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Whats going on with SL? Is it failing?


Azrikam
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Over the last year SL has become so over inundated with these "griefers" and sims opening and closign so often. It seems to me that the Linden Labs people are letting this game be overrun by these troublemakers, and ive noticed so many sims closing and becoming empty I wonder if this game is worth investing any more money into. What are your thoughts? Has the whole point of SL become to drive people insane by raising rates and making a linden dollar that people forgot its just a game? I love the game but right now lately it feels like every other avatars someone whos a griefer or troublemaker or someone full of drama. I see people who have like 4-5 diferent avitars and such. I dunno maybe im just some old grump who missed when fun was role playing and making things instead of annoying people. But is there anything we can do to combat the insane amount of griefers and steeply rising cost of the game?

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SL isn't falling. It has turned into a long tail business model where it doesnt make a huge profit on release and then goes out of business but rather it continues making a small profit for a long period of time after release. As long as it makes a profit Linden Lab could run SL indefinitely. 

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oh yes.. thanks... it was too long ago we had a "SL is dying"  thread

 

yes it's true... sims open and close, but thats happening since the private sims got released.

yes the amount of sims is slowly going down

 

you use the word "game" too often

 

RP was only for a certain group of residents... and still is...

And last... griefers been here since start... nothing new today that wasnt here yesterday.

Best solution against griefers?... go somwhere else, in all years i'm here only a few times, less than finger on one hand,  really seen those at work. Often, not always, griefing happens because they cán by bad landsettings.

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SL is still pretty profitable both for LL and many of its users, there aren't that many griefers, land fee has mostly been stagnant as far as I remember, plus you can still use SL without owning a land anyway. LL keeps on updating Second Life, available regions did go down by a very small margin the last time I checked on certain sites, but they might still bounce up, there's also the chance that if Sansar is going to be a commercial success, SL's general quality and QoL will also increase as LL would be able to work on more things, So I don't think it's failing. There's also still a lot of things you can do alone or with others in SL, you just have to be a bit creative or put on different mindset to see all the things that you can do in SL. Oh and the average quality of items and contents in SL is always going up as people are becoming more technologically conscious and the technology becoming more capable. So yeah, don't worry too much, and if you do worry, you can do things that will help SL, like inviting your friends to try SL, endorse and promote it wherever you can, help new users, become a teacher inworld, etc

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Azrikam wrote:

people forgot its just a game

Second Life is big.  Not just land but what happens here.Did you know there are college classes being held in world?  They are on their own private grids, of course.  Then there are the many many social groups that do not even have specific meeting places.  We as humans tend to keep to what is familiar but that only leads to a limited exposure to our immediate surroundings.  We only see what is nearby and project to cover everything.

You see a game.  Yet you cannot see that to others, it is not.  There is no right or wrong answer to the question of if SL is a game or not.  That is not the point.  The point it is changes based on perception.  If all you see is a failing game, might I suggest you try changing your perspective?

You are not alone in your perception, BTW.  Not about it being just a game and not about it flailing on its last legs.  Both of these have been brought up on many occasions over at least the last 10 years I have been here. I am dead serious that it was a common perception that going free to play was the sign of collapse and SL would not last another year.  Same with the end of 1st Land.  The end of last names.  Zendra, bots,casinos,adult content, teen grid ... and many more.

The world has imbeciles every where you look.  Sometimes they congregate into one area.  (We call that Capitol Hill over here, btw)  If you keep moving and looking for more people or groups that you find interesting you will notice that the derp|dude! ratio is not as bad as it sometimes seems.

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1 for the record im not "new" lol ive been here for a couple years. And only use one avitar. But you guys and gals are right about one thing for me its just a game. Thats all im here for. To play around and have fun doing whatever I feel like doing. I do not intend to nor ever will take this seriously. It dissappears when my window closes and thats all it has to do with for me. What im more or less noticing to be more specific, is the emptiness of sims in general. Lots of land and open spaces where there used to be cities and stuff. Im also noticing allot more drama just from listening to nearby conversations and stuff as I meander around either flying above in a plane or diving underwater. I do allot from building houses and buildings to people to just having fun. But I see allot more people changing things and shutting down things that used to be cool to visit like the Garden of Whimsy and other once popular attractions according to their signs its due to not making enough profit or it not being worth having the stuff there anymore. So this was more of an observation post. Just noticing that allot of people who I used to watch do stuff and have fun are seemingly more tied up in drama or closing themselves off because of the "griefer attacks" they have and it wasnt until recently that people started messing with my avitar or items that started frustrating me. For me it is just a game and I dont see the point of bothering other people if there is an issue i go elsewhere but I also am wondering if its going to be even worth opening up my own sim if theres going to be this much of an issue that I see. So many rental boxes I passed today alone were properties for rent that a few months ago they were seemingly all occupied or I see entire sims move and open and close. So perhaps it is my perspective, but im still going to do what I want, just was shocked at time of post that so many places I used to visit are gone now. And this is from finally going back through my landmarks of favorite sites because I wanted  to start doing a little storybook of my adventures on SL so to speak.

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Seeing as majority of locations and content are user-created, it is certainly not uncommon to see Sims and Projects disappear frequently. There is no guarantee that simply because a Sim is popular or beautiful it will stick around.

I haven't delt with a legitimate griefer in nearly 2 years. I explore all the time, mostly in public spaces, and I can safely say I cannot even remember the last sour enocunter I have had with a resident. I don't live isolated in a skybox, I have several public locations on and off mainland, and there has been so little riff-raff for every 50 visitors I get only One might be troll-like.

I think a lot of things you are bringing up can be attributed to simple changing of times. Everyone uses SL for a different purpose, like you see it as a game, others might see it as a photo studio, or a place to learn. Not everyone is here just to hang out and chat in large groups. 

Not saying it's a good thing, but SL is certainly a "Niche Culture" society. The most active and stable places on the Grid are catered to a specific audience. Roleplayers, Fashionistas, Merchants and Blogger, Photographers, Adult Content, the list goes on. If you are trying to find sims that aren't empty, consider joining some groups that are in-line with your interests. Also keep in mind people play SL from all over the world, a sim might be bustling with 20-30 russian residents, but by the time the rest of the world logs in that party might be gone! 

My best advice would be to start clean. Forget all your old landmarks and locations. Focus on using the search tool to find Groups and Places that fit your interests. Im sure in no time you can find plenty of active sims. And if there is one thing I learned from exploring all these years, take pictures and document while you can, because ANYTHING can disappear tomorrow.....

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I agree that Linden has let griefing get out of hand again.

It used to be part of the problem was that Lindens themselves were friends with some of the griefers, but most/all of those Lindens are gone now.

So I think it's just not a priority.

There has been all this focus on fixing the abuse reporting mechanisms and making the picture stay after a crash and all this that you can read on the release notes.

But what is really needed is a change in attitude toward grief reports. Lindens do not let you speak to live chat customer service about griefing nor do they allow you to file tickets to customer service about griefing, you can only file a "go nowher" Abuse Report. There are so many of these LL doesn't process them.

What I would like to see is a more business-like and neutral attitude toward grief problems involving self-replicating prims and particle spam. This should be viewed as like "weather," i.e. just as you'd view a poorly-performing sim, a lagging sim, a sim with unknown "problems". The Lindens should allow customer service reports to clean up these messages as if they were routine matters and not bar them from the system. I should be able to file a ticket to have a grief box removed from land next to me as if it were anything, a crashed airplane, a couch that got away from me -- anything accidental. Griefing should be treated the same way.

Furthermore, I'd like the Lindens to get more serious about immediately banning the owners of grief objects from SL permanently. Anyone who puts a grief cube on land that spews obscene, racist, and pornographic images not allowed in SL should have their avatar instantly banned. They shouldn't remain in the People list for days and weeks on end.

 

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Prokofy Neva wrote:to be

There are so many of these LL doesn't process them.

 

i quote Tommy Linden... a little earlier this week in another topic:

 

 


Tommy Linden wrote:

.......

The Governance team is the ones who will be able to properly investigate this matter and the only way to ensure they get the report, in a timely manner is by sending in an Abuse Report. Just make sure you include all the information you possibly can in the report. If you need to file multiple reports regarding the matter, make sure you make a note in there that this is linked to multiple reports around the issue.

I can assure you that the Governance team does infact review every single report that they get,
so please always make sure you are filing an abuse report.

Submitting a support case, or contacting via other means may actually cause the problem to take longer to be resolved.

.......

~Tommy Linden

 

 

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The mainland isn't as crowded as it used to be, but there's still a lot of occupied area. It's also a lot less laggy and cluttered. I've been enjoying traveling around mainland more now than in years. I'm seeing less banlines, less security orbs, less griefers. I've actually been able to use the waterways in some of the areas that were notorious in the past for being so clogged they were impossible to bypass.  I've also noticed more people are on at odd hours. I'm usually on SL in the AM Linden hours anywhere from midnight to 7 am depending on what my work hours are, and I see people out and about.

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"I wonder if this game is worth investing any more money into." OK so don't spend any money on it, just quit your bitching and have fun with it. I have not spent one dollar here in over a year. yet I have been able to buy a new mesh avi, plenty of clothes for it, a store, a house and I have more Lindens right now than at any point when I was buying them. It is what you make it, if you want to mak eit a miserable wretched place that is not worth bothing with, well then that is what it will be, on the other hand if you want to make it into you personal Wonderland, wel it will be that to. It is all up to you, and what ever anyone else thinks does not matter.

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I've found that LL responds rather quickly to griefing reports. I have one neighbor that has a sandbox that griefing stuff gets dropped fairly regularly. I have another that has their land open for rezzing. I've sent AR's on both and they were cleaned up within about 24 hours. 

I'm an admin on an RP sim and we've had regular problems with griefing since we have to keep the build option on for bullet rezzing, for instance. We had one that was really bad that we couldn't get rid of everything without LL help because of the way the item was scripted. They were there within a few hours. 

So those reports do get responded to.

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Amethyst Jetaime wrote:

I have heard this same question or one very like it, such as " will SL last?", since I joined in 2006.  Nothings changed since then.  As long as SL is profitable for LL, SL will continue.

 

Yeah, I think it was a major topic when I joined also.

In the end, none of us are making it out of here alive - so we might as well enjoy the place while we're in it.

 

I've said it before and I'll say it again - the population in SL hasn't changed much since about 2010. There are very very very slight declines over a very long trendline. But it's very steady.

I've had a population meter, showing current number of people online, that I've not reset since 12:51:33 on Nov 6th, 2010 and it had it's highest ever day right after I first rezzed it, recording 73,721.

It's lowest ever is 19,252 - which appears to be recent as that number was just over 20,000 last time Iooked.

BUT it is sitting at 46,593 as I type this - and every time I post this message it tends to be somewhere between 44,000 to 51,000... The other day it was just short of 52,000.

If you want to go look at that prim, copies are sitting at:

http://maps.secondlife.com/scondlife/Guittarez/185/23/64

http://maps.secondlife.com/scondlife/Bay%20City%20-%20Morton/10/106/29

- It's an old sculpty vase with an LSL script in it because if I fix any of that it's going to reset...

 

SL isn't dying. It's ever changing. Stuff moves here, then there, then over there, then somewhere else. And people likewise.

Almost everything that was going on when I started here is not much of a thing anymore, or completely gone. New stuff replaced it.

 

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While it may or may not be true that LL doesn't prioritize griefing as much as they used to, it people limited their griefer reports to actual griefer incidents that can't be stopped on their own, then we'd probably get a faster response time, since every griefer report must be looked at.

Griefing reports should be limited to incidents that involve interference with a sim or parcel that results in people's inability to use it or enjoy it that you can't stop yourself, using the tools available in the viewer.  About 98% of grief to your sim or land you can deal with yourself.  If you don't know about all the tools available take a land management class or ask in the Answers section.  If your land is continually being griefed by a person's series of alts obviously you can't stop this yourself.

Anything else is harassment or just a person to person dispute that LL won't get involved in (according to the TOS) as they are not your mom.  Harassment (which is against the TOS) is severe systematic and/or continued unwanted and annoying actions of one party or a group, including threats and demands.

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Amethyst Jetaime wrote:

While it may or may not be true that LL doesn't prioritize griefing as much as they used to, it people limited their griefer reports to actual griefer incidents that can't be stopped on their own, then we'd probably get a faster response time, since every griefer report must be looked at.

Griefing reports should be limited to incidents that involve interference with a sim or parcel that results in people's inability to use it or enjoy it that you
can't
stop yourself, using the tools available in the viewer.  About 98% of grief to your sim or land you can deal with yourself.  If you don't know about all the tools available take a land management class or ask in the Answers section. 
If your land is continually being griefed by a person's series of alts
obviously you can't stop this yourself.

Anything else is harassment or just a person to person dispute that LL won't get involved in (according to the TOS) as they are not your mom.  Harassment (which is against the TOS) is severe
systematic
and/or
continued
unwanted
and
annoying
actions
of
one
party
or a
group,
including
threats
and
demands.

We see it every day here in the forums, people complaining about things they could put a stop to by blocking or ignoring or teleporting out, but they don't really want to put a stop to it, they just want LL to punish the evildoer. They think LL is a parent who must constantly intervene in their disputes with others, to see that justice is done.

And then there are those who are just paranoid and think if they have a technical problem, it is because someone has hacked them or infected their computer. 

And some just have an exaggerated view of the level of respect they are due from the rest of th world.

All of which they think LL ought to employ people to rectify.

 

 

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1. I don't believe it.

2. I still don't believe it.

3. Because there are a zillion reports.

If they really read each one, they'd act on them. It takes them days -- weeks -- to respond sometimes, and sometimes they never do and you have to repeat AND get your friends to repeat. I sometimes try filing the tickets ANYWAY because I get so exasperated and sometimes if it's a matter of just removing a grief box the Lindens will do it. And not this is NOT what is "making it take longer" it's what finally works when multiple abuse reports using their system as they ask DOES NOT WORK.

Tommy Linden's job is to tell you the policy. My job is to tell you the real experience and say what needs to be done.

If the claim is "we read them but just not in real time or even within 24 hours," sorry, that's just unacceptable. The Lindens need to do what I've suggested here, stop pretending THIS MAIN KIND of griefing is somehow "only" to be AR'd, and allow it to be put in as a ticket the way you do abandoned land or a sim down or any kind of routine technical matter.

UPDATE: For the last day, I've been griefed on multiple sims and parcels by the same old Woodbury/PN style griefer with the same creepy effigy of myself -- a high-prim horror. This object could have been removed from SL completely instead of allowing it to remain to be copybotted by a succession of griefer alts from their sandbox stashes. But no.

If LL really read abuse reports, a day should be sufficient to remove not only this griefer but this object. But five years isn't sufficient, quite frankly. And usually these idiots remain in the people list and remain to harass me and my tenants for days on end. Someone like Saul Goodie may never experience something like this so doesn't understand that it exists. And you can bet that *because* I publicize it and protest it that only brings more griefing, and quite frankly, griefing that the company tolerates and even incites. So I'm totally sanguine about "the reading of ARs" and quite frankly, it is my job as a blogger and civic activist to call out this crime, as any person of conscience would do in RL.

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I haven't delt with a legitimate griefer in nearly 2 years. I explore all the time, mostly in public spaces, and I can safely say I cannot even remember the last sour enocunter I have had with a resident

That's just your experience. As you just said, 30 Russians on another time zone could be having a party, and by the time you log on, they're gone as if they never existed. Same with griefing. You didn't experience. Others did. That doesn't mean it's not very real, very persistent, and a problem the Lindens have not deal with adequately in their 14 years of existence because the problem has been some of the griefers are them and their friends.

If you don't understand this point I'd be happy to explain chapter and verse.

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Actually, Prok, we're back to using the tools available if you had a group that all stuff has to be rezzed in for your properties, you could then set the land so only things rezzed in the group would be able to be rezzed. Or you could set it so anyone could rez but anything that isn't rezzed in the group gets returned within 1 minute. Both would deal with your griefer problem as they either couldn't rez or it would be returned within 1 minute. Also set your land so nothing can enter from outside your sims.

So. your griefer problem is one you could solve yourself with the tools availabe rather than depending on LL to take care of it for you.

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