Lydia Craig

About an hour ago the Zerango sim locked up and dumped everyone from the sim. As of now the sim is still up, but you can no longer log into it, port into it or even walk into it. This appears to be another unanticipate problem associated with Pathfinding, and certainly deserves some serious attention.

This is deja vu all over again. LL did the same thing with water physics and flying when they first introduce the Havok Physics several years ago. At that time boating was destroyed and all water sports as well as the aircraft business as I recall. The sad thing that those that had been testing Havok on the beta grid were totally ignored by LL when they reported these problems and it was installed anyway. The result was a lot of heavy losses for players and business failures though those that adapted to the new physics had a windfall, selling new items to old customers whose old planes, yachts and swimmers and pools no longer worked. Also people stopped supporting the beta grid and we soon were faced with the RC system or restarts. It appears LL lacks institutional memory or maybe just does not care and now we see the whole thing again.

Looks as if Iam hit a nerve, and brought all you out, and you showed your true colors. By the way until now I did not know this post existed, so I guess I should feel honored to see my name included in it. The truth is it does not take much brains to tell that things went off the tracks badly last night, and that they really are not a lot better now, but then you guys will, of course deny that in this best of all possible worlds. Now to be exact about what I think. One Linden Labs came up with a great concept with Second Life but have not managed to sustain that promise. I have been in second life for six years now and been highly active in the economy, and for the last year have watched as online numbers have fallen due to poor implementation of Linden additions to the grid, and the lag crashes and other problems that have accompanied them. I have also seen an increasing unwillingness on LL's part to address or even admit these problems exist, which makes me wonder if anyone in charge cares or not. At this point I have just about lost any trust I have in LL's ability to deal with these problems, but have not done as others have done and decided to leave just yet. Frankly, there is still a glimmer of hope and for several days that hope grew as we saw things improve drastically. Last night, however, crushed much of that hope and it remains to be seen if stability will return or has been the case all too often over the last six months this is a start of another wild run of instability. Whatever, the result I expect you all to continue to deny there is a problem and do not begrudge you that right, but I also will not refrain from complaining when I see a problem developing, until I reach the point where I like so many others give up and leave in frustration at which time you will be welcome to continue telling the world how fine things are, but until then I simply beg to differ with you.

Now we are hearing that regions will be down form up to 5 hours, and still no reason. It is no wonder that businesses are leaving sl in droves and new players are not coming in if this is the kind of service they get. All that is needed is for LL to for once tell us what is going on, what has happened, what they are trying to do and what we can expect. This utter lack of information though drives players away and slowly but surely is kill sl. For once LL needs to listen and practice the transparency expected of them rather than hide behing a screen of excuses and spin that does nothing but raise player suspicions higher and lower overall respect for both LL intentions and ability.

Heaven forbid that it is the SL program that may be bugged or much less the core server, that simply will not do, and the slightest suggestion that this must be the case will drive the Spin Police crazy as we have seen. At the moment Sl is having problems and they may well be effecting logins and causing all kinds of misleading log in messages to be sent out, they also seem to be effecting ports and the map as well as possibly search on SL viewer and its clones, ie third party viewers. It would be much more productive if LL would admit these problems and stop the game of blaming connections, our computers and now our graphics cards, but that is not likely to happen and the result will be more and more player distrust and more and more migrations out of SL, and in the end Linden Labs will have no one to blame but themselves.

Generally this is just a matter of the contacts list information not being sent to your computer in a timely fashion and most of the time if you wait a minute or two it will arrive. If it does not you may have to relog, though I would try porting to another sime first. Basically, this is just another instance of lag coming out of the overtaxed core servers, and if the information does not time out it will eventually reach you. By the way you will find the same lag with many core function commands like calling for a port or even opening inventory, and at times chat and IMs.

Probably the most basic function of any video game is logging in, and when log ins fail as they do constantly on the RC blue steel servers and elsewhere in sl online numbers will inevitably drop. This apparently does not concern Linden Labs because they have let this situation go for a time now and done nothing about it, and instead pursued their current grand design to make everything right, which seems at the moment to amount to diverting more and more resources from player functions to whatevrer project LL is working on at the moment and not telling us about or perhapst to marketplace which has yet to become stable and apparently is demanding more and more of LLs time just to keep it going. The result is and likely will continue to be a steady decline in online numbers, which are now in the 40k avg range and still falling. This has gotten worse through out this week which has been marred with massive log in problems and crashes though LL has done its best to explain them away. Unfortunately, the problems are real and unless they are fixed soon this trend which has already become critical will turn into a disaster and SL will be left with nothing but Lindens, newbies and bots, as the people who have been trying desperately to hold this economy together are fast loosing patience with LLs inaction and are starting to leave in frustration at the lack of basic service and support. Hopefully, LL will come to its senses and fix this mess soon but I see little hope for that and expect rather to see a flood of "linden friends" accusing me of either not knowing what I am talking about or saying the fault lies in my isp a third party viewer, or maybe even in cookies or my computer. The fact is anyone who spends time in SL knows this problem existed is touch by it frequently and likely is just a frustrated by it and LLs lack of action as I am.

Really hate to bust your bubble guys, but a restart is only one of the reasons for that message, and I get it regularly even when I know the sim i am logging into is active and has people in it. Generally what this message seems to mean is that for some reason, likely that the core server did not send a key command or the proper information, the regional server is unable to complete the log in process. If this continues try another server and if it still continues first dump your cache and try again, and if that fails either reload your viewer or try another viewer for your viewer is likely corrupt. The truth is SL is having a very serious problem with logins both with this bug, crashes during logins, that lead to a region is still signing out your avatar message, and with inventories being corrupted during logins or as the result of crashes prior to logins. As a result online numbers have fallen even more dramatically over the last week and will continue to fall until LL addresses this issue and fixes it. Sadly, making excuses for why logins are failing or denying that the problem exists does not improve things and only makes them worse as can again be seen by the seriously reduced online numbers.

Oskar whatever happened really got dramatically worse after Tuesday and today, it is the worst yet. Whatever is going on needs to be fixed and needs to be given a high priority because it is driving people from SL in droves. As for myself after six years I am seriously considering dropping my premium account since over the last few months service has been terrible and I frankly see no hope of it improving soon. As for LLs acclaimed program to fix things, we have seen those constantly over the last three years and the stability we were promised has never materialized and what little stability that was achieved was negated by the next "big fix", so I see no reason to believe this round will be any more successful and if I do renew my account it will be for a quarter at a time, so it is easier to get out if things go as badly as they are at the moment. To be specific logins in are imossible, inventory is lost during the login process, crashes are epidemic and there is a tremendous lag between starting a routine like moving and it implementation. This is a constant feature and does not end with login but continues til the time you eventually crash. Also border crossing are anything but ideal, teleports are unreliable and rezzing is at times impossible. These are all basic service which most online games manage to provide but with seem at best unstable in SL.

Since the Tuesday restart things have gotten much worse, inventory loading is at best erratic, logins are unreliable and crash often, internal lag is huge, teleports unreliable, and service in general worse that before the restart. If this is an indication of LL plans to fix SL then they will be no more effective than they have been since the introduction of MONO, the first big fix, and by the time they fix this mess they will have no paying customers left to surrport them, becasuse it is increasingly foolish to pay for services we are not getting and LL appears unwilling or incapable to deliver on.

This all sounds good but the fact remains, things have not improved or at best have improved very little, or have improved and then been destabilized again by more changes. This couple with pasted LL attempts at grand fixes followed by huge disasters leaves me anything but optimistic, but we shall see. It is a pity though this information was not released via this forum where more would see it, for at least it does give us some idea of what LL is attempting to do at the moment and that even if not reassuring is good to know. Finally, let me state the obvious in the end whether rezzing or other operations are server or viewer based the key information comes from the core servers and if they are nto working, and it is very obvious these are not working well and have not for a long time now we will have trouble. For those of you that can't understand what i am saying consider this example, I log out in zerango and log in at my home in Turnip, do I expect zerango to send my information to turnip or is that stored in the core server which then sends it out to whatever mechanism is in place to handle it in Turnip. Right now I see a lot of smoke, a few mirrors, and very little that I can call positive action, though if the present situation continues for a week or so and is not destroyed by this weeks restart I might be ready to conside that some minor improvments have occurred. Now though I am not optimistic as i have been seeing these promises for six years now and have seen very few postive results come from them.

It would be really nice, if when LL makes substantive changes they tell us what they have done, and it would be even nicer that before they make those changes they test them to see their effects, and deal with any problems they cause. LL needs to remember that the RC changes are not beta channels we pay and pay dearly for their services and were put in them without being asked. In effect the RC servers and most of SL in general is being treated as a paid beta, and we are not getting the services we are paying for. This needs to change and change soon or the exodus of players and business from SL will continue and there will be nothing left here other than Lindens and free accounts.

Blue Steel servers desperately need relief from the crashes and teleport failures and lag that has been plauging them for over a month now, and if it does not come soon you are going to see a mass exodus of businesses closing in those areas and accounts closing with them. Right now this are is in desperate trouble and if it does not get help soon whatever project you are working on there will not matter because there will be few there to test it.

Unfortunately, whatever gains were made in the restarts were lost this weeked by whatever it was LL did to the servers, because crashes were epidemic, teleports are failing constantly, lag is horrible, logins are a constant problem, and inventory is at best an adventure. Also if you look at the median numbers of those on line this week you will see it has declined steadly. If LL cannot provide players with a dependable level of service such declines are to be expected and as for myself I will be changing my membership to quarterly from annual, after six full years of annual membership simply because I no longer am sure SL will last another year. If you cannot work one the servers without making them worse why bother and instead either hire people with the skill to do so or test what you are doing til you are sure it will work. Logins, teleports, movement between, sims or zones are things that are taken for granted in most games and if you cannot provide those basic services then one wonders how you justify us paying some of the highest rates for service in the gaming world. This has to change or we all are in serious trouble.

Actually there is still a ton broken on the RC servers, but if they could get those stable a break might be appreciated. If nothing else it would give people time to recover from the last six months damage and hopefully convince some that left in frustration that it is safe to return. Also it might give LL a little time to better test some of their projects and evaluate how this is actually working.

Credit where it is due, this restart seems to have lived up to expectations, lag is down a bit, rezzing is better, scripts seem to run smoother, and sim ping is down drastically all in all making for a much more stable set of servers. Now is we could get similar results in the blue steel regions we would be making progress for those areas are seriously suffering.

it is truly sad to see this thing fall apart like it is. In a couple of days I will have been in SL for six years and for at least the last two have watched it decline steadily under a constant siege of self induced technical problem, and for the last six months watch helplessly as it has gone off the edge of a veritable cliff taking everyone with it. As for the MONO pause the pause is still there and not it is prolonged into teleport crashes,. thise developed about two months ago at a time when things actually seemed to be getting stable, however, some either made a mistake in engineering and messed up the core servers or more likely intentionally installed some poorly tested code on the core server and set off the present as of yet continuous decline. This has been accompanied by a second wave of veteran players leaving SL and far fewer new memberships than in the past. As for myself when my account comes up for renewal I will likely do it for 3 months rather than the normal 12 that I have been renewing for since I started six years ago and if things do not improve by the end of the year may sell my holdings and leave SL entirely, because by then there will be very little left to stay for.

I have a simple question that deserves an answer. What changes have you made in the last few restarts that we need to know about,. have the bandwidth thresholds been lowered, has logging to accounts on on the same computer been stopped, have the old inventory protocols been altered, is the rezz process changed. These things along with new and massive amounts of serious lag have all accompanied yesterdays and todays logins and are getting worse and if they have been intentionally altered it would be nice if LL would let us know so we can take steps to deal with them, otherwise we will just have to consider it another LL blunder and one more reason to seriously curtail our activity in sl and with it our financial support of Linden Labs.

Oskar since the restarts today on Blue Steel we are back to the same pattern of sudden and unannounced crashes that plagued us two weeks ago when this code was first introduced. It would be really nice if restarts marked a step forward and not on backward and that they actually dealt with some of the problems that are plaguing us all and not some pet project of an unknown Linden who has the power to place it above other more needed code. Unfortunately, the Linden way appears to be one step forward two steps backward and the result are obvious in the declining online numbers, close businesses and abandoned land. I realize you do not make these decisions and are bound by the will of others, but if they have an ounce of concern for the overall health of Second Life they will back off and let you do the job that you have shown you are so capable of doing.

You can add this information to what is going on. The problem does not appear to be on of bandwidth, as bandwidth usage appears very low, Likewise basic FPS is fine as is server FPS and physics. There is a tremendous oscillation in server ping and it can run up to 20k or more. There is, however, no clear indication that this is causing these crashes as they occur at all ping levels. What is noticable though is that loading of inventory is uncharacteristically slow and erratic and is often accompanied by long pauses. This makes me think that core resources are being diverted and functions like inventory are suffering as a result. If so this needs to be dealt with for from a players point of view logins and inventory are the foundations of all play and when those things are not working SL is next to useless. All of these problems began early in the week and were first noted on monday after the unscheduled restart and got worse on Wednesday with the RC restarts. Somewhere in this process something has gone terribly wrong and needs to be fixed and fixed soon, for players are fast loosing patience and if not corrected this is the surest way I know of driving them from SL in droves. I hope this information gives someone a clue as to where to look and hope that somewhere in LL there is someone with the courage and integrity to address this issue and try to fix it. LL needs to remember that it is the players who provide their income and if they cannot get online or get the services they expect to recieve and were promised they will look elsewhere. Right now this problem is likely managable if LL moves to rectify the issue, but if it continues to deny it exists and in facts makes things worse with further misadventures they should not expect their player base to remain patient.

Somehow I do not think that if you take the trouble to establish a user id and password standard for a forum you would then rely on a cookie from a users account to verify it, and if you do I am now a lot more worried than I was previously.

Oskar what is going on? Since the end of the restarts today it has been all but impossible for me to successfully log in with any viewer. I either lock up, or get horrendous sim ping and then crash. This was not the case this morning and began only after the today's restart. This occurs in every sim I have tried including Garmu, which makes me think that it my not be a RC server problem but something that was done either during the Monday restarts,or during the work done during the evening last night, and somehow activate either by the restart or in the wake of the restart. From what limited contact I have had with other people they too are experiencing this problem and it appears to be growing. This is probably the last thing SL needs at this point for a general failure to be able to log in could will be the start that breaks the back of the player population and leads to a general exodus from sl. At present I am paying 600 usd a year for services that for the last six months I, in all honesty, have not recieved and if this does not imporve soon I will sell my land and cancel my premium account when it comes due in July and if thing do not continue will be gone by August, probably taking with me several of the businesses I am associated with and adding my land holdings to the growing expanse of cheap land for sale on the mainland. Quite frankly, if LL is not capable or unwilling to offer a dependable level of service and continues its ill considered policy of expanison, I see no real future for Second Life and it may well be time for people to start looking elsewhere. This would be a shame for, despited its many flaws and the general inabilityor unwillingness of Linden Labs either to correct them or even admit they exist, this is an well designed game which, if properly managed and nurtured could well be the star of the internet. Instead it has become a sad joke that is slowly slipping into ruin and low tragedy. This need not happen but if it does Linden Labs will have no one to blame but themselves and their leadership. Hopefully, somone will come to their senses and stop this from happening but right now I am not optimistic.

Last time I looked LL had not updated its computer requirments for serveral years, and that is a shame, because it leads a lot of people to take on SL with not enough system memory, find they are crashing constantly and leave. Unfortunately, were LL to give an accurate requirment of the memory needed to run SL viewer they would have an embrassingly large number that reflects the huge memory leak from the central core serverss that drains everyone's memory constantly. By the way the function of the the viewer be they sl or third party viewers are only to show the visual data come from the core servers and when that data times out and is not sent the data is not shown and the rest of the procedure that is waiting for that data to arrive loops and begins to eat memory which gradually leads to the loss of memory in our computers, the creation of virtual memory and eventual crashes. This in turn has been turned into the myth that the memory leak is in the viewers, particularly the third party viewers, when the truth is it comes for the core servers which are not sending out the information expected of them. Ironically if you do a memory use analysis of the major servers you will find SL viewers use the largest amount of memory over time, followed by snowglobe based viewers then Phoenix which still is a memory hog. Moreover the most memory efficient view I have seen is the non mesh based firestorm beta which is relatively stable and does a decent job as a second fall back viewer unlile sl v3 which is a memory hog. As for graphic, yes they have gotten better but graphics cards in general have gotten better and this has absolutely nothing to do with Linden Labs, but rather with Nvidia and the rapidly growing game market in general that places constantly greater demands on video cards. As for falling though the earth or a road you obviously have not tried to move from one sim to another via walking or driving or you would do it regularly. Fact, is do you spend much time in SL at all or do you just prowl the forum, hiding behind a variety of alts and try to debuke the reality of the situation LL has created, and by the way this situation is nothing new, but is something that began as part of the build up to the introduction to MONO which was going to be the great cure for all sls problems and instead has like Pandora's box unleashed a wave of woe that leaves nothing left but hope which sadly too is quickly vanishing.

Take a close look at concurancy over the last 365 days, those numbers are pretty unmistakable, and down about 30 %, if LL wants to dispute them I am sure we would all welcome them returning to reporting numbers online, but that is not likely to happen as it is easier to try to deny what is obvious than take responsibility for a distasteful reality.

Here is the url where you can find the charts I referred to above. http://dwellonit.taterunino.net/sl-statistical-charts/