Update on Search and TP issues
Sunday, January 14th, 2007 at 11:09 AM by: claudialinden[6:08 pm PST] Search functionality has been returned. We expect to see improvement in teleporting issues. Thank you for your patience today.
[4:45 pm PST] The regions are back up now. Search features are still disabled. We’ll be continuing to investigate performance problems and will keep you updated.
[3:56 pm PST] In an effort to improve the performance of teleports across the grid, we are going to rebalance our bandwidth to some simulators in our co-location facilities. This will entail taking 164 regions off line for 30 minutes and bringing them back up on a new circuit. We will start this process at 4:00 pm PST so we should be complete with this operation by about 4:30 pm PST.
[3:25 pm PST] Search functions are currently disabled while we work to reduce a spike in database load. Investigations into problems with teleporting continue. Thanks for your continued patience.
[1:17 pm PST] Our technicians are continuing their investigations– unfortunately we don’t have an ETA at this time. Thanks for your continued patience.
[11:09 am PST] We’re disabling Search for Places while we work on reducing the database load. Thanks for your patience. If you are experiencing difficulties with teleporting, try reducing your attachment load: remove a HUD, bling, or prim hair and try again. We’re working on returning full search functionality as soon as possible.
January 14th, 2007 at 11:12 AM
Forget teleporting, I can’t even cross a sim boundry on foot today.
January 14th, 2007 at 11:13 AM
Well RPing certainly gets more entertaining when you can’t walk, and half your chat text goes missing and the other half is wildly delayed.
January 14th, 2007 at 11:13 AM
detaching all and TPing is fine, but then the attachments won’t attach again. freezes and crashes and friendlist not working and IM’s timing out…and even trying to log back in and getting a 503 CANNOT CONNECT…just seems like there are way too many more problems now than when i first started in SL.
/me sighs heavily
January 14th, 2007 at 11:15 AM
Please also look at the money transfer problems.
Also.. it would be nice if LL were to identify and FIX the actual issues causing these problems instead of attacking them with band-aids and duct tape whenever they pop up.
Oh.. I almost forgot.. the HELP REQUEST feature is not functional either at this point.
January 14th, 2007 at 11:17 AM
yea…i have another problem..cant log in, and get “unable to resolve domain name “userserver.agni.lindenlab.com” message.
All others parts of my network work fine…so seems to be something wrong with sl. I crashed…and now cant log in
January 14th, 2007 at 11:19 AM
Perhaps you should consider investing in some proper hardware (i.e. solid state harddisks and the like) and some knowledgable database specialists. This is happening way too often.
January 14th, 2007 at 11:23 AM
Another issue….. I have no body!!! Only thing youe can see is hair and accessories. What am I invisible now? Please fix skins!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
January 14th, 2007 at 11:25 AM
How about fixing this instead of giving us a “workaround?” region borders aren’t crossable. TPing doesn’t work. Even FLYING in a ship doesn’t work right now.
THOSE issues are more important to fix than search.
January 14th, 2007 at 11:27 AM
I can’t even attach an item on my island. It says “Attempt to rez object failed.”
January 14th, 2007 at 11:31 AM
GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR…..that’s all i can say. Iced in, and SL troubles are enough to hack anybody off.
January 14th, 2007 at 11:33 AM
As others have begun to notice, 20k+ people the system goes screwy.
How bout reduce the camp chair alt load?
January 14th, 2007 at 11:34 AM
can’t log in. logged out because all sl sim host activity had ceased. perhaps the grid status needs to be set to offline since sl is, effectively, offline.
January 14th, 2007 at 11:36 AM
finally got in after 10 minutes. sl is unable to keep track of last location now. and no cant get to where i need to be because teleporting is inoperative attachments or no attachments
January 14th, 2007 at 11:36 AM
Claudia, I’m not the only one who thinks that the current situation is due to a problem LL may have with either the classes of servers or the co-location system. Some sims have no problems and others do. So I must assume that this situation may not be resolved until Tuesday since Monday is a public holiday in the US. Please let me know if I (we) are correct or wrong in my (our) assumptions. Thank you.
January 14th, 2007 at 11:40 AM
We’ve just hit 25,000 users online (25,002 to be exact). This must be the heaviest load SL has ever had, so problems are to be expected…
January 14th, 2007 at 11:42 AM
25k+ “Players” online; hmm think about closing the login temporary!
January 14th, 2007 at 11:44 AM
Linden Lab … you clearly are saying this is a database load problem. You have almost 25000 people logged in concurrently right now. Your latest resident statistics clearly show that very few of them are paying you anything to be logged into Second Life. Isn’t it about time that you throttle the database access for non-premium accounts - rather than disable search functionality? Why can a non-paying resident have 20,000 inventory items, and race all over the grid and download textures and sounds at the same speed at a premium member? I am paying you over 300 a month. I am unable to do anything on my island. My business has been effectively shut down for more than a day … and over the last two months we have seen at least one day like this every week. Stop shutting down searching and start to realize that you cannot offer the same level of service to every single resident when the vast majority of them pay you nothing for their time on the grid.
January 14th, 2007 at 11:45 AM
Can’t even load website. Can’t log in. Last night I could not TP into Curious Kitties. This game is isn’t worth playing when the issues keep piling higher and higher. No game play costs money in real life for designers and builders. You need to think about that next time you make changes to your policy, such as allowing freebie accounts to effectively kill this game. Because it is dying. Whose gonna stay, the freebie accounts maybe. But the long-time designers I’m not so sure they’re gonna be sticking around much longer, thanks to your policy.
January 14th, 2007 at 11:45 AM
From Wikipaedia.. for what it’s worth. Dunno if Linden Labs plans to be closed or not.
“Although the day is a federal holiday and a state holiday in all states, it is usually not observed by small private companies except for banks. Some large corporations close their operations (more so than on Veterans Day or Columbus Day, which are also federal holidays, but less so than on holidays such as Memorial Day or Labor Day when virtually all corporations are closed), but small shops, restaurants, and grocery stores tend to remain open. Overall, in 2006, 31% of employers are giving employees the day off, with 35% of large employers over 1,000 giving time off and 29% of smaller employers giving time off.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King_Day
January 14th, 2007 at 11:46 AM
Problems since this morning (Sun 14 Jan): Unable to TP, unable to cross sim borders on foot, money transfers timing out, avatar invisible, no linden balance, frequent crashes.
January 14th, 2007 at 11:47 AM
Wow, only 20 hours after LL said they fixed it. Nothing but timely updates for us. What good is this blog, if you dont use it?
The treatment that the residents of SL have received this weekend is so bad I dont even know how to describe it.
LL, you should be ashamed. I try to give you the benefit of the doubt, but this weekend that is not possible. You knew there were problems all night, but not a word. And now, here we are again, totally in the toilet.
I am angry, I am disguted, and truly sad at the way this weekend has progressed and how little regard you obviously have for the people who come into SL
DRD
January 14th, 2007 at 11:49 AM
well what next? “try to tp naked and all be fine?”
Why dont you work on an… issue for basic and premium membership?
you know what imean dont you?
*cheek*
January 14th, 2007 at 11:55 AM
“Stop shutting down searching and start to realize that you cannot offer the same level of service to every single resident when the vast majority of them pay you nothing for their time on the grid.”
I have four accounts. I did recently make one of them a premium account so I could own land, but even before I became a paying user, I was spending a LOT of money in SL. I had payment info on file. I was buying Lindens, and I was using those Lindens to buy the goods that designers and store owners like YOU provide. So before you go calling all free account holders useless lumps on SL’s behind, remember that a good number of us (the ones with payment info on file) ARE supporting both LL and the content creators in SL.
January 14th, 2007 at 12:02 PM
“So before you go calling all free account holders useless lumps on SL’s behind”
Good thing you caught me before I did that. Nobody called you useless, and I appreciate that you spend your money in SL. The point is, the vast majority of the 25,000 people currently logged into SL are paying Linden Lab nothing to store their inventories, or to consume their database bandwidth. It is clear that the current database architecture cannot support so many concurrent logins. Something must be done. Limiting free accounts, even modestly, would dramatically decrease the load on the database. Linden Lab should think about dong this immediately and until it can scale its database technology.
January 14th, 2007 at 12:02 PM
I must agree with Persephone Milk .. the mechanics for paying and non paying needs to be addressed and can be Im sure.
I work with a website where we do load balancing between paying and free and hope you will do so as well.
This weekend has not gone as I had hoped.. so much for a fun holiday that some do get.
January 14th, 2007 at 12:04 PM
So now all search is disabled?
I really hope you are just waiting for a holiday back order of some new hardware.
January 14th, 2007 at 12:05 PM
Hi people…
I have noticed that SLXchange is unable to deliver items. Is this problem related to the database problems you are having ?
January 14th, 2007 at 12:06 PM
How about letting all the paying accounts on one version of SL, and let all others have the failure that has become SL on another version?
January 14th, 2007 at 12:07 PM
January 14th, 2007 at 12:08 PM
Another day, another common problem.
It’s always the same things over and over and over again, and they do all the same BS to jury rig it all. How about hiring someone that knows what they’re doing to actually FIX something for once? It’s not just free accounts us premiums are pissed about, it’s the utter lack of support for your paying customers. Items missing? Go f*** yourself. Can’t log on? Go f*** yourself. billing problem (which gains you money for services I don’t have)? Go f*** yourself… twice.
This is how this company chooses to represent itself. All they care about is their profit gain while throwing around clauses and loopholes that relieve them of any and all duties to their paying customers. Fire your staff, sell the code to someone that can handle it, and pray that McDonalds will hire you after your shows of public relations. GL, see you at the food bank.
January 14th, 2007 at 12:08 PM
lol - every weekend is the same.
and now it is spreading to friday and monday.
So from this latest Linden post I basically read:
“stop doing stuff that makes SL fun and productive”
I cant believe I really read this blog entry today - its like a last resort situation from Labs.
So every weekend SL is going to degrade simply to an IM system then. Well - that makes my region costs feel a little bit steep.
I am beyond the angry point now, I just tend to give up, log off and go do something else. That is not right.
BTW, around my island the name “Second Lag” is used.
Leaf
January 14th, 2007 at 12:08 PM
Just logged in and having a heck of a time. Can’t move my av, textures are downloading painfully slow, took me three attempts just to get in, can’t see my L$, and things just generally don’t work.
I’m at Raffaello 217,81. Hope this helps.
PK
January 14th, 2007 at 12:09 PM
I happen to agree with Persophone. I wouldnt limit the number of free accounts that can log in. But limiting things like attachment prims and max items held in inventory seems reasonable.
I still think many issues can be resolved more easily. For example, why would search functionality ever be a significant database penalty when the data it searches through (places at least) is almost completely static. I suspect some things can be dramatically improved if they hire some optimalization experts.
January 14th, 2007 at 12:09 PM
hi all i have a prob why i can a conection witch a seconde life ??? i have make a char but i can t conection
January 14th, 2007 at 12:09 PM
Aye. Here here. Wayward, you said it well.
Many free accounts still pay money in for lindens since the stipend is no longer offered…something that paying members get for free. Well, not exactly free, they pay, gasp, a fee to be a paying member.
Humorously enough, the earlier comment seems to imply that these FREE accounts are ‘zipping around’ with ‘20,000′ items in inventory while paying members are terribly behind the 8 ball.
I agree that there is a server load issue with large numbers of users, many being free accounts, but if we are going to point fingers, let’s point them at actual culprits…the folks who go around with 20,000 things in inventory, greifers, spam surfers, auto-rezzing-tools (people not items), and general problem folks….not just the folks who don’t pay a monthly bill. Many folks don’t pay 10 dollars a month, and they don’t get land or permanent shops either but they do have to dump money in for currency.
Either way, FIX the problems before adding new stuff that tends to look cool but breakdown just as fast and add to the already long list of “oops”s that need fixing. Free or pay, we’re all hurt when a new ‘feature’ adds the functionality of a lead parachute or a cyanide sleep-aide.
January 14th, 2007 at 12:11 PM
I am so afraid SL is dying a slowly death of too much succes. I love SL but it is getting worse every day. I think if you would look at the trouble statistics, the graphic is climbing of the chard last month. If you can’t handle the fast growing, Stop growing! It is in every basic book about successful doing business. There are numerous companies in history who died because they did not wanted to see they couldn’t handle their success. Get someone in the Linden company with knowledge and experience of this so we and others in the future can keep our beloved Second Life.
January 14th, 2007 at 12:12 PM
Stupid to think when u kick out the people withe a free account that fix the problems. And less people on the grid is more empty places. At the moment u can not expect somebody pay for a game wich is that onstable.
January 14th, 2007 at 12:12 PM
Funny there Harold. Most “free accounts” I know pay four times the monthly fee to LL anyway in linden purchases. I know quite a few who spend 80+ a month easy in buying linden, and shopping/donating to money trees.
The real solution here would be for LL to drop some of the massive money they make off SL and buy some decent hardware/servers.
January 14th, 2007 at 12:12 PM
The main problem I have about search being down is I, and just about every other land owner, pay $30L a week for our places to show up in search. If search doesn’t work we are simply getting ripped off not only from the $30L but new players cannot find our places.
January 14th, 2007 at 12:13 PM
Great, now ALL search functionality is disabled.
Guys - INFRASTRUCTURE!!!
Gone are the days of 5,000 users - 50,000 concurrency is not that far away - and how in heck are you going to deal with it - I hope you have a plan, and I want to know what it is.
The current situation is unacceptable!
January 14th, 2007 at 12:14 PM
Dont need to ban free accts BUt as campng is the real resource hog how about making “camping” against TOS? Would make a world of difference to manyapsects of SL?
January 14th, 2007 at 12:15 PM
Sarge learn what you speak. It is unverified free accounts they are talking about not regular free accounts. Unverified have no payment info on file therefor do not BUY linden.
January 14th, 2007 at 12:16 PM
“Many free accounts still pay money in for lindens since the stipend is no longer offered …”
Paying money for Linden dollars does NOTHING to help Linden Lab. You are buying them from other players.
Free accounts get something for free from Linden Lab and you are subsidized by those of us who do pay Linden Lab. Nobody is arguing that you should go away. Only that you should get a little less for free, particularly when the database is hammered.
January 14th, 2007 at 12:16 PM
I’m amazed that it takes so long to fix this, it’s the ever recurring problem nowadays in SL. I’m not a database-girl and I can imagine it _is_ hard to get it right, but a good architecture makes it almost as easy as add another asset server when load increases too much. It doesn’t even have to be a replicating server but something simple as distributing the asset over several servers and with a simple hashing function on the key let the client/sim determine which server contains the needed asset.
But then again, if S.L. keeps getting problems we eventually get back our first life…
- Zhe
January 14th, 2007 at 12:17 PM
And it’s only Sunday… heh.
Could be worse i suppose.
January 14th, 2007 at 12:17 PM
Well, this thread will be closed soon because once again it has turned to Premium Vs Free accounts. I am a premium member but i do not think that free accounts should be penalized. I think the ones who give no payment info should, but those who are legitimate players, who do spend money with those of us who own businesses should not be kicked out.
To keep this on topic, It is frustrating to have these problems weekend after weekend. Hopefully before everyone gets so frustrated and leaves SL, the problem will evenually be fixed.
January 14th, 2007 at 12:17 PM
I vote we rename this thing to ‘Second Laugh’. Who’s with me? ROFL
January 14th, 2007 at 12:19 PM
I know it’s annoying with all these problems, But come on guys give Linden a break. I am sure they are doing everything they can to sort this.
Thanks LL
January 14th, 2007 at 12:19 PM
Zhe, for someone who’s not a db girl you speak wise words. I happen to be a db guy and that’s just about exactly right. It *is* easy….ish.
January 14th, 2007 at 12:20 PM
TELEPORTING - Not sure if it works all the time but when teleporting issues come up I have found that you can get almost anywhere you normally go by going through a Linden Sandbox first.
January 14th, 2007 at 12:21 PM
Persephone Milk, stop wasting your breath, Linden Labs has your money, they know you won’t leave, and if you were to leave, they could sell off your things for more of a profit. Their goal seems to be get as many members as they can, no matter what the cost. That total members list is a lot of bull anyway, people have left SL the second day they were here because it runs so bad, yet they are still listed as members.
January 14th, 2007 at 12:21 PM
I have waged my little campaing against unverified accounts for some time now, but always stopped at saying paying vs non-paying shoud get different treatment.
No more. I could not rez anything all morning, but the griefer who caged me this morning had no trouble. Some how, that just doesn’t sit to well with me.
At this point I totally agree with the above sentiment. Paid “premium” ( what the hell is premium about it) should get full access, and all others should be limited to take the load off the system. What ever that takes. While a great many of the folks who have free accounts, spend plenty of Lindens, I pay a membership, and subtantial tier each month and spend a ton of lindens. No longer is the privalage of owning LL land worth the money each month if I cant use the system. I can go to a private sim and pay no monthly, and lower tier.
As a paid member, I should be able to totally utilize SL and I can’t. The reason i can’t is because the system as it is, won’t handle all the users. And the truth is, the majority of those online anymore, are unpaid. Time to do something LL. You invited them all in, even when you knew you could not support a rush to join of this magnitude.
You gambled you could make work and you lost. Time to make it right for those at that the core, who stayed, who created and continue to create what is SL.
DRD
January 14th, 2007 at 12:21 PM
“Gone are the days of 5,000 users - 50,000 concurrency is not that far away - and how in heck are you going to deal with it - I hope you have a plan, and I want to know what it is.”
Exactly. Linden Lab likes to think of Second Life as the next world wide web and they have the utopian view that everybody should have equal access. Its a noble idea. But there is one huge difference.
The web does NOT have a centralized asset server where all images, sounds, etc. are stored. If the web did only have one server for all of this, we would all be paying to store our items there, and to have those items streamed to us.
The current technology is not infinetly scalable … and some kind of throttling control must be implimented soon.
January 14th, 2007 at 12:22 PM
I’m a paying account. Most of my customers are freebie accounts. They feed the economy. They’re not the problem.
A completely unscalable grid/platform and testing patches on the beta server with only 500 concurrently logins max before launching to a grid of 20k+ is the problem.
January 14th, 2007 at 12:22 PM
When you put Search Places back into effect, try smacking the guy who coded it to an OR search by default. Please put it back to an AND search, so it’s actually possible to find things, without a lot of bogus results.
January 14th, 2007 at 12:23 PM
Firstly I want to say I am not one of the people always down on the free accounts I believe they drive the SL economy and are my primary customer base, BUT it is obvious that SL cannot handle the current number of online users, todays count I saw 25,463 online.
Maybe the total of concurrent online free accounts can be capped at a reasonable level so island owners and paying accounts can get in and the system will actually be useable.
January 14th, 2007 at 12:23 PM
And yeah, what Silverrain says!
January 14th, 2007 at 12:25 PM
LL lets have the stats of fully paid for members in here…
Please look into this free account issue …. offer a trial dont load your database with dormant accounts.
The last stats i saw was 18% paid members and only 13% of new free accounts return.
And before someone pops on here abd says why would I pay when its like this?…..
Why dont you pay and maybe LL can spend more cash fixing the prob.
January 14th, 2007 at 12:25 PM
It may help ease some worried minds if Linden Lab would actually acknowledge the continuing problems from the previous post and give people some sort of E.T.A on when -those- issues will finally be resolved.
As it stands, it looks like a lot of people’s concerns are falling on either deaf or cooly indifferent ears.
January 14th, 2007 at 12:28 PM
“I’m a paying account. Most of my customers are freebie accounts. They feed the economy. They’re not the problem.”
The “economy” of Second Life is irrelevant. Money flowing from player to player does not help Linden Lab make the investments it needs to scale the database you are using to store all of those purchased items. If you are spending so much in-world, why not consider sending a little cash to Linden Lab and go premium?
January 14th, 2007 at 12:30 PM
Actually there IS a way of improving TP performance. we used to do it after the infamous 1.7 update when LL broke the TP system, back when 2500 was a high number of concurrent logins.
Strip before TP! Completely. No hair, shoes, clothes - TP to your destination completely bollock naked!
Makes for fun shopping trips… especially in PG areas.
But TP performance IS somewhat improved.
January 14th, 2007 at 12:30 PM
Load problems….again….Strange I thought LL told us the asset load balance server fixed this major issue a few weeks ago.
I have been in SL for only 7-8 months most of it running a little cost covering business mainly for free accounts. The traffic was up at 2k so I think I was providing a decent small scale content towards SL world, I am now closing the three rooms (2 land plots sold today and 1 to go) I mean whats the point if its not fun!.
I thought at the outset that SL was the greatest thing I had ever seen on the net but hey-ho as usual poor management decisions have crippled SL. I am glad I wasn’t one of the unfortunate people who have paid US$1250 for an island.
Good luck to all the tech & support Lindens because I genuinely believe that they work both hard and caringly. But I also suspect that the real choices to update blogs, close down grids for real repairs etc are left to the senior management and accountants!
On a more positive note, SL has opened the eyes of at least 2.6-million people. So roll on the next virtual world. Lets just hope they do not make the same mistakes of over-crowding
…and tech Lindens, you will be able to name your own price when it comes .
Quant
January 14th, 2007 at 12:30 PM
Yeah — I can’t even log in
And when I was in I couldn’t cross any sim boundaries with out crashing! I hope it can get fixed I am taking a week off of Second Life hopefully when I come back things will be up and running again.
January 14th, 2007 at 12:31 PM
I can’t imagine why weekend after weekend this reoccurs, since when ? 11/2006 or there abouts.
this is unacceptable 2 premium members in house, 40 a month in tier not including the linden$ purchases that go well into the 100’s USD a month and even a “PAID FOR” alt.
please stop the bailing wire fixes.
Good Luck guys and Girls, back to try to log in again and build more
January 14th, 2007 at 12:31 PM
i’m new to SL, about a month or so, so I never did see the SL running OK i guess, a bunch of issues i fully understand because i work in this area and i know ppl that don’t work with new technologies don’t understand the work involved to make the simplest thing to fully work. i think people complain a lot about this brilliant concept that is on the edge of technology (and politics and philosophy) and we see the cost of being on the edge everyday. i do agree that free accounts shouldn’t be able to do (almost) everything premium does. and premium should do a hell lot more than what it does now comparing to free. maybe the free ones should get access only to a demo land like so many other games around. or demo powers dunno.
i really get frustrated not being able to search because that’s the only good way to travel in here, but i encourage the SL team to fight back this issues the way they think is better because i know it’s very hard to do what they’re doing, almost an UTOPIA. people seem to complain a lot without presenting valid solutions and THAT SUCKS too.
maybe the investor, the retailer, the vendor that went inside SL to make business and a bunch of money just playing was the precipitated one. it’s a big risk to do something that has never been done before, so mind that.
it doesn’t work like it should i agree, but i believe the essence of the concept will survive to these problems because it is ONE HELL of a concept. shouting orders like DO THIS HERE AND NOW will not bring anything positive. Patience i say. my congratulations to all the team behind this and to all of those who made such impressive structures and environments inside SL. It’s a fantasy (almost) came true.
January 14th, 2007 at 12:32 PM
Linden Lab is wrestling with how to make premium accounts worth the montly fee. The problem is, they are thinking in terms of ADDING benefits to premium accounts. They need to forget about this for now and realize that an unlimited inventory and high speed downloads of textures, sounds, etc. ARE a premium service. It’s time that people who do not pay to play, have some limits put on their experience. Nobody is talking about “kicking you out” … we are talking about inventory caps, network throttling, etc. This simply has to happen, and I hope that Linden Lab realizes this soon.
January 14th, 2007 at 12:32 PM
Update on LOGIN issues. Last hour:
1. Tried to log on to “home” in dreamland. Appeared to be rezzing but blackscreen crashed after 10 seconds.
2. Tried to log on to home sim in dreamland using and specifying name of home sim. Blue screen crash with .sys file unrelated to drivers.
3. Tried to log on to Plum using . Lasted about five seconds, got blue screen crash with a different .sys file unrelated to drivers.
4. Tried to log on to Blacktail Ridge using . Screen froze and keyboard locked up while map was rezzing.
Update on DISCLOSURE and LIABILITY issues:
First, let’s consider the terms of service. If your development team was spending all their time flicking paper “footballs” rather than trying to fix anything, I don’t think there is a judge in California who would not rule against you in a claim for damages for real money (USD) spent on tier for a non-functioning system. That is the extreme case that would be presented by a tort attorney. Now look at up time/down time etc since September against the background of very active solicitation of new members that you KNOW cannot be accommodated, including but not restricted to opening unverified accounts. I don’t believe the TOS offers the level of protection that you presume it does under those circumstances. There is no FUNCTIONAL difference between what is going on and flicking paper footballs around the room. Witness the litany of RESOLVED issues that turn out to be far from resolved, over and over. There is an IMPLIED CONTRACT here due to your charging real money and representing that there IS a service that is not, in fact, being provided. You are selectively disclosing good news, and putting forth numbers re: subscribers and number online that you KNOW to be false or at a minimum misleading because of old accounts, real and alt, and alts playing at any given time. I believe that there may be a basis for a class action suit here. You may consider this notice that a class action lawsuit has been threatened. If you have D&O insurance and other usual and appropriate insurance policies, those policies very likely specify that your carrier(s) be IMMEDIATELY notified of same. This is your OFFICIAL BLOG so posting here is sufficient notice. I intend to consult with a tort attorney tomorrow on this matter.
If you are circulating an offering memorandum, preliminary prospectus or similar document relating to a financing, merger, take-over or similar, which documents do not fully and completely disclose the myriad difficulties you are having providing the service, you may be in violation of federal securities laws and regulations and/or state Blue Sky laws. I’ve reported bad actors to the SEC before, and I’m not afraid to do it again.
I could spend a while talking about fraud in the inducement, but your counsel can explain that to you.
Finally, would you please get your act together and fix this? Adding new users to a broken system is a DELIBERATE ACTION on your part. Lindens: “Sure we’ll take your money.” Users: “System is broken.” Lindens: . Doesn’t work that way, folks. You need to take this very seriously. This is senior management/Board/legal counsel material.
Please feel free to rebut any of the above. I am commenting based only on my personal knowledge of the situation, which may be incomplete or inaccurate.
CONSULT YOUR LEGAL COUNSEL BEFORE DELETING THIS POST OR REMOVING MY ABILITY TO POST HERE. IF YOU ARE NOT AN OFFICER OF THE COMPANY, DRAW IT TO THEIR ATTENTION IMMEDIATELY. TRYING TO BURY THIS WOULD BE ILL-ADVISED. CONSIDER VERY CAREFULLY WHETHER THIS IS INDEED OFF-TOPIC. I HAVE HAD MY SHARE OF TELEPORTING ISSUES OVER THE LAST COUPLE OF DAYS AS WELL. PLEASE FURTHER NOTE THAT THIS POLL IS NOT FLAMING, TROLLING OR COMPRISING A PERSONAL ATTACK; NOR IS IT VIOLATING OF “NETIQUETTE.” THOSE ARE YOUR OFFICIAL LINDEN BLOG GUIDELINES FOR REMOVAL OF A POST.
I am a user who is more than a little fed up at this point, and I am drawing urgent matters to your attention. You have ignored literally hundreds (perhaps thousands) of similar posts and continue to represent that a service is there that is not. Hence I draw certain legal and regulatory perspectives to your attention, lest you lean too hard on the TOS.
January 14th, 2007 at 12:33 PM
So what you’re saying with regards to restricting access to the grid is that if everybody were to pay LL $10 a month this DB problem would be solved? I just want to make sure I understand this topic.
January 14th, 2007 at 12:35 PM
ROFL Indigo i sooo rember that patch!
Sylvia really said it , its about growth like a plant given to much Miracle Grow it grows fast but spindly and leafless soon burning its self out. LL we know you need the numbers but we the users need stability. Perhaps you should reconsider open registration , at least untill you over come this current problems and restore stabiltity again can alwys run more ads and reopen regestrations.
January 14th, 2007 at 12:35 PM
I think it’s just best to kiss SL good bye at this point. Everything is just crashing, SL is lost…
January 14th, 2007 at 12:37 PM
[Wayward Seoul Says:
January 14th, 2007 at 11:55 AM PST
“Stop shutting down searching and start to realize that you cannot offer the same level of service to every single resident when the vast majority of them pay you nothing for their time on the grid.”
I have four accounts. I did recently make one of them a premium account so I could own land, but even before I became a paying user, I was spending a LOT of money in SL. I had payment info on file. I was buying Lindens, and I was using those Lindens to buy the goods that designers and store owners like YOU provide. So before you go calling all free account holders useless lumps on SL’s behind, remember that a good number of us (the ones with payment info on file) ARE supporting both LL and the content creators in SL.]
Besides being a dead horse to beat, I don’t believe the issue of free accounts vs paying accounts is the problem at all. I’m a paying account (but just barely as I pay no tier for my measley 512 plot). Some free accounts contribute vastly to the game…………some don’t. But some paying accounts contribute very little also. It’s a wash and not the problem some people seem to think it is. Besides it doesn’t appear that Linden Labs is going to restrict the free accounts anytime soon………let’s quit whining about it. Now, the non-verified accounts is another story all together but not something related to the current problems with the game.
I’m no network or computer nerd but I do understand enough about asset servers, networks, servers and routers, and nodes to know that there is a finite limit on how much all that stuff is capable of doing at any one given instant in time. It appears that the limit is reached at around 20,000 logged in residents………and quickly slides down hill beyond that magic number. It looks to me like Second Life (the game) is just plain overloaded…………their equipment and network cannot handle the amount of work it requires for any more than 20,000 logins. It could be that it’s more and better hardware that is needed. Or maybe better software or maybe more pipelines to do what is required for satisfactory performance. Whatever the reason………the fact is simple: It ain’t working worth a flip right now!!
Now, I know there are some real computer/network savey nerds out here in blogsville………and maybe even a Linden or two might lurk too. So I have a simple question that I (in my simple mind) believe will go a few miles toward making things work better. Why is it necessary for every residents inventory to be stored on Linden Lab’s database? 2.5 million residents with god knows how many inventory items all stored on a few network databases……….that’s asking for trouble no matter how “cutting edge” your equipment and software is!!! Why is it not possible……..even more preferrable……..to have each client store those inventory items? Take the load off the choke points and let each resident’s computer take that load? It seems so simple to me……..but I’m sure I’m missing something……maybe it’s something to do with protection of content creaters copyrights (but I’m sure that would be an easier problem to solve than turbo charging a sick motor).
January 14th, 2007 at 12:38 PM
“So what you’re saying with regards to restricting access to the grid is that if everybody were to pay LL $10 a month this DB problem would be solved? I just want to make sure I understand this topic.”
No, I actually do not think that would solve the problem. I don’t even think it would be enough money to solve the problem. However, a whole lot of these people would chose NOT to go premium. And therefore their load on the database would be throttled and the experience would improve for us all - perhaps for non-prems a bit less. What if non-premium accounts were limited to 2500 inventory items, and their network throttling was set to 50% … they could still play here, and get a whole lot for free … but the database load would be reduced dramatically.
January 14th, 2007 at 12:39 PM
ooooh just remembered,
I think that I saw a message somewhere from LL that the Gird performance might be poor tomorrow (15th) because of some more work somewhere.
lol
January 14th, 2007 at 12:40 PM
NickCA…. w00t!!!!!!! I wanna know how this goes =)
January 14th, 2007 at 12:41 PM
Claudia, we’re nearing the two hour mark since an update. Can you give us an update to read instead of all this free vs paid kvetching?
January 14th, 2007 at 12:41 PM
I’ve been reading the blog about the premium vs regular issue and decided to pony up and pay my share. Unfortunately I signed up with SLBoutique first and that signup failed. I have lost 510L in the process. I got one response CommerceLeader, and then nothing, and the problem still exists. This has made me a little gun shy of comitting to regular monthly payments from my credit card. If they can fix my SLBoutique problem successfully, I will sign up for premium and purchase some land. Until then, I’m just patiently hanging around, sucking up resources.
January 14th, 2007 at 12:43 PM
“Claudia, we’re nearing the two hour mark since an update. Can you give us an update to read instead of all this free vs paid kvetching?”
UPDATE (Dramatization based on real life scenarios): We’d tell you we don’t know wtf we’re doing… but you already knew that… no update for you at the moment….
January 14th, 2007 at 12:44 PM
A lot of people that have premium accounts, that own private estates have alts. they are paying $300 a month for the sim. is it right to cap them because they have an alt without a premium account? even though they have a sim they are paying for? i don’t think so.
January 14th, 2007 at 12:46 PM
i spend at least 40 u.s dollars on SL per month, and i dont have any membership but basic… and then i hear that people are wanting the basics to go as they do not contribute!? you may not believe it but all members on SL have a duty and help on what goes on… dont insult us
January 14th, 2007 at 12:47 PM
The database cannot handle 20,000 user concurrency.
All current focus at Linden Labs should be redirected to resolving this situation.
You have over 2 million registered users, your server capacity should at least be geared to service 10% of that actual number. 20,000 online at once causing this many issues for a platform that boasts over 2 million registered accounts is not a good outlook.
Come on LL, I know you can do this. Fix it. The incessant database related bugs are becoming too hard to deal with optimistically.
January 14th, 2007 at 12:48 PM
Persephone, when enough people feel like you do I most certainly just kill my two accounts.
You should know that those of us with free acounts and payment info used DO put money in the Linden’s pockets but indirectly. The 6000L I pay a month for rent gets converted at some point to pay a land tier fee. The more 10K a month I spend on good and services gets converted at some point to pay a land tier.
At the point I begin to loose funtionality because I am not a premium member I will certainly leave this broken world and try to renew friendships I have in Yahoo Spades.
January 14th, 2007 at 12:49 PM
Sounds good, any idea on what time we may have the search facility back?
VC
January 14th, 2007 at 12:50 PM
This repeated non-availability of Teleport & Search is getting very very boring now. It is getting beyond a joke.
Sort your lives out people. We’ve been patient, we’ve been more than patient. We are getting sick of it now.
Twist Lemmon, …rapidly becoming Bitter Lemon.
January 14th, 2007 at 12:50 PM
I have four accounts. I did recently make one of them a premium account so I could own land, but even before I became a paying user
Its against the ToS to have more then one free account all otehr must be paid fore and yes your jacking the paying customers and just openly admited to doing so.
About the recent problems with Free accounts, to paid accounts. Maybe free accounts should be limited to 2 hours in a 24 hour period they can have access. Or such, to limit the amount of free play time so they have to get paid accounts to kick into the LL base funds, allowing them to buy better hardware.
January 14th, 2007 at 12:50 PM
Bah, who cares about all the whining about free vs. premium? My wife and I live on a private island for which she’s been charged tier fees by LL 3 times in a row and they claim they’re working on a way to fix that in the future WITHOUT REFUNDING HER. So LL, where’s your representative in here today? You’re dead in the water and can’t face your customers, right? Pull the plug.
January 14th, 2007 at 12:52 PM
I would like to know what you did with my $10.00 last month, cause I’m not sure that it was used effectively, if possible, could you please detail how my $10.00 was spent. I would like to go towards programers, or at a minimum their sodas so they can work longer. If it can’t be used in that manner, could it be put toward something like stress balls for end users.
January 14th, 2007 at 12:52 PM
I have a sim, we pay a lot of money monthly almost $300 a month. i also have an alt or 2. from what a lot of you are saying. i need to pay a bunch more then $300 a month. that is nothing but crap. if LL gave me a reason and not being throttled back to %50 bandwidth (that would make me want to leave) then i would upgrade them. but since i am paying for a sim with my wife i don’t feel we need to. i do understand that the problems that sl is having is causing a lot of grief in world. but good lord. why take it out on the basic memberships. get the hardware upgraded to where it needs to be. as stated above, $10 a month isn’t going to fix anything.
January 14th, 2007 at 12:53 PM
removing prim items, hey its like the terminator, you can only teleport naked
January 14th, 2007 at 12:54 PM
sorry that was from Wayward Seoul Says:
January 14th, 2007 at 11:55 AM PST
“Stop shutting down searching and start to realize that you cannot offer the same level of service to every single resident when the vast majority of them pay you nothing for their time on the grid.”
I have four accounts. I did recently make one of them a premium account so I could own land, but even before I became a paying user,
January 14th, 2007 at 12:55 PM
Samuel: LOL
Folks I just found one little piece of the search functionality still active (so much for disabling all search to ease the load.)
If you’re in a similar situation to mine, this could help. I was afk when the badness began. I came back to find an IM from someone who wanted to rent one of two parcels i have for rent. But alas, my client had crashed.
I logged back in and then had no way to reply because i can’t search the interested party in ’search -> people.’ I went to ‘friends’ and clicked ‘add’ and used the ‘find’ field there. I couldn’t IM him from there, but I did offer friendship.
He hasn’t responded, so i don’t know if he got it and thought “wtf? i don’t wanna be your best friend, i just wanna lease land from you” or if he is offline and hasn’t seen it yet. If the latter, then we’ll be able to communicate when he logs in again, even if search is still down.
Anyway, hope that info helps someone.
And there is one tiny little snapshot of someone trying to do business in a world without search. *rolls eyes*
January 14th, 2007 at 12:55 PM
I mean I am not a paid player, but a hear a few of you screaming saying “People that are no upgraded to premium are making the database overload”. Why should we upgraded? To impress others by buying Lindens? To win arguments by say “I am a paid player”.
Their is no real reason to upgrade to premium if the service is not premium. I mean on 9/8/06, Second Life was hacked and all the accounts were comprised, many people weren’t able to sign back on to their premium accounts again. Second Life has poor security staff and is very poorly managed.
I have valid proof right here go to secondlife.com and look for an article entitled LL Deducts Millions in FurNation Assets and you will see what I mean, got a prolem IM me in world…
January 14th, 2007 at 12:55 PM
I have to agree with Persephone Milk……..
January 14th, 2007 at 12:56 PM
sorry that was from Wayward Seoul Says:
January 14th, 2007 at 11:55 AM PST
“Stop shutting down searching and start to realize that you cannot offer the same level of service to every single resident when the vast majority of them pay you nothing for their time on the grid.”
I have four accounts. I did recently make one of them a premium account so I could own land, but even before I became a paying user,
Yes you are jacking the system and admitted to it, by having 4 free accounts, its in the ToS you may only have one free account and the rest must be paid fore. On teh recnt issues with free accoutns, maybe the LL should give free accounts only 2 hours in a 24 hour period they can be online, there by forcing them to get paid accounts and adding to the LL base funds, so they can buy better hardware.
January 14th, 2007 at 12:59 PM
Lol disable Search for places they also disabled Search for People lol
January 14th, 2007 at 1:00 PM
They need to disable their life support next.
January 14th, 2007 at 1:03 PM
Ledeanna have you found any search functionality working? Classifieds aren’t searchable either, so all of us with classifieds have paid for something that can’t be found. Again.
January 14th, 2007 at 1:03 PM
I thought there seemed to be more than the usual problems teleporting about the place… when I noticed that there were often over 20,000 residents on even in the awkward hours of the morning, I suspected there might be problems of this sort coming. It’s frustrating, I know, but given the situation I’m not surprised it has to be patched rather than fixed once and for all.
For what it’s worth, I wonder if people would be willing to forego SL for, say, two weeks while things were properly addressed? Just an idle thought…
People, even if we’ve paid for premium memberships, we are still _guests_ in the Linden’s ‘home.’ Yes, the continuing difficulties are annoying, but it’s not like it’s life-threatening oe anything. Relax, cultivate a bit of detachment, and when things are working properly again, go dancing with your Significant Other at your favourite SL club, okay? It ian’t worth raising your blood pressure over!
January 14th, 2007 at 1:03 PM