You don’t need to be a premium member of Second Life to enter a best old person competition. However if you do go as a Dwarf beware that old people sometimes don’t have 20/20 vision, to this end you may be labelled a Gnome! A Gnome! Oh my, the shame of it! Gnomes don’t have beards like this! Anyway, on with the show.
After somewhat berating Linden Lab over the terms of service wiggle they performed, it’s only fair to point out some of the positives coming out of the hard work of the Linden Lab team, including their ongoing improved communications. To this end I will take a look at their blog posts detailing Limited Time Offer: Save 50% on Premium Membership and Get the New Premium Gift Airship! and Upcoming Improvements to Second Life. Yes this blog post comes complete with a two for one offer.
Let’s start with the premium membership offer, it’s the traditional 50% off a quarterly membership, it’s always a quarterly membership for these offers, I’m not quite sure why that is. Here is the important part :
*TERMS & CONDITIONS FOR 50% DISCOUNT
This limited-time discount offer is available only for memberships on the Quarterly billing plan. Discount will be applied to the first quarterly billing cycle only, and all future charges will be at the regular Premium price. To qualify, Second Life members must have an active Basic account or create a new Second Life account. Discount offer begins on Friday the 18th of July at 8:00 am Pacific Daylight Time (PDT) and expires on Monday the 4th of August 2014 at 08:00 am Pacific Daylight Time (PDT).
The one thing that disappoints me slightly, hey I have to be disappointed in all my posts, even slightly, where was I? Oh yes the one slight disappointment is that the blog post states :
As a Premium member, you’ll enjoy rewards like exclusive Resident-created gifts, access to special Premium Sandboxes, as well as Live Chat support. Plus, you’ll get your own inworld home, a L$1000 sign-up bonus, and weekly L$ rewards to spend on whatever you like. You can read more details about Premium benefits here.
Now where this disappoints me (slightly) is that it sells Linden Homes, as in you can get a home, but makes no mention of the fact that you can forego a Linden Home and buy a 512M parcel of mainland instead. I mean I appreciate that a Linden Home is easier to obtain, but it would be nice in many ways if LL tried to point out the alternative option, this is not a big gripe!
The question that comes up often about premium membership is, is it worth it? The answer is, it depends. Premium Membership is ok if you want mainland or a Linden Home, you don’t need to be a Premium Member to own a private region, but of course a private region costs more in one month than a Premium Membership does for a year. The weekly stipend comes in handy and if you think you’re going to stay in Second Life, can actually go a long way to offsetting your premium membership costs.
On the other hand, if you’re not looking for mainland or a Linden Home and don’t care about the stipend, it’s not a feature rich solution, you do get better support. I’ve long said Linden Lab should get more creative with Premium Memberships and offer alternative options, but they seem to work in their current form for Linden Lab. One thing to note is that Premium Members get gifts, the blog post informs us about the new one :
jump behind the helm of your new interactive pirate airship, the Linden Marauder. Enjoy fast-action, high flying fun-near-the-sun, or menace the airways with your armament of cannons.
They had me at pirate! Yarr!
The improvements to Second Life blog post builds upon the discussion with Oz Linden and Gray Of The Lab from San Francisco at the Firestorm Q&A about the future of Second Life.
The improvements include :
- Releasing Experience Keys
- Improving Group Chat Performance
- Implementing the Chrome Embedded Framework
- More Texture and Mesh Loading Improvements
Now if some of this sounds all geeky and technical fear not, it sounds geeky and technical to me too, but remember, the geek shall inherit the earth.
Ok so experience keys are being exemplified extremely well in The Cornfield.
Improving group chat performance is like painting the Severn bridge, it’s never going to end! However Linden Lab really are making noble efforts to shut us cynics up about fixing group chat, the gauntlet has been thrown down, the real question is, can they force the owner of the website Is SL Group Chat Still Broken? to update his site? That’s quite a challenge, but LL are working on it!
The blog post does make a very bold assertion :
This is an issue that impacts lots of Second Life users, and it’s something we’re actively working to improve. Anyone should be able to reliably hold a conversation using group chat in Second Life without delivery delays or other problems.
I’m tempted to shout “Noob” because so many of us are actually comfortable with group chat not working as well as it might, it’s actually a sign that you’re in Second Life. However LL’s work in this area should certainly be welcomed, even if it will potentially ruin my joking about group chat not working!
The Chrome Embedded Framework improvements excited me when I heard about it (*EDITOR* I Thought you said you weren’t a geek? /*EDITOR*), I mean it’s not going to blow you away but it’s a major change in implementing web content in Second Life, we’re talking media on a prim, splash screens, streaming media all getting a modern framework. Obviously my excitement about this didn’t last long, as I’m not a geek, honest!
Finally they talk about improving mesh and texture loading speeds and this is something that many a non-geek can also embrace with a massive hug. Obviously loading speeds are important and I’ll be honest, I do feel Second Life loads a scene faster today than it did last year, this may be a perception issue but I doubt it. Inara Pey, included a Whirly Fizzle video in her post on this subject and I’m going to post the same video because it demonstrates how these changes improve loading speeds, even though there’s no project viewer out yet….. Whirly is a good person, trust me!
In general, Linden Lab are moving in the right direction, they are still working on Second Life, they are still improving Second Life. Most things out of the lab are good. I was a fan of Rod Humble and I’m a fan of Ebbe Altberg, neither of them got everything right but I firmly believe they are taking Second Life and Linden Lab in the right direction, there are of course a few creases that need to be ironed out, but ironing sometimes requires great patience, especially with stripey shirts that make your eyes go funny.