Welcome to Second Life™

Sounds nice and inviting? Then you're not a Second Life user.

I hear it or read it close to every day. In group chats, in forums, in blog comments, from friends. And I say it myself.

It's the response to any problem you have in SL. You buy something on the market and it's not delivered? You buy something in a shop and come home with an empty box and the store refuses to help? Welcome to Second Life. Learn to live with it. Or file a complaint, an Abuse Report, not that LL gets into user to user conflicts but it may help to vent. Besides even if they did it would take them months to get to it.

You register a creditcard with LL, make sure it's valid and has the right amount of money. And you have used it for months or even years to pay LL successfully. You get an email that says you don't have a valid payment method. You have 30 days to pay or you will lose your land holdings and the content of your inventory. If you don't catch this in time your account is blocked. You can't log in, you can't update your payment method.

Every little bit of problem is totally on LL's side. But you fix it. Learn to live with the fact that the customer is always wrong and has no rights. If you were to threaten to give up on SL - who cares?

I've been in SL for almost four years now. When I hear stories like this it's mostly from oldtimers that laugh about it. "Welcome to SL ..."

My guess is that if you are not an oldtimer, if you just became a premium member and went shopping or bought land and this happened to you and when you turn to the SL forum or some group for help you get the same old reply (probably a slap in the face to you who haven't learned yet that the customer always is wrong), you'd just shrug and decide to get out of here.

The worst isn't that LL screw things up and treat us like a bunch of gatecrashers whether we pay or not, it's that we look at ourselves the same way. Take a look at the forum and read the responses to people that complain about something that happened to them. And it's not even from unkind or unfriendly people. The "Welcome to SL ...", "Learn to live with it", is more like comforting phrases.

I wouldn't have written this if I hadn't seen a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. A hope that the attitude is changing at the lab. The new CEO Rod Humble has stepped in and saved the Elf Clan sims that were on the way to close down over billing issues. A sign that users matters even up there at the top. I'm sure there are employees at LL who would welcome that kind of change too.

I love my SL. It's a world like no other, where anyone can find an outlet for their creativity. It's full of fun and interesting people that build amazing places and make awesum items. I want new users to come here to help keep the SL society, and economy, alive and prospering.

There are some good signs, like the mentors being brought back to help newcomers. And I'm not sure when this happened but lately I have a much better performance in SL, on the same computer, same ISP connection and same viewer. I can cross between regions without much lag at all, and I sometimes forget I have my graphics settings on Ultra cause it's so smooth. Things are improving.

Mesh is on the way. And the fact that even if it won't happen this month we will be presented with a timetable for it. That's a huge information improvement. Kinda respectful actually. (not a sure thing, see my comment)

Since I am (and plan to stay) totally addicted to SL I have to believe that Welcome to Second Life will get back that tone of promise it once had. That feeling of "Your world. Your imagination".