Op/Ed: Virtual Paradise – But Never on Sunday
by Pixeleen Mistral on 16/01/07 at 5:13 pm
Take evenings and weekends off, OK?
by Inigo Chamerberlin
Trying to accompany a friend on a shopping trip Sunday led to me arriving half naked in, of all places, an InfoHub, or whatever they call those things where newly minted noobs are thrown in at the deep end these days, in Mauve.
I logged out, largely due to the ongoing griefer activity, logged into home, wondered briefly at the number of avatars in the sim, made myself decent, managed to teleport back to the shopping venue, where the sim promptly crashed (again) and hence back to… wait for it… yeah, you got it – the Mauve InfoHub.
By this time it’s a war zone, I mean, Francis Ford Coppola could have used this asshole to supply special effects for Apocalypse Now! Though flying dicks weren’t a feature of the film as I remember, still, maybe I wasn’t paying attention?
It’s a well established drill since 06/06/06. Shields up, sit out of the cage, weapons on and wait for the shield to deliver the name of the attacker and a range of retaliation options. Today I’m pretty PISSED, so it’s something that will set this sucker on fire and bounce him around the sim until he gives up and logs, and do the same again if he returns.
Peace descends, though smoke, flame, discarded prims, cages, penises, and you name it, it’s litter the landscape. So THIS is how noobs are welcomed now, is it?
I’ve had enough. So have the noobs. I pass out landmarks to The Shelter, gather a couple who are trying to ask sensible questions in this madhouse and head for home. A few minutes investigation on arrival shows I’ve invited a Swiss and a French noob back, both less than 4 hours old, fortunately both with quite good English.
It also emerges that the half dozen visitors already on the island are French too!
Is this a ghastly French conspiracy? An invasion? Are they taking over?
Well no, for some reason LL decided to cripple the search system tonight – as if it the latest ‘improvements’ hadn’t screwed it up enough, and these new French AVs were trying to find other French AVs – understandably enough. And Map Search was still functioning. It seems they all tried inputting various French city names, they seem to see sims as ‘cities’.
To understand that you need to realize how city oriented the French are, most French seem happier living in a shoebox apartment in a city than in a house in the country! Anyway, my island is called Lyonesse – NOTHING to do with France, but if you enter ‘Lyon’ in map search…
Oh well, at least they are polite and reasonably smart – more so that the average ‘native English speaking’ noob you encounter in fact. The evening rapidly turns into a question and answer session, hopefully the information I’m giving will help them in SL, but once you start fielding these questions you realize two things:
- Just how much there is to learn in those first days (none of these AVs are more than six hours old)
- Just how much a couple of years in SL leads you to take for granted.
A lot is predictable. They are curious about the basics of SL of course, the ‘how to’s of being in SL. Money, jobs, how come I look better than them (they are French after all), the social structures… some of it makes you think hard, it’s easy to give flip replies, but these things matter to people trying to take first steps here.
Keeping track of the various conversations is tricky, but I notice that they are puzzled to find SL is functioning so badly. A couple of them have already been warned of this though, apparently they’ve picked up information about SL’s flakiness via various French websites and blogs… Tried it anyway, had the bad luck to choose to do so on an evening (Euro time), and worse luck to try it at the weekend. To the others it’s an unpleasant surprise. As was the griefing in Mauve to the two I bought back from there.
Well, in all honesty, my first thought is that if LL wants to put noobs through that, it’s just fine by me, the more they put off, the less load on the system – who knows, SL may keep creaking on for a few more months if the numbers don’t keep climbing?
But, there again, these are nice people, they deserve better. Some want to know WHY it’s like this – the better informed, startlingly better informed to me, answer immediately that SL’s infrastructure isn’t able to grow sufficiently to handle the current growth… Lively discussion ensues, theories are offered, more investment required, distributed servers… These noobs aren’t stupid by any means. My assertion that SL has already soaked up in excess of US$20 million in investment is met with disbelief.
‘But why is it so broken then?’ comes a response.
I shrug, offering the observation that the users don’t really know, but we suspect that the core networking infrastructure and software is badly flawed. That and poor management has burned a lot of US$ getting this far.
The subject changes, we talk about where we come from in RL, I caution them about giving too much detail in SL to people they hardly know.
Talk turns to the island, did I build it? That launches a long explanation about land, basic to islands, buying or renting, terraforming. Then we start on the buildings, did I make everything? No, but a lot is self built or modified from bought items. That launches a series of questions about building.
Eventually it’s getting too late for me, so I make my farewells and leave them to their enjoyment of a Sunday night in SL. Yes, Sunday was crap – we all know why. But even with SL crippled to that level, noobs are still signing up, aren’t being completely put off — why not? Mauve on Sunday night would have put ME off — and are prepared to give it a try.
Which of course is why Sundays – along with most days – are NOT good days in SL anymore?
In fact, about the only time SL ‘works’ now for me is about 10:30 – 1:30 GMT weekdays. Around 10-12K logins, most things work – if they didn’t get disabled last night to prevent a complete system failure – you can do a bit before the system begins to falter under the day’s rising load.
And, while the noobs DO continue to sign up, they don’t seem stupid enough, or starry eyed enough, to fail to perceive that all is definitely not well in SL.
Indeed I note the Official Linden Blob is now filled with complaints from relative newcomers about what they see as unacceptable service issues.
Is it just me, or does the rate of ‘growth’ seem to be slowing somewhat?
Several effects are occurring:
First, the newer signups are less the ‘early adopter’ mentality and more the ‘I want what I’m paying for’ mentality – consumers not geeks. They want and expect standards of service, which they aren’t getting, and can’t be fobbed off with the ‘you should be grateful to be allowed to use SL’ argument they fobbed early adopters off with.
Secondly the idea of ‘So WHAT if a few people chuck it in, there’s loads more suckers out there’ isn’t quite working out as envisaged. I think a great man had something to say about that once, something about fooling all of the people some of the time, or some of the people all of the time, but never all of the people all of the time?
Finally the performance hit of so many new users is proving far more than the system can take. There must have been a crossover point where the maximum acceptable performance degradation was reached – the point where signups, or at least logins, should have been restricted pending performance improvements. Clearly that point has been exceeded in no uncertain terms.
Equally clearly nothing is going to be done about it.
Prokofy Neva
Jan 16th, 2007
Yes there are loads of French speakers arriving at the infohub in Ross, too. My favourite quote the other night was something like,
“Mais il ne fonctionne pas maintenant et il est tres fucke”
Of course, the accents don’t fall into place automatically, I guess, and anyway, you don’t have to know French to get this phrase lol.
I find that there are 2-3 regulars who become like the trolls of infohubs. They live there, any hour of the day or night, shooting, going around naked, putting up particles.
The Lindens set the tone long ago by never ejecting these people immediately. They’d never talk tough to them. They’d just sort of whine at them.
I’m different. I pass out notecards that you can also get by touching the donkey there in Ross. It says something like “Can I be an ass and walk around naked and shoot guns and particles?” and the answer is “No” lol.
I pass that card to some of the miscreants, and I also tell them to move to sandboxes or frankly, to go back to WoW if they keep shooting and if I also see they are like 14 years old. I find that when you take a strict stance like this, even without any powers whatsoever (it’s Linden land) others are emboldened to join you, and pretty soon, 38 people on an infohub can tell the 39th one who is an idiot walking around naked and trying to hit on women to leave, and he does. Of course, this doesn’t work perfectly. But just because it doesn’t work perfectly isn’t a reason not to do it and to pitch in now and then to try to help maintain civility.
My sense is that there are still huge waves of people, as you get now the Dutch, the Italian, the French who are just tuning in (I even heard Tagalog being spoken the other day). Some of them move on to their friends or figure out where they want to go. Others stand around helpless and clueless, but there’s a limit to what you can do for them, even speaking their language. I find that despite 16,000 or 20,000 traffic a day, there isn’t any noticeable increase in either the use of the money tree or sales in the malls I have nearby. So I think they are arriving without money, and without even an especially keen drive to get money — they fly around, and leave. But this is just an anecdotal impression.
It really is bizarre, working these infohubs. One minute a teenager is walking around naked poking people with a giant dick and spewing particles and some idiot has deployed a giant shield across the entire sim on himself, so that autoreturn doesn’t return it, but suddenly, a professor of digital arts will land and talk about Internet culture lol. It’s wild.
starcomber Vig
Jan 17th, 2007
The impression that new users are more consumer-minded is accurate. I may add this trend was visible dating back to pre-first-million users count. The impact of such shift in behavious and expectations is reason one for LL’s Orientation System smashed down to bits as we speak. No amount of work is going to fix this situation without serious refocusing.
The impact of recent changes in SEARCH functionality is now showing as predicted by many. I’m glad that this post goes thru the effects of such changes.
Italians are still in small numbers in SL.
Finally I see that my feelings about retention numbers going way below the already low estimates produced by LL itself are not just mine.
Lorrie Leavitt
Jan 17th, 2007
I found both the article and the posts to be ‘slightly’ patronising. Yes, being noobs, we are the late arrivers but then again we are the mass consumers who bought CDs then moved to downloading music. We are not bedroom programmers or doctors of the digital internet we are USERS the people who really beta test the systems after the systems designers coders and early adopters have built it. Dont judege us all by a few arrivals on a Sunday, consumers spend money but they also test systems and ideas to destruction.
Inigo Chamerberlin
Jan 17th, 2007
‘slightly’ patronising?
Fuck it Prok! We screwed up AGAIN! We must be loosing our touch…
You go first, I simply can’t be bothered tonight, maybe later, after I’ve whipped a few serfs and exercised my patronage and condescension a bit more on some less important individuals? Maybe then I’ll be in the mood to do a rewrite?
Inigo Chamerberlin
Jan 17th, 2007
Grrrrrr, just checked the blob and it seems the Dilberts have screwed up big time yet again. 23:00 GMT they say. Which as we know probably means around 03:00 tomorrow…
If nothing else goes wrong…
Which it will…
Because it always does…
So, I can’t recharge my psychic batteries by lording it over the insignificant dross of SL until tomorrow!
Guess I’ll take a long hot bath and a bottle of something nasty and leave it all to you then Prok. Later. Uh, don’t make too much mess.
Lorrie Leavitt
Jan 17th, 2007
Sorry if I hit a nerve, I’ll get back to the tapestry I’m sewing in the kitchen. Does this mean I don’t get an invite to your island?
Inigo Chamerberlin
Jan 17th, 2007
LOL! Well, well, a sense of humour.
No one needs an invitation to Lyonesse. Though I have been known to throw out those who don’t meet my fairly relaxed standards – oh, and of course those lower levels of society that have filled the place and lowered the tone so much of late, well, we just can’t have them cluttering up the place ‘y know?
Oh, and don’t fall through the fishing hole in the ice – it’s NOT a noob trap, and it’s your fault if you fall in!
Lorrie Leavitt
Jan 17th, 2007
Pax vobiscum, Domine vobiscum. Et cum spiritu tuo
“This ceremony stills obtains in LOW MASSES, when the peace is thus given to prelates and PRINCES, not to others except in rare cases established by custom.”
Inigo Chamerberlin
Jan 17th, 2007
Ok Igor! Fetch the impaling spikes out!
Cocoanut Koala
Jan 17th, 2007
Really, I don’t think it is too much to ask to expect a thing to work.
coco
Arthur Fermi
Jan 17th, 2007
Sending them to a sandbox seems like a good idea, except now the sandboxes are unusable collections of crap and griefers. (I know your thinking there is no difference between crap and griefers, in my mind its prims versus people.) Additonally some of us have private sandboxes open to the public, and the griefers end up there. Since someone one told them to stop griefing where they were and go to a sandbox, they think its OK to cage people in a sandbox. This really sucks when you are trying to help some n00b create a prim and they get orbited.
Arthur Fermi
marilyn murphy
Jan 17th, 2007
i used to predict sl was just being prepared to be sold. i dreaded that actually when i first thought it. now…. now i wish they would sell it,to some large company that will fix it.
Cinico Chamber Lane
Jan 18th, 2007
> First, the newer signups are less the ‘early adopter’
> mentality and more the ‘I want what I’m paying for’
> mentality – consumers not geeks. They want and expect
> standards of service, which they aren’t getting
Since you can try this service for free, if you instead choose to pay for it without giving it a try before, you deserve what you are getting.
Mrs. Chokovy Dicks
Jan 18th, 2007
Hi Inigo, thanks for your report. I have a couple of questions.
1. Were those French people on paid accounts? or were they on free accounts?
2. Could you bring some evidence to your scary thesis “clearly nothing is going to be done about it”? I agree that we do not see tangible improvements, but this doesn’t mean Linden Labs are not working on it, as you’re stating.
Inigo Chamerberlin
Jan 18th, 2007
Hmmmmm, well Mrs Dicks, you know something? I didn’t even look.
But if you stop and think about it, would YOU pay up front for an untested service you could use for free with no restriction? Didn’t think so. I certainly wouldn’t. And I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be prepared to pay for SL if my introduction were the current SL either.
As for your second question about my ‘scary thesis’. Firstly Philip Rosedale has publicly stated that LL will do nothing to restrict access to Second Life to any individual or group. Apparently that includes griefers, hackers and criminals?
So there’s NO WAY LL is going to limit signups, OR prioritise logins depending on payment status, land ownership or any other criteria.
As for evidence that they aren’t ‘doing’ anything, I assume you really mean ‘aren’t doing anything positive’?
Well, I’ve been around a pretty long time, and in that time I’ve seen the ‘quality of Second Life’ decline, rather than improve since 2005. Most notably since the preparations for free access, though it was slipping before that (hands up all who remember 1.7, from which SL has really never recovered?).
And since the infamous 06/06/06 things have declined even more so.
Oh yes, LL HAVE been WORKING on ‘it’. That’s much of the problem.
Maybe I should have said ‘Clearly nothing that’s being done is likely to have a positive effect on the daily performance of SL – or something along those lines?
All LL ‘working’ on SL seems to do is make it slower, more unreliable and break more functions.
I’m not going to discuss the whys and wherefores of that. If YOU are happy with SL’s present level of performance and the prospect that things will only get worse as the number of concurrent logins rise, that’s fine by me.
If you are confident that there is a secret LL project underway to rewrite the whole mess and get it working acceptably to the bulk of users – fine.
Er, got any evidence of that belief you’d care to table?
Inigo Chamerberlin
Jan 19th, 2007
Bah! ANOTHER Friday and…
NO TP!
NO Map!
NO Search!
NO Object Rezing!
NO Inventory!
This is getting beyond a bloody joke. Throw in an update and SL is running (badly) three days a week!
I hereby declare open season on both Lindens and the unverified! Somehow the paying users of SL have to take back their world!