Quo Vadis SL?

[Furholio]

Hey guys, sorry, I know I'll get lots of flak but this post/vent/rant was overdue.

Whats the current state of SL, and what are the future plans for this platform?

I joined SL in 2009 and had lots of fun but the last recent years I saw nothing but decline (at least in my peer groups).
Sims/Sandboxes day and night full of people driven by curiosity, creativity and inventiveness, always up for a chat and instant partys are fading memories. 
Big meeting points disappeared along with their regular visitors and all that remains appear to be afk'lers (or bots?) and disillusioned old farts like me, roaming around trying to rediscover the joy that is lost (heck  ... even watching a griefers attack would be a joy now since it would show at least SOME sort of life around ... sounds crazy I know)

Many good bloggers called it a day along with valuable contributors like Tyche Shepard who said good bye as well.
Bugs that should have been fixed long ago still persist (group chat? really? in the day and age of everyone's instant 4k streamability, SL still cannot handle few lines of text? ), no further technical developments were announced for a while. I know LL may need to regroup after the recent losses and structural changes, but anyway. Its far too quiet over there. I find it increasingly difficult to justify paying for my sim in a VW that hardly offers anything anymore and shows no signs of change.

So what happened?

or is it just the usual attention span of maybe 2-3 years of the average SL resident that makes people disappear

or did marketplace & mesh kill the shopping-tours and modding events?

Please share your thoughts

[bigmoe Whitfield]

most of the last few years have been working on project uplift and bom and eep.     since the full move to aws, which costs them more, but allows them to focus now on SL instead of having to worry about physical hardware (which there are none!)   so with the CEO just passing away and the team working behind the scenes to make sure transition for whom ever is taking the help a good one, the goal for the lab is still very much move forward and that includes fixing group chat,  they were using xmpp or jabb protocol the last time I heard anything,  I suspect they will end up moving to another open chat platform,  some of us would like them to integrate discord some how, but that's not going to be free or easy on their end. 

[Innula Zenovka]

Even if you're not a premium member, it might be worth checking out Bellisseria, the new Linden Homes continent, and joining one of their innumerable groups, which are open to everyone.    The larger ones are always organising large community events, to which everyone is welcome.

Check out the very active Bellisseria Citizens group, who publicise major events and  organise a lot of their own.   It's open to everyone, not only Bellisseria residents.  They also have a list of places to explore on the continent, which is a consistently rewarding place to explore, with lots of surprises and Easter Eggs.     

Edited July 4, 2021 by Innula Zenovka

[Alwin Alcott]

4 hours ago, Furholio said:

Please share your thoughts

enjoy it as long it's still around.

Thats a bit to negative.. but i really think we'r on a platform that has only a future, when some serious work gets done, and not some bling new features, but real work.
It's very silent since the new investorse except on fee subjects for (heavens know why.. where did the rest of the money go??) maintenance and growth, SL got drained for years for Sansar, but now not even possible to pay itself for maintenance...i don't get that... but perhaps i'm alone in that..

[Garnet Psaltery]

Ex his patet, quod nos Latine loqui in futurum.

[Nalates Urriah]

5 hours ago, Furholio said:

Hey guys, sorry, I know I'll get lots of flak but this post/vent/rant was overdue.

Whats the current state of SL, and what are the future plans for this platform?

I joined SL in 2009 and had lots of fun but the last recent years I saw nothing but decline (at least in my peer groups).
Sims/Sandboxes day and night full of people driven by curiosity, creativity and inventiveness, always up for a chat and instant partys are fading memories. 
Big meeting points disappeared along with their regular visitors and all that remains appear to be afk'lers (or bots?) and disillusioned old farts like me, roaming around trying to rediscover the joy that is lost (heck  ... even watching a griefers attack would be a joy now since it would show at least SOME sort of life around ... sounds crazy I know)

Many good bloggers called it a day along with valuable contributors like Tyche Shepard who said good bye as well.
Bugs that should have been fixed long ago still persist (group chat? really? in the day and age of everyone's instant 4k streamability, SL still cannot handle few lines of text? ), no further technical developments were announced for a while. I know LL may need to regroup after the recent losses and structural changes, but anyway. Its far too quiet over there. I find it increasingly difficult to justify paying for my sim in a VW that hardly offers anything anymore and shows no signs of change.

So what happened?

or is it just the usual attention span of maybe 2-3 years of the average SL resident that makes people disappear

or did marketplace & mesh kill the shopping-tours and modding events?

Please share your thoughts

Rather broad question. In general the company is healthy. It has two major cash cows; SL and the Tilia pay system, at least that I know of. Danial Voyage found the most recent economic news is the users took US$80 million out of the game which suggests the Lab's income is quite healthy. The move to the cloud has greatly reduce operating costs. The pandemic had increased the user base.

From 2009 to 2019 you would see lots of 'decline' in concurrent users. But the nature of SL has changed. Prior to 2009 to 10 the majority of building was done in SL. With the addition of mesh SL users building were work in modeling programs other than the viewer dropping concurrent logins. We now have no way to measure the time people are spending on that part of their time participating in SL. This makes Concurrent Use stats WAY less accurate. But in 2020 (the year of the big suck) user stats started climbing.

...a few lines of text... interesting idea that you think there are only a few lines of text involved. Person to person IMs that do only involve a few lines of text work very well. The group chats that involve 50k or more users do run into problems. With group membership increasing with each upgrade in the chat engines it appears the Lab deliberately sets the max limit of groups near the max capacity of the chat engines. Users want more group memberships and the Lab provides. This is a strong enough demand that the Lab made joining more groups a Premium Member benefit. Add up the number of members in the groups we have joined or multiply the number of groups by the average number of group members and you have the number of members the system has to consider every time someone presses enter in a group chat. No small or simple task. But, none techies generally don't understand the problem.

announced for a while. May be define "awhile". A over a year ago the uplift project of moving SL into the cloud started. This is a huge change and effort. The Lab was focused on that. The project was declared complete a few months ago. But there are problems with the lift they continued to find and fix and that is ongoing.

The move to the cloud was intended to be invisible. So for over a year the Lab has worked on a project that provides new horizons. So non-techies are clueless and think nothing is happening.

They also added a bunch of new ways to track what the system is doing in the cloud, things they could not track before. I suspect the Lab is learning what the new possibilities are, beyond just those they knew of and based their decision to move on. With that knowledge we will see what new plans they come up with.

The viewer is now 11 to 12 years old. It is well developed. It has had lots of features added over the years. Most of what users want is there. So I doubt we'll see huge changes there and what would you change anyway?

2-3 years... That may still be a thing. There is an academic study by a couple of big name social professor at some university that did a study awhile back about what kept people in SL. TL:DR Summary: It is  interaction between users. But, a facet of the study is that the average life expectancy of an SL users is 2 years. Has that changed? There are no studies I have seen that change that info.

Shopping Events... OMG... you must live under an SL rock... or you have an excellent strategy for avoiding SL Spam. There is no shortage of shopping events nor the promotion of them.

Modding events... Not sure if you mean game mods or not, that were popular in most online games. I suppose in SL those would have been the build competitions we had in-world. With the shift from prims to mesh that part of the world changed, went away. But, SL looks way better for it.

Symptoms... Not fixing bugs is a persistent myth in SL... well... several online games. The bugs most complain about not being fixed have been fixed multiple times, But understanding what is happening is key. With most bugs the users only see the symptom. Like a fever. Doc, I have a fever. What's wrong? The doc will test to see if it is H1N1 or Covid-19 and then treat that. Fever gone. Next year, Doc I have a fever, Why didn't you fix it? This year it is variant D which never before existed... duh!

If you learn to use the SL JIRA you can track the Lab's bugs reported, fix rate, and estimate "time to fix". The Lab does fix almost all the bugs in 60 to 90 days. But those "bugs" causing similar symptoms where users see only the symptom... they think those are never fixed.

[ChinRey]

6 hours ago, bigmoe Whitfield said:

...

the goal for the lab is still very much move forward

...

Yes but how, how fast and in which direction?

Quoting Coffee from another thread:

On 6/22/2021 at 1:42 AM, Coffee Pancake said:

An awful lot was left unsaid. If SL wants to see meaningful growth, the boat needs to be rocked. The lack of vision is manifesting as paralysis and a catch 22. There can be no growth without change and no funding for change without growth.

My impression can be summed up as  "SL is sacrosanct, don't rock the boat, showing growth is imperative but #nochanges. Tilia is exciting."

Discussing SL's future without LL being involved is all but meaningless. What are their priorities? What is their vision? How do they see SL anno 2026 or 2031? How does the road map to get there look? What is their target audience?

This is a long shot but maybe, just maybe, @Grumpity Linden or @Patch Linden or the allmighty @Linden Lab is willing to share some of their thoughts here(?)

Edited July 4, 2021 by ChinRey

[Coffee Pancake]

I'd like to see goals for platform advancement and a roadmap. I'd like to see what LL's aspirational vision for the platform as a whole is. I'd like to see they even have plan.

So far we have .. new user stuff (which is something they should be doing anyway), an advert (again, basic expectation), and 'a year of experiments' .. which sounds like management speak for 'throw mud at the wall and see what sticks'.

[Sid Nagy]

4 hours ago, Alwin Alcott said:

enjoy it as long it's still around.

Thats a bit to negative.. but i really think we'r on a platform that has only a future, when some serious work gets done, and not some bling new features, but real work.
It's very silent since the new investorse except on fee subjects for (heavens know why.. where did the rest of the money go??) maintenance and growth, SL got drained for years for Sansar, but now not even possible to pay itself for maintenance...i don't get that... but perhaps i'm alone in that..

As long as they don't have another cash cow in their barn and SL pays their bills, we're good.
Can be a few years, can be half a decade, maybe even longer.
But one doesn't need magical skills to see that SL has used most of its lifespan, if there ain't gonna be spectacular upgrades and improvements on several fronts.

Edited July 4, 2021 by Sid Nagy

[Polenth Yue]

I never met people at sandboxes and have no nostalgia for them. All these sandbox dance parties and social occasions people talk about were not my early Second Life experience at all. Most people at sandboxes either ignored me or they were griefers.

I still meet people in the same places I always met them... at events and in the groups for those events/communities. There are so many events that you wouldn't be able to attend all of them, so you're bound to find something you like. My personal event schedule is quiet for a bit after the birthday, but it'll get busy again from September (I'm signed up for Spoonful of Sugar and SciFi Expo and will likely have a couple more things arranged soon).

Fantasy Faire started in 2009, so some of the events might even be things you have been to before.

[Krystina Ferraris]

7 hours ago, Garnet Psaltery said:

Ex his patet, quod nos Latine loqui in futurum.

Manifestum est… incipit nunc eam!

[Rowan Amore]

Ob-la-di, ob-la-da 
Life goes on, brah 

[rasterscan]

23 hours ago, Furholio said:

the last recent years I saw nothing but decline ... Please share your thoughts

Bellisseria is thriving, Furholio.    secondlife:///app/group/f7b0c9d9-ab6d-30d1-e37f-52b2bb132074/about    <<< pop that in your viewer chatbox for link to citizens group

Edited July 5, 2021 by rasterscan

[ChinRey]

3 hours ago, rasterscan said:

Bellisseria is thriving, Furholio.    secondlife:///app/group/f7b0c9d9-ab6d-30d1-e37f-52b2bb132074/about    <<< pop that in your viewer chatbox for link to citizens group

It is and that's good but Bellisseria is not everybody's cup of Starbucks. How about the rest of Second Life?

[Sid Nagy]

The rest of SL stays as beautiful or crappy as it is for now I guess.
The Bellisseria project is not finished yet.