So I’m going back and forth as to whether or not I’m really ready to open a sim in a month. At any given moment I could give several reasons for going for it and several reasons against.
Generally, my feeling is this: I’m willing to give it a try. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work, and I gotta know that if I need/want to back out, I can. I’m confident that my benefactor is on my side with whatever decision I make, and wants to see the sim succeed just as much as I do. That known, of course I want to give it my best shot.
Mistletoe Ethaniel's Blog 
My honest opinion after spending months and sinking money into OLG is, don’t. If you have the extra money to toss into the breeze, go for it. Otherwise it is pretty clear to most of us who got out (many with hundreds of dollars or more wasted or tied up in false promises by Sakai) that it is a money pit. Reward a company when they follow through with promises. Do not support them when it is clear the track record is sketchy at best. Ask where all the developers went. Ask where the new continent of sims are. Ask where SSOs are in development (hundreds due last June) and ask if the new “platform” he is again promising (realXtend being the first lie) is a rehash of the RealXTend meshes we were promised when we invested in the grid. Ask why he had to move offices so soon. Ask why he refuses to give an accurate count of avatar concurrency. Ask why he still cannot process a simple payment and apply a credit without being begged. I think you can see where I am heading here. 🙂
Good luck with whatever you decide. Just don’t spend more then you are willing to see fall into a void. With the earmarks of failed business that 3DX is displaying there is no way to know if he is going to default payment to the server company (oh, yeah.. he is shopping for a new one of them now too, odd that) and everything you worked for and invest in gets the plug pulled without warning.
Not being a Debbie Downer here.. just look at things in perspective. False promises are the only consistent thing from 3DX and Sakai Openlife.
Who are you? I’ve been hearing things here and there but they’re all from people who cover tracks or otherwise maintain anonymity. The people who do speak up in favor of sticking it out maintain the same persona wherever it is they speak, so I know who they are; but from those in opposition I get all this mystery.
My names is neither Holmes nor Watson; I’m not in the mood for a mystery.
No mood for a mystery? Call it a favor to a stranger I have neither met or heard of prior to posting on OLX. I have no need to out my ID and invite the emails, PMs, etc that come with that. Test what I say and you will see it is true. If my anon posting is not welcome here, I understand and will now move on. Good luck. Honestly.. know I have been there and done that. Take care, I won’t post again. Don’t even feel like you need to approve this post, I was just offering a voice of experience in hopes of another person not losing money in a sinking ship.
Take care. 🙂
I have to back Former OLGer, on everything they have said. I came across your blog from Twitter and also wish to hide my id. I do not want the PMs, emails and harassment that starts from a “number” if you speak out negatively about OLG. Call me a coward my all means, just not into having drama in my Vws.
Some have the view point of “picking your grid and sticking with it”, no matter what. Never looking at other platforms new or old to see how things have changed in the last 2 years. Which is fine if you can afford to kiss that time and money goodbye, if it does not work out. Others have the view of watching, reading and doing research on VWs, keeping an open mind.
Openlife looked to have a promising future, back in 2008 beginning of 2009. Lots of positive blogs , talk of the new currency, the new platform (Avatar 2/RealXTend meshes ), lots of members and it being imposible to buy mainland because it had sold out. Back then we had quotes of over 600 regions http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2009/11/social-opensim-grids-gain-over-1000-regions/ (this link is only to show that OLG had posted to the OpenSimulator grid list that they had 600 regions) Mainland alone is over 250 regions, do you see them?
Have a look at the currency issue http://www.virtualworldsnews.com/2009/01/openlife-grid-to-adopt-virtual-currency.html
Can land owners cash out yet? I know when I requested I couldn’t and I was a land owner with tens of thousands of credits.
I could do a 101 links to sites/forums like that, but I am not going to get into bashing OLG, just repeat what Former OGLer has said, ask the questions, google Openlife, do your research, don’t just take someones word.
I wish you luck. Like OLGer I am not bothered whether you approve this, I am just offering you some advice, as a fellow VW traveller, its up to you whether you want to listen or take it.
I have no reason to hide who I am or what happened with OL and what led up to us actually starting our world. I’ve already been through the OL gristmill of their nasty comments and blogs, so I really don’t care too much what the cheerleaders want to say.
As with former OLG’er, I can attest to the countless promises that never came through. Another promise left out from above posts: Nov. 2008, promises of 24/7 customer support… it still doesn’t exist to this day in OL. My eventual departure and resulting ban came as a consequence of Sakai discussing with other customers saying I was late on my tier payments by 3 months on my region. This was a lie. Until April of 2009, while we were running our first tests on our grid, I was still paying my tier. When I felt this was bad business practice, I filed a dispute against Sakai with PayPal. My last month’s tier was returned to me and I was banned same day from OL. This is posted on my blog at elesland.com, with the pertinent info from PayPal posted there, so you can see I have no reason to lie over this.
Let’s cover his development shall we? I can give you links, but I think you’d have more fun wandering the OS forge. MRM’s… nothing but SSO’s renamed, originally hooked in by Adam. Profiles, look at Profiles in the viewer and notice all the tabs gone? If you can’t fix it, remove it, then people stop asking about it. Web side dev… he runs DNN, DotNetNuke, which in and of itself isn’t bad, but I can show you the Events module that was released in my emails from notification of them, surprise surprise, 1 week later, there were Events posted on the site. Notice they don’t work in world however? How hard is it to really put events to hook into the grid code? Not very. Not if you are trying to pass yourself off as someone who can get things done. Event coding is easy peasy then, it’s just a matter of the grid getting info from DB, and passing it to the Viewer. Seriously, it’s that freaking easy.
Let’s talk about his “latest upgrades” from yesterday shall we? I’ll quote him for you in case you missed it:
Notes: Notable changes-
Improvements to script engine handling.
Updates and improvements to the cloud system.
Update to Openlibrary 0.56
Huh, so you should ask him WHAT handling was fixed? Because we just made a ton of script engine improvements, and something we did WAS fixed in handling of certain things. How about you ask him for technical details. I can pass you over 20 references of things he picks up across the web and then suddenly it’s his 3DX development. Interesting.. cloud system improvements? Oh so he had his provider fix some thing or upgraded his cloud computing… again something he didn’t do. Openlibrary? Seriously? He can’t even say the OpenMetaverse Library? It was upgraded in OS’ 0.6.8 release from what I can tell, although I could be wrong as we no longer take OS’ releases. It’s either that or he updated the Library itself to add what, more textures? Script files? These are easy XML files to update and toss on the server.
I can give you many stories I’ve heard from his provider, but that’s hearsay, so I won’t include them here, but it’s probably why he’s looking for a new provider. But one thing I CAN say with certainty, is that most of mainland is gone due to him shutting down many servers with them residing on those. However, if you start going back through the forums, you’ll see this coincides with about 5-6 months ago they were going to “redesign” mainland. Huh, still no new mainland other than what he has to have to keep things running.
If you wander the web, you’ll find an interesting little tidbit about how he stiffed another company of $4k for OS software development. Just little things. But, you’ve steadfastly defended OL, I admire you for that, it’s easy to be blinded by shinies and things you can do, I was once in your same shoes, as noted in my blog. Do your own research, do your own thing, if you want to toss money at a man that has no ability to do anything on his own and outright lies to his customers, then feel free. I’m glad you have the money to do so.
As I mention here, I’m genuinely touched by your genuine concern for my money.
Well, normally I stay out of things like this. However, I have to give you my two cents worth. You will make up your own mind in the end, and if you are SET on doing this, what any of us tell you matters not.
I bought a region that I paid for on October 31, 2008. I was told at that time it was 24 hour turnaround. Two weeks later I got my region. Not having learned from that lesson, bought another region a few months later, again, 24 hour turn around. Again, two weeks later (and many emails) got the region. Never once was my tier posted timely. I had to beg them to post it. Told them wasn’t paying the next installment until they had recorded the prior. Now keep in mind, this isnt like it was a week or so wait. I was paying three months at a time in the beginning….
Sakai’s trademark “soon” became less endearing and amusing as time went on. The region/s would go down at the blink of an eye and stay down. sometimes for more than a week. This was real money I ended up refunding to my renters as they could not access what they were paying for. In the end, ended up cancelling the second region and then still could not handle the broken promises (I will be kind and not call them outright lies) even though I am still waiting for the refund of credits I requested and that as a REGION owner I had a right to get. Almost $75. alone right there. Not to mention the money I paid to my commercial renters outright for everything.
I have NOT let it sour me on vw’s and have an avi in almost all the viable ones. I do have a favorite even, however this is not the place to beat on that drum. I’m the only Noxluna in most of the worlds, feel free to come find me.
Dream the dream, but don’t let yourself get fleeced, unless that is what you wish to take from this venture of yours.
Do research, check on what we non – cheerleaders say, as Elenia has pointed out, the information is there to be found.
Respectfully,
Noxluna