Sucks Comments Weekly Wrap-Up

General, Linden Labs

I decided to gather a few quotes from people saying how bad Second Life sucks, without really saying that it sucks. Looking at the amount of people saying things like this, and how often they are said, it’s really amazing how “this” site isn’t overflowing with frustrated Second Life residents. Here’s some random quotes from the past week, which can all be found on the Official Second Life blog:

In the Podcast with Joe Miller comments:

“Excusme me but who cares about these types of broadcast when the grid is in its most instable state since some time in November? It´s practically unplayable…Payments & Deliveries borked, tp´s borked…The sytem cann´t even retrieve a parcel key…

But hey Havok4 is going to improve everything. You know any system is just as good as it is rolled out & controlled by people. All I know is that since the early adopter program is being announced…NOTHING WORKS ANYMORE

Thanx again! Fix Your Product Now!”

In the No Tip of the Week Comments:

“Tip for you

Change the name from Second Life to Unstable Life to accurately depict the experience”

“Maybe it should be Second Death, since all we do is crash or get stuck or our client slows down so much that we can barely move.

If you crash in real life you don’t wake up again, which is a bad thing. If I turned my head too fast when looking at something I don’t fall over dead or have my neck break and my head roll off. SL is pretty much the buggiest platform I have ever seen and I love using it as examples for others who complain.”

“OK Torley…some of us know something about using SL and we would like a frank nd honest answer about what SL is doing to improve reliability. Just tell us, please.”

“Ok, i know this isnt the right subject but ive seen the other blogs talking about problems logging in to the website and second life itself and the most frustrating thing is that it says its resolved when for me it isnt. I havent been able to access anything but this blog site for two or three days. So seeing as i cant get onto any other part of the site or contact Linden Labs i’d thought i’d write it here in the vague hope they might actually see it and realise that people still cant get on.

Its really hard to run a business on SL when it doesnt work.”

“… here is a tip for you don`t even bother trying support because they down too. shakeshead 3 1/2 years and thisis what the game turning into? a pile of parts with no real people to do they work. sad sad sad………..”

“Login to the website to see missing pictures and atotal lose of the page. But it did say 55,000 in world. There you go, so much for the recorded number online some doo doo posted inthe blog so honored do call. Priceless don`t you think :/ Again showing how much lies are being said these days on sl.”

In an effort to not completely fill the front page with the numerous comments like this, you’ll have to view the rest of this entry on it’s own page:

… continuing…

“55000 online really OOOH I wonder how many are bots of one sort or another…. For all we know LL could be boosting the said figure with bots of their own, the figure logged on over the last 60 days plummetted by over 200,000 if you noticed.”

“Is there trouble with that Havok4 early starter thingie or what is happening? It hasn´t been such a bad sl experience since 2 months now. TP´s not working, payments & deliveries failing on mass, stuff not rezzing temporarily.”

All of the comments for the early week web site problems were turned off, because obviously, most of the comments would belong over here on this web site. The next post that contains comments is the “Got Opinions on Voice?” post. Here’s some of the comments from that thread:

“Quite possibly the worst survey yet, most of the features proposed were gimmicks and no real helpful functionality, like possible event functions (certain people can talk set by group/chat/parcel admin, then other people can be selected to talk)

Or how about an integrated voice program instead of the one which doesn’t work on most PCs because SecondLife.exe consumes all the system resources.”

“Why are human resources allocated to new feature surveys while the jira has 7 unallocated, open show-stopper bugs (defined as ‘only the most severe confirmed issues demanding immediate attention) in the SVC tree and almost 100 unassigned show-stoppers *shudder* in the VWR tree?”

“focused feedback which means “we dont care wght the customer wants”
there truly needs to be a couple of those there who wont stop making bad stuff tha lags us down like mad and have them look at and actually READ the mail…IF there was a place to send it
Voice bites so far leave it alone stabilize SL stop implementing for a week will ya?!!!”

“yes so it finally comes to light that LL is wanting to charge both island owners AND residents for this voice chat…
this grid took a performance hit when voice was introduced, despite LL’s promises to the contrary.
please just put voice aside and start working on the things that really need the attention.”

“Voice is useless. Nothing that can be done with voice cannot be done with text. Fix the grid stability, tp and asset server issues. Stop working on “features” that will take more resources and further degrade performance and fix the multitude of issues that affect everyday activity like…moving around, building, commerce, etc…”

“LL… your programming sux like a Kirby. I hate to smack you upside the head, but I’ve never seen such a tiddly winks job of coding and system management. If other computer companies ran like this, they’d be out of business. If you had any competition, you’d be out of business. I think you’d be embarassed to run a company like this. “Bleeding edge” my tooter. You can’t even handle chat and inventory.”

“Haven’t you guys learned by now? SL will never be stable, the Lindens just don’t care about that and possibly couldn’t do it even if they did care. These chumps can’t even keep their web server up!@ They just want more features to advertise and flashy looking skies for their promotional screenshots. We’ve had the same bugs and server issues since 2005! Now we’ve got lagy sims from voice servers and clients that won’t even work for half of the 20% of SL users who even care about Voice.
Seriously, sayonara, I’ve had enough of this garbage.”

And in the Mono Beta Launch comments:

“While I am all for anything that makes SL run faster and LSL work better, seems there is a lot of things being added to a system that is having trouble at the most basic levels (chat, inventory, teleporting, asset servers, group notices, logging in, etc etc). Same complaint has gone on for the last 3 years: new stuff is fine, but fix the foundation before painting the walls.”

“Hey, I am posting this here seeing you guys stopped taking comments on the upgrade (laughs at that term) to the servers.

It is 5:45pm EST and I still cannot get on SL….fix it now!!!!”

“I just wish LL would acknowledge the existing persistent problems, list them on a blog and then come up with a real action plan to fix them. Crash on TP, Shoes and Hair up Ass would be a great start.”

“The person who said “Fix the foundation before painting the walls” is right. The Foundation - i.e the main grid and the central gaming/drive engine - need major upgrades in order to cope with the game volume. People are experiencing more and more crashes and other such problems because the foundation is old. Why can’t Linden see this? Are they so enamoured of they’re own glory that they can’t see the truth? Please Linden, before upgrading anymore “novelties” fix the essential problems.”

“Mono will be great, but unless LL starts correcting issues and problem now. Things will just get worse. Nobody like depressing chat about any issue. But After what we been going thur these past few months. Its nowonder people are so upset. I don`t want SL to fail, but if we just shut our eyes and spin 3 times saying ” EVERYTHING IS WONDERFUL EVERYTHING IS ROSES” then you better start looking for another game to play.”

From the comments on the post that announces that Full Region Auctions are Back:

“Hmmm….there is still so much land for sale….and the servers are bad….and the lag is high…why are we introducing more land now? Fix what is current before you add on please.”

“This seems to come just in time to add prolbems to the recent exodus in the past week of ppl abandoning their or putting it up for sale. It looks like Island owners will feel the pain or loss of more land and ppl leaveing. Events have recently taken a downturn, i think this is going to be a huge mistake, Island owners are covering the land fees for much unsold land. Lets watch and see what happens now.”

“This must be in response to all those threats to sell land LL received from people like myself who have had such horrid performance in SL that they can no longer justify paying land tier fees. Seems like a pretty mean thing to release new land when there are so many plots still for sale. Guess now I’ll have to keep my land and continue to pay tier fees while unable to actually stay logged into SL long enough to enjoy it. Gee thanks LL.”

“Cant build, cant TP without loosing everything up my A@se, cant even change my f@cking shoes ans you want me to even consider bying more land! Koff!

I would so love to expand the amount of land I own, your tier system is so screwed I can’t afford 1 more mtr without doubling my tier payment and the platform is a stable as…..well LOL

Ummmmmm…. what was that song by Bob Marley called again?????

Ah I remember….EXODUS”

“This is a huge blow to SL economy. Those of us who have invested in private estates will be the one’s who feel the pinch…I predict many will abandon land because they can no longer afford outrages tier fees. Are you prepared for the consequences LL?”

“This is clearly unethical and irresponsible behavior on the part of Linden Labs and land flippers who don’t even have the sense to collect tier after resale. But what comes around, goes around and the door will definately hit them in them all in the a$$ on the way out.”

Then, they decided to Upgrade The Server Code:

“Stability fixes? Sounds good if it will actually come to pass, but you’ve been promising stability for years and haven’t provided. Stability before flashy features and making up arbitary rules to apease the moral minority. I’ll keep preaching that until you get it.”

“Crashing during TP about 50% of the time, logging back into a completely frozen or stuck AV resulting in another relog… Random complete computer freeze ups resulting in a hard reboot. BTW crashing in mid TP does not generate a crash log. I always submit a crash log when prompted… I’ve no response yet that would indicate anyone is even tracking any of that data at all. If they were, they would see that within the past two months I’ve been crashing at least five times during the time I’m logged into SL. If they were counting the hours I’m logged into SL, they would also note it has dwindled substantially because my performance in SL is so horrid these days, all I can do is sit there and pull out my hair when I’m in SL. I’m very sorry that I even have a Premium Account and even more sad that I’m paying for Land Tier in an obviously Beta SL.”

“Why dont you upgrade a real fix like the bug exploit where someone spams you with 1000+ drop down blue boxes on the right top corner of your screen to prevent newbies from crashing your client?? Im tryin to sell and build here and nothing is being done about the serious bugs. Lameness if you ask me. Pure LAMENESS! =(((”

“Can I just add that one of the reasons why I don’t pay for a premium account is because of the lack of stability of the overall system. A condition that would not change given a premium account.

Stabilize the system before adding enhancements. Get rid of the memory leaks in the client. PROVIDE SUPPORT FOR BASIC AND PREMIUM ACCOUNTS until the product is actually working.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it… stability…ROFL best joke i’ve heard this year LOL”

“503 SERVICE NOT AVAILABLE
Will service be available tomorrow after the rolling re-start?
Linden Labs?
Helloe? Anyone at the helm?
Second Life is dead.”

“One step forward and two steps back. I am now crashing almost 50% of the when Tp-ing. This is BS. Stop screwing around with new stuff and fix the stuff you already have that doesn’t work. TP-ing is as basic in SL as Breathing is in RL and you have screwed this one up royally. And its not just me. Its everyone around me as well. And before the wanna-be tech geeks question the system I am running, I have a mega system fitted with all the more than recommended bells and whistle. Its SL, not me.
FIX THE DAMN TP.”

“New features? Can we get the current ones working first? Little things like inventory disappearing, not being able to teleport, you know. the usual stuff that’s been broken since time began.”

“Forgive me if I’m less than enthusiastic about this “upgrade,” both in light of all that I’ve lost because of it and in light of the fact that the awkward clumsiness with which it has so far been implemented bodes ill for the final results.

I suppose it’s probably too much to ask that you actually fix what you destroyed.”

“Your “customer service” is a BIG honking joke! You don’t give a damn about ANY of your residents, but you sure as hell do not mind triple billing me for advertising my businesses in your search/ ad spaces.”

“you know… i stopped logging in to the game because it was extremely flakey (crashes, services not available, etc) and after selling my land I left my store open… so now every once in a while I come and transfer money out - but for the past week or two its been a crap shoot since you can’t even keep a web server running. Jesus.”

“That’s 125 residents so far complaining…this is getting beyond a joke…before anything else is added, the stability of this ‘game’ needs to be looked at good and proper, find a fix and do it, until then I for one am not spending any more of my real money on this.”

“Nice job folks. Can’t even log in.

After 8 years, a person would think a company would have its act together. Pitiful. Unprofessional. Sad.”

Then, after a few more posts where the comments were turned off, they tell us about the “Rolling Restarts on Wednesday, Jan. 30“:

“Service degradation for the last week has been quite concerning, I think I’d be interested in knowing exactly what the engineers have been doing to cause all this cause whatever it is…it hasn’t helped. And everything thats being said publicly doesn’t really indicate any reason for it.

Whats more, Concierge isn’t even really in the loop. And if Concierge isn’t in the loop…then the estate owners of Second Life aren’t in the loop and thusly we have a lack of communication that is quite unprofessional.

Someone in engineering needs to start talking to someone that deals with users. Plain and simple.”

“When Cory was shown the door, I said to my group that either he was the one holding things together and they’d fall apart, or he was the one keeping it busted and it would finally get fixed. The past few weeks makes me believe Cory was holding things together…”

“Everyone here seems to have really short memories. SL has always had problems with network performance and stability for YEARS. It’s been the same crap everyday for the past 4 years at least. There’s been problems long before this Linden blog page existed.”

“Ever since the last round of updates and rolling restarts life in SL has gone from almost tolerable to downright frustrating. Contently crashing, Flying or walking into oblivion at every sim crossing, scripts faltering with unexplainable lag, TP’s failing, regions unavailable, arriving in regions all ruth’ed, with missing or misplaced attachments. And most importantly failure of even the simplest of purchases with transaction timeouts and stale transfer requests. I think its time that SL support stop burring its head in the sand and acknowledge these problems and stop the constant push for “New Features” until we get what’s in place working. And I don’t mean support saying “Its Working” I mean real in-world testing buy the residents and land holders in real SL situations.”

“The 503 error problem is still unresolved even though it was posted as resolved long ago. This is effecting the webs site, forums and in-world searches and who knows what else behind the scenes. Somehow doing a rolling restart with an unstable network infrastructure does not seem wise.”

“Forget that we are customers paying for a subscription, or even for stable server hosting, in the case of island/land owners…Can you not get it through your heads that this is not a game for a good portion of your “residents?” It is a BUSINESS, and when performance suffers, WE LOSE MONEY.
It’s great that you’re finally trying to focus on stabilizing the software and making improvements, but when is LL going to hire someone who understands proper QA and Release procedures, and give them some power to actually do their job?
Hearing “aw, shucks, we’re sorry; it wasn’t supposed to do that!” just doesn’t cut it anymore. It’s not enough to simply admit your mistakes, it’s time someone steps up to the plate and actually does something to correct them.”

“You must be new here. Service has degraded for the last week? Try the last THREE YEARS! What is so surprising about anything this week? As long as I can remember, SL has had WEEKLY outages and service interuptions. THESE CLOWNS CAN’T EVEN KEEP A WEB SERVER UP!
Screw it, I’m tired of it. Not sinking another penny into this farce.”

So that’s it for this weeks “Sucks Comments”, directly from the Second Life blog. This is actually the first of these that I plan on doing. Each week, I plan on re-posting all of the best “sucks” comments that I can find on their blog, just to highlight the fact that I’m definitely not the only one who thinks like this.

This Second Life Sucks web site is meant to be a place where anybody who feels this way can post. The fact is that there’s plenty of people who “could” be posting here, besides me.

Malignant Narcissist @ January 30, 2008