“Hi, I am a tv producer who works on a national morning show in the US. We are doing a segment on second life and looking for a story of someone who is on it and their partner who doesn’t understand it. We pay all travel and hotel costs to NYC. The segment is tomorrow so we need to move ASAP.
Thanks so much!”

Thanks for the advance notice, but I’m sure I won’t be taking a trip to New York to talk about how bad Second Life sucks. Even if I was still “on it”, I’m sure that my real life job wouldn’t appreciate me skipping out on them to be on TV… especially to be in a segment like this.

The television industry seems to be getting pretty desperate for stories, if they have to do stuff like this, in my opinion.

If anybody happens to catch this episode and gets it recorded, I actually would be interested in seeing how bad it is, though. Leave a link in the comments, if you do.

I was closely watching the change of command to see if I could notice any good changes that might come out of it, but sadly… I’m still waiting, and things are still sucking.

One of the things that caught my attention was how low the prices for mainland “property” has become. To think that I could pick up a 1024 sqm. plot for less than 8000 Lindens (under 3000 Lindens, if you look at the actual economic information, rather than what they’re telling people on the blog), is mind boggling. As I look at the other numbers, though, I don’t see that price going back up any time, soon.

The real point of this post is to say that I’m still around and SL still sucks. If any of you have anything that you’d like published, here… your stories about how SL sucks, first-hand accounts of your loss of real money because of SL, relationship troubles caused by SL, or anything else, click the “contact us” link, and let us know.

He hits home on a major trend that seems to be blanketing the residents of Second Life, lately. Many of the loyal users are “finally” starting to see what the SL doomsday prophets have been saying, all along.

“I still feel a bit nostalgic when I read the Herald or think about SL. I like Second Life a lot but I hate what is happening here. I have heard the cries of the ‘end is near’ for a good while now and never paid them much attention. I had always thought that it was coming from people who just didn’t understand how complex a platform like Second Life would be to perfect.

Since then I have been noticing a new trend where LL has become increasingly bold, ignoring the outrage of it’s residents and further alienating them. They seem intent on assuring their own destruction by driving away their most loyal user base. It is such a shame that they are ruining something that could be so great.”

Be sure to head over to the Herald and leave your comments on his Op/Ed article, there.

This is a big blow to Linden Labs “effort” to open source the viewer, since Nicholaz’s work on the source was considered to be at the forefront of the SL open source movement. Many people considered the “Nicholaz Edition” of the Second Life viewer to be one of the best.

His original “Moment of Truth” post is here.

Why are they trying to cater to these “big companies” when the majority of their customers are you and I?

The following quote was found here:

“According to the Financial Times, IBM and Linden Lab, the creator of Second Life, are to develop an enterprise-class virtual world to convince companies of the value of communicating through avatars and 3D environments. The joint project between Linden Lab and IBM will put parts of Second Life’s “Grid” platform behind IBM’s company firewall for greater security and host it on IBM Bladecenter servers for increased operational scale and stability. “We are responding to what our customers have been asking for: they see the value in Second Life but are very concerned about security and want [internal] conversations to stay behind the firewall,” said Neil Katz, chief technology officer of IBM’s Digital Convergence business.”

Reading through the “Unauthorized Use” page gave me a strange feeling that they had seen this web site (and most likely others like it) and realized that they could do nothing about the information on it. Section number 2 and number 5 of that page gave me a very bad taste in my mouth. They are trying to tell people that they cannot refer to “Second Life” by saying “2nd Life”, yet they are also saying that you are not “allowed” to register a domain name “2ndlife.com”. You can’t have it both ways, Linden Lab… sorry!

They are also saying that you cannot use a “modified” logo or even use a modified version of their (bogus) tagline, “Your World. Your Imagination.” Again, this is something that they’ll have a very hard time trying to enforce, since the modification of a logo and use as a parody is considered “fair use”.

Number 8, on that list actually mentions “fair use” and gives a link to The Fair Use Network, which they obviously didn’t read before making some of these things up.

What I find simply amazing is that Linden Lab would actually have the balls to do something like this at such a late stage in the game. There are thousands of web sites, news sites, in-world publications, and blogs that use all sorts of different ways to refer to Second Life. Now, they want you to think that they are “being nice” by giving everybody 90 days to change everything. Think about some of the larger Second Life news web sites and how long it will take them to change “everything” on their sites so that they aren’t violating the rules laid out in the “Proper Reference” section.

The people that have the most work to do, because of this change, are they people that have stuck with SL the longest. Now, they want their long-time fans (so-called residents) to suffer. I personally know one person that will now have to proof read and edit over 4000 story entries, so that their web site doesn’t violate anything. I’m not helping him…

As for this site… we’re not changing a thing. Before I even started this site and ever since, I’ve made sure that nothing here violates any copyright, and that everything contained on the site falls into fair use. If Linden Lab wants to argue differently, let them.

Although there is a limited amount of posts that can be commented on, it seems like people are just getting sick and tired of commenting for the purpose of other residents to read, rather than for LL to actually read them and respond. The amount of comments on the “commentable” blog posts is way down.

I’ve been seeing a lot of other blog posts and forums with statements about how bad Second Life sucks, also. There is now even a T-shirt that you can buy for your avatar from SL Exchange. Second Life is never going to become mainstream. The phrase “SL Sucks” seems to be getting very popular, however.

This site is still open to your suggestions, ideas, stories, and anything else that has to do with SL sucking, so go ahead and register to become an author and post your own.

Meanwhile, I’ll be doing something a little more interesting.

Just to show that I’m not making this crap up, check this out, too.

Wait!! Linden Lab wants your username and password for these other services? This is just like those “find your friends” pages on sites like MySpace and FaceBook. Please tell me that you’ve never entered that information on those sites. You did realize that they’re on “non-secure” pages… right!! Not only is it a stupid idea to enter that kind of information, when asked for it, but owners of sites that ask that kind of information, in my opinion, are being highly irresponsible.

Anyway, let’s pretend that you enter this information, anyway. When you do, it imports all of the addresses that you have in your address books at these various services. All of you GMail contacts, Yahoo contacts, and Hotmail contacts are sucked over to Second Life. Your boss, your parents, Aunt Betty and Uncle Phil… everybody else that you’ve sent or received mail from are matched to a database to see if a Second Life user had used that email to sign up.

Just imagine the surprise of the “once anonymous” users of SL. Who is your boss in Second Life? What do your parents do in SL? Your Aunt Betty and Uncle Phil own “what” island? Whoa!!

It’s not actually a “plan” to do this, and I seriously hope that it never becomes one. This is being called just a thought about something that might be able to get better retention. If you sign up and know somebody in-world, you’ll be more likely to stick around. Makes sense, but this is definitely NOT the way to do it.

If they really want people to “stick around”, why not just improve the platform, so that users don’t crash four times every damn hour. Fix it so that you can actually “see” the graphics. Fix all of the other technical and social problems of Second Life, and people might actually hang out for a while, Linden Lab.

I’m sure that Linden Lab doesn’t want all of their beta testers to realize the truth, which is of course, the reason for removing the link. The thing is, I’ve had some posts in the past that have been a LOT worse than the last one, as far as “hating” second Life, but I suppose when you start picking apart their business model and the way they’re “using” their residents, they want to censor that.

That’s their right. It’s their blog. It looks like when you start getting close to the truth is when they start sweating, though.

“If you have time, please download and help test these RC and Firstlook test clients - the more customer data we have on how these clients perform on your hardware and network configuration, the better we can fix and tune them before they hit prime-time, and please don’t forget to log any bugs you find in our Issue Tracker.”

Imagine any other company that you “pay” for the use of their software asking you to help them beta test. I understand how this could “help” and all that crap, but seriously… “Has it!?!”

A lot of the people in the comments seem to be oblivious to the fact that Linden Lab is asking paying customers to help beta test software. I won’t go any further into the comments, though, since they’re mostly “sucks” comments again, anyway.

Meta Linden has answered a couple questions in the comments, already. Just the fact that he/she (I’m not sure) did that might demote him/her from having the “sucks” tag after their link, here.

Even though the past week has been filled with more of the same (downtime, rolling restarts, logins not working), at least they are taking a little bit of time to explain to their users, what’s happening.

I realize that this isn’t a “normal” sucks post, but I did want to point out that the responses in the comments “are” being noticed. Thank you Sidewinder and Prospero.

You don’t work for Linden Lab, Bob. You don’t even live in the same country. I highly doubt that you’ve spent any real money on SL or ever will, in the future. Why do you insist that this blog is a complete waste of time, and that I have an unrealistic view of SL, yet you keep coming back to leave comments here? Isn’t “that”, in fact, a waste of time?

Now, I’ll say that I will never lock anybody out of this site or prevent them from leaving comments, here. I do request that you actually have something constructive to say, though, rather than being counter-productive, or attacking the only reason that this blog exists. This place is not called “SL Sucks” simply because it was the only URL available. It is all about any and every reason why SL sucks, and nothing more… no matter how big or small the reason.

If you can’t understand that, then there’s no use leaving a comment saying how much you think that I am too committed to highlighting the bad and closing my mind to situations where it doesn’t suck. If you do leave a comment, back it up with a little bit of substance, please, rather than revert to namecalling. If you’re gona’ start, though, don’t expect to be taken seriously, or for me to sit back and take it.

A little forewarning: Don’t get me started on those damn Canadians!

The last line in the latest blog post thank everybody for the great response to the Mono beta test. Funny… I haven’t seen any “great response”, at all. Where is this so-called “great response”, Babbage?

What is this? Seriously? What is the point? I suppose when it sucks that bad, you have to find something to do, but what exactly are they doing? Is it supposed to be some type of music video or just an example of how to beat a furry to death?

Miyaoka Hitchcock, please let us know. Honestly, this sucks.

For some reason, there may be people who received more or less of a stipend, depending on certain criteria. Not being sure what that criteria is, I’ll just adjust the number of residents that received stipends to ~400,000. This would bring the average stipend payment to avatars to about L$413. Maybe this number is too high or low, but let’s work with it, anyway, since it’s got to be “close”… right?

Now, consider how many people that you interact with on a daily basis. How many of them are NPIoF and how many are actually paying members of Second Life? Remember, you only get a stipend if you are a paying member. Normally, a large percentage of the avatars that you interact with are not paying members. Looking back up at the “Population” graph at the top of the page is when things get a little more interesting.

In January, 919,196 residents logged in. One thing I’d like to point out is that if people are going to pay $9.99 a month to play, they are going to log in more often that people who don’t pay, or NPIoF accounts. Assuming that all of the paying members logged on at least “once” during the month of January, we can see that just over half of the people that logged on were “free” accounts. That should mean that about 45% of the people that you interact with a “paying residents” of SL. Is that close? It’s not close, by far, for me.

About one out of every 10 avatars that I see is actually a paying member. About 10% of the population that I come in contact with actually pays Linden Lab to screw up their first life. Maybe I just hang out in the wrong places, and there are others that experience 90% of the people they come in contact with that are paying residents.

So, my question is, where are these 400,000 avatars? Where are these 400,000 people that continue to pay to be residents of Second Life, rather than flushing their money down the toilet for a better experience?

The “Total Residents” number actually reflects closer to what most users feel about the world, though. Only about 3.3% of the total residents receive stipends. When you see that only about 7.5% of the total residents had actually logged in during the month of January, you realize that not only are users leaving and never coming back, but there may be a large amount of paying residents who never actually log in, any longer, yet thier avatars still collect stipends.

Just look at the “Monthly Spending by Amount” graph, for example. 919,196 residents logged in, in December, but only 341,791 of them actually spent any money. Looking at that graph, do you see the problem? Only 37% of the people that logged in during the month of December spent any money, at all. The majority of them (238,921) spent less than L$5,000 which is about $17.50 USD. Keep in mind that it’s also a good bet that all of the In World Business Owners have “premium” accounts, so they are also collecting stipends. My results are also slightly skewed, since December is the last month we have economic data for, yet January is the last month that we have population data for. My results are actually a little generous.

Now, thinking about economics, for a bit, consider the statement, “the more you make, the more you spend”. Everybody knows that this statement holds true, so we can be sure that those “business owners” are spending money, also. Considering that, let’s subtract them from the total amount of users that spent money in-world, since essentially the transactions between one business owner and another cancel each other out in the “Total Customers Spending Money In-World” because the money had already come from a different source. We are left with 291,113 actual customers spending money in-world. We are left with 52,192 residents that spent more than L$5,000 in-world.

I will ask, again… where are the thousands of residents that are receiving these stipends? Are they still paying for something that they’ll never use again? Maybe these are all accounts that paid for a full year, yet decided somewhere within the year that they wouldn’t be coming back.

I guess I should also note that Linden Lab says this about the economic data that they provide: “While we hope to provide accurate and useful information, please note that we do not guarantee the accuracy of any information…”

If only 3.3% of the total customers I claim were paying customers, I wouldn’t guarantee anything, either.

UPDATED: Sometime in the 3 hours after I posted this, Frontier Linden updated the post to let people know that the 1.19.0.0 Release Candidate version has been fixed and can be tried.

It sounds like people who “accidentally” downloaded version 1.19.0.0 got caught in a vicious circle, when trying to revert back to the previous version. Prospero Linden acknowledged that the new client wasn’t supposed to be released and that there was a “glitch”, but offered no solution to those caught in the loop. Prospero’s comment came about 12 minutes after the problem was initially reported in the comments thread:

“Those who downloaded 1.19.0 RC client : that wasn’t supposed to be released yet, and was briefly offered because of a glitch. It should no longer be offered anywhere. Watch this space next week to find out if there is any more information forthcoming….”

With the latest blog post coming 20 hours after the initial report, there was still no solution offered to anybody caught in a vicious circle. I guess that “forthcoming information” is still coming? The comments of the post (and trackbacks) were closed, however, so if there are still residents that have been locked out of the grid because of the glitch, we won’t hear about it, there.

If you’ve been affected because of this little “oops” and are still having trouble, let us know in the comments, here. If you “were” having trouble, but got around it, leave a comment, as well, and tell others how you did it.

Picture this: You run a rental business (mall, apartments, houses, etc) and you have a rental server in your office. Outside of each unit that you rent (let’s say 100 units), you have a rental cube that people can click on for more information, or pay to begin renting. Suddenly, Linden Lab decides to upgrade to a new version, and without “any” forewarning, all of your rental boxes stop working. The identifying keys have all been truncated and they can no longer communicate with the server.

Do the rental boxes evict the current renter and return all of their items? Do they keep any record of what the renter has paid you, and how much time “was” remaining? Does the maker of the rental server and cubes have a fix for this?

What about all of the product vendors that do the same sort of thing? All of a sudden, the vendors can’t communicate with the product server to deliver the products. Let’s pretend that “Armanna” (Meg) was evicted from one of your rental units, earlier. She says “Hooooooray for Joppa!” and decides to go on with her Second Life by seeing what events are happening. She goes to the store and pays for a new dress and some new shoes and waits for the product to arrive in their inventory… and she waits… and waits… then she contacts the seller. Obviously, the shop owner is the one who put out a vendor that doesn’t work, right? Not only does the shop owner get upset at what the Lindens have done, but Armanna (Meg) also gets upset, because she really wanted a new outfit for that “Best In Formal” dance that starts in an hour. After the shop owner and Armanna work things out and bypass the vendor, though, she puts on her new dress and shoes and heads to the party, yelling “We love Linden Lab and we love Second Life! - Woot Joppa!”.

When she gets to the club, she meets up with a few friends and they decide to dance. They head over to the dance floor and click on the dance ball to start their dance animations… and they wait… and wait… When they realize that the dance ball no longer works because it’s using “pipe” characters in the description to control the various animations, they realize that they’ll just have to stand around all night. While her friends are standing around, listening to the music that they should be dancing to, Armanna (Meg) just “lays on the flooor cheeering and kicking and screaming for Joppa”. Such Fun!

Throughout this whole experience, Armanna (Meg) has crashed three times and has had to relog a couple more because of rolling restarts. Still, she thinks “LL and all the Linden’s do a great job, don’t lnock em! Keep it up Lindens!”. It sounds as though Armanna is not actually paying Linden Lab to have her fun in Second Life, but instead it sounds like Linden Lab is paying her. She’s the “only” one saying that “Negativity is not needed, feedback and suggestions should be welcomed : )“. What’s your story, Meg? … and if you “really” think that way, can I have some of those drugs you have, too? We’ll pass them out to all of the authors and people who leave comments, here at SL Sucks.

I still plan on posting the next Sucks Comments Weekly Wrap Up, next Wednesday, but I will try to narrow them down to the “best” (or worst, depending on your view) of them.

The last couple posts on Object Name and Description Changes and Wednesday Maintenance seem to contain nothing but “sucks comments”. There really is no use for me to repost all of the comments, here, in a weekly wrap-up. I have better things to do in my life than to repeat everything that they’re saying, there.

“For nearly 15 minutes yesterday, SecondLife experienced unprecedented stability.” (Read it all)

This whole week has been plagued with outages, rolling restarts, and the SL web site going down, all while Linden Lab tries to perform upgrades without actually bringing the whole grid down. The latest is that a rolling restart that started, today was “suspended” with only 30% of the regions having been complete. Once regions restarted, the reports of problems started rolling in.

Map Search is now “borked“, according to the latest blog post.

I’m sure we haven’t seen the end of the problems that this latest update will cause. It could be another week or two before they get the whole grid updated. In related news, it looks like Twitter is experiencing some of the same problems, and although Twitter’s service is free, it’s users aren’t standing for the bad service.

Maybe people that use Twitter should be more like people that use Second Life. They should just “expect” the bad service and connection problems. Wouldn’t life be easier for everybody if companies didn’t actually have to deliver what they advertise? In the same respect, I suppose that the computer that I just bought my kid should only be expected to work for him “at times”, and never really have everything working exactly right.

I’m honestly hoping that they get their shit figured out and after all of this updating and the problems with it, maybe things will run better for everybody. I “hoping”, but I’m not holding my breath, at all.