Camping Chairs: Slowly But Surely, SL Catches up to TSO
by Alphaville Herald on 12/11/05 at 11:52 pm
Uri and Prok earning big bucks doing what they do best: nothing!
Ever so slowly Second Life is becoming more like TSO. We’ve had the mafias. We’ve had the gnome building tables. But now we can make bucks just by sitting in a chair and doing nothing. It’s a win win situation. Noobs get paid for doing nothing, and evil land barons like Prokofy Neva score big time Dwelloper awards! I will say this. Those Camping Chairs don’t pay enough; my ass got sore before I made 10L.
RB
Nov 13th, 2005
Pay for hours in T afk SO or pay for dwell in SL. There is no difference. I see what your getting at Uri.
in SL tho, 1 town still has more activity and entertainment than the entire TSO “world’ . Kill the 3D interactive chat room already. Passive lazy housewives social activity.
- RB.
Cocoanut
Nov 13th, 2005
Ha ha RB – “Kill the 3D interactive chat room already. Passive lazy housewives social activity.”
You mean so they will stop being social and get back into the kitchen and rattle them pots and pans like they should be doing? lol
coco
RB
Nov 13th, 2005
Depends. At least it wouldn’t take 10 hours of nothing to skill up for. oh god the memories. T afk SO should be a graveyard cause all the skill houses are as quiet as tombs. Only changes every 40 mins when someone says “food plz” , “thx” and nothing more.
- RB.
Aliasi Stonebender
Nov 13th, 2005
Said it before on the forums, will say again. Nothing wrong with the chairs, but ye gods, I dont’ see any damned way the people putting them out are making anything out of it.
(With exceptions like, say, the stores that are keeping chairs out. That’s actually kind of clever, since people who might just come for a single item and leave are enticed into staying for a bit…)
Cocoanut
Nov 13th, 2005
You oughta be there NOW, if you wanna talk graveyard, RB!
They finally made it so people can move. I was wanting them to consolidate the cities, but this enables the players to consolidate them for themselves – mostly to AV, BF, JP, and, I think one other, I forget.
Last night for Simball in IH there were:
Us playing Simball (10 of us).
Eight roomies botting in one money house (as they were the night before, and what they were botting FOR, I have no idea).
25 other people.
One person said to me, “I wish they would just cancel the game already so I could save the money.” I know the feeling. But I still need it to see friends, play Simball, and have a place to go if and when my SL forum enemies manage to get me banned off the forums and thus the game, for being such an unwholesome influence on everyone, apparently.
I volunteered my size-8 lot in JP for Simball, and so we arranged that. Now at least when we play it, it won’t be in quite such an empty city!
coco
Ayumi
Nov 13th, 2005
Please forgive the newbie question, but what is TSO?
As for the chairs themselves, I think they’re a pointless waste of time and resources. I say make Lindens the less-boring way: save what you do get (allowance, referal rewards, etc.,) and get a blasted job-like IRL. To me, sitting in a chair in Second Life and getting paid for it is as stupid as doing so in real life. (Not to mention how many campers use hacks or whatnot to keep their character from timing out, which is also stupid and pointless.)
Urizenus
Nov 13th, 2005
TSO = The Sims Online — a catatstrophic failure of an online game produced by Electronic Arts Corporation. The story of which is coming soon to a bookstore near you!
We should all go back and report on the final days, don’t you think?
Mister
Nov 14th, 2005
Hay you could always work down the mines of Minerva! Newbs get 7L$ for each iron ore mined (although you need a backpack for 50L$ to get started) at least this is real work (when I say real I know I don’t mean real, but real in SL real!).
RB
Nov 14th, 2005
Yes, many a tale and scandal still to be told. I stopped logging in back on start of June myself.
Coco – Avatar moving does not help the game. As i said previously, it just spreads the boredom round easier. To have an active vibrant (as opposed to an afk treadmill where progress is effortless automatic) community you need to have everyone concentrated in the same few areas.
Say you have 100,000 players in a game. And you have enough servers for 300,000 players. That’s bad.
How bout if you had enough servers for only 150,000 players? That’s good. Big groups of people are always around at anytime of anyday. and there’s still space for future growth.
Conclusion: TSO infastructure is way underpopulated and has been for a long long time. It needs 5 cities + TC. not 10 cities + TC.
5 cities with say roughly 10K in each is much better than a random smattering over 10. Leaving some places with 15 – 20K and some with less than 5K. A very quiet city *pause* *crickets chirp* *wind howls* *unpause* is not a good place. in a game.
I don’t think it’s any suprise why Tigger (PR rep) and Kyle (game dev) left thier dead end jobs there for much bigger projects.
- RB.
Tasty Tapioca
Nov 14th, 2005
I see what most are saying but I think they have benefits here and there as well. For me when I’m dabbling in paintshop pro or something, sitting in those chairs usually gets me enough money to pay for my uploads when I’m all done. Before I didnt get paid a thing while doing it.
As for ‘hacks’, I think you have a small mis-view of the term. The anti-AFK script has been around for a long time. If it was a hack as mentioned, the Lindens would have put a stop to it.
I dont see SL becoming a graveyard of zombie sitters as there is to much to do in SL as compared to TSO. I think its sad it will suck in newbies like ‘clubs’ in SL do but with time they will actually wise up (well… most do anyways, some never learn) and realize what a waste of time it is and could be making money doing something else or actually creating stuff.
Cocoanut
Nov 14th, 2005
You’re wrong, RB. You obviously haven’t played TSO in ages!
It needs ONE city, plus TC, not ten.
And avatar move does help. It allows people to congregate better (albeit not as well as consolidating into one city), and that is exactly what they are doing. It also avoids the problem of people raising hell cause their city was deleted.
You and I are saying exactly the same thing. I started campaigning for consolidating the cities about a year ago.
I agree, it’s no surprise Tigger and Kyle left, and – way before them – that other guy, what was his name?
But then, you know – nothing we ever said did any good, cause they pulled most of the support for the game long about winter of 2003, I believe it was – when it was apparent that the release hadn’t immediately garnered them the numbers they were expecting.
coco
coco
Marsellus Wallace
Nov 14th, 2005
Who the hell is going to sit 5 minutes to earn $2L thats $24L an hour, $576 per full 24 hours. For 7 days @24 hours thats $4032. Hardly worth it.
Marsellus Wallace
Join the Mafia and make that much in 5 minutes and still sit on your ass. LOL
Marsellus Wallace
Nov 14th, 2005
Oh and Tigger?? Don’t get me started… Fughedaboudit!
Marsellus Wallace
Tigger Quote of the Day “Please stop role-playing Mafia, you’re going to get me into trouble!”
Kiss
Nov 14th, 2005
It appears that Tigger was fired from her position at SOE last week.
Prokofy Neva
Nov 14th, 2005
Re: “We should all go back and report on the final days.” Gosh, yes. What would be an appropriate way to do this? Well I will get back to my bar and…bar at Flamingo Court soon and reconnoitere, if nothing else to take some snaps of my beloved doggie, ADogMorePreciousThanLifeItself. It’s not REALLY dying is it??? When I was there recently it seemed overflowing with new people and lots happening.
Marsellus Wallace
Nov 14th, 2005
Randy Farmer was the other guys name I beleive Coco. He was a joke and a half and Tigger’s supervisor. He had the common sense of Jeff Brown and the customer service resolve of Tigger aka Diana Maglicio (sp).
Marsellus Wallace
aka JC Soprano formerly of Alphaville
Cocoanut
Nov 14th, 2005
Might as well have camping chairs. You can’t do anything in the dang game anyway.
Every time I turn around, my skirt is missing again, and I’m looking at my underpants. I’m sick of that.
Every time I turn around, my own signs are BRAND NEW to me! Like I’d never seen them before! And won’t again, for a minute or so! Ditto with half the stuff I’ve built. To say nothing about other people’s signs, vendors, etc.
The Lindens say, don’t worry, we aren’t done working on these issues. At the same time, they are asking for bug reports for things that aren’t bugs, but a new way of life, everywhere! Some of the forum regulars advise, “Get used to it, we were spoiled in 1.6 anyway. The things that are better [whatever they may be] are worth it.” I figure the truth is somewhere between the two, so I’m not holding my breath for the game ever to be as good as it was in 1.6.. I’m willing to be pleasantly surprised, though!
Never one to move very fast in SL anyway, given my computer, I now move in really strange fashions. Much further than I intended, and not from pressing the arrow key. Or into the ground. Or not at all.
If people can’t move, why not sit there in chairs? At least you’re being productive and making some money.
Can’t play sports. Rides at amusement parks are borked, too, last I heard.
At least I have fun playing Simball in TSO still. It was really kind of refreshing to play Simball the other night, and actually GO where I intended to go; see everything I was looking at, and actually be able to do something ACTIVE. I didn’t build anything, but I bet it would have been refreshing for that to work like it was supposed to, too.
And even if you are looking for something to do, the Lindens have helpfully removed the “events” button and replaced it with “build.” This prevents new players from immediately clicking “Events” and getting excited by all there is to do in the game. Very few new players come into the game not realizing you can build in it.
Doesn’t matter what people come up with to do, anyway, as the haut du monde on the forums are quick to point out how low-brow whatever it is is.
I was in the events group while it lasted, and saw this first-hand. You’d think the whole future of the SL world was contingent on making sure no one managed to put too many Bingos, Slingos, Tringos, yard sales, grand openings, or T & A contests into the events calendar.
The events calendar is probably one of the best things SL has going for it. But – if certain snobs get their way – a lot fewer events would appear on that calendar. Adding categories didn’t really pacify them, either. They want those events they don’t like GONE, period. Or at least, out of sight. Hence – the events button was removed. Don’t want all those newbies searching for operas and literary salons to be run off by seeing things like “Bingo.”
I can still build, but it is a much more time-consuming process than before. Textures don’t show up. Things you could once do by switching from prim to prim, you now have to get out of edit to do. Numbers act funny; things won’t stay where they are put, etc.
So maybe these chairs represent less the TSO-ifying of SL than they represent the inability to do anything else anyway. Either thanks to 1.7 and/or thanks to the fact that SL is, in fact, limitedto largely building, scripting, and dealing in land. There really isn’t much other way to make money, aside from selling your body in some form or other.
It really doesn’t matter whether people come up with Tringo, or money balls, or chairs with movies – those on the forums anxious to prove to everyone how cultured they are will be swift to put it down.
Of course, the chairs ARE lame in their way. But they are also adaptive, inventive, and serve a definite purpose. And they are lame less due to their nature than due to the circumstances that inspired their creation – no variety of ways to make money, limitations on sports, etc., and too hard to move around and see to do what there is to do.
If it the TSO-ifying of SL, then it is being TSO-ified for the very same reasons as TSO – due to the game itself. TSO encouraged afk-ness with the skilling system; SL encourages it by making the game physically hard to play and limiting what you can do in it.
Icoco
Marsellus Wallace
Nov 14th, 2005
Oh yes in regards to moving cities. That’s stupid. Consolidation is the way to go. Now you’re going to have people going into other cities as other players creating clones. Clones were always a problem in TSO and the moving cities just gives the cloners another way of harrassment. In addition, you cannot expect to have a good in-game based economy unless you just have 1 city.
Marsellus Wallace
Just my thoughts
Cocoanut
Nov 14th, 2005
No, it wasn’t Randy – it was some guy from way back there at the beginning. Name me some names, and I’ll remember which it was, lol.
coco
RB
Nov 14th, 2005
Right. And i bet the entire current populattion could fit in one big city too. 40K? 30K? Who knows.
- RB.
Cocoanut
Nov 14th, 2005
I’ll go in and estimate soon, RB.
coco
Marsellus Wallace
Nov 14th, 2005
Many people can fit on a city if they allocate their servers and resources appropriatly. EA Games fumbled at TSO like a teenage boy fumbles for a girls panties. I don’t think they really knew what they were doing, but knew Sims was a successful franchine and so were MMORPG’s. I don’t think EA ever once took into account social and boredum problems when they made TSO. Anyway, Coco, I have lots of names. The key players over at EA though were Randy Farmer who was pretty much the top dog when it comes to TSO. He was in charge of it all. There was Diana Magliccio (sp) aka Tigger who was community rep/amateur PR person. There was Kyle, who knew what he did besides program a bit and talk shit lol Other than that their were a number of people behind the scenes, but other than Jeff Brown there was no one of concern or value.
It’s my understanding too that Randy got Fired and Tigger quit before she could get fired. That’s just hearsay though.
Marsellus Wallace
Paraphrased Randy Farmer quote of the day “I support Tigger 100% since she is my employee and I do not care that you are the customer and have a valid concern/complaint.”
Urizenus
Nov 14th, 2005
haha, I talked to Randy Farmer a couple weeks ago. He remembers you fondly, JC. Not.
Cocoanut
Nov 14th, 2005
No, it was this guy from WAY back at the beginning, a guy who had some kind of a nickname, too – something along the lines of “the killer” but NOT that. The name is on the tip of my tongue – you’d know it. A top guy.
Anyway, if you want to talk about fumbling, let’s talk about SL. I haven’t given up on SL whatever. I’ve even tiered up!
But I fear that 1.7 is going to break it. Be, possibly, the peak of it. If they don’t fix stuff. Game’s no good if you can move and can’t see.
Someone on the SL Forums referred to those unhappy with 1.7 as “whiner noobs.” Typical attitude of several on the forums. But I do know this much: If they don’t fix it, this game is a goner. Gotta give them time; more time than usual, apparently. So I’m not giving up. Nonetheless, this particular update is a pretty bad one to be going through, at this stage of the game.
Even worse, some people actually seem to HOPE tol drive others away. They simply don’t like the “masses” coming in, with all those typical mass expectations – you know, like equal opportunity for everyone. Masses who supposedly fail to take into account the “unique specialness” of SL as it was before all of us arrived.
I don’t see any dichotomy whatsoever with putting into place systems that enable equal opportunities for everyone, while still maintaining the friendliness and politeness that epitomizes virtually all SL employees. Even accessibility to the Lindens needn’t disappear entirely, or even substantially, due to increasing population.
There are many vocal players who are doing their dead-level best to drive off anyone who doesn’t agree with their views of things, and no comment is ever too low, too insulting, or too stupid, to that end. (Which drives off readers just by reading them.) Unfortunately, those views often reflect – or directly express – the desire that the game NOT grow if it means such simple concepts as equal opportunity must accompany it.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume the Lindens want the game to grow; they want more residents; and they want more premium accounts. 1.7 isn’t helping it. The Lindens also fumble big-time (and virtually criminally) in their handling of the forums, and that one’s biting them on the butt worse than they probably realize.
coco
Marsellus Wallace
Nov 15th, 2005
Oh I bet Randy Farmer had fond memories of me lol
Marsellus Wallace
Fughedaboudit!
Marsellus Wallace
Nov 18th, 2005
Just re-reading some stuff here. What do you mean by your last comment of virtually criminally Coco?
Marsellus Wallace
Cocoanut
Nov 18th, 2005
I mean – I have not received protection from behavior that would not be allowed to happen against me in other venues. Protection expected in civilized places, and promised by the meaningless TOS. The report system doesn’t work. To say the least.
coco
chicki
Dec 6th, 2005
Coco grow up. You’re an adult, start acting like one instead of such a cry baby. All you do is complain about your “mistreatment” on the forums, when you’re not crowing about your shitty house being a linden winner and top of it’s genre.
And if you want sl to run smoothly, go get a better video card.It’s really not rocket science. You could get a decent one for about 150 now. The prices have come down.