Yesterday in Second Life, Sunday 18 November, 2007
Yesterday in Second Life there was:
17,131 new signups bringing the total to 10,967,242 signups.
A peak concurrency of 56,953 at 1:50PM, and a minimum concurrency of 30,097 at 1:35AM. Median concurrency for the day was 41,504.
The Grid Stability Index for the day was 3.06 (lower is better).
This should by all rights have been a record day for Second Life. Usage and popularity have been trending upwards, and Sunday should have seen new record peak concurrencies. It came close, true, but the grid problems more or less put the kibosh on it.
From talking with residents through the day, IMs and emails I've received, it seems that Linden Lab's communications over the weekend are considered by some to be "Not even good enough to call pathetic" as one put it. Another said, "Shouldn't they at least say something? Anything? For all we know there's nobody there today and nobody cares."
Maybe we'll get another post-mortem on the Second Life blog sometime during the coming week. I suggested that possibility to one correspondent who thought it would be "too little too late."
MMOs and virtual worlds aren't easy. The code isn't something everyone can do. Nor is the bug-fixing, operations, systems monitoring, and networking. Even the budget is tough. Most of them never make it into production - but you need to keep talking to your customers. When the product breaks, you need to at least let people know that you know that it's broken. Today's troubles have passed without a single notice.
When it breaks, tempers are already high, and the absence of information always breeds misinformation. If you've got to make embarrassing admissions in public, do it - and move on. People are still going to scream - there are problems, of course they will - but at least they'll feel more like you're trying.
