February 26, 2014

Dear Ebbe: My wish list for Second Life

I started to make this part of my post about Ebbe Altberg's tweeted reply to Marianne McCann but changed my mind. It's better off on it's own.

We all have our personal lists of gripes about Second Life itself. Mine include:
  • Fix Group chat (IMs). Huge issue. It often makes groups useless for long stretches.
  • Fix avatar rez issues (gray cloud). Major frustration for new users AND those who don't know all the arcane hoops you have to go through to fix it.
  • Fix teleport issues. Either you get stuck in a SIM or you get logged out trying to leave one.
  • Fix SIM crossings. Uggh. My car just sticks when I cross a sim.
  • Improve tier and pricing structures to encourage new development and land purchase. People are tiering down and abandoning land. Help them KEEP it.
  • Improve the base avatar mesh for more detail (long term goal). Some areas are so lacking in detail that it's painful.
  • Restore some semblance of HELP for new users! Seriously. The new user experience is miserable. Even the old self-guided "get the torch" system was much better than the current "rez the n00b and leave him/her in the hands of lurking trolls" thing that happens now. Heck, with a few tweaks, you could turn the entire new user experience over to Caledon Oxbridge* as far as I'm concerned.
  • Bring back Linden Lab office hours. Communications with thought leaders in the SL community will go along way toward restoring trust.
  • Respond to griefing problems quickly. It took 4 days to get an identified griefing object removed from the land next door to hers. That's unacceptable because it was hurting her inworld sales.
  • A fair process for DMCA infringement. Huge concern for merchants. Some people are allowed to keep clearly infringing or copybotted items up for sale on the SL Marketplace while others get their non-infringing items taken down without cause or comment.
  • Reduce lag and improve concurrency. Even with fewer people actively in Second Life at any one time, it seems this problem has gotten worse over the last year.
  • Open the JIRA back up. Let us ALL see and help Linden Lab evaluate it options and priorities. 
  • Make us feel better about privacy. MOST residents do not choose to expose their real life information to Second Life for a variety of (generally) very good reasons. Yet, Linden Lab seems to keep wandering in the direction of connecting the two. STOP IT. Keep pushing the issue and I'd bet you'd lose 1/2 or more of your customers.
So those are some of my personal hot buttons that come to mind. I'd appreciate hearing yours since I'm seriously thinking of doing a poll to see how people rank their own issues.

*Edited to remove reference to Desmond Shang.

4 comments:

  1. Land costs, yes. I would love to rebuild the old Restaurant, but I flat out can't afford that kind of space any more :(

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  2. Carl Metropolitan (Carl Henderson)February 26, 2014 at 2:02 PM

    Desmond Shang has almost nothing to do with the content or operation of Caledon Oxbridge. The land (a homestead sim) is leased by Friends of Caledon Oxbridge from the Caledon Estate. Nor do I, at this point, either.

    Oxbridge is operated by a very skilled and dedicated team, consisting of Martini Discovolante (Chancellor), Wordsmith Jarvinen (Dean of Education--i.e. classes offered), Steadman Kondor (Dean of Development--i.e., fundraising), Ravelli Ormstein (Dean of Information--responsible for updating tutorials and notecards, and related), Tali Rosca and Marion Questi (incoming and outgoing "Dean of Engines", responsible for Oxbridge's IT infrastructure).

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks Carl. I edited the post to reflect your comment.

    ReplyDelete

All thoughts are welcome.