Second Life has seen an enormous amount of growth in the last year, and that has been both a boon and the bane of Linden Lab. While it means that the real world is discovering (and liking) Second Life, it means any and all mistakes made in the infrastructure with regard to scaling will throw a spanner in the works.
And that has happened.
In the early days of Second Life, fun new features were added every couple months. But soon the bugs that come with new features started to build up, and public opinion swayed towards “stop adding new features and fix the bugs”.
They did, mostly. (Long-term feature projects continued to trickle in, adding a few new bugs even as the older bugs were being tackled.)
But then the fans hit the grid, and “scaling” became the new watchword at Linden Lab. Second Life just couldn’t handle the hoards of new people. Major and fundamental changes needed to be made, and pretty much all new feature development (or at least, releases) ceased.
And that’s where we stand now. The few new features that show up are mainly geared towards the mid-level activities.
(Quick aside for definitions of my private terms: High-level activities are the fun stuff, stuff just about everyone does including basic building and avatar customization. Mid-level activities involve the management of groups or land, things done by fewer people, but people that have a strong influence on how Second Life evolves. Low-level activities include heavy scripting, big interactive projects, and external interfaces that involve fewer people, but add sometimes revolutionary value to the Grid.)
There haven’t been many new low-level features for a while, and pretty much NO new high-level features since flexi-prims.
Now, I’m not complaining since the scaling issues are the most important problems to address. Without being able to handle the number of people banging on the door, there’s just no point in adding new bells and whistles to play with. But the time is coming where the Second Life model will start to be imitated, and it is coming soon.
It may even be the PS3 that provides the competition. A fixed hardware platform would give a very even and guaranteed experience for virtual world travelers. It may be highly seductive if it can hold a candle to Second Life (which still remains to be seen).
Voice is coming in Second Life. I got to test out the beta just this morning. That is definitely a high-level feature to add, even without voice masking (which will have interesting side effects among the cross-gender avatar players out there). On the Mac, its a little broken (incoming voice sounds like a clone army with the hiccups singing rounds of Row, Row, Row Your Boat) but the promise is there.
I’m still hopeful that Second Life will thrive and grow… I just would like to see the scaling issues get solved soon so that client-oriented features can blossom once more.