I am testing the waters with a two week free trial. I compiled my character an aptly named Jennyfur of the Gallente race and began the training program. You can’t really do much of anything until you complete the training. I wish they had a similar training thing in Second Life. I think it would make newbs a lil less ignorant to not let them leave Orientation Island until they could demonstrate the capacity to do everything in the training program.

I just needed a break from Second Life and its not like it works very well these days. My friends list almost never works so its kind of pointless, but woohoo to all the megacorps staking their virtual claim and the millions of droves of new users. Don’t get me started.

Sometimes more doesn’t equate to better: In the race to have a million users something has gotten lost along the way. Those of us who have been here since the early days (pre-2004) definitely sense this loss. In this race to boost user numbers, Second Life faces the grim reality of becoming completely unusable by the constantly increasing number of grid attacks. We can now refer to the time before open registration (B.O.R) and a time after open registration (A.O.R.) because that is where it all changed. B.O.R. there were grid attacks and instances of griefing however it wasn’t happening multiple times a day and multiple times a week and now in the era of A.O.R. we see the griefing growing exponentially. The problem with the grid attacks seems to be through abusing the scripting function for self-reliplicating objects. There does not seem to be a quick and easy fix for this since many objects have legitimate uses for self-replication though I am not sure why any object would need to self-replicate millions of times. My knowledge of scripting is limited, but Flipper suggested that this function could perhaps be restricted to users with payment info on account.

There has to be a silverlining somewhere: While I have many criticisms, as do we all, concerning the direction of Second Life and many of Linden Lab’s recent decisions, I have faith that all this will soon pass and things will get better. I just hope that we can all make it through these trials and tribulations. I hope that the truly wonderful people who have stood by through thick and thin to make Second Life the beautiful world that it is continue to perservere. I just fear Second Life becoming an extinct dinosaur beneath the sediment.