Marianne McCann

Click icon, drag into applications folder, click open. What need of a lengthy installer?

I note that none of those screens focus on the "build your world" aspect. It's more of a "consume" message, no?

What all the above said. Given LLs seeming desire this week to try to glom Second Life onto "Social Networking," the inability to do simple group messaging is crippling. It's killed events that I promote using such, as well as some of the chat-related groups I need to be in. The error messages have also been a constant annoyance.

They paid how much?

Skinning should be largely irrelevant. Use the OS interface's style, or at least make this an option. I would rather be looking at a MacOS style look and feel for myself, than a proprietary look, no matter how dark/sketchy/etc.

The interface is still overly complex for the new user and not very attractive -- but they've taken away the "tools" menu. I've suspected that for a long time coming: The belief being that it is the very ability to build -- one of the core things that has kept many here -- is the thing that "overcomplicates" Second Life for new users.

I spent about an hour there last night. The "fenced" area seemed confusing to many, who were already standing in the adult sim, yet felt they needed to be able to cross into the "fenced" area to prove verification.

Great write up!

And yes, the LL staff involved with Bay City at this point have been amazingly supportive., helping us to a flea market event, working on the hubs, and providing a lot of support for the events this weekend.

The issues of child avatars in Ursula was addressed at the second-to-last Brown Bag by yours truly, and jibes with the answer you got for your update.

Kid avatars have had to live under a shifting, vaguely worded policy for two years. We’ve had to watch what we do, be aware of where we were, and otherwise step carefully lest we be accused of doing something wrong.

Now everyone gets to share the joy.

Wel, it is the *perfect* time for them to get that "boost" from the SL bashing bandwagon, no?

I dunno if the "Wonderland" stuff hurt then or not (as most of that happened on SL, most of that blowback seems to still be there), but I do think this points to the financial issues towards trying to make an SL "alternative" that still uses the SL framework and is largely marketed as a "we're like them, but without LL." That doesn't seem to be the way to run a railroad... er, VW.

I s'pect, once this all comes down to it, we'll see more of a middle ground. The pricing structure that Jack outlined already seems to be *slighly* backtracked on. This seems to be in this paragraph:

"Over the next few days we will be continuing to review the feedback and keep the dialogue flowing with as many of you as we can. If you have something to say, the forum is the best place to say it. It is clear that some Openspaces are being used as they were intended originally, so we recognise that there are different levels of usage that we need to account for."

I say seems, cuz well, you know how th' blog posts are always worded.

As to th' use of LDPW an Openspace, well, that seems like one hand not knowin what the other was doin', which is so, so often the trouble with LL, no?

At any rate, this whole situation has caused more damage than I suspect LL realizes. It goes much further than a price increase, but into how it was presented, how the teams communicate, how much research is done before major announcements, how feedback of those annoucements is handled, and yes, how quickly LL can damage the trust of its users.