ZenWarrior Fuosing

I'm sure there are many such rankings and even different tests by which scores are determined. If I've more time, I'll also find the I.Q. score of 90 stated as the American average, but below you will find data 10 years more recent than your citation which places the U.S. (tied) at 19th. Still, I find SL's learning curve seemingly more a problem for Americans than other nationalities. Remember, they even have to conquer a second language first. Therefore, I stand by my implicit or tacit argument that's it's more the function of a person's willingness to learn than problems so greatly inherent to SL. http://www.statisticbrain.com/countries-with-the-highest-lowest-average-iq/

The I.Q. of the average American is 90 (world ranking = 19th). The average I.Q. worldwide is closer to 100. And frankly, this does seem an "American" problem. Those ten points do make a substantial difference, especially when most now coming into SL are late adopters of technology and have more looked more to avoid than embrace technology most of their lives. Given that avoidance, lower-than-average I.Q., and SL certainly being a technological product which is far from plug-and-play, I'm certain many do find the learning curve quite steep. And even should they get to a certain point, I cannot begin to count the number of times I've discovered those supposedly proficient people have never once opened and customized their viewers' preferences, even after as many as three years, to maximize their SL experience and ease of use. Worst of all, and this may only apply to Firestorm, none see the splash screen announcement offering classes. That's not anyone's fault but their own when the announcement is surely more ignored than not seen. I find the announcement impossible to miss. And given it's people who have consciously avoided learning in almost every single case, I no longer make any attempt to help them. Ninety to ninety-five percent of fault lies entirely with them and not SL. (Note: It's a bit like the person who recently wanted to learn how to build, but then angrily accused no one of helping him learn when every single person in the group discussion told him to take building classes and even provided landmarks to where schools and/or tutorials could be found inworld.)

Madelaine McMasters wrote SL has fallen off the technological rails. There are those who would prefer overlooking the fact that 95% of SL's current technology is 10+ years old. That's equivalent to a hundred years or more in the computer/technology world. (And no, it wasn't truly ahead of its time so forget that argument.) Therefore, your anecdotal references are entirely valid. Money which might have gone to badly needed infrastructure improvements served only as milk from the cow for failed projects. As for his leaving: "The king is dead! Long live the king!" (Anyone up for driving a train wreck?)

The dune buggy (58 prims?!) is one premium gift which hurt premium memberships far more than help them. It's terribly built and almost impossible to handle. I certainly will not be encouraging anyone, even now premium, to run and get one. Any Steam gamer who first uses that dune buggy won't be able to log back out of SL fast enough! I've used it once and don't see removing it from inventory for use ever again. And in fact, it's very likely to simply be deleted. And, we again see LL's inability to do the simplest marketing correctly. With every purchase I buy from the marketplace, I also receive a LM needed to fully actualize the purchase. However, someone at LL is so clueless as not to package a LM to the rezzing/driving areas along with the buggy. Doh! There is not one single link to an all-in-one pickup, rezzing and driving area on the blog page, either. I'm already premium and can therefore skip the unneeded extra steps. LL's premium gifts are having me think they are wasting my premium membership fees on ill-considered, useless, poorly made and marketed "gifts," when the very best gift of all would be to use that money to repair SL's often crippled infrastructure.

Three letters why provision and adoption of SL via Steam--as a game--will fail: FPS. (Look at the vast numbers of people in SL who now never see more than 20 FPS on a very good day with their low- to mid-powered graphics and PCs, and often see little more than 10-15 FPS.) However, is LL looking to Steam as less a "possible" source of new customers, or is it more looking to use the Steam cloud as a cheaper alternative to its present servers and COLOs? Finally, and related to FPS, what changes can be expected in SL's infrastructure to handle those expecting to play a "game" vs. (slowly) living in another world? The infrastructure even now cannot keep pace with one's thoughts, and especially not in a game where actions must occur almost concurrently with thoughts. One thing SL has always lacked, and clearly forgotten in its design, is adrenaline. I do not ever recall my heart pumping faster or feeling challeged by anything other than lag in SL. However, when I pull out a NFS or Tom Clancy game, the adrenaline pump works overtime!

Great marketing, LL. I am a premium member who logs in every single day and I've never heard about your game until now. I check my dashboard everyday also, but still never heard about it. None of your otherwise useless e-mails I've received have mentioned it. But now that I have stumbled upon it, I'll promptly forget about it. (Didn't LL hire a marketing manager some time back? Did she get fired? Appears so, the marketing has been turned back over to the unpaid interns.) As for the new CEO, he's slowly proving to be another loser with first his inane idea for a viewer with Basic/Advanced modes and now this idiocy. Where are all fixes for the basics we were promised instead of attempts to placate the little children with pablum like this?

Nevermind my posting above. However, given hardly anyone will read the "fine print" of only one quarter being discounted, this is about as close to bait-and-switch and you can come without stepping over the line. Bad, bad LL.

Wow! As a long-term customer of 5 years now, I feel so very (un)appreciated after paying a full rate while new people are offered 50% off their memberships--if even for only a weekend. Does LL wish to be fair and have me forget this slight? Offer me that same deal when my premium membership again becomes due. Otherwise, I now have good reason to believe LL doesn't give a hoot about anyone who has stuck it out with them during some of its worst and most troublesome times. Why bother renewing instead of accepting the obvious fact that my loyalty is not appreciated, and never will be.

Knowing LL will not bother to actually read and learn from each of these comments, let me sum them up: New Premium Membership Feature = 85% FAIL! (I'd not take a gamble with that high a probability of losing anytime anywhere.)

It is most unfortunate this is another somewhat ill-conceived idea by LL. Many of these premium members are the very same new customers LL hopes to attract with the provision of a free Linden home. However, the left hand again did not consult with the right. The furnishing have far too many prims to be of truly practical value as new furnishings in a "completely" furnished Linden home. A dear friend of mine, who just took my advice to go premium, discovered to use all the pieces provided in this gift meant using approximately 45 of the mere 117 prims allocated to a Linden home. Needless to say, she placed each item back in inventory. We then went shopping in SL, found low-prim equivalents of each item, and furnished a room with essentially the same pieces using less than 20 prims. Did LL not consider that most of these items will likely be used by newer residents, who have not yet acquired a large inventory, quite possibly taking advantage of the wonderful Linden homes, and hoping to save money might need better craftmanship and more recent building techniques which reduce the number of prims used? LL is using 4-5 prims where a sculpt would take only one, or the complete item would require only 2 prims at most. Go back to the drawing board LL, take time to think through what you're doing, and do it far better than you did this time. By the time my friend finished buying 1-2 prim sculpted pieces of furniture and using some I gave her and built with only 2-3 prims at most, she had a fully furnished Linden home (including a bed, wall hangings, media screen, rugs, Intan, and TP pads) with over 40 prims remaining. And with those extra prims, she was able to go to Zooby's and purchase the virtual pet she so badly wished to have. To achieve that with LL's approach is quite frankly impossible.

Perhaps offering a measure of true customer service might help. That's one of the oft' repeated reasons I hear for people leaving entirely or at least no longer remaining premium. The seemingly abject lack of customer service and its implications certainly has me spending less time inworld.

I wish LL would figure out how important search is. It's worse now, after "improvements," than it has ever been. I could once review all the events occurring across 2 days in seconds. Now with the useless graphics taking up so much space and thus only a few events listed per page, it takes several minutes--if I ever get past the first dozen listings, which recently has been never. In all its finite wisdom, LL doesn't understand that many of us "browse" the listings and do not search them. Given that, the ability to effectively browse via what we're provided as a search engine has all but been eliminated. On the other hand, search is now so useless (for me) that I spend a good deal less time in SL and instead doing more substantive things in RL. Normally, I'd have logged in by now to "browse" through the events listings to see what I might want to do in SL today. I have not once done that with the "new and improved" search. And admittedly, I should be thankful to LL. It's saving me from wasting away time getting nothing done and saving me a fair amount of money I once spent inworld.

<Yawn>

Although SL is a world comprised solely of information and finding only the information needed is absolutely essential, LL has neglected search for so long or done it so poorly that except for the denizens of these forums, those 7 of the 10 people (Lindens?) surveyed, and so-called vendors, LL's misteps with search mean no small number of "average" residents don't even care anymore. That's what happens when something as vital as search meets the following management and customer service attitude: It has been a while since we last updated you on search and that’s because we’ve chosen to take a big leap forward versus smaller, incremental improvements. ~ LL blog posting, 25 May 11 WT_?! Talk to us! Personally, I essentially gave up on SL search a while ago after realizing I could find whatever I needed within the first 5 returned results using any decent seach engine and a properly constructed guery, with the exception of whatever LL used. Sorry, LL, but you lost me and 90% of my business long ago when search should have already been fixed. So guess what? Fixed or not, I don't care about search anymore! Too many years without decent search capabilities taught me not to even bother logging in at times. (Yes, Virginia, there are many reasons concurrency is down or flat. Did anyone in LL ever think being unable to find items and events was causing people to either leave SL or log in only once to never return?) As for testing any new SL software, LL already wastes enough of my time either with things in SL which don't work or its "caveat emptor" consumer protection policy which has too frequently left me spending 3-4 very unpleasant hours per week tracking down SL vendors--a.k.a. con artists--to get that for which I've paid but is either broken or was falsely advertised. And after searching for "lost" vendors who have stolen my money, I'm not searching for anything else in SL. Instead, I'm logging out.

Very good question. I've submitted 4 reports about indisputable abuses over the past 6 weeks and zero action has been taken. AR number five will be submitted today. (Could it be LL is again overwhelmed by its own ineptitude because it did not think and anticipate the inevitable large increase in ARs when it merged the teen grid with the main grid?)