See What the Community thinks? Isn't that Dangerous?

For those of you that don't know me, I spend a lot of my time away from Second Life (and those friends at Linden Lab) doing some Beta Testing and even playing in other worlds. I've done this for a great many number of years, and was even invited to Second Life Beta over years ago without my knowledge. Anyway, over the years, I've come to find out about a great number of Game Developing Company's and even Game Developers. Let's just say it this way, stay away from anything Gordon Walton is working on, and run towards anything Sid is working on!

So, anyway, now that's out of my system, I recently received an E-Mail from a Game Company that's asking it's Users just what they think about a certain subject. Instead of acting on what they want, and then trying to sell it to the Community as an enhancement or a great addition, or ever good to improve the New Resident experience.

Many Game Developing Company's think that they know all and know best about their game. This of course has ALWAYS gotten them into trouble when they decided to screw with one class or another and find themselves having a revolt on every server. Maybe that's what it will take for Linden Lab to finally ASK their Community of Users just what WE WANT from them. Of course, if you have been reading M Linden's latest "4 Months Old" Post, the Community has spoken in spades, but I still doubt anyone at Linden Lab is listening. From the post itself you can tell that M Linden is doing nothing more then trying to sell a sinking ship to the worlds press. Unfortunately, it seems the number speaks volumes about the condition of Second Life, unfortunately there is no competent employee at Linden Lab to read those numbers.

There is one more "number" I wanted to bring up, that our faithful CEO fails to mention, and that is from a friend of mine, who asked me my opinion of whether I thought it would be a good idea to buy a private Island from Linden Lab at this time. I spoke in my usual dulcet tones and told him that if he was planning on having a rental business or something to that effect, then he should NOT do it. With all the downtime we occur anymore, he would be the one his customers turned to for rebates when outages occurred. Linden Lab has made it perfectly clear in their TOS that they are NOT going to give any refunds or reimbursements. So, I think this is a BAD IDEA right now. Well, apparently that's not what he's going to be doing, just wanted a place for himself to play without the griefers, and that's ok, I can see that happening then. Well, I spoke to him a couple hours later and said, "good luck with your Island, just when did they think they would have it up and running?". My friend, with me in shock and dismay, said, "It's already up. They had it operational in two hours!" Now most of you would think, "Gee that's great customer service", but those of you in the know, are thinking, "Oh crap". For the former people, the problem with this is, when Linden Lab was at its HEIGHT in popularity, it took "3 to 6 weeks" to get a private Island up and running. Now, they can do it in two hours. This tells us two very important things. First, Linden Lab must have an awful lot of unused servers sitting idle now, and second, there's a whole department that used to take care of turning up Islands, I wonder just how many are doing it now if it only takes two hours to accomplish? One or Two Peopl? This goes to show you just how far Linden Lab has fallen in its popularity and likability with customers.

I HOPE someone at Linden Lab reads this with the intent in which it's written. I want Second Life to exist for a good long while, but the only way that's going to happen is when Linden Lab stops futzing around and begins to LISTEN to its Community. We are the Customers they need, and if they won't listen to us, then there's going to be a time that we will stop listening to them too.

Anyone at Linden Lab care to comment? As for you Gordon, screw off.