Second Life, disappointment of the year 2007?!
November 23, 2007 5:50 pmEach year, in Belgium, the Websites & Products of the year are chosen through an internet poll organised by PC Magazine.
Yes, indeed, that’s correct, no link to be found here. Why so? I dislike them because…
… the f*****g r*****s over at PC Magazine nominated Second Life for ‘Disappointment of the year 2007′.
I strongly disagree. The reasons?
- I, Vint am a Second Life Resident / Avatar. Without this so called disappointment, I would not exist. My existence is certainly not a disappointment, so neither is the virtual world that gave birth to me.
- Heard anything impressive like for instance Relay for Life that has been done in There? Habbo Hotel? IMVU? Nope. Indeed. We’d kick thoses other virtual worlds’ asses anytime. Actually, it has been rather silent around World of Warcraft too.
- We’ve gotten scultped prims aka sculpties and WindlLight atmospheric rendering. Lindens started to communicate better. Second Life client versions have become more stable and the code is open source, leading to alternative versions like the OnRez viewer. And all this amongst other great achievements. Even taking into account the so called massive amounts of child pr0n, the upcoming Age Verification ft. Aristotle, the VAT for Europeans, etc. I find the overall balance of 2007 to be ‘positive’.
- Second Life might have disappointed some persons, companies, … but that’s only because they came to our brave new virtual world with the wrong expectations. And who’s to blame for that? *points at the magazine*
So, what do you guys think? Any chance we’ll win ‘most prominent disappointment of 2007′ over Vista, internet connection prices (terrible in Belgium, especially compared to the allowed upstream & downstream) and PSP3? Or rank better than DDR3 memory and Quad-core cpu’s, which I did not even know existed?
The full text:
Disappointment of the year (teleurstelling van het jaar)
Not all that shines is a good thing. In 2007 we saw also enough misplaced concepts, failed launches or decisions that were not understandable. The redaction gathered the most prominent disappointments in this short list; you may choose the three biggest losers.
- 802.11n wireless technology
- ATI Radeon 2900-series
- DDR3 memory
- Internet connection rates
- Digital HD-television
- Safe on-line banking
- Playstation 3 (40GB, non compatible with PS2)
- Quad-core CPU’s
- Second Life
- Windows Vista
As people who do not know for sure what to answer, pick things that sound most familiar, I’m afraid we stand a good chance at playing runner up to Internet connection rates. :(
12 Responses to “Second Life, disappointment of the year 2007?!”
Yikes, I got that poll too this morning, didn’t vote yet so didn’t see what there was in their lists…
Now, I don’t get the full advantages of WindLight, and sculpties take a minute or 2 till they’re all loaded, but all in all, SL still remains one of the greatest things that happened to me in quite a while, so I’m not planning to give it a bad rating.
I’ve got to disagree with you a bit, Vint. I feel that the list was well-chosen, and except for the ATI 2900-series and Quad-Core CPUs - which I don’t have any experience with - I have experienced some level of disappointment with all of those items.
Second Life in particular has been a grave disappointment to me. Although I still think Second Life is currently the best virtual world available (and perhaps not for long, some of the beta programs I’m in seem VERY promising), it has utterly failed to live up to it’s potential. I’ve been involved with Second Life for about 18 months now, and what started out as tremendously fun and rewarding has turned into an incredibly painful experience.
With 95% (rough guesstimate) of my online sessions suffering from “abnormal termination” and roughly 50% of sign-in attempts failing, I’m already severely disappointed in the platform’s stability and user experience. Add to that the now daily (yes, really) problems with inventory and the all-too-frequent problems with object permissions, I’m very close to losing all interest in Second Life altogether.
Windlight is indeed very pretty, which matters not one whit if I cannot remain in-world long enough to enjoy the prettiness. The Lindens are making public noise about communicating better, though the evidence suggests to me that they have a very long way to go in that regard.
Despite my frustrations, I still retain hope that LL will somehow manage to get Second Life back on track, that I will someday be able to again enjoy the user experience that I used to have, and that Second Life will once again start moving in the direction that will allow it to achieve some measure of it’s tremendous potential.
Until that day comes, I guess I will have to settle for OpenSIM and other open source metaverse projects, and continue beta testing up and coming virtual worlds while pouting that my favorite of them all is currently just plain and simply broken.
Is there any explanation or they just made a bulleted list? I am interested what they find so negative in second life to place it just beside Vista.
I agree that SL is far away from perfect, but it is different when you or me or other resident rant in own blog and when PC magazine say it’s a disappointment of the year. I spent this year on the grid and was there to protest both IDV and beating of the monks in Burma, my eyes were blessed with reflections of WindLight water and millions of zombies released by some PN idiot, I’ve said ugly things to Iridium and Trollofy but also sent a thousand of kisses to Torley and made love with…. well… some great and wonderfull people on the grid.
And who is PC magazine to say anything about SL? What have they done except getting in the trend of spitting over the SL? Afeter all, SL is “your world, your imagination”. Despite all the lag, bugs, crashes, glitches, despite many wrong decisions and lacks of communication between Lindens and the residents, it is still what you make of it. And PC magazine and other press is just asking from their readers to justify their incompetence and disability to to find their way there.
One more thing… Robby… OpenSim is a part of second life. I am waiting for it too, and waiting to settle on an independent sim, but after all it is the same system. And possibility of having the OpenSim is what makes SL a great thing.
Robby, I find ‘With 95% (rough guesstimate) of my online sessions suffering from “abnormal termination” and roughly 50% of sign-in attempts failing, I’m already severely disappointed in the platform’s stability and user experience‘ strange as lately I hardly suffer from those. Besides if all suffer to login or to stay logged in, I’m doing OK.
Dandellion, it was merely a bulleted list, no explenation, except for a little tiny bit with the PS3. You’re right on OpenSim, but if I recall correctly, SL is not our world anymore? ;)
With OpenSim SL is OUR world. With OpenSim nobody gives a f*** what Lindens have to say about it.
Fuck Belgium.
Only 3 more months until I finally can say this country goodbye and will be living happily in Finland.
WITH DECENT INTERNET CONNECTION RATES!
The Radeon HD 2900XT a Disappointment? Maybe from the standpoint of Hardcore gamers but not for people who want a decent DX10 card but don’t want to pay $800 for it.
As for SL, I look at it this way: It’s the same thing when that so called News site revealed a poll that said the average SL user only spends 12 minutes logged in. (I have an Xfire profile that is to the contrary), take it as a grain of salt and when it comes to mass-media, plug your ears. Who gives a bat’s as what they say, we already know better.
Dangit I forgot to add that so far my only disappointment for 2007 has been Windlight, it doesn’t work very good with ATi cards especially the newer ones.
But since it’s not officially ready for prime-time and it’s expected to have bugs it’s not really that big of a disappointment.
SecondLife a dissapointment? Not for me, otherwise I wouldn’t be here now, like many of you :) But perhaps for all those people who try it with wrong expectations, caused by the hype in the media (possibly inclusive PC-magazine? - I don’t read it).
I’d vote for the bad internet connection rates in Belgium. I’m living in the Netherlands myself, but have experienced the bad Belgian circumstances while being online with a good friend who lives there. Very annoying when your connection suddenly slows down, because you’ve reached your monthly limits… I’d call that prehistoric.
And according to the other options:
* Digital HD Television? I don’t watch television anymore since I’m in SL ;-)
* Windows Vista: hihi they did another try? I’ve been a Mac-addict since 15 years :D
* I’ve been pretty content about online banking for several years.
* Playstation: ask me again in a few years when my boys are older…
* the rest: should I know what it is? Apparently not, when it’s disappointing :P
What a dumb list. Screw them.
Monthly limit of internet bandwidth? That’s a crime!
Ow, no, Dandellion! That’s a reality! :(
Care to comment?