The Ghost at the Banquet Speaks

by Pixeleen Mistral on 25/10/06 at 7:34 pm

[In March, Doc Nielsen - a two year veteran of SL - liquidated her assets and left the metaverse. For a perspective on how our world has evolved, I asked Doc to share her impressions after a 6 month hiatus. - pixeleen]

by Doc Nielsen

Back in March 2006 I finally decided I’d had enough of Second Life. It was getting to the point where I really didn’t want to log on anymore, SL had become a disagreeable chore, the fun element had been eroded away by constant problems, bugs, poor performance, the intrusion of increasing numbers of griefers…

So, I cashed out. Luckily I’d always purchased land at well below market wherever possible, and at this point land prices were sky high and the L$ was cheap. I sold out at ridiculous prices and stashed the money in Ginko for a bit as I had a feeling that the L$ was about to rise in value against the US$. Shortly after, it did. I was able to recover my entire original investment in SL, and leave sufficient in Ginko to enable me to set up again in SL should I ever want to – not because I was particularly astute, just lucky.

Since ‘leaving’ I log in rarely. I used to check out the forums, until Linden Lab effectively closed them; still keep an eye on Lindex and occasionally cash out some of my Ginko interest. Recently an old friend, Pixeleen Mistral contacted me and asked if I was interested in writing a piece about the current state of SL for her. I was dubious, but we met up inworld and this is the outcome…

So, how has SL changed since I left?

For the worse I’m afraid. Many of the things I warned might happen in forum posts – which were mostly shouted down at the time by the Linden Fan Club – have in fact come to pass.

I really can’t think of one change made by LL which has impressed me positively. On the plus side, there are things that residents have done that impress, but the masters of the universe seem to have made SL into an even less pleasant place since I left.

Level of detail is a poor joke

I notice that the performance in most mainland sims, even on the high end system I built just before I left in an attempt to regain reasonable performance, has degraded still further – something I’d noted ‘update’ by ‘update’ ever since v1.7.

It looks like the only way to have a decent Second Life now is to get yourself a private island – something which is of financial benefit to LL and thus hardly motivates them to improve mainland performance. Something I saw coming a long while back.

Level of detail is now so low that the concept of landscaping, especially on islands, has become a poor joke. When I first joined SL, over two years ago, one of the first things that struck me was the beauty of the landscape. Now you only have to get some 60 metres away from any feature for it to break up into a horrible blocky jaggy caricature of its intended shape… This is obviously a desperate attempt to maintain a vaguely acceptable level of performance in the face of the ever increasing load the grid is being placed under.

I see that the frequency of grid attacks has risen to frankly unacceptable levels since the amazing decision to remove any and all forms of verification on signup. It would be nice to be able to say I’m amazed at this decision by LL, but one eventually reaches the point where nothing that LL decides to do can amaze…

The results of this policy must have been obvious to the meanest intelligence, so I can only assume that some overwhelming need must have overridden elementary common sense. What though? Investor pressure? Philip’s vanity? Cory’s infamous bet? Who can say? One thing’s sure though, that decision has damaged everyone’s SL experience irreparably, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

Smashing the mirror

Closing most of the forums – not wholly unexpected – I pointed out once that the forums were holding up a mirror to LL – and they didn’t like what they saw. So, in typical LL fashion, what do they do? Smash the mirror! – and attempt to replace it with a deeply tinted and distorted alternative – the corporate blog. In doing so they have fragmented Philip and Robin’s much vaunted ‘community’ beyond repair.

I actually discussed this move with people in real life. They were aghast at the stupidity of it. The most frequent comment was something along the lines of ‘surely if customers are complaining about the product or quality of service, the right response is to address the issues the customers are complaining about, not attempt to shut them up?’. And/or ‘Don’t these people realise companies pay large sums of money to obtain accurate customer feedback? Ignoring it when you get it for free is madness’. Well, that was how I saw it too. But I notice Philip, when asked in public about the reasons for closing most of the forums, could provide no reasonable explanation other than to whine about how ‘depressing’ all the ‘negativity’ was and how it was ‘too difficult’ for staff to monitor it – yeah, right. Forget listening, then doing something about the complaints Phil! ‘Not fun – too difficult’, right?

The Tao of Linden Lab is ridiculously inappropriate

Obviously I glanced at the blog but it became so unreliable, disorganised and filled with curiously inappropriate posts that I, along with many others, simply abandoned it. Still, I’d like to nominate Philip’s ‘Tao of Linden Lab’ article as the most ridiculously inappropriate entry a CEO has ever placed in a blog.

Apart from that I found it very neatly summed up much of what is wrong with LL. In it he takes credit for ‘inventing’ something he didn’t. Shows he doesn’t really understand what he’s talking about. Demonstrates the true limitations of LL’s ‘transparency’. Highlights the LL corporate ethos of ‘not fun and too difficult, so ignore that’ quite clearly. And reveals the true dimensions of his ego. Not bad for a short blog entry!

I think that’s probably enough for now, as writing this is a rather depressing experience.

So – am I coming back? I rather doubt it. Maybe if SL changed for the better, which would take a full re-write of the client/server software by a competently managed development team? Maybe if the management structure changed so that paying customers came first? But as things stand, I think I’ll remain ‘the ghost at the banquet’.