Open Letter to Linden Lab
by Pixeleen Mistral on 30/04/07 at 7:09 am
Metaverse residents ask LL to fix the game
by Pixeleen Mistral, National Affairs desk
In an attempt to entice game maker Linden Lab into fixing problems with Second Life, an open letter asking that long term problems with the virtual world be fixed before more new features are added has been signed by over 600 players and virtual world entrepreneurs.
The open letter comes in response to both stability problems with the world and Linden Lab’s retreat from contact with their customers – the world’s residents. This retreat has been in progress for some time as the Lab has removed resident forums, and most direct customer contact – apparently in an attempt to cut support costs.
The cost cutting measures and focus on new features at the expense of stability may exact a toll as Cristiano Midnight points out, “it is much easier to retain customers when things work as promised”.
However, the social network effect – or wanting to hang with your friends – tends to blunt criticism of the Linden’s product, and those with significant investments in the game are not likely to migrate out of Second Life in a hurry. This platform stickiness may be what the Linden game gods depend on as they continue to rework their world despite the protests from its residents. It should be clear to all that Second Life is a never ending beta test – but it is significant that residents are organizing large scale protests of the way in which the beta test is being conducted.
Here is the text of the open letter:
In the past eighteen months, Second Life has expanded, growing from a small community of early adopters to a platform supporting millions of users. Linden Lab has created a world that inspires a deep level of passion in its users and provides unprecedented opportunities to share creatively, socially, and financially.
With explosive levels of growth often come unexpected problems. In keeping with your company’s policy and rich history of resident involvement, we the undersigned would like to take this opportunity to address some concerns that we feel have gone unanswered for too long.
There are some consistent, ongoing problems that are getting worse under heavy load, not better, and are not simply irritants but problems that are causing financial loss in some cases, which is unacceptable. Here is a brief list of the main concerns:
* Inventory loss – this is a devastating problem that is worsening. We have no ability to protect our own inventories through backups, and are trusting you to protect that data. This is the highest priority. Sensible inventory limits (on non-verified accounts only), combined with better management tools and ways to protect our inventory ourselves would help to mitigate the problem as well. Regardless, this cannot continue – we will not accept financial loss as a feature of Second Life. It is your responsibility as service provider to ensure our data is not lost, and you are failing us.
* Problems with Find and Friends List – we continue to see search outages on a far too regular basis. It is bad enough trying to get anywhere without being able to use search, but many users are also paying money for classified ads. Our friends lists just do not work reliably any longer, after years without an issue with them. If America Online/MSN/Yahoo can provide presence information for hundreds of millions of users, surely there is a way to make our friends lists work again.
* Grid stability and performance – teleports fail quite regularly, especially under heavy load. Attachments end up in places they did not start out in, and sim performance varies wildly. None of this makes for a very pleasant experience for users. Long promised improvement to physics and scripting would help dramatically to reduce these problems, but there are a lot of other scalability issues as well. It often feels like the grid is coming apart at the seams. The promised use of limiting logins of non-verified accounts during peak load has been severely lacking. This would be an effective interim solution to load issues, but Linden Lab seems unwilling to use it.
* Build tool problems – the importance of build tools that actually work as promised cannot be overstated enough – we rely on them to create content. Prim drift, disappearing prims, imprecise placement, problems with linking and other issues with the tools need to be addressed. Too much time is being spent trying to work around the problems.
* Transaction problems – inventory deliveries are failing with an alarming (and annoying) frequency, leaving merchants with the burden of replacing missing content and having to try to confim the transaction in the first place. We trust that our L$ balances are accurate, but given recent problems, that is a cause for concern as well, and one we place our full trust in you to ensure its accuracy.
We remain fully supportive of Second Life and are more than willing to continue doing our part to help, but our confidence is steadily being eroded due to a general lack of communication and the apparent failure to successfully address the many issues detailed above. What we are asking for is that these problems are addressed immediately, ahead of new features, and that we are able to see tangible improvements. We accept that this will not happen overnight but it also cannot be allowed to continue indefinitely either.
Thank you for taking the time to read this letter.
Sincerely,
shockwave yareach
May 2nd, 2007
Prokofy:
Very well. A friend of mine named Brolly lost half her inventory about 3 months back. It never returned. She never got recompensated or get the hardware replaced. This includes one of those 12KL$ beds – not exactly small potatoes. In addition, HW lost everything 10 days back. Absolutely everything. I’d like to report he got it back, but he has left SL and isn’t likely to return. He has lost all confidence in the game and quit. There; I have given you two examples from personal experience.
And I couldn’t be more wrong? Listen, you have far more land than I, my friends, everyone I know combined, could think of possessing. You have a rental business whereas my crew doesn’t like dealing with people much so we just tinker to outdo each other. So if there IS a class structure, you are in the upper middle class as a business owner and a land owner. My “tekkies” and I, we are just the mechanics you call when your stuff breaks. You, you are “the man”. Congrats.
But the whole idea of class in SL is silly though. The only labels I wear are the ones I put on myself. I could not care less what people I do not know and do not pal around with think about me. If there is a class on a person then it is one that they themselves have put (or allowed one to put) upon them. I find SL to be the BSfree place anywhere. Race, sex, color, religion, none of that means diddly divided by squat in SL. If I met Ansche Chung (sp?) and you side by side inworld, there’d be no way for me to compare class between you. She has a limo? Big deal – 250L at Bobs Used Primshop. She wears bling? Who doesn’t? She has large… tracts of land?
The only class difference I know of is the one dividing those who know what the previous reference means and those who do not. And it’s a silly difference, really.
Onder Skall
May 2nd, 2007
These arguments, rude and ridiculous as they are, serve several useful purposes:
1. They demonstrate how futile it is to return spite when it is offered to us. Nowhere else is it clearer than in a thread like this one. You don’t actually win anything by doing so, and any satisfaction you might gain is *very* short-lived.
2. They remind us that we are all infinitely flawed, every last one of us. When somebody says/does something awful, that only makes sense. We’re all flawed. We all do awful things at some point. I know I have. Expecting perfection or for others to meet our personal standards is silly.
3. We become better information parsers because of these arguments, dragging the murky depths of insults and slanted arguments for actual facts and ideas. I disagree with Cristiano – it’s worth it, especially with the long-winded and passionate, and even when you’re being attacked. Those people generally have the most interestingly complex ideas, if you have the skill to dig them out. You may not agree with what you find, but you’re faster/stronger/better afterward. I surf three times faster after having read through a thread like this one.
4. We learn self-control, and the separation of emotion from ideals and strategy. I could expand but… that might go a bit long and it’s self explanatory as long as you don’t get all “that’s what sociopaths do!” on me.
There are those reading this thread who are too busy dealing with their emotions for this – they’ll dismiss, or even revile, what I’ve just said. That’s fine, I’ll be patient with that. This is for everybody else, those who’d rather not get involved but read these threads anyhow, to let them know that they’re not the only ones thinking this way. Hi guys!
Inigo Chamerberlin
May 2nd, 2007
Sling? Bit of a typo there I fear…
‘So there you have it from the horses mouth (so to speak).’ -I think it ought to have been – ‘So there you have it from the horses ass (so to speak).’
I’m really, really glad I haven’t read that article, it is cringingly embarrassing just to glance at your quotes from it.
Nacon
May 2nd, 2007
Prok said: “No, dickwad, they aren’t being supportive of me, they’re being incited to griefing and TOS violation by you using the Herald. Stop it.”
Sorry, I can’t change the way how those people were somehow Honest? It’s still a joke to you cause you still have not realize anything at all. It’s a shame, really.
Now I notice the page has gone pass 100 comments, meaning I’m done with this crap.
BUT! keep posting Prok!
Rugal
May 2nd, 2007
How cow. You folks are seriously retarded.
And I DO mean all of you.
Again, there are a crapload of folks that can’t even get into the game..and what are you getting into? Personal disputes, name calling…and sheer stupidity..be it Prok or anyone else of you..the whole lot of you is acting more like squabbling children out to make themselves look good rather than anyone that really cares about “the people”.
You folks don’t care about a damn thing aside from yourselves, and it shows. What about all the people that can’t get on..that can NOT get a dribble of support..and can’t even change their accounts because..OH, that’s not working too.
Isn’t that a sort of fraudulent activity? Is that not a major concern to be raised? But what do I hear. Prok being ridiculous, other people hardly being anything but stupid themselves. Alot of “ME ME ME” but rather nothing else.
Honestly, get with it, ya bunch of jackassess. That is, if you REALLY care about the people as much as you all seem to claim, but never seem to SHOW. Action speaks louder than words.
Reality
May 2nd, 2007
Rugal, I’ll repost this for you – since it did not sink in the first time:
“It seems to me that people such as Rugal have forgotten the issues other services have had in the past with logging in – or for that matter remaining logged in. In this age of High Speed Internet connections, most people have forgotten what dial-Up was like …. as well as the early days of DSL and Cable connections. I can clearly remember it being a royal pain to log in and stay logged in when it came to my Service Provider. Second Life’s issues? Not nearly as annoying if you had to sit through five to ten disconnects an hour. Want to talk about crashes before ever getting to a log in screen? Many service Providers – back when they had their own interface – constantly added new features which, when compounded, broke the new versions of the program for people. The difference between them and Second Life? when a required upgrade is indicated, this means that there is no option to go to an earlier version which worked.
The solution? figure out what is causing the issue, be it your Operating system, Hardware, other software …. and fix it – or find another service to use. I fully expect a future update to break the Client for me … when that happens I will do whatever I can to fix it on my end.
There is no such thing as perfect compatibility. second Life requires, however, your machine to be as compatible as is possible when these updates occur.
That about ends my tirade on the issue of log ins and crashes.”
Prokofy Neva
May 2nd, 2007
1. They demonstrate how futile it is to return spite when it is offered to us. Nowhere else is it clearer than in a thread like this one. You don’t actually win anything by doing so, and any satisfaction you might gain is *very* short-lived.
I disagree. I think spite is one of the things that makes conflict especially hard to deal with (it’s very typical of the Balkans, for example), but you have to keep matching it with stern rebuffs. I don’t mistak the stern rebuffs for spite. I think you keep pounding back when you are dealing with this spiteful, this entrenched, this arrogant a class of people. I think the stakes are high enough that it’s worth it.
You don’t fall into sunset reflections of amity and deeper wisdom like you’re doing now, Onder, trying to insert yourself as “peacemaker” and “Oh, Yoda, the Wise One”. Baloney. Some of these people need to be whacked, whacked again, and whacked still more. If it takes 4 years of whacking, that’s fine. I’ve been whacking at some of them for a solid two years, and probably I’m good for at least another 2. You do it to inform the weak, young, unformed minds watching this sort of protracted battle, and deciding what culture they want to support.
>2. They remind us that we are all infinitely flawed, every last one of us. When somebody says/does something awful, that only makes sense. We’re all flawed. We all do awful things at some point. I know I have. Expecting perfection or for others to meet our personal standards is silly.
No, we aren’t infinitely flawed. Some people are downright retarded. Others are youthful and stuck in Opposition Defiance Disorder memes and syndromes and routines. Others are jammed in the usual SL fuck-you hedonism mode. Not everybody does and say “something awful” — the Something Awful people can reliably be depended upon to do THE most “something awful” stuff, for example. I don’t do anything awful, and refuse to adopt a “can’t we all get along” huge cathartic “mea culpa” just because of *your* need to appear as Yoda, Gandhi, and Mary Robinson all rolled into one.
>3. We become better information parsers because of these arguments, dragging the murky depths of insults and slanted arguments for actual facts and ideas. I disagree with Cristiano – it’s worth it, especially with the long-winded and passionate, and even when you’re being attacked. Those people generally have the most interestingly complex ideas, if you have the skill to dig them out. You may not agree with what you find, but you’re faster/stronger/better afterward. I surf three times faster after having read through a thread like this one.
I don’t find much “complex” about Cristiano. I think the formula is pretty simple: “I struggle to maintain power on my eroding power base in Second Life”. There’s very little of substance, wit, wisdom, or even wilyness about Cristiano. It’s just a simple, long, protracted whine, in which he postures endlessly as injured and innocent, though he is neither.
>4. We learn self-control, and the separation of emotion from ideals and strategy. I could expand but… that might go a bit long and it’s self explanatory as long as you don’t get all “that’s what sociopaths do!” on me.
What do you mean, we, white man? Seriously, take it outside. Certain people in Second Life should always be resisted. Some people believe that’s me, and they spend all their time doing that. That’s fine, because I feel the same way about them or others. Conflict is important. Controversy is vital. There will be wars, and rumours of wars, and that’s fine. There really is a struggle to be had, and people are not going to be holding hands and singing Kumbayah here.
Prokofy Neva
May 2nd, 2007
How cow. You folks are seriously retarded.
And I DO mean all of you.
No, you’re seriously retarded for imagining that you can rise to a mountain-top of insight and judgement over other people who simply *disagree with you*, which doesn’t mean they are “retarded”
>Again, there are a crapload of folks that can’t even get into the game..and what are you getting into?
So? I’m supposed to link hands with Cristiano and 3,399 other people now and sing Kumbayah, Lord?
>Personal disputes, name calling…and sheer stupidity..be it Prok or anyone else of you..the whole lot of you is acting more like squabbling children out to make themselves look good rather than anyone that really cares about “the people”.
No, I think you’re just unable to penetrate very deeply into important arguments about substantive issues. My beef with Cristiano is basically that he is a lame limousine liberal who will not do what is required to really fight this battle that he only half expected or half wished to begin fighting. And that ultimately, he is only fighting for his own class and clan power, not any public good. That’s common in atomized and Balkanized societies, and I don’t see that we need to whitewash or oversimplify the complexities.
>You folks don’t care about a damn thing aside from yourselves, and it shows. What about all the people that can’t get on..that can NOT get a dribble of support..and can’t even change their accounts because..OH, that’s not working too.
Um, well, what about the children? Seriously, think about the Teen Grid. And the future kids who might some day use Second Life! What about them! Come to think of it, my cat needs feeding, too!
You’re whining incoherently and making no sense, and I don’t see why any of us should be hounded into some resignation over it. If people can’t get on to SL after a patch…like that’s news? Like that doesn’t happen every single goddamn time? It does for me and always a good percentage of my tenants. I can reliably expect that on patch day, I will lose money.
>Isn’t that a sort of fraudulent activity? Is that not a major concern to be raised? But what do I hear. Prok being ridiculous, other people hardly being anything but stupid themselves. Alot of “ME ME ME” but rather nothing else.
I hardly think I’m ridiculous by pointedly raising the real point here, which is the classes of SL, their struggle for power, their stepping on other classes to stay in power, and the vanity of their leaders.
>Honestly, get with it, ya bunch of jackassess. That is, if you REALLY care about the people as much as you all seem to claim, but never seem to SHOW. Action speaks louder than words.
Um, so that would involve…what exactly? It’s a challenge to figure out how you affect an online game. But I’d start by not showing up to this cooptive, hastily-called, insincere Town Hall. To show up is to go on sealing the whole sordid system.
Brent Recreant
May 2nd, 2007
Prof Neva, you are right to some extent.
How about they delete unverified try-me’s and others if they don’t log in for an extended period of time, sorta like when you cancel, and they can re-instate it for free if you claim it back within 60 days, you get an e-mail stating this. If you didn’t want to re-instate it, you wouldn’t respond to the e-mail and so-forth.
Leam Cunningham
May 2nd, 2007
I used to have sympathy for you regarding that whole Plastic Duck incident, but this is utter hypocricy and you’ve lost any moral high ground you had in regards to this.
Prokofy Neva
May 2nd, 2007
I used to have sympathy for you regarding that whole Plastic Duck incident, but this is utter hypocricy and you’ve lost any moral high ground you had in regards to this.
Um, can you tell the difference between revealing someone’s REAL LIFE NAME AND CALLING THEM AT HOME, and giving the first name of their SECOND LIFE NAME after they troll you repeatedly and grief you inworld and incite others to grief you inworld by spamming crap at you?
Guess not!
But hey, there is a BIG DIFFERENCE between putting out someone’s REAL LIFE NAME AND CALLING THEM AT HOME and telling the first name of their SECOND LIFE NAME which they say many people knew anyway.
I think it’s important to link Second Life names to statements on blogs. When people have to take responsibility for their writings relating to their SL reputation, especially to business, they behave better and stop doing the kinds of things we see Vincent Nacon do routinely.
Prokofy Neva
May 2nd, 2007
Brent, what would be the point of deleting those names? If they don’t log in, they don’t log in, and are no “drain on resources”. Who cares? Lots of people try SL and put it aside for the simple reason that they don’t have the right graphics card. I know I did. And it might be awhile before they get around to getting on.
Brent Recreant
May 2nd, 2007
How do you know? Do you work for SL.
Also today they redid there side of the AR system, look at the thread on the boards, everyone is jumping for joy.
And besides, what is the point of not deleting them, it’s a waste. Either way they still take up HD space, specially if they have 1000′s of inventory items.
Phantom
May 2nd, 2007
Prok, not really true, it doesn’t put any active strain on the servers, but the server has to search for your user account when you log in, that means it has to go through what is it now 2 million users (tho there are some search techs that cut the search down).
and lets say only one million users are still some what active (active at least once a month), this means there are 1 million users accounts that are eating up storage on the servers. more names to search through to find your account. not to say anything about the items in the inactive accounts.
so yes it doesn’t put any active stress on the servers because they aren’t logged in, it does cause a build up of trash.
I’m not to sure how LL does the log in, but I’m sure they are using some ways to cut the search time down (maybe by last name groups, as well as looking at the first letter of the first name).
but I don’t know if it would cause any noticeable difference if you took the inactive users accounts into off line storage.
Prokofy Neva
May 3rd, 2007
but the server has to search for your user account when you log in, that means it has to go through what is it now 2 million users
I’m finding this hard to believe. Surely the system would have something like a “short-term memory” set up where it goes to look first, of those items that log on every day, that it finds faster, a smaller set, if you will, it tries first. Only then after it searches that does it go fetching into the depths.
I often wish inventory search worked that way, anyway, with “short term quick” memory of things always in used and “long-term memory” of things mothballed.
Phantom
May 3rd, 2007
I’m sure the lindens are using some way to cut down on searching but, but in reality we’re talking about computer time frame not human, so like I said cutting down on the accounts my not show anything noticeable to the end user. but right now I can’t even log in for a half an hour after a crash, so yea, good times.
Leam Cunningham
May 3rd, 2007
“Um, can you tell the difference between revealing someone’s REAL LIFE NAME AND CALLING THEM AT HOME, and giving the first name of their SECOND LIFE NAME after they troll you repeatedly and grief you inworld and incite others to grief you inworld by spamming crap at you?
Guess not!
But hey, there is a BIG DIFFERENCE between putting out someone’s REAL LIFE NAME AND CALLING THEM AT HOME and telling the first name of their SECOND LIFE NAME which they say many people knew anyway.”
It’s still you giving out his private details, when he chose not to, in an attempt to incite action against him. I am not trying to equate the two situations, and I have no need to take a stab at that strawman.
Phantom
May 3rd, 2007
well at least she didn’t give out Nacon’s Key, or anything
Phantom
May 3rd, 2007
He?, sorry can’t tell gender by names that well
Jessica Holyoke
May 3rd, 2007
If someone starts an account but can’t access Second Life due to having the wrong graphics card, does it really affect the server space? Because at that point, all that avatar should have is the standard library inventory and not “thousands of items” in inventory.
Onder Skall
May 3rd, 2007
Prokofy,
I was honestly surprised to see you analysing my little philosophical rant. Don’t take me too seriously with that stuff… it’s just personal perspectives, and not directed at those too busy arguing to ponder these things.
Before I get into what you’ve said here, let me request, please, that you not make assumptions about my unstated agenda. Let’s just talk about the points raised, ok? If you want me to admit to something, let’s get that out of the way: EVERYBODY, I’M A BIG ASSHOLE. I SAY AND DO EVERYTHING FOR THE WORST REASONS. There. Now let’s talk about what the issues were…
1. I’m not at all surprised that you consider it important to give as good as you get, but I’m a very results-oriented person and I’m not seeing the big payoff there. You get a temporary adrenaline rush. Big deal. I want to move things.
Feeding people scorn makes them stop considering anything you say. You only make yourself irrelevant, your voice becoming a background noise whose content is rarely, if EVER, analysed for what it’s worth.
Striking powerfully involves clarity, brevity, and simplicity. Adding other elements weakens your blow.
2. Well, your assumptions about my personal issues set aside and ignored for now… so that we might actually deal with the issue at hand… Prokofy, you mean to tell me you live without regrets? You’ve never done anything you regret, ever? Look, this is how it works: we do something unfortunate that we feel justified in doing, awhile later it occurs to us that it wasn’t a great way to go, and then we’re faced with a decision: do we accept that it was wrong, or do we go with our original feeling on it?
If somebody comes in and starts screaming at us, it’s a lot more comfortable to assume the screamer is full of crap and we were OK the whole time. If we’re simply presented with the facts, and we’re not threatened, we can accept them. Badgering makes those facts unpleasant and makes us inclined to ignore or deny them.
I’m not saying anything earth-shatteringly insightful here.
3. The more simple somebody appears, the less accurately you are perceiving them. Even morons have layers. Denying this denies reality.
4. Well, the “we” was the people who weren’t busy screaming their heads off. (BTW, you quoted the punchline to my favorite joke.) You can disagree and argue without insults or pigeon-holing people, or even acknowledging their attempts at doing those things to you. You don’t even have to go through the effort of implying disrespect. All that stuff lacks content. That which lacks content does not shed light on the issue.