Socially|Mundane

I did some looking at alternate Grid Viewers when Linden Lab released the current (as of this writing) Official Viewer (1.23.4) - and I plopped it onto my machine and discovered how riddled with bugs it is. After that harrowing experience (hey, you try installing seven viewers on one system then trying to compare them,) though I only spoke of five of the seven I played with, I settled on the GreenLife Emerald viewer.

Ironically, the day after I had completed all that and posted my thoughts on those, Linden Lab announces Snowglobe. The only 'feature' spoken of is how fast the map art appears and how ridiculously tight you can zoom-in on the mini map. Features I personally figured as being useless to me.

Then, Gwyneth Llewelyn posted an article on her blog with a video hyping-up the performance benefit of Snowglobe. This intrigued me as even though I truly enjoy all the wonderful whiz-bang features of Emerald and Gemini viewers, I'm really in preference of performance and Gwyneth's discussion convinced me I should look at Snowglobe.

I did. And I repeated Gwyneth's performance test, but with control rules to make comparison far easier. Hamlet Au posted my findings at New World Notes, so I won't bother repeating them here.

Of course I didn't expect everyone's result to be the same as mine, but I do suspect the majority will experience something similar.

I get so tired of people who proclaim they have "invested real life money" in Second Life. These people are seriously misguided or delusional or both. I don't mean this as a slight. What I do mean is that people really need to get their bearings straight.

Linden Lab does not promise anything to you other than access, and even that is revokable at any time for any reason. So anyone who puts real money into the system and expects anything other than that should perhaps take a finance 101 lesson from someone. Anyone. because anyone and everyone whose feet and mind are planted in reality knows full well that anything you put into the virtual world is a black hole by all expectation.

The fact that you can actually make a return on any of it is more or less an exploitation of tools and services provided, which could disappear without warning or explanation at any time and for no reason.

Simply because it is not promised.

First, special thank you to Grace Loudon who posted a teaser to this article on her Tumblr site.

A fascinating and unfortunately truthful commentary on MMO's (Massive Multiplayer Online) 'virtual worlds' and really strikes home. At least it does for me. It's a really good read.

The portion of the article Grace quoted is repeated here:

Slowly we fall out of love with our virtual world but somehow we stay addicted to the grind. We in effect make a Faustian bargain with our virtual world; we replace what should be hours of danger and excitement with the comfort of predictability. We become like the husband and wife that can barely tolerate each other but we stay together because we feel safe and secure with the devil we know.

So I ask does this ring true for you, too?