Dear Linden Labs,
First, I'm no geek but for the last 30 years (you know, since we had floppies and parked our hard disks and I was incredibly avant garde for installing and using a 2400 baud modem) I've been handling my own PC issues and rarely needed outside help.
I have been earning a living on my PC plus my Internet connection for 25 years. I buy fairly good machines, too.
Second, I love SL and have done since 2007. I don't come anywhere near to meeting my tier, but I enjoy designing and building and chatting to friends, and try to pay it forward a bit by selling my stuff for 1L.
Putting money in monthly is OK because a) I can (within reason) and b) it's my hobby.
So when everything changed overnight and I couldn't stay inworld without crashing, it was something of an unpleasant surprise (understatement) and I did everything I could to find out why.
For three weeks now.
But that's all beside the point. Call it background. Let's get back to facts.
So, SL stopped working properly for me (as in it crashes sporadically but regularly, and kicks me off the Net), and after I changed nothing on my machine or settings.
Since then I have checked stuff, double checked stuff, and read up about stuff until I have frankly run out of ideas.
Your Live Help? Pleasant enough but despite asking politely to be spared the blurb about dealing with lag and clearing cache and uninstalling (done all that twice, thanks), I got... the blurb about doing just that. And was told to file a ticket.
I did. With basic information on my system (model and graphics card). It may not be a gaming monster but it's 2 months old and a pretty fast machine that had absolutely no problems with SL (on the recommended 'high' settings) until January 15.
None.
I've now tried setting it on 'medium' and nothing changes.
Oh, and I've been checking my connection speeds and fluctuations, temperatures, and event logs. They all tell me everything is dandy. Your lag meter shows green everywhere. My fps is magnificent (up to 48, when I'm connected).
My network card says it's very happy thank you. I flushed my DNS cache also, just in case it was that. It wasn't.
This happens on whatever viewer I try (the official one being by far the crashiest of all, just so you know). It all started when I was on one particular sim (which I named), and if I try to go there I crash immediately which could indicate lag but other busy, primmy, scripty sims are fine. Sometimes. But I also crash on empty sims.
Mystery.
But... that comment today on my ticket about whether my machine met minimum requirements is pretty damned stupid. I did send the FULL configuration this morning, in return, to save you Googling for the specs (which quite honestly would have taken you less time than writing that comment on my ticket in the first place).
I did say I had no problems (yet?) on my own connection and using another (fancy schmancy gaming) computer, thus indicating the connection is fine... but that does not make my normal machine some sort of wheezing, elderly, below-spec one.
No, my idea was to suggest it could be a problem with SL and my system DESPITE the fact it is well over the minimum needed, and hoping you had some ideas about that.
And if it affects me, it could well affect others too (and for days if not weeks, I have been hearing about people constantly crashing so I suspect there is some sort of a conflict going on with one bit of equipment and your code - and stupidly thought you might want to investigate that).
But no, you just trot out 'check minimum requirements'. Bah.
This does not make for what you would call a "Good User Experience". In fact it makes for a pretty crappy SL experience, including with your 'customer assistance'.
I've spent 5 years standing up for SL, despite its - um - quirks and shortcomings. I've found far more good than bad.
But... I'm sick of this. Really, really sick of it.
I'm not even sure whether it's worth trying to continue (and no this is not emotional bribery for you to magically fix it because you couldn't bear to lose me - it's just a fact).
How long will I keep trying? Not sure, but not very much longer.
8 comments:
Great letter! I wish I could say that I was surprised by the level of support but I'm not.
I just hope you can get over this issue because I know how much SL and Vent du Sud means to you.
xx
Thanks.
The good thing is that the good friendships I have there mainly go beyond SL (as you well know).
But I love creating and sharing (broken record broken record).
Bah.
While my pc is definently no power house it's nearly 5 years old it should be able to handle Second Life without much issue and some days it can but most of the time it lags like crazy.
My specs meet the minimum requirements and even the recommended so i should not have a problem yet i seem too.
Seriously Linden Labs get it sorted!!
The one time I had to use CS it was like pulling teeth. I was ghosted and they didn't seem to -understand- what I was asking so their fixes were to problems, I didn't have and didn't help me.
Frustrating and they always seem so confused/surprised by negative feedback.
I found that having the SL browser installed had a negative effect on my using other browsers. I ended up uninstalling all SL things and reinstalling just firestorm, and things improved a lot. Adding Radegast didn't change much.
Thank you. I shall try that. Hell, I've tried everything else.
Hi there, I stumbled over your post and it reminded me of the same problem I had, very similar to yours. Mine started after installing windows updates, I kept crashing in SL, there was a graphic card issue with the 3D rendering (or something like that, I'm not a pc expert) so what I did was uninstall the windows update (well,if you can, you can just doll back the system at the date you started having problems, I didn't have a system backup made). Hope it helps :)
Thank you - that is on the long, long list of things I tried too - there were Windows updates around then so I uninstalled them, did the whole registry clean / uninstall SL, and... didn't help either.
BUT after a remote update to our ADSL box, and another uninstall of SL, it finally seems better. Fingers crossed.
Again, thank you VERY much!
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