exhibits with the crowds gone, and the Lindens at both the "Meet the Lindens" events and "dragging the Lindens in front of live audiences" which she felt "this had been something the community needed so badly – the feel that Linden Lab has not deserted Second Life, that they care, that they take interest in what’s happening on the Grid."

Such a big event inevitably has things going wrong. And among the minuses, in her opinion minor inconveniences, were that most performers did not put on a show that was significantly different from their usual performance, many exhibits were challenging to photograph (something I can relate to), and that she wondered if some exhibits could have done a better job in reflecting, or speaking about, the community they came from.

In the case of the Second Life Newser's exhibit, we've had an interesting challenge: what kind of exhibit represents a newspaper? The settings of our stories change with the locations. In the past,we've had office buildings. But after a while, we were soon asked to come up with something different. When our friend Silvia Ametza offered to build us a 19th Century style riverboat, that in my opinion would fit in a cowboy adventure, we went for it. Since we have a couple cartoons every week, it was suggested we put some up, so we did in the form of a slide show. And in the end, it worked. The exhibit got a number of complements from people who saw it.

What we'll build next year, well, that depends on the theme. Unless real life decides to throw a real humdinger of a monkey wrench at us, the Newser will be there.

Bixyl Shuftan

Another Linden Blunder Hits a Resident

With the harsh treatment Alleara Snoodle got last month from Linden Lab still on my mind, another of my friends came forward with another story. "Thanks to Linden Labs and a accounting error," she told me "I'm going to lose my primary account."

My friend went on, "Thanks to a error in their accounting computer my account got switched from a basic account to a Premium Annual account." I asked if she could switch it back, and she told me that wasn't the big problem, "they locked and disabled the account until I pay the $72 dollars they say I owe." She had never been notified of the account's status change, "I have till the 24th of (June) to take care of it though, or the account will be cancelled and wiped from the server."

My friend requested that her name not be listed, either her primary account or the one she has been using currently, " hate to even think I'd lose the account over something as retarded as Linden Lab."

The friend in question is pretty much devoted to Second Life thanks to a few individuals whose friendships she values, so she plans on sticking around regardless. But what does this say to those thinking of getting land from the Lab, or expanding their holdings?

Linden Lab, how much money can you expect to make in the long run if your customers lose your trust in you?


Bixyl Shuftan

Cartoon of the Day

By Xmbers Slade

Glitches in the Grid

If you had problems with Second Life this weekend, you weren't alone.

Chatting with friends, it seems there were an above average number of glitches in the system. They ranged from sims crashing and being briefly offline to attatchments not attatching to HUDs not working, clickable objects not working properly, etc.

Yours truly also had trouble. The sim I was in crashed, and logging back in, the picture shows as far as I got. Eventually, I had to set the viewer to port home. And even then, it took a couple tries.

Checking secondlife.com, the only thing I noticed was server maintenence scheduled for Monday. Later on, I found the following:

[RESOLVED] All network issues have been resolved.

[POSTED 31 JUL 2011, 1:18PM PDT] We are currently experiencing network issues that may cause regions to fail to restart, login and teleport issues, and Landstore issues. We are working to resolve these as soon as possible. Please check this blog for updates.

Hopefully this means things have been cleared up. Then again, most of us know the Grid seldom is truly glitch-free.

Bixyl Shuftan