With Philip Rosendale returning to advise on SL I thought I might return. Should I? If so why?

[Misty Rookstown]

I popped in to Second Life and even filed a ticket to see if I can get my alt out of Second Life Jail for not paying property tax a good number of years ago. I left when the skill game drama hit with all the changes. I had a game store then called Celestial Game Tower. It actually inspired me to open a real game store featuring mostly board games and such. I went through my inventory to organize what this avatar had. I found the browser not too intuitive ... And I been here since 2004 or so. I searched out events that were currently active by topics of game, dance or even party. I couldn't find a real person. I checked some of the classifieds looking for an active game place to find an empty plot of land. I searched for land for sale, teleported to it and found it wasn't for sale.  I ran across hardly any people ... just people that appeared to be afk. 
Contrasting that to my first experience many years ago in Second Life, It was quite easy to find actual people in clubs, shopping, building in sandboxes. Everything felt like a ghost town. 

Second Life should think about going back to basics. Look back when it rewarded content creators and growth. For those that weren't there what they would do is reward people with the most traffic with linden dollars. They would pay you for running an event. What it did was it motivated people to create events and contests and it grew Second Life considerably. I say go back to basics again because coming in feeling like a noob again ... I could not find anything to really do. Site seeing perhaps through the destination guide. 

Second Life needs to shine again. It needs to be intuitive again. Searching for events for example I couldn't just search for events. I had to put in a key word. And they didn't yield many results when searching for events that were currently happening. The only active chatter I saw going on was in some of the coin chasing groups I was still in. Mostly posts of coins spawning. 
I would love to go through my inventory and the tons of games open an arcade and game room to give people things to do. If allowed I wouldn't mind putting out skill games out as free play. Some old gems not around anymore. 

I am just trying to see where Second Life is and where it is going given Zuckerberg is clearly interested on taking over from what SL opened up. In my mind I think it is critical that LL rework the browser and create a "Third Life" servers that are up to date for modern times where you can seemless you go from the classic sims to more current ones. With some set up specifically to create game worlds for instance. There are RPGs in SL but they are limited by the infrastructure. Being able to move to new sims with specific designs to facilitate such things is one of the answers. Have a series of RPG sims with infastructure specifically made for such things. 

Currently I don't see strong reasons outside of nostalgia and when I visit with nostalgia in tow I am greatly disappointed currently. It needs a major overhall .. and should have started a few years ago. 
What are LL's plans to take SL to the future ... I want to hear it ... or are they just cruising to keep money coming in when they should be moving to the next level. The clock is ticking. 

[Alwin Alcott]

29 minutes ago, Misty Rookstown said:

With Philip Rosendale returning to advise on SL I thought I might return. Should I?

Second Life should ..
Second Life needs ..
 

if PR is your reason ... don't 

to the rest... don't  either, LL will make their own plans, and how .. and yes, of course to keep the money comming in, but not only that. There is development.

[bigmoe Whitfield]

Nope SL is fine now how it is,  can keep improving, but taking steps backwards is not what should or will happen.

[Extrude Ragu]

1 hour ago, Misty Rookstown said:

Searching for events for example I couldn't just search for events. I had to put in a key word. And they didn't yield many results when searching for events that were currently happening.

I agree wholeheartedly that you should be able to find events without entering keywords

If you're using Firestorm it's still possible, in the search window head to the Events tab at the top:-

Improvements to Search was on LL's 2022 roadmap. So perhaps they'd be open to thoughts on Search in one of their user groups?

I think LL are probably also open to ideas regarding region offerings since they recently announced Event Regions

As for modernizing the viewer, to LL's credit they have actually been working on that, both with a performance improvement viewer in the works and also new modern graphics capabilities (PBR) which asset creators like me will greatly benefit from.

Although I think that there is still work to be done, I do think that SecondLife is currently in a period of change in some ways and they seem more motivated to get things done than usual, so I'd say it's worth sticking around

 

[Coffee Pancake]

2 hours ago, Misty Rookstown said:

Second Life should think about going back to basics. Look back when it rewarded content creators and growth. For those that weren't there what they would do is reward people with the most traffic with linden dollars. They would pay you for running an event. What it did was it motivated people to create events and contests and it grew Second Life considerably. I say go back to basics again because coming in feeling like a noob again ... I could not find anything to really do. Site seeing perhaps through the destination guide. 

Rewarding locations for traffic scores is how we ended up with camping and traffic bots. You can't have this and then complain about AFK people or ghosts.

2 hours ago, Misty Rookstown said:

Zuckerberg is clearly interested on taking over from what SL opened up.

If you think that, you've not really been paying attention to what Meta and corporate visons of the Metaverse actually involve. They aren't talking about virtual worlds or 3D chat platforms (although that might be a part). The meaning of the word has evolved into a risk avoidance procedure, limiting the potential for individual failure by incorporating everything into the same over arching fold.

The modern corporate metaverse is the Marvel MCU applied to unrelated brands and revenue streams. It's Disney World without the fun.

2 hours ago, Misty Rookstown said:

In my mind I think it is critical that LL rework the browser and create a "Third Life" servers that are up to date for modern times

LL did that. It was called Sansar and it had more staff than users, they sold it to another company who solved that particular problem by letting all the staff go.

2 hours ago, Misty Rookstown said:

Currently I don't see strong reasons outside of nostalgia and when I visit with nostalgia in tow I am greatly disappointed 

No one is here for the tech offering. We're here because this is where we chose to make and maintain personal relationships and friendships. This is where SL shines and there is no where else quite like it.

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

3 hours ago, Misty Rookstown said:

What are LL's plans to take SL to the future ... I want to hear it ... [...] The clock is ticking.

Come on. Chop chop, folks! Where are those plans? Hurry up a bit with those answers, or we're gonna lose another one to the Zuck!11

[Mollymews]

10 minutes ago, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

 

Come on. Chop chop, folks! Where are those plans?

my plan is to wait for a Premium Plus Experience account which comes with a grid-wide Experience key. I will settle tho for a grid-wide Experience key that only applies to myself. With this I be able to make HUDs for myself that can access my KVP

[KT Kingsley]

40 minutes ago, Mollymews said:

my plan is to wait for a Premium Plus Experience account which comes with a grid-wide Experience key. I will settle tho for a grid-wide Experience key that only applies to myself. With this I be able to make HUDs for myself that can access my KVP

Exactly ditto.

[Kalegthepsionicist]

Yes, I'm new, but I've been in many multiverse before SL, and I've never seen that a virtual world that has fallen  cannot get back up again
I never saw it.

 to get fans back is  by creating a new brand, and reshaping the image tbh SL is known as sex virtual.platform, that's what I have seen . LL should create new verse,  same inside, dofferent name, and NO adult stuff inworld

Ibeen in many various multiverse, since 1998.

https://productmint.com/what-happened-to-second-life/

Edited May 11, 2022 by Kalegthepsionicist

[Sid Nagy]

O boy, the sex is becoming a very nasty thing these days.
We are rolling back to the Victorian times.
What about Victorian Life as name for that new world that @Kalegthepsionicist wants from LL?

On the other hand, sex has been around since the beginning of higher life forms.

On a side note: You will find in SL what you are searching for.
Being a-sexual myself, I never run into sex in SL. Guess why?

Edited May 11, 2022 by Sid Nagy

[Love Zhaoying]

16 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

O boy, the sex is becoming a very nasty thing these days.
We are rolling back to the Victorian times.
What about Victorian Life as name for that new world that @Kalegthepsionicist wants from LL?

On the other hand, sex has been around since the beginning of higher life forms.

On a side note: You will find in SL what you are searching for.
Being a-sexual myself, I never run into sex in SL. Guess why?

I think if Musk buys SL, sex will be compulsory.

[Katherine Heartsong]

To follow up on @Love Zhaoying's post above, is it too soon to suggest all female avatars will be required to have the Mama Allpa thing active at all times? 

Asking for a friend.

Edited May 11, 2022 by Katherine Heartsong

[Silent Mistwalker]

3 hours ago, Katherine Heartsong said:

To follow up on @Love Zhaoying's post above, is it too soon to suggest all female avatars will be required to have the Mama Allpa thing active at all times? 

Asking for a friend.

🤬

[Tasha Ezarael]

5 hours ago, Katherine Heartsong said:

To follow up on @Love Zhaoying's post above, is it too soon to suggest all female avatars will be required to have the Mama Allpa thing active at all times? 

Asking for a friend.

I don't know about you, but I'm spayed. 

[Misty Rookstown]

14 hours ago, bigmoe Whitfield said:

Nope SL is fine now how it is,  can keep improving, but taking steps backwards is not what should or will happen.

Well I only brought up past efforts because revisiting it seems inaccessible to anyone new to find activities. The search for events is key word based which is fine but it was more straight forward and clear and when  you selected one there would be people there. Several I tried nobody was there. What the old approaches did was encourage people to create content with incentives. I am recalling to my first visit to SL back in 2004. just logging in you could find people easily, huge parties going on and the like. Someone new or someone even long experienced like myself coming back ... hard to find content. The browser not being intuitive doesn't help matters. 

[Misty Rookstown]

13 hours ago, Extrude Ragu said:

I agree wholeheartedly that you should be able to find events without entering keywords

If you're using Firestorm it's still possible, in the search window head to the Events tab at the top:-

Improvements to Search was on LL's 2022 roadmap. So perhaps they'd be open to thoughts on Search in one of their user groups?

I think LL are probably also open to ideas regarding region offerings since they recently announced Event Regions

As for modernizing the viewer, to LL's credit they have actually been working on that, both with a performance improvement viewer in the works and also new modern graphics capabilities (PBR) which asset creators like me will greatly benefit from.

Although I think that there is still work to be done, I do think that SecondLife is currently in a period of change in some ways and they seem more motivated to get things done than usual, so I'd say it's worth sticking around

 

I need to reinstall Firestorm on my computer. I switched computers since I been in SL. But yup they made it harder. Key words as an option is a definite plus but I found it hard to believe there was only one page of parties that were currently happening when I checked using party as the keyword. The abstract icons doesn't help either. I understand wanting a universal language/identifier for things makes it easier than coding for all the languages but it just forces everyone to learn a new language effectively which brings barriers and learning curves that can be avoided. This sort of thing happens in board games though it is more understandable because one wants to avoid printing new cards for 20 or more languages. 

[Misty Rookstown]

12 hours ago, Mollymews said:

my plan is to wait for a Premium Plus Experience account which comes with a grid-wide Experience key. I will settle tho for a grid-wide Experience key that only applies to myself. With this I be able to make HUDs for myself that can access my KVP

Do you have links or descriptions to what this premium plus experience account is and comes with? And what an experience key is? 

[Misty Rookstown]

10 hours ago, Sid Nagy said:

O boy, the sex is becoming a very nasty thing these days.
We are rolling back to the Victorian times.
What about Victorian Life as name for that new world that @Kalegthepsionicist wants from LL?

On the other hand, sex has been around since the beginning of higher life forms.

On a side note: You will find in SL what you are searching for.
Being a-sexual myself, I never run into sex in SL. Guess why?

Well ... there isn't really sex in SL ... just visuals of it. Kinda need a tactile full body VR suit to have something resembling sex in SL. It has been there from the start of SL nothing new. 

[Rolig Loon]

35 minutes ago, Misty Rookstown said:

I am recalling to my first visit to SL back in 2004. just logging in you could find people easily, huge parties going on and the like.

And SL was a lot smaller then too, and a smaller portion of it was in private estates, so you were much more likely to bump into someone randomly.  The world has moved on, and people are here for a wider variety of reasons than they were when you and I joined.  There's much more to do in SL than go to parties.  Try the Destination Guide.  You won't necessarily find large crowds but you will see a nice cross-section of the types of venues that people spend time in these days.  And if you want to see where LL has been putting its greatest efforts in modernizing living space (and protected land parks and event areas), visit Bellisseria.  I think there are something like 1700 new regions there already, with more coming on line daily.

3 minutes ago, Misty Rookstown said:

Do you have links or descriptions to what this premium plus experience account is and comes with?

Nope. It's still in the planning stages.  Anyone's guess.

3 minutes ago, Misty Rookstown said:

And what an experience key is? 

The Knowledge Base is always your best place to start asking:

 

[Codex Alpha]

16 hours ago, Misty Rookstown said:

I am just trying to see where Second Life is and where it is going given Zuckerberg is clearly interested on taking over from what SL opened up. In my mind I think it is critical that LL rework the browser and create a "Third Life" servers that are up to date for modern times where you can seemless you go from the classic sims to more current ones. With some set up specifically to create game worlds for instance. There are RPGs in SL but they are limited by the infrastructure. Being able to move to new sims with specific designs to facilitate such things is one of the answers. Have a series of RPG sims with infastructure specifically made for such things. 

Currently I don't see strong reasons outside of nostalgia and when I visit with nostalgia in tow I am greatly disappointed currently. It needs a major overhall .. and should have started a few years ago. 
What are LL's plans to take SL to the future ... I want to hear it ... or are they just cruising to keep money coming in when they should be moving to the next level. The clock is ticking. 

They kinda had plans, but the resident Second Lifers would not entertain it. Many here have sunken a lot of work into their worlds, shops, marketplaces, and presumably their livings - and anything that would threaten that they will actively fight against.

There was an LL platform with new technology, new engine, PBR workflow, marketplace, ability for events, free worlds with 4km square of space to do as you dreamed - and many SL'ers actively voiced against it - when it could have been a modern platform they could have easily and slowly transitioned to with a few texture changes and model updates. Some did, but not enough.

it was suitable for desktoppers with no need to enter VR if you didn't have it. My entire experience in this new platform was from desktop.

So now I guess this is what you get. Outdated engine, outdated work flows, etc, and laggy as hell as a result, but I guess they're going to try to keep beating a dead horse.

For many Second Life remains a place to be, but not so much do new users feel the same, compared to other offerings out there. If a competitor rises with the same features, but more affordable access for all, etc then they might be in trouble.

[SarahKB7 Koskinen]

Philip's surname is Rosedale, not Rosendale.

Edited May 11, 2022 by SarahKB7 Koskinen

[diamond Marchant]

5 minutes ago, SarahKB7 Koskinen said:

Philip's surname is Rosedale, not Rosendale

I like this thread because it deals with existential issues...

Some random existential questions in no particular order...

1. Why did "an investment group led by Randy Waterfield and Brad Oberwager" acquire Linden Research, Inc. in 2020? Why is Brad an Executive Chairman (salaried top boss)? Why was was Ebbe never replaced as CEO? What is the exit strategy for the investment group?

2. Why would anyone purchase Linden Lab? Cash cow? Brand? User base? Proprietary IP? Employees with unique skill set? Plans to monetize something?

3. Do you really own anything in Second Life? Should Second Life close, what happens to all the stuff we bought?

4. Do Second Life residents have "low expectations"? Is "not crashing" or "being able to walk in a crowd" enough?

5. Is Linden Lab critically understaffed? Is Brad keeping expenses down? Why does governance take so long to address obvious problems? Why is Bellisseria being built so S L O W L Y?

6. Why do Second Life residents (including me) bristle when Second Life is called a game? Is it because we see our avatars as ourselves, not game tokens?

7. Is Philip Rosedale's current association with Linden Lab just a PR thing?

That was fun 🙂

[Mollymews]

46 minutes ago, diamond Marchant said:

1. Why did "an investment group led by Randy Waterfield and Brad Oberwager" acquire Linden Research, Inc. in 2020? Why is Brad an Executive Chairman (salaried top boss)? Why was was Ebbe never replaced as CEO? What is the exit strategy for the investment group?

2. Why would anyone purchase Linden Lab? Cash cow? Brand? User base? Proprietary IP? Employees with unique skill set? Plans to monetize something?

i think the cunning plan (guess) is that one day should Tilia turn out the way the investors hope (able to sustain itself revenue-wise) then it will be spun out as a standalone company, as a independent investment. Second Life will be a company on its own also as a result

 

[Mollymews]

2 hours ago, Misty Rookstown said:

Do you have links or descriptions to what this premium plus experience account is and comes with? And what an experience key is? 

what Rolig said

i am just hoping to get a grid-wide experience key one day

[Coffee Pancake]

1 hour ago, Codex Alpha said:

They kinda had plans, but the resident Second Lifers would not entertain it.

That wasn't the issue at all. 

Sansar was pointedly not made for us. It was for other, more desirable "high brow" users, rather than the weirdo pervs who call SL home (these other better users seemed to only actually exist in tiny numbers and weren't the kind of people looking to sink huge amounts of time into a PG virtual world .. for unknowable reasons). The VR dependency was a major limiting factor made worse by the complete absence of any in world social tools .. it's almost like they didn't want people interacting in any meaningful way. The load times were brutal, the experience exhausting and the creative potential entirely external. When people were in world, there was nothing to do, and barely a whiff of interactivity. We all tried it. We all came to the same conclusion after about an hour of use, and then sat back waiting for LL to add something .. anything .. to the platform that would be actually fun.

Slow walking museum simulator, that pivoted into awkwardly stand about high school disco simulator.

Entirely missing the point of why any of us actually log into SL. The technical package is secondary, the events and shopping and music venues are secondary, being able to meet and freely chat with other people without needing to self censor for fear of breaking the Disneyesque rules, meaningful personal relationships and interactions are what keep SL running.

Habbo hotel was a more vibrant and fun virtual world, and it was garbage.