Who broke SL?

Saturday 20th June 2009. It started like any other day on SL. First thing I noticed was lots of blue boxes as people on my friends list were logging on and off and on and off. Then I noticed that about 600 items had mysteriously disappeared from my inventory, including a couple of gestures. So I hit the SL website and read the status.

‘Some residents may now be able to connect to Second Life however to login process may take a while. If you’re unable to connect, please wait a couple minutes before trying again. For those who are connected, some services may not be working at the moment. These include teleports, the world map, display of L$ balances, search, inventory and purchases made inworld. Some regions may also be inaccessible or showing as offline.’

Update number 2 read ‘Approximately 8,000 regions are currently inaccessible. Our technicians are working to restore service to them and other Second Life services.’

I think that roughly translates as ‘it’s screwed’. Now although things were slow, we did manage to get to the Mystic Fair which was finishing over the weekend. We did quite well too. The sim was there. Things rezzed, and then Mael just vanished while he was following me upstairs. This isn’t unusual – he quite often tps off somewhere to get a landmark, but no sign of him anywhere. I then got an msn – he’d crashed, and couldn’t get in. So he was going to do something in RL for a few minutes. I then made a basic schoolgirl error. I decided to log off for a while!

I had some RL stuff to do but I have downloaded Slim, so anyone who was in World would be able to talk to me. I got a message come through from Mael, Asking if I was in World. I said ‘no’ but I could be in a minute. Yeah. Right.

After several attempts, I read the status, and it told me to try again after a few minutes. Now usually when you can’t log on you get a polite message saying that despite their efforts, they have been unable to log you on (ie tough). This one was telling me it couldn’t find a simulator. After a while I decided that if I ever got back in World, I’d have a whip round to buy LL some new simulators, whatever they are.
Eventually I checked the status again – logins had been re-enabled – for the last half hour. So why was I still out? I linked up to online help and a polite man told me to try again in a few minutes. When I told him I’d been trying to do that for the last half hour, he suggested that my Home was probably unavailable.

I never knew you could change your log in options while off line, so he told me how to change it so I could log in to the last place, and it actually worked. Then came the peril of the tp to get to where Mael was at the fair. Joy of joys - that worked too.

Throughout the day things slowly improved, but we still received notices about sims being down and events cancelled. Now I work on the theory that any one of us will only visit a very small proportion of the grid. So if a place we visit is down, that’s just bad luck. If 8-9 places we visit are down, then that adds up to one serious problem.

Early evening things were sufficiently improved to risk logging off again. Logging on again was a matter of seconds, and the tp to Demented worked just fine. (The sim was one which had taken a little holiday earlier in the afternoon, but it had returned refreshed) Unfortunately we only had 6 of us there, which included the host and the DJ, so we decided to postpone it to the next day, when SL would hopefully be a little easier to negotiate.

So we wandered off to go through various bits and pieces from the fair, and then decided to go to Zoo Bar. We don’t usually get to go because it clashes with Demented, so it was a rare chance to catch up. I went straight there, while Mael was joining me after visiting a sim he couldn’t get to earlier. I then got an msn – he’d crashed. He logged back in and sent me a tp. I had several im’s going on so I couldn’t really concentrate on the trivia so I said my goodbyes and hit the tp button. I then got another msn – he’d crashed and couldn’t get back. I was fine I said. I then realised I was standing about 50 feet in the air above sea. No ground had rezzed. In fact, nothing had rezzed. I just stood there, suspended above sea. I then got everyone’s favourite message. ‘You have been logged out of Second Life’. And I couldn’t get back again.

It seems the problems they’d been working on all day had re-materialised, so they had to start over. And that was it. We were all locked out. After a couple of hours I tried again. I was in! Unfortunately I was in a place with 50 other av’s and it seemed none of us were going anywhere. I attempted to tp and got the best message yet. ‘We have been unable to complete your request. You may need to re-log in to Second Life.’ I’d spent the best part of the day trying to log in – so not way was I logging out again! Then a group im from Chad – trivia at Zoo Bar. He sent me a tp – it worked – I was with human beings again. There were several other trivia ‘refugees’ there too, and thanks to Chad and Shale for providing us with somewhere to go. Apparently their sim had crashed just as I was leaving earlier.

Now, what to do when we are faced with a Saturday night with no Second Life! Well here’s a few tips, so that next time it happens, you’ll be prepared.

1 – Link up with your friends on msn. They have some interesting games you can play to pass the time, including one where you smack each other in the face with a wet fish! Not exactly the most intellectual of games, but it feels good when you whack them. There are a few other more interesting games, as well as some which are run by Linden Labs (ie – they didn’t work)

2 – Go out and but the DVD that you’ve always been meaning to get, and keep it in a drawer in the cellophane. Then, next time, just grab a drink or 2 from the fridge, put your feet up, and away you go.

3 – Sleep through it. Someone had been burning the midnight oil, so they went to sleep early evening, only to wake up late at night. They were completely oblivious to everything that had gone on, and then I told them what had gone on, they were even more happy that they’d missed none of their usual events. This method relies on timing on your part too, but as a way of coping with the loss of SL, it’s probably the best, and certainly provides the least stress.

Now make sure you are prepared – there’s bound to be a next time. Group chat is bad to non existent, and getting worse all the time. Chat lag, and lag in general are getting worse and the lag monster seems to be making more friends by the day. Those little blue boxes seem to flash up even more, as we all experience more crashes. LL are so concerned, that they’re concentrating on getting rid of camping chairs and sploders! The problems aren’t getting any better, and they won’t if that’s how they prioritise things, so be prepared. We could all be faced with another day without Second Life:O