Second Life – Page 193

January 27, 2013

Jira Requires Some Changes

I’ve just reluctantly filed a Jira issue on something fairly trivial, but something that’s not working correctly for me. I say reluctantly because I still find the changes to the Jira in September, extremely disappointing. I actually pondered whether to both filing a report because the whole process is now so disappointing. The only real improvement I see is that it’s now easier to report an issue because they’re mostly filed under the Bug report project but beyond that, it’s an unsatisfactory experience.

One area where it is partcularly disappointing is that you no longer even get feedback on your report that the issue has been fixed, to quote the September blog post:

“Once a Bug reaches the “Accepted” or “Closed” status, it will not be updated. You can watch the Release Notes to see when and if a fix has been released for your issue.”

I’m sorry, but that’s a really poor approach to something which is a two way street, people take time out to report an issue, they should certainly be alerted that a fix has been released from their initial report, to not do so is really poor form and is one of the issues that caused me to ponder whether or not I should bother reporting the current issue I’ve observed.

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January 25, 2013January 25, 2013

The Tier Discussions Need To Cut Out The Blame Game

Over at New World Notes Hamlet Au has made a series of posts about lost revenue regarding sim losses and a couple of posts on how to introduce revenue streams to try and help the situation. The discussions have been somewhat heated, but I welcome Hamlet’s ongoing discussions on the tier issue. I can recall (although unfortunately can’t find any old posts) Hamlet quite some time ago posting that the tier model was too large a plank of Linden Lab’s revenue and that long term it’s unsustainable, so Hamlet is not a Johnny come lately to these discussions. He also posts the awful sim deathwatch series, of which I’m not a fan, but hey, these sims are disappearing.

Now two recent posts were on ideas for new revenue streams:

How to Stop SL Land Loss: Require Land Ownership to Sell Lots of Items in the SL Marketplace (Comment of the Week)

Should Linden Lab Charge SL Users to Keep Excess Inventory? It’s a Hidden Subsidy Hurting SL’s Economy

Now I personally disagree with both premises, in the first case with The Marketplace, the horse has bolted. This is the sort of thing that needed to be there from the start, introducing it now would be chaotic and bad PR. However I’m still not convinced that people should be able to list items via Direct Delivery to infinity and beyond, people should need to relist, but you don’t need to charge fees for that, although maybe a fee could be introduced if people want to list to infinity and beyond, but that wouldn’t be a long lasting fee.

The latter post I disagree with because the horse has bolted on inventory limits, they needed to be introduced from the start and how on earth would this be introduced. People would not want landmarks or group notice notecards, they wouldn’t want textures advertising new content, they wouldn’t want free gifts in case they went over limit and most of all, people would be miffed that their purchases were in peril, this would hit the economy.

However, although I don’t agree with the ideas, I do welcome the widening of the discussion. Unfortunately the comments tell a pretty sorry tale of blame games.

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January 25, 2013January 25, 2013

Can The Blocksworld Team Create A 100% Honest Second Life Trailer?

Draxtor Despres over on Twitter pointed me in the direction of the highly amusing Blocksworld 100% Honest Trailer, which I’ll embed at the end of the post. These guys sure know how to make a video and with a bit of prompting from Torley, we could be cooking on gas with a Second Life trailer on similar lines.

The video tells us that Blocksworld is : “From the country that gave you Minecraft and the country next to the country that invented Lego” now this doesn’t work for Second Life, well except for Lady Sakai who was telling me the other day that she was fed up with people thinking Scandanavia is a country and that we should appreciate they’re different countries out that way, so Lady Sakai will be happy that the creators of Blocksworld differentiate, but there’s a lot in that 100% honest trailer that fits perfectly with Second Life.

“It’s the ultimate building game, but it isn’t really a game, but you build stuff.” Now come on, that works great for Second Life too! We often see people berated for calling Second Life a game, because it’s not really a game of course, but you can build stuff. They also describe Blocksworld as “The game that isn’t really a game … or is it?”

“You can build motorcycles, with awful cornering.” Again, this is a good fit! Vehicles in Second Life are problematic, yes they can be built, yes they can travel nicely along some roads but at some point you hit issues with sim crossings, rubber banding and fall off your seat.

“Blocksworld is a world full of green grass, blue skies and sharp edges” This works too, unless you’re somewhere like Insilico, where there isn’t much in the way of green grass or blue skies! However even Insilico has sharp edges.

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January 25, 2013

Second Life Official Quick Tip Video Features Torley Without Friendly Greetings!

Another blog post has appeared over the last 24 hours, almost as if someone found a dusty box in the corner of a room and realised it is still a useful tool. This one is a quick tip video about changing your avatar appearance and promotes shopping, largely on the marketplace but it does make a reference to inworld shopping too, yes it does still exist!

The blog post can be read here, I’ll embed the video at the end of the post. This video sounds like it was produced by Torley, I mean it sounds like Torley but there’s no “Friendly Greetings!” … how can a Torley video not have friendly greetings? Did that end up on the cutting room floor because it’s a quick tip?

The video itself seems to be aimed at new users and is the sort of video that would be useful inworld at welcome areas, I’m not sure how difficult it is these days to keep YouTube videos working inworld, it would be nice to be able to put such videos in newcomer friendly places but I know that in the past, YouTube videos have had a habit of no longer working.

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