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I keep waiting for that earth-shattrering message from LL that says we ARE working on existing problems.

Anyone else tired of the ranting of Jahman Ochs and his "I have invested over 5 hard-fought years to make Second Life something to be proud of - and when Linden Labs, whom I have given tens of thousands of U$", "which I have partly paid for, through the thousands of U$ I give them every year", "that it is Linden Labs' mandate to take MY MONEY and spend time working on creating such tripe"?

 

Wow I guess Second Life would not be what it is today without Jahman Ochs and his time and let us not forget his money. I'm pretty sure they won't be bowing down to you anytime soon or give one hoot if you leave. And thanks for looking down on the rest of us from your mighty perch.

 

"How much have you invested?" (Oh a dig to all of us who seem lower than he because he has defiantly spent more money here than everyone else.. Not.).

 

"a waste of MY (and everyone else's) subscription and tier fees" Well I am pretty sure there are a lot of other people here who made SL fun and enjoyable besides yourself so sorry it's not all about you.

 

"That said, ultimately, if it gets stupid enough here, I *will* walk away rather than throwing good money after bad". Please run, don't walk away, we are not sorry that your days of making boat loads of cash from the USERS are over! Do yourself a favor and leave, because you sure don’t seem happy here.

 

That said, get over it buddy LL is YOUR SL government and like the government in the real world. Your meager dollars are a drop in the sea and will make no ripples to change how they will do business. You should be grateful no matter what that they allowed you to make money off of their idea. Try griping at your RL government about all your dollars going to waste and see if it helps there too. I’m sure it won’t.

 

My hat is off to those of you who really made Second Life what it is today, whether you spent money or time or just joined to see what a virtual world is all about. It’s about all of us, without all of us there would be no Second Life. Thanks for not complaining and making the rest of us feel little like this dude.

 

Peace!

AFTER READING EVERYONES OPINION,AFTER SPENDING MY HARD EARNED MONEY ON A PREMIUM ACCOUNT,AFTER SEEING THIS GAME AS IT REALLY IS, A MEAT MARKET,AN I CAN LOOK BETTER THAN THE NEXT PERSON IF I FATTEN LL POCKETS,I USED TO HAVE FUN,MADE FRIENDS,NO MORE.LL DOESNT GET IT. I HAVE MOVED TO ANOTHER GAME ON LINE,WHICH REWARDS THEIR SERVERS,GIVE FREE STUFF,OFFERS FREE HOMES,AND HAVE GAMES WITHIN THEIR GAMES. NO I AM NOT A KID,IM A MATURE ADULT,LL IS DYING!! THEY DO NOT LISTEN TO THEIR SERVERS,THEY DO NOT CARE! AFTER CAREFUL THOUGHT IM CANCELLING MY ACCOUNT,AND I TRUST I WILL NOT BE THE ONLY ONE. SL HAS CHANGED,I WILL ONLY GO TO SITES NOW WHO KNOW HOW TO TREAT THEIR SERVERS RIGHT AND LISTEN TO THEM. GOODBYE SL,IT WAS FUN FOR A WHILE ,BUT U ARE NOT GETTING ANYMORE OF MY MONEY,NOR MY TIME.

The realm games were for SL to try using their scripts to create and game for the purpose of improving upon their scripts so we could then have more options to make our own games... it's called research and development. Although I have not played the game yet I am looking forward to see what they come up with in the way of cleaner, faster scripts so we can offer more things to do for our visitors.

One thing I would suggest would be to have the Home destination upon dieing NOT set to an avatar's Home but instead allowing us the option of an alternative landing point in our own Sims, (aside from the main landing point). Many people do not want to use health since it takes an avatar out of their sim if they die, possibly not to return. I think this makes the health system useless since it only drives people away.

@Mal - Hah. Ok, if that's how you want to interpret what I've written, go for it. My intent has never been to egrandize my own accomplishments over anyone elses. I know my own the best, needless to say; I could speak for others, but would rather they do so for themselves. If you take offense at my asking you what your investment is, either in time or money, to demonstrate the depth of your commitment here, so be it.

And I may be a ranter, but I'm certainly no whiner. I'm passionate about the subject, not selfish about its value to me alone. I make my opionions known to Linden Labs in as many ways as possible, both verbally and with my hard-earned dollars. I won't go into your comments about the nature of business and government and their relationship to those whom they service or serve - I could wax on that for more space than on the topic at hand, but this isn't the forum for a discussion of economics (at least on that level) or politics. If you don't like what I'm writing, and feel like you need to attack me for it, have at - and I'll respond in kind. That's what forums are for, after all. If Linden Labs objects to my opinions or the way I express them, they're welcome to ban me. You have no such power, and you certainly won't cow me by trying to rally the troops against me. I could just as easily ask "How many of you feel like I'm expressing your sentiments?"

@Freecilla - my whole point precisely. If this is research and development, then where's the beta test? Why is this being promoted front and center in the login splash page? If this is for us to improve our own environments, where's the interaction with the existing userbase that creates those environments, ensuring that what they are building addresses what we think we need to make compelling content that will attract and hold new subscribers? Please read the links I posted earlier - this is not some benevolent process to improve the quality of life for those of us on the grid. This is the end result of a series of steps that recently included the head of a failed "SIMS Online" project taking over the helm of this ship, and I consider it hostile to the original intent of this platform - which has failed not because it was inherently flawed (I give Philip a lot more credit than that) but because of a failure to adhere to the fundamental commitment of the plan.

If Linden Labs expects this new content to be of value to us, then they should be making us part of the process; as someone who specifically is involved in Second Life as a content developer dedicated to creating environments that engage the attention of residents, I certainly have an interest in such, but no solicitation for advice was made, as far as I know. If there are any of you on this thread who've been involved in the design stages of "Linden Realms", I'd be very, very interested to hear about it.

@Jahman - The "beta test" so to speak is to put the game in place and present it to the public to get feed back right away, using the login page to show the games gets the most people to see and use it and provide feed back in the shortest time possible. SL can see the results and edit things as they go for improvements. SL is working on their existing scripting that they created in the first place to make it more effective... they realized while there are some games in SL created by users, (mainly hunts these days) there are not a great variety of interesting games or just things do to in SL and that is limited by the scripting as it is and what we can and can not do with it.

I agree with your thoughts that SL has had no real plans in the past however I do fault Philip for that. He reached his dream and failed to realize where it could lead from there, so he left, he was done, hence it has lead to a plateau where the main stream public still has no idea what SL even is. It finally seems the new direction SL is taking to improve things is a step in the right direction, improving scripts for highly interactive features, (like games) is just not where those improvements will end since those scripts can them be added to non-game related interactions as well. The new direction seems to be breaking away from the limited idea that SL is a product and they are finally seeing it as the "World" it is that dwarfs the idea of a mere product by a light year. I still don't think they know what SL is capable of yet though, there are many important elements still missing and not adddressed in any way so far but making improvements one by one is a good thing and nice to see.

SL does read these pages and it does keep in mind the input from it's users. This is seen in the new viewer with it's drag and drop interface, (now just to get rid of the side bars, this added programming is unnecessary and all unnecessary programming must be deleted to improve over all performance). We see it in the deletion of the Basic viewer as well. We have to remember SL is dealing with a complete "World" which has many many various departments with limited staff from the past limited idea of what they attempting to accomplish.

@Freecilla, While Linden Lab has been adding functions to LSL, the only gaming related addition that I am aware of is llCastRay() and this, as far as I know, isn't even applicable to Linden Realms so, be a little more detailed please.

@Setekh, I can not be more specific, I do not work for SL or LL. I have to admit I am assuming one can not make a game in SL like the realms by only using prims with no scripts. Since they have worked on prims, (size and mesh) it is likely they would be working on scripting for the game.

Actually, I really enjoyed the simplicity of the game. More over, it gave me the chance to meet a wide range of avatars outside of my normal acquaintances.

I just checked this out a while. It's wonderful . I'm 47 BTW. I think this and other things like it is what SL has been needing; some interactive activities put on by the folks that run the show. It helps me feel like they are taking an active part in the world that is SL and not simply cashing in on it. I hope it's jst the beginning of things like this we will be seeing. Not that everything has to be Spyro revisited (loved Spyro btw as a family activity!) but it seems to me like anyone with a design sense that goes and has a look should be able to easily see the mass potential here.

There was only one problem. I wasn't dressed appropriately for it. Guess I'll have to go spend some money in some of you folk's stores before I go back and make my way to the bottom of Devil's canyon.

Funny, but it would not let my main account in? Perhaps because it is an older account. I was able to take a look around in a newer alternative account. Is LR only for noobs? 

The new tools in Linden Realms will help builders make cool new games and creators develop new products.   The primary purpose of Linden Realms was to develop new tools for creators to use in their builders.  Although, as a sim owner it will take at least 12 regions to develop a mesh sim. For example, the Shattern caverns uses 1 full region island 15,000 prims for a few paths in that cavern. Current Linden prices is going to cost a sim owner around $3540 per month for 12 regions.

In comparison to other virtual worlds with mesh, like Blue Mars, and open sims with( dedicated hosting). For example, blue mars offers a terrain size of  8km x 8km = 32 second life islands at the same price per month. Setup fee is a bit cheaper in blue mars. 

In open sims with a dedicated line, the cost is 32 islands for the same price as 1 island in second life.  Linden Labs needs to address the land issue for mesh, especially since Linden labs wants to turn off the V1 server.  That is if Linden Labs wants mesh to succeed.  

removed

Hmm, Getting rid of viewer 1.  Viewer 1 is the viewer that I have the least lag and most stable.  I think they need to improve the lag and stability on these newer viewers before removing viewer 1.

Would like to touch on the Customer Service improvements, we have been getting spammed with horrid particles and sounds on our Mainland Parcel, AR have been filed, nothing has been done, we get a hold of Chat support, or we are sorry nothing we can do, we are tech and billing issues, What part of Billing Issue do they not understand, we are PAYING Tier for this land and to the point we cannot TP anyone to the land because they get blasted with this encroachment. At my wits end on this matter. It takes but a momnet to return griefing items. Months this has been going on. I think it should be taken very seriously by Linden Labs, we are PAYING for use of this land, and denied enjoyment.

Is there a place where I can go to ask a "triggering" question for the Realm?? 

 

It's told me to go back to the workshop.. and I have.. but nothing more is happening.

I'll have to agree with a number of people here who expressed a desire for Linden Lab to fix "ancient bugs" before creating new games. 

Many of us are here, not for a social network or gaming experience, but because Second Life is just that, a second life.  It's a virtual world where we can create our own experience, and most of us don't want to be known as our RL selves, and I'd guess many if not most don't even know they have a profile online at my.secondlife.com, which was created for them without their consent. 

Linden Realms would be fine with me (not that I have any interest in it, but there are all kinds of people here with all kinds of interests) but please put time and money into fixing what has been broken for so long before you create new things with new bugs that will need to be fixed.

What made Sl so successful was content creation by in-world residents and stores/attractions on their lands. It is my belief that Marketplace has made developing land obsolete for content creators. Therefore the loss of close to 900 regions (?) in SL in 2011. Since content creators have vamoosed for pushing wares on marketplace or other worlds, now 75% of Sl's economy (ie land rental) depends on Land Barons. Combine this with raising tiers while other virtual worlds are growing and charge nothing to 1/4 the cost for a sim (and growing fast) , we have a perfect recipe for disaster if and  when the land barons leave for more profitable pastures. It is no secret that SL is losing ground while other virtual worlds are growing and poised for the future. In my mind I think it is clear that the new powers that be (LL) do not have the same vision of sl as it's client base, and may be planning to morph sl into just another video game platform. Bottom line seems the order of the day without vision for the expansion or development of virtual reality as a creative platform for the content creator and the future. Land aquisition by LL on the other hand is on the rise, which hints at LL competition against all land owners and content creators.  As staunch as an SL supporter that I have been as land owner and creator, lately I feel a great disconnect with their visions, plans, and or support to the community that has made them successful. Yes I do have a back up plan and have started developing eleswhere. I guarantee you I would not have if all the above was not happening. Of course there is always the old rhetoric we heard during the civil rights movement in America "if you don't like it leave".   Some things never change...

Big thanks to the team who put it together!

 

 

 

 

Great fun for about 2 hours, now what?

I really love the game like you have no idea, lots of fun at the Realms thanks for this super game, I enjoy loads the monsters also keeps me running and I enjoy this make my day super good :matte-motes-bashful-cute-2::matte-motes-little-laugh:

Don't be so quick to bash the guy who makes the sims... he is richer than you and the sims games were awesome, I just can't get into the latest ones, but that's okay cause I bought it anyway so he made some money from me . Enjoy it... stop whining... they are pretty much handing us free lindens on a plate. I know it's helped me when I have needed a little extra to upload an image etc and not quite had enough. It's about time people stopped being so synical and just tried to enjoy life a little.

The SIMS Online was a bomb; it closed years ago. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sims_Online) Just because someone is rich does not make them smart, and it definitely doesn't make them dedicated customer service providers. "I like to fire people" seems to be the rule around Linden Labs, anyway.

I will *object* to the policies of a service provider whenever and wherever I feel appropriate; since they asked for feedback on this new offering, I have and will continue to do so. I do not whine. What they have done here is divert resources (and, in this case, it's clearly competitive resources for what could otherwise be repair and improvement of the grid software infrastructure) that *I*, among many others, pay for directly out of my pocket.

And I am not cynical, I am pragmatic. If it comes to the point where I actually see a negative impact that impedes my ability to achieve my own goals with the platform they have provided, I will stop using it. "Linden Realms" does absolutely nothing for me; having sim crossings create ghosts, having inventory caches that continuously fail, having physics engine failures, etc. etc. etc. impact me very much. There is no contest, for me, to which I would rather see them apply their effort.

Ok so Linden Labs has decided to make the Linden Realms.  I have some very basic problems with this feature.  If it was designed as a way to introduce new residents to SL and put a little Linden it their pockets I support this fully.  It should be limited to new residents less than say 30 days old.  If older residents wanted to access this feature then they need to be premium.

 However, they choose to open this to everyone on the grid.  Now why do I have a premium account?  In the old days, you got a small stipend of Linden as an incentive and the ability to buy Mainland real estate and or own private regions.  Next they added the Linden Homes and then free gifts.

On Linden homes, Linden Labs essentially destroyed the residential sims that catered to new resident.  Before this enhancement one of the big selling points of a private island was you did not need a premium account to purchase.  The adjusted prices was a few dollars less a month than Linden land.   Sure Linden Labs needs to be competitive, however, we are paying 300 dollars a month to be able to offer residential and commercial real estate.  I of course do not know how much it cost for Linden Labs to maintain a SIM but the profit must be more than $9.95 couple that with the fact that a SIM owner is a Premium Member.

So playing the Devil's advocate.  I do not own land so do I need to be a Premium Member?  The stipend of 300 Linden to help play the game?  Not anymore.  I can just go to the Realms and collect crystals trade them for Lindens.  If I have enough time I can make a career out of this.

Remember at one time Linden had real value, but now we have made Linden free.  Why would I make a nice jacket for sell.  I spend 10 hours making the textures.  I pay to upload them.  I create the ad work.  If I have an in-world store I pay my tier.  My jacket sells for 150 Linden and I sell two a week.  This is a lot of hard work, and all I have to do is run to the Realms collect crystals.

Finally about the Realms.  I went, and looked.  I do have a World of Warcraft account.  I do occasionally go and play.  Simply put WOW is well done, the Realms are a joke.  The difference?   I pay to play World of Warcraft.  The Gold Silver and Bronze have no real value unlike Linden.

In World of Warcraft there are gold farmers.  They will spend 20 hours a day completing quest and reaping resources. They create bots and have this down to an exact science.  I have been to the Realms, it is so simple compared to WOW it would take a savvy Realm farmer to develop a system in about 10 minutes which is how long it took me to figure it out.    The Blizzard TOS explicitly prohibits the sale of in-game currency.  These farmers risk it all selling the gold on illegal web sites.  If they get caught they lose their account and the gold.  This is not the case with the Realms.  You can harness a set of farmers and destroy the Second Life economy real fast.   

Finally; why was this concept even needed?  It serves no purpose towards integrating new residents into the game.  Unlike the Welcome Islands there are not tutorials depicting how to put on clothes, find items in search or build.  The time spent on developing the Realms could have gone to developing a better alpha texture system so when you put your shower in front of your window half you house does not disappear.  Once in place the Realms with "Quests"  Linden must constantly chase new material for new quests or it simply becomes about farming Linden.  The time spent on developing new quests content could be applied to research and development of the Web Site UX.  If I wanted to play games like the Realm I would go to a gaming system like Blizzard that has a mature system in place.  The only reason I would even play Realms is for the free Linden.

Ask yourself what the grand plan is here.  Expanding the Realm in 2012? Are the realms designed to attract new players?   Slowly but surely SL is losing grid mass at an alarming rate.  Last year SL lost over 650 Regions.  The amount is staggering.  How many new players would Second Life need to offset that amount of revenue?  Consider that not only do you need new accounts they must be Premium or paid.  Conjunct this with the fact you are giving away something of monetary value and you just have to think how can SL survive?

What happens when the players myself that spend over 300 USD a month decide enough is enough with Linden Lab's evolution of Second Life.  Why do we stay here?  We can go to Avination and have 7 sims for the price we pay Linden Labs for a single sim.  Some of us purchase 10s or thousand Lindens per month.  We are the creators, builders, scripters and texture makers.  And we stand by and watch our work fall aside as Linden Labs infuses our economy with bogus Linden.  You just can't give money away and Linden is money.  Not for long anyways.  

The Realms are dangerous and need to be stopped each free Linden will devalue the Linden others work hard to earn.

This is just my personal take on this matter.

im a first time user,but if you dont ever give anebody a chace they will just leave you to your self