As someone in SL off & on for years now, I can say that non-hyped periods are when LL makes the biggest changes... Those changes usually being the reasons for the new hype.... With an all new set of directors at LL now (no original people are still there), anything could happen in the future with SL...

Being user-driven btw is good for SL... LL's decision making has been spotty at best... If LL drove innovation in SL we'd be years behind where we are in content & SL as we know it would probably not exist....