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Doomed Secondlife


garey Solo
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Your post makes sobering reading. I hope someone from LL reads your post and others in a similar vein. Therein lies important clues to attempting to formulate a more successful strategy than the ones I've seen used. Too easy to try to generate faux-positive posts and shiney-happy feed-back. It's the negative stuff which is potentially more useful to any company worth its salt.

Condolences for the loss of your friend.

My best wishes to you.

C.F.

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I'm confused and curious.  Why would you purchase 3 new 3D modelling programs when you would only need one at most and even then there is an excellent opensource free version called Blender.  Also buying Win 7 is not going to make you a better builder, likewise with higher end support and a fancy gfx card though they may increase your workflow speed in modelling programs by minutes.  Similarly, if you were just interested in building aircraft then you didn't need to buy a sim + a homestead.  A sandbox to build or a quarter or a half sim would have been plently with a temp rezzer if you wanted to display all of them for sale.

It seems to me that you have unnecessarily invested too much money without thinking the whole scenario through.  Your contention that there was BIG MONEY to be made was never advertised that way by LL and neither has it been true for 99% of the userbase.

Your comparison of SL's performance to other MMOs such as WoW is false as they are predominantly client side based/cached with no unique content being created every second by it's users having to be uploaded.  There is much more in your post I would argue and disagree with, but you are on your way out of the door so better luck next time, but I'd advise you to have a look at how much you contributed to your disillusionment as a guide to how to do it better next time round where ever that may be.

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Thank you carole:)

before I can't Post any longer, I hope someone from LL does take some notice of my ramblings:P  Of course I have 60 days

to reconsider, But don't  think much will change in that time.  Tbh LL has done absolutely nothing to restructure any of the main infrustucture within sl since I joined, apart from the wonder of viewer2!!  One of biggest boosts, to kick start SL and get people back, is to make Homesteads available to Anyone to buy them.    Why On earth do you have to own an out of reach priced full sim, to be able to purchase a Homstead is beyond me.   I know at the momment tier rates to lease an estate homstead /Island whatever, have had to come down in price, or sim estate owners would never rent them. Thats good news, but the amount you pay, is still linked to the US$ currency rate, and that could go sky high at anytime. Luckily the GBP is strong against the $, so we are getting a very good rate of lindens at the present time.

 

But I much rather pay, say 300US$ for a homestead sim, that I have control of, and can rename or do what i like with it, instead of paying 7.5K a week constantly, which is never mine. In fact, if, you were having some success with that homestead, it would be even better that you might be able to afford a second one, and join it to the one you have.

Observations for a long time, now show, that 2-3 sims connected, offering a variety of interests, including some sailing room, attract more Folk, than a single sim, perched in a blue void on its own.    Me and my sl Partner Sue, who was an estate manager when I met her, have made quite a few glorious sims, with many many hours amd L$ put into them. But even paying the advertizing of 1000L a week, plus the  full Sim tier rent, almost no one visited or stayed in any of the hotels or took a parcel.  perhaps If we could have bought 2 homesteads between us, and made both sims, with both ocean, and land, plus the off world backgrounds now, are truly one of the more exciting items , that make sims seem twice as big as they are. We had an Avatar Sim, with the Floating mountains high above the sim, standing on one of these, looking out onto green mountains, that looked like part of the sim, was one of our favourite themes. sadly, we have so many Avatar items, especially  The plants, grass and animals, There was no way, we could cover a homestead sim with only 3750 prims. The RDA buildings and compound, even though I  modified it, was still taking 250 prims alone.

Me and Susan Don't want to leave SL., we being forced to, because Susans no longer able to afford the tiers we used to pay , circa 2008-9. I retired now,  but although me and my wife arent short now, basic commoditys are going up so quick, we could easily be in trouble quickly.  I believe this must be one of the most expensive games going.... Don't forget,the new TOS of last year, consistantly maintained in its TOS that this is a "Game", not a living, Linden $ are not real money, play money thay call it.    That statement lead me into a row with LL over that sentence, because Linden $ is a real currency as its floated on the Financial markets, linked to the US$,      the rate of lindens you get for your US$ depends on the currency rate on the day, which means L$ is real currency and I still maintain that.      I play many other games, I purchase coins, and other units of things, but these never change because the £ is lower than the $ or the euro is stronger then the yen lol.       Actually I made an error on the amount I gave to LL since 2007, that should have read £2000. many will think in relation to some spends, thats not a lot, but for playing a game, with hardly any support or ARs dealt with, the constant errors, loss of items. none returned and sim crossings which still are a joke, do you think its value for money?    

Also another Fix thats needs doing, is to scrap the punitive L$ charged to upload sounds and images. I dont pay to upload picture to many sites, neither do many have old fashioned Quicktime mp4 as its video base. This all needs changing, and the length of sound files need expanding by doulble at least, I used to make many sound files for many people and for sale. you woulndt believe the time it takes to try and work with 10 seconds of sound, and link each 10 second of time from your edited project, to make a 30 second sound, then rework all those into Wav format, and even then, most were too quite, as there no way of altering the wav bit rate, thus hi quality gestures and sound effects are so low, you cant even here them, most of the time.

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((Oh, And I dont give away my items to Vultures sitting on the fence looking for  easy pickings, go and MAKE your own stuff, and work hours on a building, then, when some one like you, asks you to give it to them for free,   perhaps you will understand, the crass statement you made,  that makes you sound like one of those idiots, who go to an Aircaft creator and bodly plea for a free plane, unbelievable!!))

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Sy, I would like to quickly comment on your post.

Going backwards, I'm afraid your wrong about LL Not advertizing, "make Money fast in Second life". many folk were lead into sl, with the false notion it was going to be a second or third income, this is a well known fact, that was the slogan  in 2006-7. Mind you, before the hike in land prices, it was possible to make some money at that time, and I did do for a short time, never needing to buy Lindens, I was able to work for my objects and clothes at that time.

The confusion over the the 3D programs, I understand, but this was because the ones I already had including photoshop elements, were no longer supported by Win7, being 64 bit. hence I had to invest £200 in all new software that was 32 bit XP, even the sound card, was no longer supported by win7 leaving me, with either keeping the onboard tinny sound or spending £60 on a soundblaster top end one, that is win7 compliant.

Im afraid Sy, you can not  build complex items or unique items without securing them from people too ready to clone your items..... my last building platform  was 600 high, with 3 security orbs. Unfortuently because i use a lot of mega prim platforms, together with large mock ups of Airbus 320s, and some editing programs like AC3D need a lot of room to attempt rezzing without causing off world parts to go into parts of another part of an estate sim  on top of that, to be able to add , like control tower or sim wide sounds, plus your objects assigned to your working group, you have to have estate rights..! I bought the win7 PCI computor, because Snowglobe stopped working, and my old xp computor couldnt use any of the new viewers without crashing before i even stepped out of a sim. I like to use differant programs, than just one, so I use Google sketch up, which allows uploadable objects, along with AC3D, I use sometimes, photoshop elements I use for all my texture making and photo editing, as I say was no longer compatable, and I had to purchase one of the later Elements that was supported.. Hope that makes things clearer ;)

 

My point of actually purchasing a win7 comp, was to improve rezzing and crossing sims, as most of my activity is flying or sailing

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Michaelatv Destiny wrote:

((Oh, And I dont give away my items to Vultures sitting on the fence looking for  easy pickings, go and MAKE your own stuff, and work hours on a building, then, when some one like you, asks you to give it to them for free,   perhaps you will understand, the crass statement you made,  that makes you sound like one of those idiots, who go to an Aircaft creator and bodly plea for a free plane, unbelievable!!))

It was Alazarin who asked, "Can I have your stuff", not Carol, and it was a joke. It's a standard bit of humour in this forum. It's never actually meant.

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Michaelatv Destiny wrote:

Sy, I would like to quickly comment on your post.

Going backwards, I'm afraid your wrong about LL Not advertizing, "make Money fast in Second life".

In your post (#99), you wrote, "[..] what was advertized at the time, BIG MONEY".

Sy corrected you in post #104 by saying, "Your contention that there was BIG MONEY to be made was never advertised that way by LL"

Now you say it was, "make Money fast in Second life" after all.

No wonder confusion reigns.

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There is so much good stuff in SL now that even if you make high qualitiy party hats, there's probably a few dozen other people who have made lots of party hats over the years and party hats don't go out of fashion, I guess.  

 Each year the amount of saleable merchandise in SL and SLMarketplace increases, so the butter is spread more and more thinly.

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Sy Beck wrote:

I'm confused and curious.  Why would you purchase 3 new 3D modelling programs when you would only need one at most and even then there is an excellent opensource free version called Blender.

Blender's UI is not usable by normal members of the homo sapian species.

Won't dispute the rest of your post. Just saying, Blender, GIMP, and such - not really usable for most folks.

 

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Sy Beck wrote:

There is another option, a far, far darker one.  It would entail the first online avatar cleansing programme.  LL would forcibly eject all avatars from sparsely owned lands and relocate them into higher owned density lands and then destroy their previous homelands for good, wiping it from the face of the virtual world; an inverse 
lebensraum
as it were. 

I believe LLs did this several times with the Shermerville project of sims. That said its down to 4 now, with the half the properties owned by people no longer 'with us' or holding companies that think there's some point to holding land that has no build and is not for sale...

SL needs to bring the commerce back in world - that would solve a -LOT- of things people claim to see.

Though that said, land ownership today is no less than it ever was. Likewise, the number of active users is no lower than it ever was.

 

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land ownership today is no less than it ever was. Likewise, the number of active users is no lower than it ever was.

Incorrect. Grid size is the same, but this is because resident-owned sim losses have been replaced at a 1:1 ratio with new Linden-owned sims as the losses occur.

Concurrency is down by about 10000 from where it was a year ago. Used to hit 70000 plus per day & before that we used to hit 80000!

Now lately... some days we don't even hit 60000 people :matte-motes-stress:

Keep in mind SL saw in previous years more than 1000% growth. So some consolidation or a 'plateau' is normal situation, and I trust that Rodvik is busy working on some big ways to promote & grow Second Life again.

Who knows, a year from now SL (in some form) might be available on mobile devices, gaining X100 active users.

I think Second Life is not doomed, it is more like the (real world) economy is doomed.

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I don't watch the daily peaks because it's far easier for me to watch the daily troughs, which is convenient because they occur soon after I get up in the morning, when most late night west cost americans have turned in, and most early morning east coast americans haven't yet logged in. I don't watch the numbers daily, of course, because I'm not that interested, but I do look from time to time.

After the traffic-counting bots policy had settled, the daily trough concurrency was in the low 40ks (~42k to 44k). That was a couple of years ago. Six(ish) months ago, I posted that the daily trough had dropped to usually being 31k and sometimes dropping to 30k. These days, it's usually 30k and I suspect sometimes drops to 29k (I've seen it extremely close to dropping into 29k).

So, to my knowledge, the trough has been in a steady decline for the last couple of years, and the decline seems to be continuing. Judging by what was posted above, the peaks have been doing the same thing. I was surprised to read that they sometimes drop below 60k, but it's what I would expect judging by the troughs.

ETA: I just had a look at the gridsurvey charts you pointed to, and they show a steady decline from Dec 5th 2009 until now.

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While I do my small share of needling Linden Lab about some of their policies, business decisions, and occasional other stupidities, I generally dislike the doom and gloom threads and avoid them.  Despite some of the stupidities, etc, I am having the best time of my life now in SL after over four years here.  Of course a lot of this has to do with what I do with "My SL."

In any business, customer retention and attracting new customers are two vital activities.  (I Know, I'm stating what should at least be the obvious)

In SL there are two types of 'users,'  Creators (business people, sellers) and Consumers.  Each have unique needs.  Each may have unique reasons for staying or leaving.  I don't know if it's possible to calculate the ratio of ACTIVE sellers to consumers.  It might be interesting to know.  And of course there are those who's SL is a blend of the two.

For a seller it's real easy to figure out the reasons for staying or leaving.  It's called profit.  Return on investment.  If it isn't there you move on.  There is no doubt that issues with search have hurt sales for many. 

Recently I wanted to buy a ride-able horse and had to browse through page after page of breedables to find what I was looking for in the Market place,  And trying to use Boolean limiters did not help.  I have a Martian Avavtar.  A search for Martian brings up results for a creator named "martian" and I could not figure a way to remove her irrelevant to my search's results.

Supposedly the system is designed to keep people from gaming it.  The problem will never be fixed, search will never have an even playing field until LL wakes up and realizes and admits ANY SYSTEM CAN BE GAMED.  But with all the stupid word filters, etc, etc, what the Lab did was drive many people up a wall trying to figure out why there items were delisted, etc.  It became no longer worth their time. 

As a consumer, If I hadn't had my heart set on finding a martian avatar or the ride-able  horse, I might not have continued my search and made my purchase. 

For those who are consumers the reasons for staying or leaving can be multiple.  SL Relationships gone bad is a big reason.  RL needs taking priority can be another.  A generally poor experience due to lag and borked region crossings is a biggy. 

I like to ride motorcycle in SL but woe be if I try to cross regions at anything faster than a slow walk on my bike.  It really kills the experience.  I understand that there are a lot of technical issues to region crossings but it needs fixed big time.

These are things that affect both the new user and the old alike.  And for as long as I have been in SL I am left with the impression that all the Lab has done is pay lip service to us, saying they are working on it. 

Still, I don't see SL as doomed.  I see some serious problems that need to be addressed.  And I see Rodvik doing some things to address all of the above issues.  Keeping your customers happy can sometimes be a very very difficult job. 

 

 

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Phil Deakins wrote:

 

ETA: I just had a look at the gridsurvey charts you pointed to, and they show a steady decline from Dec 5th 2009 until now.

I see minor shifts there.

Looking at the pulldown, for median daily concurrency.

58k high early on, 49k on the 25th of this month. - Seems like a small dip.

But then look over a series of numbers, there are 40-something k days in 2009, and 50-something k days in 2011.

- It's changed very little over all, a minor general down, but not that major, and often down then or up now - enough regular exceptions to make it fuzzy.

 

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I disagree, Pussycat. The graphs, from when those stats were started (Dec 2009) until now, show a steady decline; i.e. overall, it's been steadily downhill. I assume the 58k high that you mentioned was early in those stats, but go back even further and you'll know (you can't see because there aren't stats available now) that the average high was a lot higher than that 58k, even after the bots issue had settled down, so it's been slowly but surely downhill for a long time. Also 58k down to 49k is a very significant drop, imo, and not merely the "small dip" that you say it is. I've seen the same steady decline - slow but sure - in the daily troughs too.

There is no doubt that SL is in decline, and has been for a long time, in spite of LL's best efforts at pushing the concurrency up, none of which has done anything except maybe make the decline slower than it might otherwise have been.

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Pussycat Catnap wrote:


Sy Beck wrote:

I'm confused and curious.  Why would you purchase 3 new 3D modelling programs when you would only need one at most and even then there is an excellent opensource free version called Blender.

Blender's UI is not usable by normal members of the homo sapian species.

Won't dispute the rest of your post. Just saying, Blender, GIMP, and such - not really usable for most folks.

 

lol thats pretty true in a lot of ways about blender hehehehe i agree

 blender has a large learning curve to it for sure..maybe even huge hehehehe

it reminds me a lot of second life in a lot of ways..

so many buttons and so many menues and this and that..

once i realized the things i did not need to use on it..it really was not so bad..

it's like SL..you find your area and focus on just those things..and as you get older you expand more into the others..or stay happy with just doing sculpties heheheh

it took me a few days before i could really make anything that was half way decent in blender..and i think that was part luck as well lol

i really took a couple of weeks of just  research and tutorials and working in it before i could just go at it with confidence..

and when i say a couple of weeks..i was hurt and out of work for a few months ..so it was a couple of weeks of long hours..

so ya i agree..you really have to either have time to invest in it right away or be ready to take a good few months to get confident in it..

blender is like the 1 gallon buckett with the 5 gallons of stuff in it..hehehehehe

but once you get past the hurdle..it's really a good program that has lots of really neat scripts for it.. =)

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As one poster was saying, Its your activities that you enjoy that make your experiance worth staying

For me, The lack of what I did spend time and money is all but gone.

 

 1  Dancing / making a few Lindens in tips, being a dancer manager or owing my own club, is not financially viable

any longer.   Dancers have to be paid too, that used to come from club owners  or the tips being split by the tip boxes.

2   Many hours of my time were spent in urban Combat sims, employing a huge array of melle or Gun weapons/ being in factions, making a lot of friends and also being an officer in some factions, allowed a lot of interaction with many people.

As I pointed out earlier , since LL let in the teens in, The combat sims that were being succesful, were unable to control teens, that had no courtesy, no respect for other players, indeed. not even Admins, who have to rule the combat.  there are very few Urban combat sims left.   The once great NOR is a tiny shadow of its former glory, which used to have, 100 players in its sims at times.

3  Flying Aircraft has been my main calling in second life, I have/ or did have , 15 differant types, from WW2 hurricanes to Huey Helicopters, to a DC10 jetliner.  But all these vehicles fail to cross a long line of oceans to the next airport, even though we were promised that this would be addressed. I installed the Dolphin Viewer, as on the web page, it says, it was developed for enhanced vehcicle crossings, but, sadly , in any 2 hours of flying, you just crash off world up to 20 times.

I would always come back to SL, if some of the Activities above, were there, or improved to enjoy.

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If SL is not growing and SL is not maintaining then SL is by definition dying.

This is hard for most people to accept because most people do enjoy Second Life as do I but reality is what it is and the community was what it isn't and in my humble opinion, nothing will change this. I can't think of one thing Linden Lab could do to save this world short of cutting costs because the people in-world now are not part of the vision of Second Life anymore.

With that, Linden Lab it seems is trying to push the game angle on everyone and it really comes across as sad and despirate and for a platform so clunky and visually unappealing, they are wasting time that could be spent elsewhere.

I do look forward to seeing what new ideas they have if any but I would bet anything that Linden Lab will not revive Second Life with WoW-like clones because they can't compete, at all, even the 16 year olds in the game won't accept the graphics and poor gameplay, just do something else Linden's because Second Life gaming is nothing serious gamers would get behind.

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i don't see them trying to be a game for gamers..i see them trying to add things for the users.

i wouldn't say it is their whole game plan or direction they are wanting to go..i would say it was probably something the new CEO wanted to try out to see how well it went to see if it would be something they would add to the world..

Gamers themselves wouldn't be attracted to SL..its to slow for them and too many glitches..but the mappers of games would..

still..there are other ways to attract them hehehe

 

their problem is tier..at some point they are going to need to lower it..lowering things around it haven't worked..

a lot of good things have left the grid because of the cost of tier..each time one of those things leaves..it shortens the life span of a users life that may have been affected by it in some way..

changing all the time is not such a good thing..constant changes just don't give that feet sunk in feeling of stability to a user..

and with a big learning curve to new users..they will never get hold of things if things keep coming and going at the rate they are today..

they need to stop trying to please everyone and get back to the basics of the real meaning of your world your imagination..

so users will get more creative and enjoy it rather than just coming in and playing copy cat or feeling they have to follow a pattern..

they need to start to market the endless abilities of the mind again and not guide them into certain directions..

let them know the options are limited to your imagination..

the way they do that is to say it themselves and to also restore that feeling in their existing veteran users so they can back it up..

the land may have gotten bigger over the years..but sl in whole has gotten so much smaller with  the variety of things we have now as far as sim content per sim.. we see more of the same everywhere rather than something different most of the time..

to me that shows a lot of veterans are leaving..LL needs to worry about keeping them around..because they are the ones with the knowledge that will help the newer users to grasp on quicker and gain interest that will hopefully have them wanting to dig their feet in and get creative..so that in a couple of years they can feel good about passing on what they have learned..

changes are good in some things..but really less is more if you ask me..

more and more change just expresses we are in trouble in my book..

 

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You make a lot of good points .. you're hired! 

As far as everything goes generally, copybotters, griefers, customer service ( used to be it's own form of griefing ) and Linden Lab themselves really took the largest bite of this virtual world.

I remember when 4chan was everywhere and while I only had an "outside looking in" perspective on their whole agenda here, my distinct impression was that they did more damage to the reputation of second life than anything else could have. Remember the flying penises? You couldn't go anywhere without running into an army of them so I have to give Linden Lab credit for fighting back and regaining control however, in my opinion they went too far in the other direction and completely missed that happy balance allowing residence the freedom to be a little ridiculous from time to time and not fear threatened like any resident with a lot to lose would now.

It all boils down to a lack of surprises; Torley Linden should have been CEO.  He has the people, he knows how to relate, people relate to him well, he can turn any simple thing into something exciting and he certainly would have re-establisehd the community.  Now, everything they do has no passion, it's all about testing the waters, how can we get people to buy land, they truly need to take a chance on their customers and hand the game back to them then stay out of the way, and like you said "less is more", just create a stable platform and listen to the people when they say they don't like your viewer, after all they are the ones who will be using it. The rest should be left up to the people, no more competition against renters with Linden Homes and alienating mature residents only to throw even younger teens into the mix to make everything more difficult, again, against the wishes of everyone.

Okay I'm done :) ..Torley For President because everything else is down hill or treading water.

Actually, one last thing. It seems I'm running into more and more people who are having all of their accounts deleted because they can't pay their land tier, which I think is a bit much. For many, their businesses cover the costs and the SL economy isn't exactly flourishing and/or possibly RL takes priority from time to time so, instead of burning bridges, it probably pays to play it cool with customers who have paid as they are the most likely to pay again over angering them because of land that was most likely not being used anyway, I mean, most of SL is vacant, most sims have one or two people on it most of the time so, it makes more sense not to piss everyone off when they've given something to the game, over most who just copybot their way around and no one seems to beable to stop them.

Anyway, just some early morning ramblings. :)

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