New changes are killing this place. What are you doing Linden!?!

[CaseyFallen Popstar]

First, I am taking my time to write this in hopes that someone with the power to make change in Linden will some how hear me and would like to hear accounts from others out there in Second Life on the subject. 

Today I helped a friend create a new account. I was shocked at that the way new avatars are brought into the world now.

Why Linden felt a change was needed in that area is beyond me. But I have to tell you, it is the worst change ever!

Remember the old way of entering S.L.? Avatars were lead through a short path that would teach a avatar the basics. Sitting, flying, camera tricks.....Then they would choose from a map..and poof through a amazing portal they would fall right into the mainland. This was how I first experienced S.L. I have to tell you, it was amazing!

Now.... Avatars are dropped into a room with a bunch of doors. No teaching at all. "I am understanding why so many new folks in S.L. seem totally lost these days and why in-world numbers are falling" But even worse, the doors you pick from to enter no longer has a cool portal..just a teleport to some random place. 

Here is a account on how my friends first random place ended up: He chose a door, ended up in some roleplay sim which started in a dingy sewer. Was greeted by the sim owner yelling at him. Screaming about not being in character. My friend was confused and horrified to say the least. Needless to say, my friend will never return to Second Life. If that had been my first S.L. experience, I would not be here either. 

Who in the world came up with this change and how could they think this was a good idea? But I digress.

To make things even more sad. I bought some items from a in-world vendor a few weeks ago. Nothing delivered. I wrote the vendor owner. No reply. So I put in a request through the ticket system. Do you know what I was told by Linden? That I was basically out the money. Even though I gave linden the Prefix I.D. and all info for the purchase..no attempt to recover my lost money. If Linden is not going to protect us from in-world scams..then all in-world selling needs to go away. Which is NOT what I want at all. What I want is Linden to refund us members. Why do they even keep records of purchases in world if they are for nothing at all. I was really treated like Linden cares less. Sad.

Finally, the latest SLV 2 glitch is intolerable. Now when you"Right Click" to get a menu to sit..instead you get what ever object you are clicking on deleted if you happen to be the owner. Sigh..... This is one issue I cannot wait for a year to be fixed. What the heck Linden!?! Are you guys listening?

[Dilbert Dilweg]

 

I agree the Viewer 2 right click menu goes directly to Delete and is a major issue that should be corrected immediately../me doesn't have the time or patience any more to file a JIRA..

 

You should have got your friends SL name and teleported them around all the nonsense. But we know that is hard to do when they join and you are not around. That's probably why not many will tell their friends about SL. They don;t want to put their friends thru the odd experience lol

 

Your fridns name wasnt Lucinda was it? lol

[CaseyFallen Popstar]

Thanks for leaving a reply Dilbert Dilweg!

Yes, the trouble report process via JIRA is beyond tedious and seriously outdated! I reported the invisible textures bug a few years back. Took over a year for a solution. I understand they have their hands full. But the fix system is beyond broken. I too shall pass on making a trouble ticket. Got to tell you, deleting my house and having to spend hours putting it back out the other day was not my idea of quality S.L. time.

Yes, leading a friend around is a solution. But as you pointed out, cannot always be there and Lindens concern should be to keep those who come alone. As most of us do. How many of us had a friend build our MySpace in the days of MySpace and then FaceBook. I would think not many. The first experience is the most important. Log -in numbers are dwindling here and If I were a gambling man, I would bet money that much of it has to do with the new account process.

Thanks again for a reply!

[Urzul]

i want to add something to this SANDBOX.....

some dont eventhink they can build in sl

Show  freebie place

i wont pay for a game if i cant play

And mesh and sculpt builder dont play sl they only sell in sl...that meen no player...

[CaseyFallen Popstar]

VERY good point Urzel! Yes, so many things that are available to do in Second Life are just plain out of sight. Only the small percentage of return users slowly find out about all the stuff there is to do in here.

I think you are very correct to point out this deficiency. If they were shown from day one that they can build and shown where the free places were do so, this would be a great start at making more visitors permanent residents.

 

Thanks so much for leaving a rely! Very much appreciated.

[Dilbert Dilweg]

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Urzul wrote:

 

And mesh and sculpt builder dont play sl they only sell in sl...that meen no player...

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/me plays in Sl all the time lol I am mesh builder and sell but also enjoy what SL has to offer by visting places and helping residents in world daily

[Amethyst Jetaime]

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Urzul wrote:

And mesh and sculpt builder dont play sl they only sell in sl..that mean no player...

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Where do you come up with this? 

It is true that if you create mesh and sculpts you aren't in world, because you have to use an outside program to create those things.  However that doesn't mean that creators don't log into SL for fun and socializing.  I am a creator and 'play" in SL every day.  Most of my friends also are creators and 'play' SL for fun and socializing.

I'm betting that most of the people I know spend more time in SL than you do, as most of them are in SL everyday and only part of that time are they tending to their businesses.  A lot of creators have avatars that they use strictly for business.  They have other avatars they use for their fun.  A large number of people on this forum also are creators and yet they too do a lot more than just work as evidenced by their posts.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

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CaseyFallen Popstar wrote:

 

To make things even more sad. I bought some items from a in-world vendor a few weeks ago. Nothing delivered. I wrote the vendor owner. No reply. So I put in a request through the ticket system. Do you know what I was told by Linden? That I was basically out the money. Even though I gave linden the Prefix I.D. and all info for the purchase..no attempt to recover my lost money. If Linden is not going to protect us from in-world scams..then all in-world selling needs to go away. Which is NOT what I want at all. What I want is Linden to refund us members. Why do they even keep records of purchases in world if they are for nothing at all. I was really treated like Linden cares less. Sad.

 

---

When you joined SL you agreed to the TOS which clearly states that you buy at your own risk and LL is not responsible for any loss you may have.  It is unreasonable to think LL should refund your money.  Does your government do that for you in RL when you buy something that you think ripped you off or you have a bad experience with a merchant?  Of course not.

While I agree that the merchant should have responded by now, there may be a valid reason why they haven't yet.  They may be ill or dealing with a RL emergency.  Merchants don't stay in business long if they do this all the time. I would continue to follow up with them.  Sometimes merchants accounts are capped and they don't get your IM's or notecards.  So send another one and keep sending them every few days until you do get a response, which I am sure you will eventually.  In the 6+ years I've been in SL I have never had a merchant not reply and deliver the goods.  Sometimes it does take a few weeks due to matters out of their control,  but they always have come through in the end.

BTW, LL transaction histories available to you for your benefit not theirs.

 

[Phil Deakins]

The official LL viewer is V3, not V2. I use it and I don'thave that auto-delete proiblem. I checked when i read your post and I don't have it.

A few days ago an upgrade was auto-downloaded which required a viewer restart, and i got a message to that effect. That was normal. What wasn't normal is what followed. The next day, when I opened the viewer in the morning, the viewer installed again without any message. It just did it. I didn't know if was a new download or a flaw that caused it to reintall the upgrade from the day before.

Putting that together with your bug, it may be that my first upgrade contained the bug and the second fixed it quickly. What it is certain is that I use LL's V3 and I don't now have that bug. I can't say that I didn't have it between those two installations but I can say that I don't have it now.

About the current new user experience. I had no idea it is as you described, and I'm astonished. All I can offer is that it's Linden Lab, and Linden Lab is known for being incredibly stupid quite often, so, whilst I'm astonished at the stupidity, I am not totally surprised.

[Porky Gorky]

Customer retention should be LL's primary focus right now and that has to start in the welcome areas. The current introduction for new residents into SL is the worst one ever produced and I have experienced them all since 2004.

When I came into this world for the first time I was guided through a series of tutorials that taught me everything I needed to know about the basics such as navigation and interaction, I was then delivered into a welcome area where I was immediately met by a greeter/mentor who chatted with me for 30 mins or so, teaching me more advanced lessons on how to use the viewer and interact with the world. It was that time with the mentor that got me seriously hooked in the first visit. They sold SL to me both through their kindness and support and for their passion and description of the world. At the end of our conversation I left with the feeling of eager anticipation and had the knowledge I needed to survive my first few days. Through questioning me the mentor had discovered what my interests were and set me on a path related to them. She gave me landmarks to the Ivory Tower, the Gnubie store and Cordova. So Essentially I had a place to learn how to build, a place to get free building materials and a free place to build. Within a week I had built my first house. 

If I had logged into SL for the first time ever today and went through the current welcome experience, there is no way I would have stayed beyond a few minutes. I play a lot of MMO's and you can really tell those that put a lot of work into the welcome experience and those that do not. Those that don't engage me quickly will loose me. There is so much competition out there for our "play" time that it's vital that LL sells SL to new users within the first 10 minutes of them logging in. The fact they they do not recognise this tells us everything we need to now about the management currently in place at Linden Labs. They do not have a clue or do now care about the new user experience or retaining new custom. 

[Jo Yardley]

I create all my mesh inworld.

A while back I revisited the noob experience for my blog, here is what I wrote, I also added some ideas to improve it;

I thought it was time to find out if the experience of new visitors to SL had improved a little since last time.

Unfortunately it had not.

I tried to recreate the new experience and wiped as much SL knowledge from my brain as possible before I signed up.

Things go wrong from the very beginning, if I had not known what SL has to offer, I would have given up many times already.

I need to think of a name for my avatar, the one I want has already been taken, of course.

I end up with an avatar who’s name has a number in it, I hate that.
It makes me feel like an email address, not a virtual person.

And of course I have no idea that if I discover the full potential of SL, become hooked and decide to stay, that I will be known by this name for years.
A problem I have with my regular account, I named myself Jo Yardley, later I learned that very short names (like Jo) sometimes cause issues when you’re searching for them and I got very much involved with a German roleplay sim, so my rather English last name is not one I would have picked.

I get to pick an avatar, I don’t like any of them but luckily I am informed that I can change my appearance at a later stage.

After joining up I stare at a blank screen for several minutes, no idea if anything is loading, if my account was created, nothing.
I decide to cheat and just go ahead and sign in with my new avatar in the viewer, the ‘select an account’ screen finally loads when I’m already in SL… but the buttons don’t work.
I assume this was some sort of temporary glitch…
The entire SL site is laggy, things don’t load, pages take for ever, etc.

Finally I end up in SL.
If I was really new, I still would have no idea what on earth is going on.
I find myself in a portal, some sort of Roman arches show me a few hints of the things going on in SL.
But because I am sort of new, I have no idea what to do.
I am yet to find out how to move around, nobody tells me that.
And because the standard settings of the SL viewer are so odd, I get a screen full of buttons and options and a rather slow experience with low graphical settings.

It is expected of me to randomly try out all the buttons in my viewer and learn as I go along?
Fine by me but many users will not like this and will not have the patience.
Compare it with almost every game out there, they all have tutorials, they all are easier to navigate.

So here I am, no idea what to do or where to go next.
I decide to click on a portal that says ‘Roleplay’ and woosh, I get teleported to some sort of Science Fiction roleplay sim.
Not my cup of tea but now I am stuck.

As nobody has bothered to explain to me that I need to use ‘Search’ to explore SL, I have no idea what to do next.
I take a few steps, fall into this roleplay sim in my noob clothes, not fitting in.
If this sim has security or managers online I may find myself in trouble.
Especially because if they decide to confront me in IM… I have no idea how IM’s work, I don’t know someone is talking to me and I may find myself banned before I even know what is happening.
Or worse, I may end up surrounded by angry roleplayers who start being mean and rude to me for ignoring the sims rules.
Not a good start…

I pretend I have found the search button… the search system is horrendous.
It is extremely slow, if your computer isn’t super duper, the loading of the search screen takes a while.
More patience needed.

Finally I’ve made it to a sim I want to see, but I am stuck with a bad viewer, bad camera settings, etc.
I need to open the ‘move avatar’ button and ‘camera’ button all the time, just to be able to walk and look around properly.

Mouselook does not work either because you lose all your buttons and options.

As a noob I am already very tired and frustrated and my SL adventure has only just begun.

I want to change my avatar, wear clothes I’ve been told to wear at the sim I found.

I look around and after clicking the tab ‘avatar’ and choose ‘appearance’, I get stuck.
I see a window with “my outfits” and “wearing”.
Basics for veteran SL users, confusing for new users.
What am I supposed to do next?

I ‘buy’ some freebie clothes, they get send to me but I forget to click ‘wear now’ and they are lost somewhere in my inventory.
I look at my appearance window again, the new clothes don’t show up.
With some luck (!) I find my inventory button.
The library folder is opened so it is easy to make the mistake that the library is my actual inventory, I could spend hours there looking for the clothes I just got.
I then try my inventory folder, I check clothes but there is nothing there.
The new freebie clothes have been send to the general folder and I am lucky to find it at all.
Again, it is all about luck!

Not to mention that thanks to my basic settings, lots of mesh does not rezz or suddenly disappears after a while.
Try and explain a noob that they have to open the debug menu and temper with the MeshMaxConcurrentRequests, just so they see things properly…

So few things in SL come natural, even to a seasoned gamer like myself.

If you don’t find the right sim or the right people to get you excited about SL, it is quite understandable that you give up soon.

By this time, I’ve sort of given up.
Pretending not to know how everything works makes it all just too frustrating.
I surrender.

Time for solutions.

I’ve brainstormed about improving the SL noob experience before on this blog but want to try and summarize it all here again, simply because I feel that this is such an important part of the SL experience.

If you can’t get people excited and running around SL in a easy way shortly after they arrive, they will not return.
It is as simple as that.

In short;
Most people NEED instructions.
Most people NEED some help finding their way.

My suggestions;

Create an online game on the SL website that allows new users to learn the basics before they even enter the virtual world.
For instance, you are an avatar on an small island and need to get off.
Walk, explore, use stuff, wear stuff and finally use ‘search’ to not only start SL but to teleport to a place you choose.
This can be a very basic, simple flash game that rewards you with knowledge and perhaps even a few freebies.
No more need for inworld portals, instructions, etc.
New players will be ready when they enter SL and understand the basics they need to know to get around and start their adventure.

Let new players create and tweak their avatar also on the website.
Look at games like ‘The Sims’ for inspiration, there it is very easy (and fun) to make your avatar and dress them.
This way you’re not only ready to go once you teleport into SL, but you have already bonded with your avatar and other people won’t immediately spot you as a noob.

And finally…. create a web page that helps people tweak their settings…
Right now you don’t know about raising your mesh and sculpt settings till you buy something that comes with that famous sculpt setting notecard!
New people are not seeing mesh and sculpts the way they should, simply because they don’t know that they can tweak this.

Or even better, set the basic settings in viewers high enough for mesh and sculpts to properly work…
I know that most of this topic is almost the same as my previous topic on the matter, but having just tried signing up as a new avatar again I felt so frustrated, I wanted to write my idea down again.

http://joyardley.wordpress.com/2012/09/26/noob-experience-revisited/

[Czari Zenovka]

Jo, I read in your blog awhile back that you had purchased a tool that converts prims to mesh without having to know a lot about mesh.  If I have that part correct, is that what you use and is it fairly easy to learn?  Thanks.

[Jo Yardley]

I use Mesh studio.

It is relatively easy to learn, at least compared to the mesh software, this is a lot easier.

If you can build with prims, you can make mesh.

Here is a blog I wrote about my discovery of mesh studio;

http://joyardley.wordpress.com/2012/09/10/mesh-addiction/

[Czari Zenovka]

Excellent!!  Thank you, Jo.

 

[CaseyFallen Popstar]

Hello,

First...please do not take the tone of this reply as anything but pleasant. I am a big fan of your blog posts! Just don't agree with you on this subject.

You wrote "Does your government do that for you in RL when you buy something that you think ripped you off or you have a bad experience with a merchant?"

My reply is: Yes, they do return the money to you. If the police catch a bank robber with the banks money in their pocket. It is simply returned to the bank.

Linden has the prefix I.D. They see the money left my account and they can see on the sellers account that my money is deposited in their account; in their pocket , if you will.

It would not be that hard for Linden to write the seller and investigate. If no reply, then remove the money from their account back into the purchasers. They could even make a system very easily that would show if items delivered or not. (If they do not have this already) Today more people than not are very sketchy about spending money online. If they cannot feel safe and protected while doing it. Then it won't happen. Take that away from S.L. and this place is no longer a money maker for Linden or anyone else for that matter.

As for contacting the seller. I tried for days. Note crads and I.M.'s It is pretty obvious the seller has not been online in over a year just by looking at the profile and when all posts stopped.

Here is the kicker. Because the store is on a free 512 piece of land, this means the sellers overhead is about $5.00 a month. Assuming she paid a year at a time to save on the membership fee. My purchase alone has made the store able to stay another month. I am sure it is getting one ripped off person a month. It could stay forever at that rate. Meaning more and more people are having this happen to them. I shouldn't have to point out all the reasons this is bad for S.L. as a whole.

Thank you so much for your addition Amethyst! Enjoy your input!

[CaseyFallen Popstar]

Hi Phil,

Thanks fo rthis reply. I still have the glitch. I am not the only one. Several of my friends are having this problem too. It onl happens with items you own and can actually delete and does not happen every single time. But very freaquent. Another person in the forums indicated they have this as well. So I know it is not just me. 

But you have brought up a very good suggestion. I will take a look at my brower number to seee if I have the latest. I hope you are right and I am on the old one.

Thanks gain fo rthe post! Very much appreciated!

[CaseyFallen Popstar]

Hi Porky,

 

Really great post! Your entrance was sounds amazing. I wish they would go back to those days. Back when I entered S.L. I did have a problem with dropping in on parcels owned by others. Always though it should have been guided to make you hit Linden community land. But other than that. Loved my first day. Was blown away. But had I had the one on one you described. I would have been beside myself and my first day would have been that much better!

I am just shocked that they are throwing folks in here with no tutorial now. Amazing isn't it?

Thanks again for this post. Great input!

[CaseyFallen Popstar]

Hi  Jo!

 

Wow! Great post! Thanks for your input. Very much appreciated and a very enjoyable read. You really captured exactly what I am talking about. You obviously have been covering this topic far longer than I Linden certainly needs to address this issue.

I really enjoyed your idea about a island that is a fun learning game. I think that would be a awesome way to start out in Second Life. I had suggested before that they start folks at Caldron University.<--spelling? But your idea sounds much more appealing. 

I have had mixed feeling about whether a person's avatar should look "Noob" or not. One part of me says no, for the obvious reasons. If they are not easily picked out as new to S.L. then they may get a more enjoyable reception from folks?

But on the other hand. When we are able to differentiate the new comers from those that have been around awhile, it lets us know that the person may need help. It lets us understand that they are not trying to cause trouble in our sim and that they are more than likely in need of assistance. So I am split on that subject. Love to hear every ones thoughts on this subject.

Thank you so much for adding to the thread!

[Dilbert Dilweg]

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 The first experience is the most important. Log -in numbers are dwindling here and If I were a gambling man, I would bet money that much of it has to do with the new account process.

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nah

Just another conspiracy theory

 

If I was a betting man I would say alt induced lol

 

[CaseyFallen Popstar]

I wish it was "Just another conspiracy theory" But you can see the number of logged in people on several different viewers. That number use to be around the 50,000 on any given Friday. Give or take a few thousand of course. Today it rarely cracks the 30,000 mark. That is not a conspiracy. Just facts. : / 

 

Trust me Dilbert, I would like to believe that more than anyone. I really like Second Life. i would not have started this thread otherwise. Just hoping that a good dialog here may reach the folks that can take the thoughts, suggestions, and opinions here. then morph them into action.

Thanks for being part of the thread Dilbert. I truly appreciate it.

[sirhc DeSantis]

From the api :

'inworld_updated_slt 2013-01-20 13:55:10 inworld 65196'

 

 

[CaseyFallen Popstar]

Of course it depends on when you check it Sirh. I always log in around the same time and on the same days. I was always fascinated by the number of folks logged in at any given time. This is why it stuck out to me so much. So to find the relevance of that number we would need to log -in every day at the time and day you logged in and keep track of hat number for at least a few months to see if it variates. 

 

When I logged in on Fridays just a few years ago, the numbers were always at around 50,000. Today on a Friday, in the last week anyways, I have not seen that number top 30,000. Saturdays and Sundays always have a higher number. Cannot compare numbers from different days of the week or even different hours for that matter. That is apples and oranges.

 

But I admit, this is still not the most scientific observation. 

 

Thanks for dropping in Sirth. very much appreciated.

[Czari Zenovka]

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CaseyFallen Popstar wrote:

Hi  Jo!

I really enjoyed your idea about a island that is a fun learning game. I think that would be a awesome way to start out in Second Life. I had suggested before that they start folks at Caldron University.<--spelling? But your idea sounds much more appealing. 

---

The way a new SL resident is introduced to SL has changed over the years.  When I joined in 2007 we landed in a place called Orientation Island that had a jungle/volcano theme. It was a game of sorts in that I first encountered a parrot (iirc - there was a parrot in there someplace...lol) who instructed me to do something, like walk or turn around then sent me to another NPC on a path that gradually wound up a mountain.  Each NPC instructed me to do something else - one was gestures, another was responding in local chat, etc.  The end of this game had something to do with a volcano.  I'm a bit fuzzy on the specifics.  People would group up in pairs or teams to go through this orientation.  At the end we received a message saying we could now tp to Help Island (and provided the means to do so) but if we did we could not return to Orientation Island.  I never saw mentors at Help Island; it was an area with signs that provided basic instructions on avatar movement, etc. that we had learned on OI.  It also had a ton of freebie material. (We won't talk about how I managed to get a Swiss Chalet on my head and couldn't remove it for about a day until a kind soul took pity on me. :matte-motes-bashful:)

I created an alt in 2009.  I don't recall much about that starting experience except it was rather bland.  The whole island theme was gone and instead I landed in some area with signs and tasks to complete, such as being able to drive a car inside a garage and park it. 

At the end of 2009 or early 2010 during the time when the maximum number of groups was still 20, I created a "marketing alt" to join the merchant design groups I didn't have room for on my main.  This time the SL website provided different locations that one could choose as their starting point.  Some of them were in specific languages such as German, Chinese, etc., etc.  I chose Caledon (I think that's what you were referring to earlier) because the Caledon sims are one of my favorite places to go in SL.  That starting area was set up beautifully.   One walked down a cobblestone path with "stations" along the way that had posters to teach the basic movement functions, then an area with a lot of very nice free outfits and avatars - all Victorian-themed.  The destination was a university at Caledon.  In this situation the new residents were sent to an area in world based on their entry choice so once they completed the tutorial they were already in a themed sim.

I haven't gone through the new avatar creation process since then but, from what I'm reading here, it sounds miserable which is a shame because the three experiences I had were at least somewhat entertaining.

[GothGirl Demonia]

I agree with this, and I will explain why I think this is bad, and yes it has to do with Griefing yet again.

I like the Old Tutorial the way it was a lot better than the new place with all the doors because it added the newbie experience to it more like learning how to use Second Life, and the old SL viewer was a lot better than Viewer 3 it was more simple to use. Even now that I can stand viewer 3 a bit I converted it to look like Viewer 1 for the most part in everyway I can I absolustely do not like the V3 experience.

I remember starting Second Life in 2008 learning the basics of SL starting in a welcome area learning how to build, what building and scripting was and that was way more fun than going into a RP sim and getting yelled at or involved with griefers.

There was one time when I would say the doors were not bad, but times have changed.

Back in Like Feburary or March of 2009 when I entered the RP community for my first time, I almost accidently crashed a sim with my hud on because of its laggy radar probes and yes this was the same RP community that went bad today and supports griefing, and CopyBot but they used to be over 28+ sims back then. I actually had the owner of the sims who was respectful tell me to take it off, it was a simple Apology for not knowing, and removed it no problems. This was before the sims decreased to like 11 sims, and the Jerk started to run things and not care for SL as a whole.
 Every since then their community has declined so many ways its not funny.

Fact is I have been told by others they are scared I am around using alts and trying to find whom I am or whatever fact is I do not even want to be in their community they are that much of a disgrace to me now. What I want is the stupid idiot out of SL, and an actual leader to take it over. I can only pray someone else takes it over or something happens so that ownership changes for the sake of the developers in SL.

The Reasons the doors are bad.

If a newbie so much as walks through a door they find themselves teleported to a simulator in Second Life where it be a RP sim or not, and they might accidently break the rules get banned because its a private simulator and LL Doesn't get involved in residentual disputes, they might be yelled at as you describe without a friendly greeting as a newbie.

I checked the RP Teleporter, and that RP simulator that supports CopyBotting of merchants is in there, there are lots of them and due to TOS I can't give the name, but newbies are landing on that simulator daily, the people who run the place are absolutely Terriable, I debated them for 2 years almost about one person who was there Copying my friends work constantly and they did absolutely nothing at first it was just griefing but it turned into theft and got a lot worse, all they did was take a griefers side, ban my account, and ask me to prove it wasn't my account, which obviously it wasn't. At least until my account became compromised by a griefer I don't know what they did with it but I did recover it I really don't even use SL now though. ( And to answer it was the people related to this RP sim who compromised my account I am sure of it, well might not have been the same person, but they all come from the same group of griefers, I know that.

Drama and Witch Hunters

These are basically people for example if I went over to some RP sim and accidently broke rules, or Griefed because someone gave me an object I stupidly rez it and got banned, A lot of RP simulators are breaking the TOS in Second Life because they Defame other residents by spreading their name in warning groups including their own without consent, and tell everyone else to ban them, so if some newbie breaks the rules on an RP sim imagine how much drama they could get into when they find themselves banned from 5 or 10 other RP sims because of ignorant people who don't want to take the time to help a newbie for breaking rules.  Yes it happens, and Yes those Red Zone, and CDS systems, and Bot Detectors are not helping SL as a community such systems need to be Banned from Second Life because RP simulators are using them on people without consent, even the meters you wear I can't give the name of the one im talking about again due to the TOS, but its got a chat logger, and logs peoples IP when they visit the site without a privacy policy.

Why Linden Lab did this  is just beyond me, but I think the reason they did this is because Second Life is going down the drain I wasn't the only one to say this so have a lot of good people I know who are fed up with griefers as much as I am. But the reason for doing it is to keep new people joining these RP sims and communities, keep people who spend money happy and the more money they make the longer these RP communities will stay around, and who gets the profit Linden Lab of course gets a cut in it you see.

Now people say you can avoid the drama.

This is all true, but allow me to explain from my experience.

So I joined a bloodlines RP in like 09 for one year we had no drama, no griefing and if so  Inever noticed it, late 2010, our bloodlines group starts Giving out Thefted content, I bring this to our leader he decides to do nothing about it bans me from the land ejects me, I contact Linden Lab, File Abuse Reports, and Notify the merchants of all the stolen goods they gave away to me too I never used them and they are out of my inventory. Yes I could have avoided the heavy drama that came with my bloodlines group, and with these other RP sims if I just never said anything let them all break the TOS act like a dummy.

My point of what im trying to say.

What I am trying to explain is that Drama, and Grief seems to revolve around a lot of RP Gorups & RP sims in Second Life so bringing a bunch of newbies into this type of communities just ruins their experience in Second Life, its what happend to me basically when I saw my members breaking the TOS I did not want to be around in the group anymore, I tried to respectuflly ask our Founder to stop supporting Griefing they wouldn't LL did nothing due to lack of proof the Cover Your Own A** tactic, and it worked they never got banned, and these groups caused me all kinds of trouble.

Personally the bottom line is.

I run multiple anonymous blogs and make many anonymous posts on the internet, I really don't care about the TOS when these people break the TOS and IP rights of others, Sure I have to follow the TOS here, But Outside of SL & Its forums thees griefer groups will be exposed, Any friends that are taking part in these groups will be asked to leave, and if they don't I will remove them from my list, I do not want to have anything to do with people who are griefing others.

The best way I have found to avoid the drama.

1. Run your own Clan, or Group, you have all the say over it.
2. Only play with your best friends.
3. Do not join a big community unless you are good friends with owners/founders & admins.
4. Stick to yourself for the most part you wont have my problems.

 

With all this said.

When it comes to RP community some Sim Owners, & Admins Are just pathetic they are a waste of space in SL, and in my opinion should be held liable for damages done to the merchant community when they knowingly support griefing, theft, and yet alone yell and newbies to Second Life. But as long as they are paying their Tier Fee, and not breaking the TOS themselves LL isn't going to do anything. (( LL Doesn't get involved in residentual disputes.)) ((LL Can't restore Lost Inventory.))

Some Merchants are Pathetic as well, just because I am in favor of the merchants doesn't mean I like every merchant in SL some of them are rude no support at all, others have been very nice, and for the most part like one out of 20 merchants I knew was a jerk.

Which leads to another question.

1. Why was woodbury removed so much everytime they came back, and why was Reddit removed from the grid, but yet these bloody RP mega sim owners are not removed?

They are doing the same exact thing these other sims did where griefers were rumored to come from these sims or hang around there.

[CaseyFallen Popstar]

Thanks for the great addition to this thread Czari!

Really enjoyed reading your post! Yes, it seems that the starting points of old were much more helpful and fun for those creating a account. Currently, not so much. 

Yes! Caledon University. That is exactly what I was speaking of. What a great sim! Takes a novice and puts them on the track to be a expert with their avatar. I too love visiting that sim. Have not been in awhile.  I think I will pay another visit. 

Thanks again for adding such a great post to this thread!