Comparing SL to any other FPS shooter online game or an MMORPG is not only ignorant but outstandingly stupid. All custom contents are implemented into games offline/online through MOdifications where its all Client based on a small server. World of Warcraft? Dont make me laugh… Only statistics and extra statics get implemented. And that is without ANY user content.

SL is ALL user content. And the grids pretty much up all the time until downtime. And I do not agree that SL players and every other Game player is the same. I personally get bored by WOW. And Online games are niche in their attraction. SecondLife does everything because its really US thats doing the content.

People like you IMHO ask for much and give too little. And getting personal by being angry at US satisfied customers just weakens your position.Go play Ragnarok or Maple Leaf where its more Lemming like.

You people are pathetic. You’ll swallow anything LL throws at you and pay through the nose for the privilege, and when someone points out very real and very serious problems with SL, problems that have existed for years and that LL has not fixed yet, you call him a troll.

Can you say LEMMING?

In fact, tell ya what. No more posts here from me on the LL blog. It’s obvious you folks can’t see beyond your own noses, don’t care about customer feedback, and still have the same old self-serving corporate attitude that’s brought LL to this mess already. You folks can’t fix things because you’re too busy copping an attitude.

Lemme ask you a question dude. I’ve asked this of LL before and they’ve always refused to answer my question (oh, and others have asked this too):

How many PAYING customers does LL have?
Out of the claimed 10 million + residents, how many are unique, active, valid customers?

You can call my posts “inflammatory” and off topic all you like. That’s pure BS. This has very much to do with Havok 4, the current situation of SL, LL and the system in general. Sorry you don’t see it that way. That’s been LL’s problem from the start… and that’s why SL is so borked.

Have fun. No more feedback. LL is heading to a head-first crash and as far as I’m concerned, I’m going to be the first person to sign up with the competition.

Bye bye.

Regardless of your compliments, continued inflammatory and off-topic diatribes will result in these comments being systematically removed. Windight, database and all other issues unrelated to the Havok4 project are off-topic for this post, and I have been quite tolerant in not removing this whole stream. This project team is doing its part in achieving the very objectives you are claiming are not being pursued, as are others.

/Sidewinder

First, reading a Philip Linden post in a blog, and observgin actual follow-through are obviously two different things. SL is supposedly committed to platform rather than toys? Is Windlight a bug fix, then? Does that improve chat, group notices, etc? Was VOICE a foundation platform issue? (Do we remember that the vast majority of SL customers voted AGAINST voice when the concept was presented to them… and LL did it anyway?).

Mind you, I have heard reports of the system running more smoothly with Windlight. I have also heard reports of Windlight crashing existing users to the dirt. Either way, when I speak of LL saying they’re going to focus on foundation issues, I speak also of following through on that committment. Since group chat has been borked for at least half a year now with no resolution (and pardon me, but shouldn’t group chat be a major priority? It worked at one time. Why doesn’t it work now?).

We’re not seeing follow through to Philip’s PR statements. He can make all the public statements he wants. When I said we’d like to see these statements, I think it should be obvious we’d like to see FOLLOW-THROUGH on such statements. When we see Group Chat and Group Notices working again, we’ll consider that a beginning.

Sidewinder: “Is it fair to compare Second Life to shooter games that have mostly static content… Is it fair to compare a web site that contains only two dimensional content with a system that dynamically renders tens and hundreds of thousands of vertices to your machine on the fly?”

Of course it’s fair Sidewinder. These sites and games are your COMPETITION. Format aside, they’re the ones that draw user attention away from Second Life. So Linden Lab flat well BETTER be comparing themselves to the performance of such sites. If so many people play World of Warcraft that it pulls people away from SL (and it does, believe it), then LL better ask themselves what they can do to compete with that “mostly static content” game. Is LL in this just for the chuckles, or is it running a business?

You’ve asked me to not get into tech aspects here, so I won’t go into graphic details. But I will say this: a database is a database. I’m getting so tired of hearing this “static content” argument from Linden Lab and it’s brownnosers that I’ve filed it right in there with the “client content” nonsense of 2-3 years ago (which claim LL is still using… even though far more people are now aware that SL coding is not up to snuff).

You can claim “static content” all you like. I and others could tech-slam that claim to oblivion. It’s is just as possible to write fast dynamic content as it is static content. It just requires skill.

As for comparing SL to “2 dimensional websites”… let’s do that. I have been a user of Google for mumblety mumble years. Not once have I ever personally seen the system even glitch, much less lag or crash. (Not that it never does, but what percentage compared to SL glitches, lag and crashes? .000001?).

Now, how many terrabytes of data does Google transfer across the net every day, day after day, 24/7/365 with virtually no difficulties? Are you telling us that LL has to handle more internal data or feed more information than Google? Are we to believe with Google Earth that Google isn’t handling 3-D dynamic, changing content?

Sorry, that argument is old, cliche, outdated, and bogus. No offense, but “static vs dynamic” actually causes programmers to chuckle. I’ll be the first to admit that SL is an amazing project– in CONCEPT. But as of now, it’s been using technology at least a decade old and nothing in SL is really all that new or unusual from a programming standpoint. It’s all been done before, on different levels. Linden Lab didn’t invent vectors, or local lighting, or vertex shading, or user-created content as either technology or concepts. SL is not “bleeding edge”… it’s just a visionary-but-logical implementation of existing technology… technology that has existed for years.

“SL is unique” applies to the concept, not the technical methodology. Remove the glitz and bling… it’s all programming, databases and networking. It can be done wrong, or it can be done right.

Even with so-called “static content” games (such as Quake and Unreal)… hey, non-tech users might buy that claim. But gimme a break. These games DO allow their users to create their own content. These games are played across the net, have in-world chat and in-world group chat, often have DOZENS of people (avatars) online at the same time in a heavy-duty firefight (lotsa lotsa “particles”), along with DOZENS of game-controlled NPC characters (something that SL really doesn’t have, doesn’t have to control, doesn’t have to worry about… oh wait… there’s campers… :D). Second Life does not deal in Non-Player Characters. Those games do, and do so well. And they handle all that with a fluidity that is amazing.

These so-called “static content” 3D games are not static. That was a bogus claim from the start. Yes, they’re different from SL in design. But they do prove that it is quite possible to have a very fast-moving, mutli-player online VR environment with no lag, no glitches, no crashes. Why? Because their programmers are paid big bucks, their games have to sell on the open retail market, they don’t get the luxury of having people pay them ludicrous amounts of money for “beta level” products… so they do it right from the get-go.

Can you imagine Quake trying to charge users $295 a month for the privilege of playing their game online? They’d be laughed out of the market. You folks are charging Porche prices and delivering Volkswagen performance. Quake and Unreal delivers the Porche. “Static content”. No. They are viable 3D VR worlds that do what they’re supposed to do and they’re SL’s direct competition.

Havok 4 is good news. Finally brings the core-foundation SL engine up to date (or is there a Havok 5 out now? I can’t remember. LOL). Havok4 isn’t the miracle worker people are expecting, but it might help fix SOME platform lag and performance issues.

Or… it might bring in new ones. We’ll see.

With all respect Sidewinder. I patted ya on the back twice in this blog, and meant it. I understand what you’re saying but to be honest, I think it’s time LL stops saying that. It’s obvious that people do not like the way LL has be operating for 8 years now. Might be time to change some operational concepts, viewpoints and attitudes. I have noticed LL being more open with the customers now than it was 3 years ago. To be honest, your customers almost had to beat all y’all upside the head with a bat to get that far. So we’re just being open and honest and still letting you know what we really think. If we didn’t care… we’d go play something else instead of providing feedback.