jwenting

People have been complaining about SL being near death for as long as the grid has been alive, including beta. In time, such complaints may become a self-fulfilling prophecy as there are always people who don't know that any successful online community is awash with such complaints, sometimes made by idiots who don't know better, sometimes made maliciously by people who have a grudge against the community for whatever imagined slights, sometimes (and ever more often) made by competitors in order to drive business away from the community and hopefully to their own. It's not unique to SL, it happens in every single online community I've been a part of or monitored over the last 15+ years. The main reason, IMO, if there is indeed a marked drop in online residents (rather than, as pointed out, traffic bots now being better filtered and no longer counted as online users), is the current economic situation in the world which causes people to spend less money, including on internet access. In a large part of the world people still pay by the megabyte, if not the minute, for internet access, so they spend less time online and most of that searching for jobs. Last year for example there was on average a 10% drop in customers across the board to multiplayer games. Even knowing this there was a constant flood of doom and gloom posts from the usual suspects on the WoW message boards when Blizzard announced a drop of 5% in their customers (which, compared to the competition, was actually a very good performance)...

Jason1 Draconia wrote: Reminds me of an old tenant on one of our Estates years ago. They had a store selling scripted items, He was a 'low lag' script maker. Rented about a 6144m sized parcel. after a few weeks started complaining of lag on the Estate makeing it impossible for him to work, everytime I went there it was 'okay'. He began examining how many scripts others were using on the Estate (adult beds mainly) going over 1 MS script time, pointed out anything over 0.1 MS is laggy. I think scripts in use were about 5.4 MS on the estate tab. Sure objects in use go higher, can't deny it. After a few more visits on checking script time and complaints about lag from him and him being convinced I needed to make the other tenants remove their overly high scripted items. I took another look at the scripts running on the Estate, decided to filter the by name, started adding his up FIRST lol. He was right his scripted items were all below 0.1 MS of region time use BUT he made up for that in sheer volume adding his items I stopped at about 2.4 MS.... So roughly 40% of the scripted items in play on the SIM using resources were his... Not bad for someone renting about 12% of an Estate and use 40% of the Estate's resources and complain about others abusing it saying they are causing the lag. Reminds me of years ago during the .com boom when I worked at an IT shop. The network admins were constantly complaining about our use of internet bandwidth, how we should use less because it was so slow. Few weeks later somebody walked into their office and noticed 3 large servers running there that had no business being there (they had not been approved by anyone for any project, even as spares). Investigation followed, turned out the network admins themselves were running those servers to download pirated music and movies 24/7 and were eating up every spare bit of network traffic doing so, causing the poor performance they'd been blaming on everyone else. Heads rolled....

and they're using that to cover everything else. Running the website, these forums idiots constantly use to try and drive them out of business, all the network traffic and CPU cycles for users who never pay a cent by buying L$ or land, development of new capabilities and fixing bugs in the existing system, etc. etc. etc.. If you think it's too expensive, and SL is so bad it's not worth the money, your choice to saddle other people with the cost of your entertainment, or worse your running a business in SL and trying to make money of your own.

16 wrote: lol it gets worse sometimes with the parent there + was at a M infohub a while ago now and this SL Dad turn up with his SL child he then start to demand that people already there behave themselfs bc was his child present. when he get told to take his child home or at least a G infohub he start to argue. and his SL child start to make bawling gestures and go: daddy daddy make the bad ppl stop anyways after about 20 mins of this somebody get tired of them both and shot them both right off the sim (: which is exactly why sims don't want child avatars... Another example (this one not even involving a child directly, but the threat of one): I was playing some greedy in a sim on Zindra (the adult continent), as usually I was naked. One of the other players was rather short (but fully developed and behaving like an adult, adult AO, expressions, etc. etc.). Someone barges in and threatens to AR us both for age play because a nude person in company of a short avatar was supposedly age play (even shoving the relevant pages of the TOS down the guy's throat didn't stop this, in the end the sim owner had to kick him out). Other sims, mostly adult ones, griefers sometimes come in with child(like) avatars, start engaging in sexual activity, then file ARs against the sim owners using alts.

if they do that, it'd be death for many bdsm and other adult themed sims which tend to be script heavy. Yet many of these sims aren't slow, they perform well (putting the lie to the simpleminded idea that the number of scripts and/or the amount of script memory claimed by them is a good indicator of performance impact).

Pussycat Catnap wrote:- We're on the start of that trend. It will only be avoided if people can find a way to pay for tier, in a world where there is no inworld economy anymore (there isn't really... its moved outofworld to marketplace). (So I guess I see some panic points, but not all of them.) no, the problem isn't so much that as the fact that the vast majority of users (now, from what people tell me it was different before) are too selfish to donate in order to keep their favourite sims running, then have the gall to complain to the sim owner about closing it down when the inevitable happens and the sim owner decides to no longer foot the bill on her own. I see that quite a lot, sadly. In part it's because of the overabundance of certain types of sims (clubs, mostly), in larger part because the entitlement culture that's swept the globe in the last several years, especially among younger people (who're now becoming old enough to start forming a serious part of the SL population), and in part the economic situation many of us face RL which means we no longer have the financial resources to help more than one or two sims with meaningful donations. I know for me, I'd love to donate to a lot of sims, but my budget is so limited I can only keep up donations to 2 of them and have them remain of more than token value for example.

Samara Kasshiki wrote: I know someone with a burlesque style strip club of long standing. She is on Moderate land. Her rule (and I believe this is correct) is that all important parts need to be covered. So pasties and G strings; no anatomical parts available for viewing. So in part it will depend upon the nature of the costumes. The more "sexual nature" it gets, the closer you get to adult land. If you are in doubt, best to just go Adult. No one needs to go through verifying any longer so it isn't a big deal. She's overly cautious. Nudity is allowed on M land, sex isn't. So the dancers can be naked, as long as the guests stay closed and there's no physical contact between them (effectively). Might have to be a bit careful about your emotes as well, not make them too steamy, but that's a very thin grey line I doubt is or even can be policed.

yup, few times I've needed support it's worked well. Not just LL support, but most any company I ever had to contact support at (and those where it didn't work, I'm no longer a customer).

that's what they claim, now to see the reality... What's "offers", sounds suspiciously like you have to buy stuff from them or their customers in order for them to pay you something (and no doubt a smaller amount). That's a typical way in which such operations work, they're effectlvely just delayed discount cards, like getting vouchers you have to mail in to get your discount. And as you see, the higher you get the more you have to buy to be able to use those vouchers, so the more you have to spend on stuff you probably don't want just to qualify for the payment (which, as noted, is less than the amount paid initially). iow, a loss leader for you, the "gold platinum premium member".

well said, Leia. Traffic numbers are up gridwide, new account retention seems decent. The "SL iz ded" mythos has been going on for as long as SL has been alive, if not since before the start of the open beta. Exactly the same happens with any single popular online environment. E.g. World of Warcraft has had the exact same people scream it is dead or dying on their forums since 2004, and those people have to pay $15 a month for the privilege of posting there...

well, 0.1 is the going rate for brokers buying up mainland for resale... One more reason to buy directly from LL, seen too many such parcels getting ugly noise generating pollution objects in order to drive neighbours from their land, eventually yielding the broker a large presence they then charge a lot of money for on resale.

As to the WoW information, I can attest that a lot of people do play alone a lot. BUT, that's often not by choice. They want to be part of guilds, go raiding or pvp with others, but many or even most such guilds and teams won't accept you as a member unless you're max level and have expensive and hard to get equipment. As a result, many people spend a lot of time on their own training up their skills and toons to where they're deemed acceptable to the raiding guilds, then more of the same farming gold to buy those expensive items from the members of those guilds who have them for auction. Then, when they have joined those guilds, they find that the guild members spend most of their time standing around the major cities, chatting in guild chat, or in im with friends, and only play together for the weekly raid that they, as newcomers, aren't invited to because the raid group is full (they've been put on a reseve list in case one of the core members fails to show up). They do however have an obligation to provide funds and goods for the guild for use by that raid team, which means more time alone harvesting stuff and farming gold.

Gadget Portal wrote: I'd just be happy with stable and reasonably priced servers. so you're happy now. SL as a whole is extremely stable. It's a rare occurance for a server to crash (especially considering the sheer number of the things that are running). And price is relative. It's not cheap to run those things, you know (or more likely you don't, you just think it should be free like gmail is free, except of course gmail isn't free, you pay for that by handing Google all yourprivate information and the content of every single email you send or receive).

Orca Flotta wrote: . Look at the thousands of private islands out there in the void, it's terrible. If some hermit wants their own private paradise and total privacy let 'em pay throught their nose. The rest can be connected to the continents, if not by land then by 'real' ocean. . we already do, you know... Private islands cost a lot more than mainland. And yet they're popular because there's far better control over the content. No neighbours putting up massive eyesores blocking your view to 100m+ high for starters, no people complaining about you putting up access restrictions to keep out the griefers and squatters who're too cheap to rent or buy a house but demand to have a place of their own anyway.

"sation with another content provider about the future of Second Life and some fun hypotheticals. One of those held particular interest; what if Second Life was sold to a company that cared about it as a community rather than a revenue source?" 2 months later they'd be bankrupt and second life shut down. Not just because of the financial mismanagement, but because it's impossible to keep everyone happy. Whatever you do, someone's not going to like it, and most often that's the very person who, screaming, demanded you do it in the first place.

yes, most people I meet are either looking for larger parcels (4096+) or much smaller (know one person who's renting out miniscule skyboxes with just a bed and a chair in them for like L$50 a week and making a killing on them, can stack a lot of them in even a small parcel).

see things like that a lot exploring the mainland. Often seem to be dumped by wannabe griefers near shops, flying into the parcel containing the store and causing major disruption.

would be a nice area, if it weren't for the neighbours blocking access to the sea. What looks like open water actually is not sailable/passable because of obstacles and banlines... But, not a bad price if you don't mind that.

Scams trying to direct you to fake marketplace sites are nothing new, I've been seeing them for months now. They are NOT directing to marketplace.secondlife.com but to URLs designed to look similar like sl-marketplace.com (which is a fake site, dedicated to phishing your SL credentials).

Not that high, given the quality. Haven't bought another skin since finding them 4 months ago. Used to buy a new skin every 2 weeks before that on average, at 750-1000 each.

The longest hair I know of is made by Sirena and Exxess. Very good, normal prices (200-250 per colour pack). They've hair coming to your knees or below, depending on how tall you are of course. http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Sirena%20Hair/116/217/22 http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/EXXESS/190/127/26

after a friend got suspended for several days after a stranger placed something illegal on her house, then filed an AR (probably using an alt), I keep my house under group access, granting permission to people only by invitation.

Phil Deakins wrote: They probably hope to get a sale at the high price. Neighbours will sometimes buy expensive land just to get rid of an eyesore. THIS! Massively annoyed at the tiny parcels with rotating advertising stuff on them intruding on otherwise quite acceptable pieces of mainland, set for sale for tens of thousands of L$ for a parcel of <100sqm.

Knutz Scorpio wrote: The part in the Linden Home Covenant "Will be kept presentable and in-theme" I think could be translated to "no horses humping in the living room". Could also nail them on "Business use of any kind is prohibited" if they are breading them to sell. File an AR to give yourself a sense of getting back at them, but don't expect any action on the AR in this life time. covenant applies to the outside of the house. What you do with the interior is up to you, there's no rule requiring you to put Japanese furniture in the Japanese style houses, rustic Americana in the Tahoe houses, etc. If there were, 99% of Linden Homes would I think be in violation of the covenant, starting with every one except the modern ones that has a television...

GothGirl Demonia wrote: Porky Gorky wrote: Whether or not LL will do it I cannot say. But I know it can be done. A good friend of mine had their account hacked last year. The hacker deleted every single item in the inventory and cleared the trash. Once LL restored the account to it's rightful owner, they then restored all the items that had been deleted. File a support ticket from the account, and describe the problem of what was lost possibly names of the objects holding the items in the inventory. I'd guess those'd be named "Object"