Whats going on with SL? Is it failing?

[Azrikam]

"Actually, Prok, we're back to using the tools available if you had a group that all stuff has to be rezzed in for your properties, you could then set the land so only things rezzed in the group would be able to be rezzed. Or you could set it so anyone could rez but anything that isn't rezzed in the group gets returned within 1 minute. Both would deal with your griefer problem as they either couldn't rez or it would be returned within 1 minute. Also set your land so nothing can enter from outside your sims.

So. your griefer problem is one you could solve yourself with the tools availabe rather than depending on LL to take care of it for you."

So you guys / gals just pointed out one of the main issues with griefing I see happening and experience. People who have the tools to grief you remotely from the sim or people who rez anywhere. Here is the big thing. Not everyone can afford to have a private sim and the group only stuff only works if its your land. You see it is a depending on LL to take care of it for us or that were entitled to it here is the hard truth. WE ARE 100% looking for LL to take care of it because its their system and their programs, and their stuff. Its not as simple as teleporting away when you dont own land to go to or have a place to call home. The only thing I can think of is this a way for LL to make more money by forcing people to get fed up and go private lands and leave more abandoned and open land on the mainland.... Which in the end would ultimately hurt their bottom line because it would cut down the amount of people using their services. But the thing that I keep seeing said as an alternative is only an alternative if you invest the money in having your own land and not everyone has that ability with the cost of lindens vs dollars. Some of these griefers have tools and ive seen them do it and had it done to me where they will attack you in a public area like the freebie galaxy or london city (huge griefer places now) where you cant do anything and if why should I have to teleport away in the middle of shopping / diving / or any other activity that I am doing to relax just rather than LL just banning that person. I have submitted multiple reports about griefers from my exploring and NOT ONCE, not one single time has LL said they were gonna do anything about it. So these solutions to the griefer problem are apparently to only own your own land and group and not interact with others, which to my knowledge wasnt what second life is about. Everyone sitting in their own little corners safe from griefing and not interacting............ Yeah that sounds like fun, not. Another thing. I have talked to some sim owners who told me they only have so many spots they can use to ban people with, as someone who hasnt invested in any private land, what gives for that? What is the answer for when you run out of the ability to ban people? If that is indeed the case and some of these sim owners or renters have run out of space, whats your solution? keep running away? Or we should buy our own sim then it wont be such a problem........................ Your solutions to me have raised more questions than answers. All of the things you suggest as solutions result in paying even more for the private land or control over land, something most people do not have the priviledge of doing.

[Alwin Alcott]

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Azrikam wrote:

 

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i don't even let the quote stand, because it's totally wrong.. owning the land by person or group does make totally no difference in using the tools provided to prevent griefing.

It's on the owner .. group or person who can control the setting to put it up correctly, and THAT is whats going wrong.

and btw... LL NEVER replies on a AR, to nobody, so you don't know if there's taken action.

If griefing happens on other people's land, simply AR yourself, and/or inform the owner. If people can attack you there you can nearly guess the owners setting suck.. and its the owners task to prevent it, not LL.

[Pussycat Catnap]

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Alwin Alcott wrote:

and btw... LL NEVER replies on a AR, to nobody, so you don't know if there's taken action.

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Actually I do know they take action as on a number of these I've happened to be in the area when that avatar dot of a linden pops up on my mini-map and the stuff I and others were ARing starts rapidly vanishing.

But in general, and for things like the AR I filed recently because a 'subscribomatic' had no way to unsub and had been placed behind a security orb up in the sky on a teleport locked parcel... Yeah I will never know if they take action. I will know if nothing happened if that thing manages to spam me again for the fashions for its group...

Some of these can take months to see action on. Others are rather rapid though. I have no real insight into what sets the difference. Any theories I could offer probably have a counter-example someone else will offer.

It is also quite possible with many ARs that they read them go through a decision on them, and decide to not take action. That could even happen with the subscribomatic I AR'd. Doesn't mean I won't file an AR again if I see what I feel is an abuse.

I do try to be very selective in filing these. For things that I feel need a filing. If I get into some drama with someone - I'm not usually going to file on that. But I did file one somebody's giant glowing prim recently that WAS drama. I then resolved the situation on my own with an IM and notecard to the person worded reasonably and trying to settle things - and thengs got settled. I suspect LLs has yet to process that AR... now imagine if they were to get involved there...

- So it seems that sometimes, even in actual griefing wars between two parties - the most action they should take is to quietly and without blame remove some rezzed items that might disrupt third parties, but others step back and wait to see if things can instead self-resolve...

- And that could cause some people to think they're not doing their jobs... But I would actually be worried about them taking an action that itself could do more harm than the non-action.

 

I'm actually more likely to file an AR in a situation that does not involve me personally than in one that does - so that I can avoid having my judgement clouded by emotion...

 

Oh and on the original topic, is SL dying. Here's the population in SL right now:

Seems to be doing pretty well. I "feel" it's been getting higher. But that's just a feeling I can't actually back up.

It actually went up to 52029 while I was typing this...

 

Now compare that to MMO video games. The most any MMO has ever reported as 'current number logged in' was around 350,000 - that was Guild Wars 2 on it's launch weekend, about 100,000 more than any other MMO, including World of Warcraft, had ever had. Those being peak numbers across multiple unconnected servers, not averages. And that Guild Wars figure required them to do an absurdly long over-hyped up advertising campaign. The game's concurrency crashed way down shortly after, but it did become one of the most healthly MMOs in the long run.

SL's average, ranges from 1/7th to 1/5th the peak of World of Warcraft. I doubt World of Warcraft's average is even 1/5th of their peak.

So SL might not have anywhere near the number of users as an MMO, but our actual regularly logged in population is rather shockingly healthy.

 

[Rolig Loon]

I suspect that some people tend to attract griefers like trailer parks attract tornados.  I have never understood either phenomenon.  Although I have no interest in RP, I visit a lot of other regions regularly, so I bump into a lot of very strange types. Like Saul, though, I haven't seen a certifiable griefer in maybe 6 years.  I've been here for ten years and have probably seen only a half dozen.  I know there are only two on my mute list.  So .... maybe you need a new class of friends?

[Bobbie Faulds]

Prok owns the land he is talking about. I own a parcel on the mainland where I have my store. It's set to rez only for certain categories within my store group. No entry from outside my parcel. 1 minute auto return. I've not had any problems with griefing on my parcel. However, there is a sandbox on the adjoining sim and there was a player who had their land next to me open for people to rez stuff. I get leakage from the particle stuff from those when a griefer has struck there. LL has had it cleaned up in about 48 hours at the most.

You used to get griefers using abandoned land but LL has the autoreturn set on those at 5 minutes.

The most pernicious one is a newer tool that we had to have LL help us with in the RP sim I'm an admin in. It used temp rez scripts so the autoreturn couldn't deal with it. https://gyazo.com/66e4c23473a41404ef2c9b71d4f4db08

[Klytyna]

Re: The Sky is falling...

 

Yeah same old same old, 5 years ago, agents logged in varied between 30-50k, today it's... 30-50k

 

Re: Everything else the OP has complained about...

 

Mainland dwelling Madlander problems, yeah the once beautiful continent of Asshatia is now 40% abandoned land, 30 % land for sale, and 30% nobody home... Big deal...

 

Many people AVOID the Madlands, because it's the home of 'Madlander Max' (worthless.permatrash), the Prim Warrior, cruising along the LL protected roads in the last of the Mod/Trans/Nocopy V8 Primterceptors, with a trunk full of insta-rez Megaprim-adboards, slotmachine-arcades, for-sale signs, and free griefer weapon dispensers for their army of spoof-IP-address griefer alts that they use to drive rival prim warriors off their madland parcels to create lucrative property speculation opportunities.

 

Yeah there are 'empty' island sims, but, not as empty as people always assume, a lot is time/day specific.

 

Griefers still exist, of course, but while they do occasionally hit the more easily found islands, they are predominantly a Madland problem, those damn useless roads you Madlanders want more of... Channels of 'object entry enabled' access for dsrifts of replicating physical prims from the "Res your car here" gas station forecourts.

 

Madland regions limit region/estate powers to... LL employees, so if your Madland parcel sits on a Madland region that gets hit bad, late at night on a sunday, SL time, when the Lindens are all at home in bed, yeah it's going to take a while to clean up the mess.

 

Last SERIOUS attack I saw was several years ago, a spreading cancer of red prims, that followed the roads, and hit almost 20 regions, you could see the red tendrils made of 10's of thousands of replicating prims on the world map sattelite cam, took the night shift weekend Lindens hours to clean that up, not enough bodies to nuke all the damn spawn sites at once.

 

Abandon your Madlander delusions, seek psychiatric help, move to the Islands,

 

SL Lives! And it Lives in the Islands!

[ChinRey]

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Klytyna wrote:

Abandon your Madlander delusions, seek psychiatric help, move to the Islands,

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You mean like... admit defeat, flee to a hidden bolt-hole and let the griefers have the only virtual world in the world? Who are you and what did you do to the real Klytyna?

[Perrie Juran]

You are right, there are a lot of empty Sims.  But that doesn't mean that their are not things to do.  There is a lot to do.  But you limit yourself by treating SL as just a game.

Amoung other things, a primary thing I am here for is to socialize.  And over the years I have developed frienships to the point that we know who each other are in first life.  We get together and do things together in SL.  Whether it be clubbing, listening to live music together, exploring builds in one of the Linden Endowment for the Arts Sims, etc, we find plenty to do.  We go sailing, we fly planes and helicopters.  Sometimes we just sit around and chat.

So while it is true that concurency is down from when I first started, SL is still very alive and vital to me and my friends.

[Perrie Juran]

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Alwin Alcott wrote:

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Prokofy Neva wrote:to be

There are so many of these LL doesn't process them.

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i quote Tommy Linden... a little earlier this week in another topic:

 

 

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Tommy Linden wrote:

.......

The Governance team is the ones who will be able to properly investigate this matter and the only way to ensure they get the report, in a timely manner is by sending in an Abuse Report. Just make sure you include all the information you possibly can in the report. If you need to file multiple reports regarding the matter, make sure you make a note in there that this is linked to multiple reports around the issue.

I can assure you that the Governance team does infact review every single report that they get,

so please always make sure you are filing an abuse report.

Submitting a support case, or contacting via other means may actually cause the problem to take longer to be resolved.

.......

~Tommy Linden

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It just seems to be a mixed bag.  I know they have to triage things but there sometimes appears to be no consistency to the response time.  Twice due to a neighbor who left his land wide open we had griefer attacks on our Mainland SIM and both times they were cleaned up within a couple of hours.

But I also have seen it take three weeks to get some pornographic griefer cubes cleaned up despite multiple AR's  One time, after watching griefer cubes next to the governor's mansion for three days I finally left a comment on Torley's feed about how embarassing it was to take new person there.  He didn't reply to my comment but two hours later it was cleaned up.

[Phil Deakins]

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Klytyna wrote:

Yeah same old same old, 5 years ago, agents logged in varied between 30-50k, today it's... 30-50k

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I beg to differ on your 5 years ago numbers. I may be mistaken, but 5 years ago the agents logged in were in the 80ks, and even popped into the 90ks very briefly. Maybe that was 6 years ago so I could be mistaken. What I'm not mistaken about, though, are the numbers.

I think everyone agrees that the numbers have dwindled since they peaked some years ago. And I think everyone agrees that they continue to dwindle, though very slowly.

[sirhc DeSantis]

Depends on your data set. Idle curiosity grabbed these from my groups hourly recorder. It goes back further but ..Three year gap, roughly same SL time (same day, 2014 was Wednesday I think)

Object-Name: sign up monitor 2
Region: (removed)
Local-Position: (160, 7, 901)

Sign up SLT : 2014-02-12 14:55:01 : 37001721 : logged in : 52839

Object-Name: sign up monitor 2
Region: (removed)
Local-Position: (160, 7, 901)

Sign up SLT : 2017-02-12 14:55:01 : 49143182 : logged in : 53136

Not sure I recall 80k from 5 years ago, before that yes.

 

[Freya Mokusei]

Perhaps this chart by Tyche Shepard helps. An alternative by Taturu Nino is here.

IMHO, sirhc's stats may be misleading because they're single-points-in-time. SL concurrency fluctuates very heavily across the day and across the week, making averages a far more definitive measure. It's cool seeing those numbers, though..

As I recall posting back in the day, traffic wasn't declining quickly then and it isn't declining quickly now. The noticable difference is the height of the 'Max' peaks, but mean and median have been in a stable, low angled fall since 2008-2010.

Think this supports your summary, Phil. It certainly falls in line with the Gartner Hype Cycle. The decline might be more perceptable now (it is for me, as a member of some small-count subcultures), but it won't accelerate for a while yet.

[Phil Deakins]

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sirhc DeSantis wrote:

Not sure I recall 80k from 5 years ago, before that yes.

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Before 5 years ago then. The charts that Freya linked to show 80k+, although Tataru's shows it much more clearly because Tyche's doesn't go back far enough. I personally, saw it in the 90ks, but it was only briefly - maybe only a day or so.

[Phil Deakins]

Thank you for the links, Freya. My estimate of 5 or 6 years ago was a bit out

Both charts show a steady and ongoing decline decline, which is the point I was making when someone tried to make out that the numbers haven't changed in the last 5 years.

[Freya Mokusei]

Perception of time has always been hard in SL.

I haven't read the whole thread, falls below my interest. But, quickly, my two cents are that what's happening makes sense - users are aging out slowly, at just-barely-below replacement rate levels. Whether it be from lack of interest, hardware failure or the other 30-3,000 structural issues that eventually become too annoying (I assume this thread has plenty of examples already).

Continuous growth isn't possible for any online platform, everything has a TTL.

Important thing is it keeps away from a cascade effect - like the sort that can happen (and has happened elsewhere) when operators take their eyes off the ball. This risk has actually decreased in recent years, which should enable the slope to continue (at the rate it has done until this point) for a while yet.

[LinuxGod4u]

I have my own opinion on this topic. It is like being aboard the Titanic & as it is sinking you are being told "all is well."  Recently I have seen sims closing including some that had be on SL for years. Sure "they come & go" but I've seen many more as of late going than coming. In addition, look at all the sims that are the equivalent of ghost towns with no one in them. Your hardcore SL fanclub will say I do not know what I am talking about, but closing-empty sims tell the story. I have encountered "griefers" although I do not condone their conduct I do understand their actions. 

"I Relish Simplicity"

[Seductive Dreamscape]

I have to laugh at this from P Neva: "For the last day, I've been griefed on multiple sims and parcels by the same old Woodbury/PN style griefer with the same creepy effigy of myself -- a high-prim horror. " I mean, what genius! You argue and ban anyone who doesn't comply with "your" mainland rules, and then get irritated by griefers who make effigies of you! It's given me the biggest laugh. Thankyou!

[Bobbie Faulds]

If I recall correctly, the 80-90K rate was about the time CSI:NY had an episode that feature machinima, though very unrealisting, of SL. Also had the program Gossip Girl inworld and there are still players with Gossipgirl as their surname. That was also just before gambling was removed and the inworld banks that crashed. Those that were in SL it gamble left so probably accounts for a good chunk of the decrease about that time.

The players now don't really care about gambling and are more interesting in socializing, roleplay, and virtual shopping, which a lot cheaper thatn RL shopping and you don't have to get up from your computer.

[Phil Deakins]

Whilst you may right about when the 80-90k occured, I'm pretty sure that your conclusion is wrong. The number rose steadily through the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s and into the 80s. It was a steady upward incline, and not something that was brought about by a TV programme. Of course, a significant percentage of the numbers were bots back then. There was a time back then when I used to have a minimum of 35 avatars logged in, and it was quite common for parcels to have 20 or so bots logged in.

[sirhc DeSantis]

I agree there, my rusty recollection is that the 80k+ number was a bit of a fleeting thing and didn't register apart from in a 'thats nice' way. Not like the day back in the mists of time when it hit 15k - and didn't immediately fall over. We were all so much younger then...

(Yes the two data points I posted were just that - points and not of any real use for an ongoing trend analysis. Never got around to breaking it out from the emails it sends anyway .  More passing anecdotes and we only put the thing out to test some basic web result passing. Kept around more for curiosity now, not as anything of use for anyone else. ).

[thimblemunch]

Second Life is failing hard, just look at the private estate sim owners decline. It has been on a steady decline for years now and it won't be getting better.

Lets just be honest about it, Second life is like a decade old, built in a game engine that is complete **bleep**, and they don't update things anymore cause they hit the limit of Havok engine's capibilities. Ever wonder why there is no mirrors in SL but there is in other games? That is exactly the reason.

I also read somewhere in this thread someone said it's not a game so don't call it a game.

Well Second Life was built in a game engine just like other games. It might not have achievements and stuff, but there is lots of other games that don't to that still call themselves games. Look at any sandbox game for instance. I feel people tend to say it's not a game so that they can justify wasting so much time on it to themselves.

[lucagrabacr]

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thimblemunch wrote:

Second Life is failing hard, just look at the private estate sim owners decline. It has been on a steady decline for years now and it won't be getting better.

Lets just be honest about it, Second life is like a decade old, built in a game engine that is complete **bleep**, and they don't update things anymore cause they hit the limit of Havok engine's capibilities. Ever wonder why there is no mirrors in SL but there is in other games? That is exactly the reason.

I also read somewhere in this thread someone said it's not a game so don't call it a game.

Well Second Life was built in a game engine just like other games. It might not have achievements and stuff, but there is lots of other games that don't to that still call themselves games. Look at any sandbox game for instance. I feel people tend to say it's not a game so that they can justify wasting so much time on it to themselves.

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I'm fine with people calling it a game, I did once too and still do when pitching SL to my gamer friends, it's just technically wrong, since SL was not meant to be a game and is not a game by definition.

It's absurd to call SL failing from a financial point of view though, since it still makes much more money than most games out there, if you want to compare it to them. 

The engine's really old, yeah, but given enough money and incentive, I believe they can always continuously make it better one way or another. I mean in the past few years alone, they added things like materials, Bento, etc. Who knows, maybe they can even upgrade it in an even more fundamental level in the next few years.