SECOND LIFE IS DYING...

[SLtesterL2]

Thanks! :matte-motes-big-grin:

[SLtesterL2]

[Orca Flotta]

Note to self: stop feeding the trolls.:smileyindifferent: Stop feeding the trolls.:smileysurprised: Stop feeding the trolls!:smileysad: STOP FEEDING THE FUNKIN' TROLLS!!!:smileymad:

[GothGirl Demonia]

 

Second Life is infact dying and I will explain my opinion and list why it is dying.

1. Griefers

2. CopyBot

3. Bots

4. Cost SomeWhat?

5. Lack of Innovation.

6. Rude Community.

7. Lack OF Security

8. Lack OF Actual OwnerShip of Digital Goods, or License Rights.

1. Okay I understand that people will disagree with these things, but it is true when I started SL back in 2008, Linden Lab seemed ot care more about the grid and community I was always able to find a helpful Linden, and even sometimes with Land issues it took like three phone calls to LL to get support on a privately owned simulator the person didn't want us next to the sim anymore and we were having disagreements after my renter wanted it moved, and then finally the bugs that came along with just having it there and LL said we can't help you it took a second ord third call on that one incident to find a helpful linden that actually helped resolve the problem which kept me from having to throw lots of money out the drain.

2. Linden Lab does have issues with Griefers, and Bots, I know its been said many times but its true, LL removed Age Verification from the grid put in a simple I am over 18 agreement, LL has no control over griefer accounts heck a griefer makes a 1 day old account with a VPN server or proxy, and uses an illegal viewer I wont give information on where to find but easy to get to go Destroy Merchants, Bot other peoples work, Spam SandBox's, LL also requires no Email verification, I have point all these issues out, and they still have not fix them.

3. The costs to own Land is Expensive, Okay I don't know how much server hosting costs but $300 a month for each region, and lack of customization on regions for example residents should be able to store more prims than 15k on their own sim if needed and have access to features like this for $300 a month even then gamers today can go to any MMORPG and find anything they want to be in Second Life there, SL in 2000, or so  I think it came out in 2000 was the bomb, but now the only thing good about Second Life is. 1. Customization, 2. Chat, 3. Yiffing, 4. Art& Design.

Other than this it is going to lack your average gamer no one is even going to waste time wanting to play, especially when a part of the community is combat based, there is just too much politics in SL militaries, and your better off just playing COD, or buying Defiance for that matter at laest in my opinion.

Believe me if I had Hundreds of dollars to buy out multiple sims and actually start something Unique that hasn't been on the grid and people to help do it I would but don't have that type of money and start small doesn't work for what I want to do.

4. Account Hacking, For any reason at all if your account gets compromised LL Provides no support at restoring digital assets or losses, when my account was deleted by a rogue Griefer I know who did it and where they came from I contacted LL like the very next day, we can't restore your inventory they said, and I had so many items there over 50k+ purchased over years of playing since 08 items that can never be replaced again, do the assets still exist in SL yes but I can't legally get access back to them again.

Which leads to the other point  I have to say, I support the IP rights of merchants always have, but when we pay them RL cash we actually have no digital rights to them and we should be able to freely obtain these items on the same account, or another account of ours if we ever change or create a new account by destroying the ones on the other account and such. Since we have no rights to any digital goods if our account ever becomes compromised we loose them all.

OverAll I manged to get items back from merchants I know trust, and support, RePurchased a bunch of items from merchants I couldn't exactly trust with information but remembered the items I had previously purchased but overall I am thankful to the merchants who were helpful, but while I can't name and shame I am very disapointed in some merchants on SL disrespectful slobs for supporting them for so many years and throwing off god knows how many bots abusing.

Who wants to come spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars in SL knowing their assets are not protected from LOSS & that LL Doesn't even offer back-up.

5. Lack of Innovation everything revolves around the same old Crap, and Lag all the time. Most people gaming today want Role-Play and thats the only great thing about Second Life, but everything I see is poorly designed. Okay I respect what other people create, but I am looking for an actual combat in Second Life that deals with CyberPunk, or Sci-FI, with actual Combat, Meters, and I don't mean another repeat like Gorean Meter, DCS, or Insilico, I mean something very unique similar to a RPG like StarCraft, and GOR isntead of having just RP items and servers Actual Mines with actual RP slaves who have to go mine and such.

6. Rude Community, I understand that there are respectful community based sims in SL, and RP sims, I know some of them because I was invited to play in a few but never did because I didn't want to bring griefers from another RP sim to theirs. Anyways by Rude people I mean Sims that support illegal activities in SL, you politely tell them about it, they do nothing tell you to F yourself, ban you from the sim, then their members spam your IM's from their sim with spammer objects and Nothing happens at all even when abuse reported. There are places like this in SL, they actively try to recruit RPer's and becaues of the no name & shame policy on the forum I can't actually come out and say it while some might know who I talk about or whatever, there are rude community like this, I have known of a few, and because of ignorant admin's it drives people away from the game. Who wants to be part of this crap when you get disrespectful admin's heck I remember the first time I came from (TG) to (Adult Grid.) someone was talking to me about politics found out I was from U.S and then banned me from some parcel on mainland because they were like you don't understand. Why be part of something like this when you got actual (RPG) or (MMORPG) where the (TOS) (CS) is enforced, and (RL Threats) are actually dealt with over there compared to Second Life where it requires Law Enforcement, or Lawyer.

You are right that SL is dying, I find it sad to see but with all the ignorant people in SL, All the Griefers, No company to help us.  Then yeah Second Life is going to die because the Security,Bots, and Griefers problem is not Linden Lab Fault, G*D gave man free will to do what they want, so no its not their fault but its still something they can help resolve, help clean up the grid and maybe we will get people actually wanting to play Second Life, but as of for now There is absolutely no way I can recommend this game to friends on Steam, MMORPG,  or any other forums because of the security issues, and no back-up, or anything. I would love to invite people to SL to a RPG with a good experience a place to enjoy time and game but its impossible with the way things are right now.

[Suspiria Finucane]

[Suspiria Finucane]

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Penny Patton wrote:

The result is people need beefy hardware to run SL at all, and even with a powerful computer SL still doesn't run well. 

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 I agree 100% with you on this one. I constantly upgrade my comp for SL while everything else runs flawlessly.

[Drake1 Nightfire]

1. LL cut their staff by 33%. They can't be expected to have an inworld presence when they have all the other things you list to take care of. With 55,000 unique log ins daily there are bound to be a lot of ARs and compaints. A staff of 200 can't handle that and be inworld as well.

2. Been here for 8 years, have yet to meet a single griefer.

3. Don't buy land then. And not to sound rude, but i would bet whatever your idea is, it has been done at some point.

4. If someone robs your house and they never catch them, does your landlord have to replace the things you bought?

5. Visit more sims. There is plenty of beauty and awesomeness in SL. Look for it. You sound like you want to play a MMORPG.. so go play one.

6. This old bit** again? You keep whining about this. Their SIM their rules. They can ban you if they don't like your hair. Suck it up and put your big girl panties on.

 

TL;DR  SL is NOT dying... whiners just want to whine.

[Tex Monday]

As we've stated before...many many times....SL has it's issues. IMO you have three choices...

1. **bleep** and whine and complain and moan about it..

2. Do nothing and just keep playing

3. Get out!

You have all these options, you all need to do what is best for you. There are a ton of other "games" to play. Do that. You may find they have the same issues that SL has.

Good luck

[Orca Flotta]

But you gotta admit, at least GothGirl made a well-sorted, structured and thought-out argument, Drake. Unlike those trolls from earlier. But yes, I noticed the same; GothGirl seems to be mainly interested in gaming ... and in shady corners too. So it seems. In my 6 years in SL I've encountered maybe 2 griefers face to face (apart from the usual social griefers like SLtester and the other guy who claims since months that he has already left SL).

So, what can one do?

1) shrug it all off

2) leave and declare yourself dead for SL

3) declare SL's death as imminent because if it's not for you it can't be for anyone else

 

I'm really puzzled why so many ppl choose the least preferable option 3.

[Jadeclaw Denfu]

GothGirl demonia wrote: "3. The costs to own Land is Expensive,"
The problem is, Tier is the main income for the Lab. About 10% of the revenue are actually earnings, the rest is costs.
And cost is not only the hosting, it is support, it is development, it is all the stuff about SL, that is not inworld, etc.
There is not very much wiggle room. What I would like to see is a rebate for educational institutions and certain community
projects. The latter tied to clear concise conditions to prevent it from becoming a ploy to get cheap land.
Seriously, a decent sized commercial entity can easily afford the 200 bucks for a mainland region or 300 for a private estate.
Plus, as that is cost counted against their revenue, they could get tax breaks for that. LL doesn't need to subsidize on top of that.

 

[Czari Zenovka]

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Suspiria Finucane wrote:

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Priceless!!!!!

[SLtesterL2]

I prefer this one more :matte-motes-big-grin-squint:

[GothGirl Demonia]

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Orca Flotta wrote:

But you gotta admit, at least GothGirl made a well-sorted, structured and thought-out argument, Drake. Unlike those trolls from earlier. But yes, I noticed the same; GothGirl seems to be mainly interested in gaming ... and in shady corners too. So it seems. In my 6 years in SL I've encountered maybe 2 griefers face to face (apart from the usual social griefers like SLtester and the other guy who claims since months that he has already left SL).

So, what can one do?

1) shrug it all off

2) leave and declare yourself dead for SL

3) declare SL's death as imminent because if it's not for you it can't be for anyone else

 

I'm really puzzled why so many ppl choose the least preferable option 3.

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I guess it would depend on the person, if you own your own simulator, or land, only login to be with friends meet people you know then chances of meeting a griefer go down a lot.

But if you are like me you visit public sandbox's quite often then you often see griefing spammers.

As far as gaming, it is why I joined Second Life to begin with when I played World OF Warcraft someone told me about Second Life, and I gave it a try and stay in the game for years it was fun until I joined GOR. GOR in general is based off a novel, and there is nothing wrong with good goreans, but when I was still learning and reading about it I found out that my own Group I was part of was a bunch of CopyBotting Scumbag griefers, and I personally had no idea, but then I dig into the issue and found out that their single gorup had connections with over 12+ other Second Life groups botters in the big alliances, and it just open my eyes to what goes on in SL.

I then finally gave up on GOR all together because of these people and what I watched them do to people I know who are Mo-Cap Designers in SL giving me NoteCards full of animations full permissions, now this is where I could have just said hey I don't care and became one of them but I choose not to.

Heck when I knew nothing about Copy-Bot, and permissions Exploit how the heck do you think I found out about it, I knew about the exploit even before Thieves MotherLoad which patched the exploit, and was still learning lots, heck I have the person admitting to me in IM about how they Bot a lot of stuff but they never got banned, and even if they did they had like over 12+ Alts.

However when I talk about GOR as a RP I talk about in general there are like over 100+ sims not all of the people are bad but I choose to have anything to do with people who are even so much as affiliated with these type of people and given the fact and way GOR is played I just quit all together I didn't want to be around it.

I still have Gorean friends, but I know exactly who they assoicate with to the best of my knowledge they are clean individuals and have been in SL for many years. Like I mention not all Goreans are bad there are clean sims, for example GOR-HUB and such who do not to my knowledge condone to illegal behavior.  I just personally can't stand the way GOR is played forced RP kidnap going from one sim to another I would hate to encounter a group of bots the reason I quit completely. And to be honest if I had the money to create GOR, and some other RPG's in SL talking about over 15-30 sims dedicated to such I would do it, and I would make them as bot free as possible and restrict RP to those regions only only players who play play within those sims not outside.

In the end I am not racist, I don't hate other countries but a lot of these bot gorups come from foreign countries at least bots and groups I met, not saying people from the U.S aren't griefers or bots because I know U.S stuck up ganksta tough girl act who are into such wanna be ganksta's too. Its just an observation, not saying every foreign country is guilty because I know actual designers from these countries too just that a big percent of piracy in SL comes from people who reside outside the U.S.

Then is when I joined into a bloodlines group, and after like maybe 8-9 months or so went by a  person who had GOR wrote in his profile takes leadership of the group, and here come the CopyBot before you know it I am given a Freebie Box full of full-perm hair from many designers in SL, and I take it to the leader about it I tell them what is going on at first I took the nice approach I explained it the best I could and was like maybe they didn't know it was illegal lets just ask them to 8delete it and send a notice instead I get Banned from the Land, and nothing gets done about it.

Yeah I play SL in the past mainly for having something to do, friends, games, RPG, and such, but you see depending on what you do you may or may not encounter a griefer. To be honest there are hundreds if not thousands of blind people in Second Life who don't even keep an eye out, or don't even care unless a griefer spams their location with objects, so yeah often griefers, and bots go by without notice and such it doesn't make anyone who doesn't notice bad or anything.

If I had to counter the number of times I have experienced Griefers, even from Reputable people unknowingly helping griefers it would be hundreds if not more, and the list of griefers I actually have is quite big. You know the drama behind the whole JLU braniac thing right? Well I have my own dictionary on griefers, thousands of snapshots, logs, videos, and audio logs on griefer encounters so yeah I would say I have quite a lot.

Yes I have shady concerns but I feel they are all valid after the years of experience, griefer encounters, and finally having my account hijacked by a single griefer, its profile deleted/changed, and then inventory of over 50k items perma deleted and LL couldn't do anything I just find it hard to believe you see.

SL isn't dead.

Second Life isn't likely going to die or anything as long as Linden Lab can make profit they will keep it going as a Stand-A-Lone service even if only two people in the company are running it however the popularity and users are on a decline I would say since I first started back in 08.

Most NewPlayers.

Most new players often visit Freebie Areas in Second Life, and this is often where you can obtain illegally cloned items easily, but most importantly they visit Sand-Box sims, and this is where all the griefing goes on I remember being a newbie to Second Life having no land at all I used to hang out in the sand box constantly and be in the sandbox for 8 hours or so a day with no Life like me you will find a griefer spamming the sim or dropping graphics card crashers or something.

Oh and whats worse about freebie items these can contain malicious IP Logging Scripts, Relay your location in world to griefers, or be made to spam other peoples IM with green text messages and you could be taking part in helping griefers without knowledge.

1. The Security Second Life has is a big Joke right now, You do realise that if you play EVE Online, in the account management you can see the person who illegally logged into your account and their IP address?

2. If you play Guild Wars 2 you have to verify login attempts from unknown IP addresses VIA Email?

3. Most RPG- Games have Secondary Passwords, or Authinticators like World OF Warcraft?

These games which cost $9.99 a month and $16.95 a month have more security that Linden Lab & Second Life does when it costs $195 for a GF, or $295 a month for a non GF not including premium, or virtual assets.

This is why I urge LL to upgrade seucirty, and give us more protection so that Second Life can become more popular again because of my bad experience in SL, and because no one knows when a TPV like Emerald might be compromised and thousands of accounts might be ruined no one knows for sure, now Emerald is just one old TPV that had malicious things but there are many TPV's right now, reguardless of if a viewer ever contained a keylogger like recent events and articles I read online our accounts should have secondary authintication to prevent the unauthroized access.

Oh and as far as the griefers go I know the people who did these activities got exposed on many RPG sites, who do you think made all the rage articles online I did of course for their actions, and the result griefers likely got griefed by vigilante then sent me rage IM's about how they were going to abuse report me they know it was me and all this other stuff Personally I didn't care because I said Don't do with Evil Doers.

[Christin73]

SL is so spread out it seems. As a club owner, dancer, and Host, I know I have seen less people in clubs at times but also every once in a while we get a spike of people. The population of SL is ever changing. Remember SL has residense from all over the world. Verious time zones effect the in world population. Although I think alot of people come on from the US and the UK. Just gotta come on at the right time to find people. 

[steeljane42]

SL is so empty after ~12:00 AM server time it's not even funny.
Even the most of "night clubs" and various adult sims are kinda empty or almost empty past that time.

It makes me wonder who actually going to those adult sims, adult europeans or kids from NA/SA. :smileyvery-happy:

I don't mind it though, I love exploring empty sims without getting interrupted every minute (like it happens in very busy sims at peak hours).

 

Ok, back to the topic.

I think price for land/sims are too high for these days. For the past 6 or so months about 15 of sims I've used to visit every now and then were closed and most of those for the exact same reason - too expensive. Way too expensive.

And donations/rent places for shops are not enough to cover it, sometimes it won't cover up even half of the rent's cost. And sim owners also need money to keep their sims fresh, so it's buying new stuff, hiring builders (if they can't build themself) and so on.

Although when the sim get closed, it's visitors probably will try to find an alternative. So I've seen some sims which never had too many people suddenly got lots and lots of people.

But it's still a bad thing. The less sims in SL = the less stuff to do for the biggest part of SL's community - consumers. I know some people will start telling the usual stuff "SL is what you want it be, so start building, scripting etc and have fun that way". Yeah, it might help to those with interest for it, but most of people are just consumers, like in real life. We don't want to create, we want to relax and have a good time, especially in SL where we can run way from RL's problems.

So I'd say LL will have to reduce prices significantly sooner or later to keep SL's alive. I just wonder when it will happen and how many sims will be closed before it happens.

[Lucretia Brandenburg]

1. I don’t think it’s that LL doesn’t care anymore, I think they’re understaffed. When an organization is understaffed, things are prioritized in order of importance for dealing with them. How they’re prioritized I couldn’t say, and yes, the amount of time it takes LL employees to help residents isn’t as fast as it used to be. I rarely need to contact concierge services but in the last two years when I’ve needed them, they have always gotten to an issue within an hour or less. Now, that is because I’m an estate manager, so I have access to concierge services. When I was a premium member, I’d file tickets and issues would be resolved quickly. When a billing issue could not be resolved to my satisfaction, I dropped my premium membership. Given that LL was billing me 40 USD a month for land I did not own, and continued to do so for months, and would not refund me the money, I didn’t see any benefit to being a premium member, and by my reckoning, they got a few years’ worth of premium membership out of me during that time. I do think that ARs and tickets filed by non-premium members are at the bottom of the “to do” list for LL, but thus far, since dropping my premium membership, I haven’t had to file any tickets, so I don’t know what the turnaround is. Some months back, the estate owner for whom I work sold a HS sim. Whoever took care of the sale inadvertently transferred the entire estate to the new owner of the HS sim, and the estate ceased to exist. No sense contacting concierge services as an estate manager when we all were booted from that role with the mixed up change of ownership. So another estate manager waited for one of the Lindens at the land office to log in, someone who has always been very helpful to us in the past, and reminded him of who he was and who he works for and explained the situation. The estate was restored in a few minutes, and when the estate owner came online, he added the managers back to the list.  That is typical of my experiences with LL. 

　

2. Linden Labs does not have issues with griefers, some residents have issues with griefers. Yes, they used to be dealt with far more swiftly back before LL let a third of its staff go. However, In over 5 years in SL, I’ve encountered griefers only a half dozen times and five out of six times the situation was handled without a need for Linden intervention.

One time while out shopping, I was caught in the backlash of an old style caging and orbiting attack, directed at another person. I snapped photos, told the person being attacked to TP home, copied and pasted open chat, and filed an AR. Three times, about four years ago, I encountered a replicating gadget that dropped prim swastikas all over the place. Locate object, ID the owner of the object, photos, AR, return the object, ban the owner. If it happened again, I would have set security orbs in the air.  Over two years ago, terraforming was left on by accident on one of the sims I help manage and a griefer mucked up the terraforming. LL did a roll back within hours. About a year ago, a renter left object entry wide open on his parcel and someone rezzed a replicator object that kept crashing the sim. One of the other managers teleported to the sim between crashes, searched for scripted objects, disabled it and then returned it before the sim could crash again.  Twice I found spawning scripted prims at very high altitudes above one of the sims on the estate. They were never active, I returned them without issue.

I worked security for an estate of over 40 sims, I have worked security at other estates, and manage an estate now. I am VERY security conscious and constantly looking for possible griefer activity, checking region and about land settings, and keeping an eye out for strangers.  If I see a stranger who doesn't answer in IM or in local chat, particularly one that is older with a blank profile or no groups or payment history, I tend to ban first and ask questions later.

The impression from reading these forums is that severe griefing happens all the time all over the grid and that untold thousands suffer griefer attacks. I know dozens and dozens of people who have never been griefed. THEY know dozens who have never been griefed. There are certain types of activities in SL that seem to attract griefers. Griefing is more an extension of pettiness and drama and less to do with age verification. In general ... and I do mean “general”...  from what I’ve seen, BL clans and those heavily into RP are some of the worst griefers and the worst griefed. Does griefing exist? of course. Do those who come here to vent about it and ask for help suffer from the attacks? Definitely. Is it a severe issue that is crippling SL in general? In my opinion, it is not. Most griefing can be prevented by proper region and about land settings. Of course, it depends on your definition of griefing. Mine may be narrower than yours. Does it make you crash? Does it make it impossible for you to move? Does it crash a sim? Does it make it impossible for you to see anything or communicate with others? If not, it's more annoyance than griefing.

3. Yes, it is expensive to own an entire region. Having alot of prims at one’s disposal is great, as is having room for a big house, and plenty of prims if you’re a builder, for your own private sandbox. Do you need to own an entire region to have a nice place with enough prims to decorate? No. If an entire sim or more is desired by a community, there are ways to finance it among the members so that it is not too much of a burden, assuming there are enough members willing to pay. It seems that those who come to SL from online gaming communities are the most dissatisfied with SL. However, are the majority of SL residents gamers? If you expect SL to be a gaming environment and function the same as one, you are going to be dissatisfied.

4. Account hacking. Yes, it happens. I do agree with Drake, and his very apt analogy. If your house is robbed, your landlord is not obligated to replace stolen items. Insurance in the form of copies that are boxed or stored in inventory storage devices rezzed in world is one way to prevent massive loss of inventory. If you don’t want inventory lost, avoiding no copy items as much as possible is a good place to start.

As for an inventory dating back to 08 ... a lot of the older stuff is no mod, or poorly made and textured (though for standards of when it was made, it was likely great), very primmy, and/or poorly scripted. In regard to clothes and hair for instance, there are very few designers whose work stands the test of time and looks good enough to wear by today’s standards. With the exception of dresses by one designer, anything I purchased before 09 has been deleted, and not missed at all. Most builders and designers in SL will give someone a new, no copy item in emergencies if there’s proof of purchase. Since the transaction history only goes back so far, if you want proof of purchase, you can copy and paste the transaction history into a document and save on your hard drive.

It also depends on one’s expectations and how great an air of entitlement someone has. For instance, I once foolishly rezzed a no copy item on a Tuesday before checking the grid status report. It poofed, never to return. It did not occur to me to contact the creator and ask for another because it was my own fault. I am not going to bother someone who is busy working to replace something that I lost through no fault of the person who sold it to me. I have had thousands of inventory items disappear now and again over the years. OH WELL. It’s like losing something in a house fire in RL. If you buy all your furniture from a big department store, don’t insure it, and it’s all lost in a disaster, do you go to the department store and ask for them to replace the items? No, because what you owned was lost, and you can’t expect merchants to just replace things like that in any life.

As for the idea of being able to obtain copies to transfer to a new account after destroying the originals in inventory in the original account, that’s asking a great deal of merchants and of LL and would require some sort of inventory checking and monitoring. Yes, you may pay someone what seems like a lot of Lindens for an item, but realize how long it takes someone to make that “pricey” item, and based on the rate of exchange, the creator gets very little for it. Asking someone who works for, essentially, below minimum wage based on RL money to go to an awful lot of trouble for your convenience really does seem to be asking a great deal.

Recently, someone I know had his account hacked. All his Lindens were transferred from his account, as were all his transfer perm clothes. Within a day, friends were giving him Lindens to make up for those stolen, they were transferring what clothing they could, and contacting friends who are clothing merchants to arrange credit for him so he could replace his wardrobe, and really coming together for him. Does that happen with everyone whose account is hacked? No. It happens with a great many, friends and acquaintances coming together and offering to help. THAT is a genuine sense of community, and a case of getting back what someone puts out. Do people who are friends and acquaintances in SL support each other or are they fair weather friends? So no, the landlord will not replace items stolen but the neighbors will often take up a collection to help someone out.

　

　

5. “most people gaming today want Role-Play” ... how do you arrive by that conclusion? As we see on these forums, many do not consider SL a game, they are not “gamers.” Lack of innovation? Scripts are more efficient today, people who keep up with new building techniques and viewer capabilities create amazing things ... love it or hate it, well done mesh is a prime example of this. WHERE in SL do you go that everything you see is poorly designed? I see some poorly built things, yes, but the majority of what I see in SL is gorgeous. Well designed and built, textured superbly ... the SL I see is usually stunning and beautiful. The same goes for lag ... most lag is perceived lag because a computer doesn’t have the chops or a decent enough graphics card to render SL well at the graphics settings used. Now, some people say “I have a gaming computer, excellent graphics for this or that, but that isn’t good for SL?" Different viewers run better or worse on different graphics cards. For instance, the viewer I use works better with Radeon graphics cards as opposed to NVidia. This means that I can use a lower end entertainment oriented computer and have a relatively lag free and quite lovely SL, whereas someone with a higher end computer may have more perceived lag and things don’t look so pretty. For a friend of mine, the reverse is true. I “lag" like crazy when trying to use the viewer he uses, but get along beautifully with the one I use. He’s tried to use the same viewer as I do, he crashes repeatedly. A well managed sim should have very little lag. If the lag is definitely NOT due to your computer, your graphics card, or your Internet connection, then it sounds like a poorly managed sim. I‘ve only been to a few that way, and oddly enough, the owners took pride in having the laggiest places in SL, which I never quite understood.

“Okay I respect what other people create, but I am looking for an actual combat in Second Life that deals with CyberPunk, or Sci-FI, with actual Combat, Meters, and I don't mean another repeat like Gorean Meter, DCS, or Insilico, I mean something very unique similar to a RPG like StarCraft, and GOR isntead of having just RP items and servers Actual Mines with actual RP slaves who have to go mine and such.”

That is what YOU are looking for in SL. That is not to say that everyone (or even the bulk of role players) are looking for that. If something doesn’t exist in SL, there are four alternatives. 1. Make it yourself. 2. Pay someone else to make it for you. 3. Complain about it and say because SL isn’t what YOU want it to be, it is dying. 4. Stop complaining and leave to find what you want in an online game elsewhere and stop looking for a genuine gaming environment in what is still largely an elaborate 3D chat room.

6. I have encountered a few rude people in SL. More often than not it is a matter of poor manners brought about by language barriers and cultural differences.  None have been group administrators or estate managers. What is it about you and the community that you have chosen to associate with that has griefers following you from sim to sim? What sort of drama rife RP groups have you belonged to that this happens? I know plenty of people in RP communities who are not griefed, who have no issues. It is absurdly easy to become embroiled in drama in SL. It is also absurdly easy to avoid it. In my opinion it is drama that motivates a lot of griefing at RP sims.

Now, if you complain about something and the group administrators or estate managers do nothing, it is your choice to go back, or your choice to try to compel them to see things your way. Regardless of how politely you phrase something, if you bring something up and a sim owner chooses to not see it as an issue, making mention of it again can be seen as nagging and strident. So mention it once, and let it go .. it sounds as if you go beyond that. Are they rude in their response? It sounds like they are. Are you rude when you try to tell them what they should and should not tolerate on their own land and in their own groups? Yes. Reporting them to LL, or threatening to report them is not likely to endear you to anyone. Yes, ARs are anonymous, but if someone stridently objects and doesn’t let something go and then an AR is filed, it does not take a genius to figure out the likely originator of the AR. As someone else said, if a sim owner wants to ban someone for having a particular color of hair, as the owner of the sim s/he can do that. No, I am not saying that you bring on all the griefing yourself, I’m saying look to the company you keep, the places you visit, the communities you interact with, and how you interact with them. It seems to me from your posts that you want things in SL just so, and if you don’t get your way, you don’t step back graciously, but keep at it. If it is not a sim or group owned by you, it is not up to you how it is run. All in all though, your experience of SL is NOT the norm by any means.

I have no opinions about bots, since I rarely see them and the ones I do see are greeter bots in stores and I once had a nice chat with the person behind the begging bot. Years ago, I used to try to go to sims and sim owners would have so many traffic bots that real customers couldn’t get into the sim, which I thought quite absurd. That was before LL changed the rules regarding them. People complain about bots, but I don’t quite have a clear idea precisely what they’re complaining bots do to ruin SL. A rational, objective explanation of this would be appreciated.

I don’t see SL dying. I don’t see it growing, but that doesn’t mean it is dying. Yes, there are ignorant people in SL. There are also egocentric people who think because SL is not what they want it to be, it is all but over.

[Lucretia Brandenburg]

" To be honest there are hundreds if not thousands of blind people in Second Life who don't even keep an eye out, or don't even care unless a griefer spams their location with objects, so yeah often griefers, and bots go by without notice and such it doesn't make anyone who doesn't notice bad or anything.

If I had to counter the number of times I have experienced Griefers, even from Reputable people unknowingly helping griefers it would be hundreds if not more, and the list of griefers I actually have is quite big. You know the drama behind the whole JLU braniac thing right? Well I have my own dictionary on griefers, thousands of snapshots, logs, videos, and audio logs on griefer encounters so yeah I would say I have quite a lot."

WOW, you put alot of energy into this obsession over griefers. Maybe others notice them but don't consider it serious enough to get upset over, maybe what you consider griefing is not what they consider griefing?  You also mention going to land owners and informing them that stolen goods are being given away on their land. You think that won't kick up drama? You've been in SL since 08 ... the generally accepted procedure is to contact the original creator and either send the items to the creator or provide the name of the copybotter and let the creator take care of it. That is a courtesy to the creator of the stolen items and oh, I'd say good citizenship. Anything other than that smacks of a crusade and is asking for trouble.

[Orca Flotta]

Lucretia wrote:

WOW, you put alot of energy into this obsession over griefers. Maybe others notice them but don't consider it serious enough to get upset over, maybe what you consider griefing is not what they consider griefing?  You also mention going to land owners and informing them that stolen goods are being given away on their land. You think that won't kick up drama? You've been in SL since 08 ... the generally accepted procedure is to contact the original creator and either send the items to the creator or provide the name of the copybotter and let the creator take care of it. That is a courtesy to the creator of the stolen items and oh, I'd say good citizenship. Anything other than that smacks of a crusade and is asking for trouble.

 Eggzackerly, Lucretia! I'm not quite the homebody GothGirl thinks I am, in fact I'm almost never at home but mostly all over the grid, particularly navigable water sims and Linden Roads. When I encounter a griefer I verbally abuse them, send AR and forget about it. Life is to busy/funny to spend time with such krap. When I was one of the poor n00bs that don't know anything and need full protection all the time I used to spend some time in public sandboxes to play with my legos. When there was a griefer attack I'd just collect my stuffz and TP away. It's not worth it to get hung up over silly kids.

And nowadays, as a respectable premium member and land owner, I build stuff either on my skyplat or at a premium sandbox. No griefers. Problem solved.

The complainers are right tho, SL is too expensive. I often complained about that myself. And exactly for that reason I expect LL to take care of griefer problems and won't play unpaid deputy on their behalf. As I said earlier, when I encounter a griefer I act accordingly. But I won't search them out and go actively looking for trouble. GothGirl can call me "blind" as much as she wants, I call her half-blind for her limited view on SL. :smileyvery-happy:

[Suspiria Finucane]

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Czari Zenovka wrote:

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Suspiria Finucane wrote:

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Priceless!!!!!

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hehe That's about the face I make when I see these threads :matte-motes-wink-tongue:

[Suki Hirano]

It's been dying from the start. Attempting to sell fashion in a game for real money is fail of an idea from the start. It's been proven that someone can sell you an empty box for $10k and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. Oh and you can't even post on the damn forums cause apparently that's "spreading negative information about a creator", cause the nazis at LL obviously never heard of freedom of speech, when it's perfectly fine to warn people of shady people or businesses on other forums like redflagdeals or even yahoo answers. The level of security in SL purchases is approximately equal to buying a fake Rolex from a hobo peddler in a dark alley. Though that might be an overstatement, at least you do get a fake watch from the hobo, whereas you might get some complete sh*t on marketplace. When you have open real $ transactions going on like this, completely unsecured, how can it not fail? Even game money transactions in some MMORPG's offer more security than SL purchases.

Bottom line, just log on and chat with people. Do not buy anything, period, unless it's freebies or near-freebies. Do not buy any lindens, your money is way better off spent in pretty much anything else, including other MMORPGs. Of course, if you're a creator and here to scam people, then you might need a few $'s of investments to get a business started. I've been in SL for 5 years, statistically speaking the majority of the creators I've had to deal with are complete pricks or fraudsters.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

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GothGirl Demonia wrote:

But if you are like me you visit public sandbox's quite often then you often see griefing spammers.

____________________________________________________________________________________

I agree with everything Lucretia posted in reply to your post. 

I just want to add that I have been in SL almost 7 years and go all over the grid and into public sandboxes too.  About the only time I've encountered griefers is in sandboxes, and then ONLY occasionally. For the most part I can go and spend an entire day in a sandbox and not be bothered at all.  The few times I'm bothered by them it is mostly newbs doing newb tricks that are easily dealt with.

As far as copybotters, I don't tolerate that and if I run into I report it to the creator, who is the only one that can do anything about it.  Contacting Sim owners and threatening them is just you causing drama.  An estate owner is not responsible for the tenant breaking the law any more than a landlord in RL is held liable if a tenant goes out and robs a store. 

To paraphrase a popular saying, in the end the amount of grief you get is about equal to the grief you make for someone.  Frankly from all your posts I think you are obsessed with griefers and copybotters and get in trouble with them due to your own actions and drama.  Confronting them does nothing but give them what they want as well as drawing their attention to you.  Ignoring them but reporting them to LL or the creator is much ore effective in deflecting trouble and stopping them.

[RiiCassidy]

[Amethyst Jetaime]

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Suki Hirano wrote:

It's been dying from the start. Attempting to sell fashion in a game for real money is fail of an idea from the start. It's been proven that someone can sell you an empty box for $10k and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. Oh and you can't even post on the damn forums cause apparently that's "spreading negative information about a creator", cause the nazis at LL obviously never heard of freedom of speech, when it's perfectly fine to warn people of shady people or businesses on other forums like redflagdeals or even yahoo answers. The level of security in SL purchases is approximately equal to buying a fake Rolex from a hobo peddler in a dark alley. Though that might be an overstatement, at least you do get a fake watch from the hobo, whereas you might get some complete sh*t on marketplace. When you have open real $ transactions going on like this, completely unsecured, how can it not fail? Even game money transactions in some MMORPG's offer more security than SL purchases.

Bottom line, just log on and chat with people. Do not buy anything, period, unless it's freebies or near-freebies. Do not buy any lindens, your money is way better off spent in pretty much anything else, including other MMORPGs. Of course, if you're a creator and here to scam people, then you might need a few $'s of investments to get a business started. I've been in SL for 5 years, statistically speaking the majority of the creators I've had to deal with are complete pricks or fraudsters.

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....and yet you frequently post on the forum asking 'where do i get ' this or that, none of which are freebies.

Most of the creators I have dealt with over the years I've been in SL are good people that give better customer service than i can get at my local RL stores.  Just because you have run into a few bad ones doesn't make all of them frauds.  There are many rude or dishonest merchants in RL too, so I guess all RL stores are just as bad.

[Mayalily]

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SLtesterL2 wrote:

..

.Is what some people are saying

 :matte-motes-wink-tongue: (please don't hurt me...)

 

But honestly, what is your opinion on this statement? I haven't been here THAT long so I don't know much about Second Life's past population status or how much it has gone up or down but from what I've heard, it seems that Second Life never really lost it's users, but never increased it's amount of them from listening to some videos on Philip Rosedale. I think I heard something about SL becoming popular in 2007 and it was kinda of a fad that slowly dimmed leaving the passionate users and alot of unactive accounts behind. What is your opinion on this "SL is dying" statement? How are things today different from the past and where do you see SL in the years to come? I honestly believe SL has potential, I just think LL has a tough time showing it (which is ironic cause the amount of cool things you could do here are amazing and even the people I show SL agree and ask why aren't there more users). I think it has to with the steep learning curve, the system requirements it asks for, and maybe the sketchy content for some users who are offended by it. Thats my opinion on what I think is keeping SL from growing more or maybe it is slightly and I'm not realizing it. Please give your thoughts! I would happy to hear what you guys have to say about it! 

:matte-motes-big-grin:

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No, not dying completely but I would have to admit that mesh did change my spending habits on SL.  I find the mesh clothes lack detail such as seams and often look like potato sacks, and the long skirts look ridiculous and stretch like rubber bands, as well as mesh being a nucance for fit.  The mesh jewelry is fantastic.  The other mesh items are not much lower prims than the sculpties, and sometimes more than the sculpties.

1.  Mesh has killed some of SL for me.

2.  Griefers at the sandboxes are unbelieveable.  I have had completed items completely stolen from me.  How they do that...I have no idea.  I've had whole sets of furniture and whole sets of dishes stolen from me.  I had a hacker and had to close my store.  I don't know who makes people like the griefers but I sure am glad I do not know people like that in rl.  They need to be seriously medicated, I'd say, as they have no life but wanting to do wrong and hurt, and I often cannot comprehend what kind of upbringing they must have had.  I think jail time needs to be seriously considered for hackers, however because the police do not take that seriously and are not concerned unless a large amount has been charged on an account. 

 

3.  I've reported and reported abuse to LL.  They have not responded once.  So, I don't report anymore.

 

I buy the super cheapy stuff now.  I find very cute items for 9 lindens...whole outfits as a matter of fact.  SL is full of hackers/grifers...so people have two choices...take it or leave it.  However, it is a problem with hackers, so people are making new avatars almost every day.  It's a game of guess who I am.  The populace I'd say is not as high as it seems, and I'd say most SL users have hundreds of avatars rather than the allotted five per household as it is supposed to have.  There are no rules here that are actually acted upon in my experience.  Griefers are let go because it is still money to LL.  I would never run a business as poorly as LL does.  It's just bad business eithics.  If you think the populace is getting smaller...it isn't...it's just people playing "guess who I am" today in another avatar.  I shrug and think it's stupid of them who do that.  I have a lot of people on block.  

 

On the good side, I've realized a 3D creative platform such as SL could be used for business perhaps in the future.  People could show their 3D creations, buyers could buy, and then the items could be re-created in real life.   That is the direction I would like to see 3D creations go into the future.  But, they have to clean up the sandboxes first period, which I doubt they will do because they would have to pay mods to be at the sandboxes.  However, with all the griefers, it just makes people NOT want to create.  That is my experience, anyhow.  But most definately, I'd say mesh has killed a lot of the creativity in SL for me, but I also think mesh could be great in a couple of years.  It takes awhile, sometimes years, for these kind of things to get to a level of superiority, quality and excellence. 

 

But to your main point about users, it's meaningless to the populace, as most make jazillions of avatars; some get a new free one every day.  It's kinda crazy, but they do.  So, there is no way to judge populace at all.   

 

[Griffin Ceawlin]

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Mayalily wrote:...

... I'd say most SL users have hundreds of avatars... most make jazillions of avatars; ...

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Do you just make this stuff up or what?