Comments on: Op/Ed: Contemplating Second Life’s Demise

By: SuezanneC Baskerville

SuezanneC Baskerville — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 23:32:57 +0000

If a much improved, incompatible SL v2.0 appeared, new users would all use it instead of the old system. The old system would thus be unlikely to be economically sensible to maintain and would be shut down.

Hipihi is available to try now. In the past few days I’ve learned the rudiments of how to edit the terrain level and texture, and build with Hipihi prims and texture them. It’s worth giving it a try, if you run Win XP and can handle dealing with the current version being Chinese only. If they have an economy that can be converted into RL money and add scripting it can certainly give SL a run for the money. If it gets popular enough, there might be more money to be made in Hipihi or other similar system, so folks that are in SL for money would switch despite having to abandon existing investment in SL. The Hippihi prim system appears to be so similar to the SL prim system that for pure builds, no scripts, I suspect that an exporter importer could be devised. I think SL builders should be investigating this; it would be a way to access a large market if SL architects and sculpters and such could enter the Hipihi market with their existing products.

Hopefully, technical progress will be such that it won’t be more than a few years before systems like SL and other existing virtual worlds are obsolete. Processors with thousands of cores on a chip, fiber-optic to the desktop, displays large enough to show avatars life sized, control done by video cameras reading emotions and body language, stuff like that.

By: @rm@nd@

@rm@nd@ — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 20:29:34 +0000

I believe people would leave. if as a population we were satisfyed with existence we would not have created computer worlds that allowed us such free control in the first place. If you are limited creatively you search for a forum that does not restrain you.

By: Atomic Summers

Atomic Summers — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 05:30:57 +0000

Second Life will die because they won’t rebuild it, and rebuild, and rebuild it. They haven’t yet, nor will they do it in time. It’s a joke. If more people in the real world knew what the user base was like, they would laugh, and laugh, and laugh. It gets attention because the idea is tantalizing and long-awaited, but they use it for a story, with no idea of the incredibly poor quality of Second Life, all around. It is not and will never be “the Metaverse”. It will be quite a while now before we get something that lives up to what Neal Stephenson imagined as the Metaverse, or what all of the cyberpunk genre gave us to dream of.

By: Brace

Brace — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 01:56:11 +0000

“oh is SL ending again? Didn’t it end last year and the year before too?”

Its been dead for about a year now.

Its just that nobody else has figured that out yet.

People mistake the twitching death throes, the convulsing of muscles into rigor mortis with signs of life and growth.

oop

just cuz my three pound “portable phone” from the 80′s still works, doesn’t mean its the best thing to communicate with.

By: Spankubux

Spankubux — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 20:43:38 +0000

oh is SL ending again? Didn’t it end last year and the year before too?

By: Onder Skall

Onder Skall — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 14:37:35 +0000

urizenus – I have to disagree. While micro-casting has a place and a use, that doesn’t mean that it’s any kind of replacement for mass broadcast. Seriously, I cringe every time I see the words “For An Intimate Audience” in a headline… as if it’s always the preferred method…

It’s like saying that the Herald would do really well with just 10 visitors a day so let’s not worry about putting it on a decent server.

By: urizenus

urizenus — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 12:16:15 +0000

I really think that the whole scalability thing is being made to seem more important than it really is. This is something I’ve learned from Joseph Jaffe — Crayonista though he may be. Reaching large audiences just isn’t that important if you can reach the right small audience in the right atmosphere. Micro-casting trumps broadcasting these days. If that’s right, then we shouldn’t worry so much about the number of users we can get into an in world event, but should keep our focus on the quality of the in world events.

By: forseti svarog

forseti svarog — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 11:13:56 +0000

Yes, the koontz event maxxed out at about 330 concurrent avatars across the different locations, so probably the total uniques was a number slightly higher. Worthwhile? I think so. My understanding is that Dean doesn’t like to travel, so the odds of a Koontz fan finding Dean visiting their local Barnes and Noble are unlikely. There were definitely some Koontz fans that signed up for SL just to be able to participate and get closer to a favorite author. Kotaku is being obtuse IMO. Why should Dean ever do anything at all, unless it’s on national TV, using their logic.

We’re all waiting for breakthroughs in scalability, both in software and in the power of our graphics cards. I look forward to testing the new VW platforms, and seeing how they stand up to scalability issues.

By: Luth Brodie

Luth Brodie — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 04:06:31 +0000

I remember sometime last year – summer I believe – there was a lot of buzz going around about a competitor and LL should be frightened. Philip during the next town hall addressed this as not being worried because LL can “out update anyone.” Anyone who has been here long enough knows that while they do update fast and often, it’s usually to fix the last one and break 2 more things.

The typical LL attitude is that they will never shake in their boots no matter how many times we all tell them we will jump ship the moment something better comes out.

If LL made a SLv2? I doubt that will ever happen because that would mean LL admitting SL doesn’t work. Instead they just blame it on us. Be it our connection or our computers.

If someone else made something that had the capabilities of SL without the band-aid fixes, blame game, worked more often then not, and the holier than thou attitude? Sign me up!

By: Boss Melnitz

Boss Melnitz — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 23:53:16 +0000

The answer is yes. I would definitely leave SL for a virtual world that is “done right”. Not only is the system highly unstable, but Linden Lab has shown repeatedly how arrogant they are by sticking it to their customers. In fairness I will offer up that they seem to have gotten slightly better on that front in recent months, but the cold hard truth is that they know they are currently the only “game” in town, so to speak. In most ways, they resemble a classic business monopoly.

New systems are not far off, and SL’s days ARE truly numbered. I see no effort on the part of Linden Labs to make their system scalable, and the same problems that were evident months ago are still there (I’m STILL having to hit the ‘region’ option to see water after a TP….HELLOOOOOOOOO!!!!).

Not only will I leave for a better virtual world, I won’t even look back.