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Second Life Economy Still Really Bad.
Renoaku
Member EpicPosts: 3,157
in Second Life
1. I was/am in Second Life right now, and I would just like to say that Second Life, as a Simulator Game, is not getting any better at all. Its actually getting worse. The Economy right now is at an all time low for Sell Rates of L$ its down to 4.06 per 1000 L$, and there are many people leaving/cashing out from Second Life, and withdrawing all their founds they have put into this game, Including myself.
2. Linden Lab let go 140 Workers from their Jobs without Notice, due to not having enough cash to keep them all at work, and keep the company running, which to me is pretty sad, because I knew a lot of them who helped me, and some close friends of ours from the Teen Grid of Second Life, Like Blue Linden.
3. I find Second Life still full of great stuff, Great Creators, and Great Potential, but the issues right now are really bad.
Right Now.
1. There are a lot Less Griefers, which means people, have lost interest in Second Life.
2. Sandboxes are less full, which means people are not using them as much.
3. There is Lots more Land for sale, and very few buying, I as a sim Owner see this.
4. Not as many active accounts logging on per day.
4. A Lot of the Transaction Loss, Which I am seeing, is because of Skills Hak, and the Emerald Team/Modular Systems. A lot of people are angry about how over the Last few Months; Linden Lab has allowed these people to violate over 3 different sections of the Second Life TOS, and Community Standards. Skills Hak Developed a System, which is suppose to detect illegal Copybotters/Thieves, and Ban them, but he used Beta Data, which no game company ever does, and it innocently locked out many of my friends, Banned me for no reason, Defamed all of us as a whole, and restricted our movement freely in Second Life, by sending users of this system a message accusing us of such actions without any type of proof. At the same time Emerald Team, was Data mining Residents illegally, their Owner/Leader being JCool410, who made VLife client, before deciding to go Legal, and Make Emerald for the public, Probably still running illegal Operations, who knows.Modular Systems, also Works with Skills Hak, and Lies to the public Claiming that his Project was never helped with by the Emerald Team in any way, but his Monitor team for the entire CDS network which Controls our entire grid now is mostly Emerald Developers. Modular Systems was also working on an illegal Project Called Onyx, which uses Copybot Viewer Bot software to find stolen content, and scans residents all over Second Life, monitors people in Public Regions without a users Consent, Both CDS & Modular Systems did this. Linden Lab took no actions against these people, and now All my friends, myself, and others are afraid to even shop Because these guys illegally Data mining Residents, Scanning, Spreading rumors, and tearing our community apart, and should be asked to Remove this system from SL, and if they refuse close all their accounts.
5. Second Life VS other Simulators/MMO on the market.
Second Life is actually going down way to fast, I am aware that no other Simulator on the market can give the Build Tools, and Creativity that Second Life Does, or Role-play Experience/Freedom, Scripting, and such, but I would like to mention this.
I am not sure if APB is still under NDA, I don’t believe it is because I actually played it shortly after Pre Ordering it, in their KTTC event, so I wont Disclose anything actually in game until I am sure because I don’t want to get into trouble, But I can say from my 5 hours of playing, and over 10 hours in the social District, that All Points Bulletin Character Customization, and their Game asset System, is Very Much just like Second Life. You can’t really upload your own stuff, but the Creativity in this game VS Second Life is Really Great, although people will debate its not like Second Life, but I say different. In character Customization, and FPS game it is different, and for those who only play Military Combat in Second Life, or just hang around talking to friends, don’t really care about Clubs, or Lag, and all that, or a game running on outdated Software Engine like Second Life, then APB may be for you. APB is going to be released this Friday 12:00AM/Saturday 26th for Pre Order, 29Th for non preorder, I have also seen other discussions about game content on here too so.
You can check out some Screenshots of the actual Customizations from the Official APB website.
6. Blue Mars, I don’t really have much to say about it yet because it’s in Alpha Stages of Development, but the Graphics Engine is Awesome. Given a year or two, depending on how much money they can put into it, it is possible it could overthrow Second Life with the way it is going right now.
7. Copybotters/Intellectual Properly Violations in Second Life?
This isn't really a concern anymore, Linden Lab locked out most the illegal viewers everyone was using, and many of the thefts stopped, not 100% but pretty much a lot better based on the reports I have been getting from some of the creators in Second Life.
8. The Answer To Repairing Second Life Is Simple.
1. Linden Lab Must Remove Client Detection System, and Make All Ban Linked Systems illegal from Second Life, and unable to use Tricky hack methods to Steal info from other people, without asking consent First each time to Scan their PC/Client, If they refuse, or Debate it then they need to remove this person from Second Life.
2. Get an Official Answer to why Emerald Was allowed to Data mine Residents, and take steps to make sure Onyx Projects, and everything never happens again without a users knowledge, and if it does Remove the people running such systems from Second Life.
3. Copybots, or Theft, Is so easy, there are many ways to Thief in this game, or Cheat it. And using spyware methods breaching CS/TOS is not the answer, and drives customers away. If a user has Actual Evidence of a person cheating, or Copybotting, they should go to Help, And File Abuse Report, and Let Linden Lab do their Job, not taking such actions into their own Hands.
4. Banning From Lands in Second Life.
If a user wants to ban another person for any reason, I have no problem with it. My problem is their illegal methods of Detection, and Defame within Second Life, which has caused us all a bunch of issues.
So Really the Question is When is Linden Lab going to take care of Skills Hak, and Modular Systems from ruining our community, Keep in mind, that every Month, I would spend 50K L$, which is $208 USD every Month, Sometimes 100K L$ every month Shopping many content creators in SL, Skills Hak has taken $200-$400 USD every month out of the community and economy by using CDS system which defamed me, without any Valid Evidence, and Dozens of friends from this game, and many others.
**ADD**
Another Thing I am Really curious about is how Tizzy Teardrop/Woodbury in Second Life, Lost over 4 Estates and a bunch of their members just banned from Second Life, Including IntLibber who did not violate the SL TOS, and the Lawsuit's filed against Linden Lab for this stuff, and for changing their TOS, after early on 03/04 Claiming Residents Owned 100% of what they bought, and that it could not be taken under any circumstances.
Comments
1. All time low? What do you base that on? Raw economic data at: http://secondlife.com/statistics/economy-data.php has shown the economy grow for the last few years; right up to today.
Second Life's economy is tens of millions of dollars a month in user-to-user transactions.
The value of Linden to USD is still in the 260s-270s to 1 USD at open and closing rates; its stable there.
2. The layoffs were to keep Linden Lab profitable, not because it had ceased to become profitable. Under M, Linden Lab took on a lot of employees to branch off into areas such as selling Enterprise boxes, and projects such as that have speculated to have failed.
Also, not sure how "without notice" it was; considering a lot of the ones named to be cut I still see in Second Life. A few of 'em at Tuesdays "Office Hours" meeting.
3. On your list of issues:
Less griefers means less interest in SL? Well first; you'd have to be specific as what kind of griefing. Linden Lab rolls out a new server version every month or so; these patch "griefing". That and any griefing you experience is going to vary wildly from sim to sim due to permission sets and who has who banned. Less griefing is a good thing; it has no correlation to interest.
Sandboxes aren't an indicator of interest either. They open, they close, they divide population, they lose purpose when residents buy their own land or are provided by one of the new Linden Homes if they're premium residents.
Land sales have stagnated; about the same amount of land sold last year is sold this year. This is probably linked to the fact that just about the same amount of active residents are in SL too.
"Not as many active accounts" or "not more"? Second Life's resident count hasn't grown, but it hasn't really dropped. The change in bot policy and gaming traffic hit the concurrent userbase more than anything else. Besides that, sign ups are still high, retention is still a problem, but more hours are being spent in SL.
4. Quite simply, the third party viewers are open source and open to being vetted by any independent party if you don't trust Linden Lab to do the job before approving new download links.
5. It seems you have Second Life confused for a "game" to compare it with All Points Bulletin. It isn't an MMO, its most comparable to the text web if HTML was swapped out for 3D content. Each sim can vary as much in purposed functionality and type of commerce as much as a webpage can.
So, APB is not going to be a competitor to SL.
6. Blue Mars will be a competitor for Second Life, in that its a virtual world that seeks to enable user to user commerce through business and entertainment. How well it'll perform against SL we won't know 'til its released.
7. "Copying" is always going to be an issue. It's just a fact of life. So long as 3D content is rendered via our hardware, it can be intercepted and stolen. All Linden Lab can do is make it harder.
The best thing that Linden Lab can do is handle the DMCA claims process better. It's getting a lot of bad press for this. One big incident lately was Rustica, a well-known prefab designer, being given the run around: http://rusticahomefurnishings.blogspot.com/2010/06/followup-ll-drops-ball-again.html
So IP enforcement is an area Linden Lab definitely has to improve on.
8. In response to your "What Linden Lab must do"
People are free to do whatever they want in their private regions quite simply. If they want to use a viewer that allows automatic banning from that region, they can. It's not like you're banned from SL all together, and if you disagree with the reasons you were banned; petition to the sim owner.
The "data mining" didn't happen from the Emerald Viewer, it was done via SL's inherent land functionality. You can read about it here: http://blog.modularsystems.sl/2010/05/11/regarding-the-concerns-over-the-database-compromise/ The purpose was to create an anti-griefing measure that didn't make it out of beta. So its nothing that's still around.
You've had about 3 different opinions of copying and IP protection in this post. but again: there'll always be some form of copying. Linden Lab should always target tools, but more importantly should handle DMCA claims quickly, ruthlessly.
All and all...this seems inspired by you being blacklisted by some database of of known griefers/copybotters. You'll have to take that up with the sim owners who've banned you from their private regions. Linden Lab can't circumvent their rights with their own land.
Hindsight is a funny thing, It lets you take all the information that the OP wrote and point out how far off he really was.
APB died and got relaunched as F2P with not a smidging of competition towards SL
Blue Mars has ceased PC development to focus on the iPhone
SL economy is pretty much unchanged over the last few years
Log in's are unchanged
New account creation is pretty much stable
Meshes are coming soon which will provide a much needed graphical update to match any current graphics.
Emerald was banned
Its goes on and on.
The SL economy seems to be fine. Its not as good as it was in 2007/2008. It seems like 90% of the new content creators use resell/full perm kits and the other 10% makes original stuff, I'm not even counting the people that make crappy stuff and never get anywhere. LL seems to be trying to get more people that would use content rather than create it. Which can be good to a point. But when you start making stupid features for them and facebook users and stop caring about the creators thats really bad.
But yeah, SL isnt as bad as the OP says. Griefing is down a lot I've noticed because its gotten old and there aren't any new ways to grief people really.