Change Comes Swift at Years' end! Well done, Linden Lab

As 2011 draws to a close, I find myself reflecting back on the many things which have happened to my virtual life in the past 12 months; The end of my experiments in BlueMars, the opening of my clothing store, the arrival of mesh in SL, new viewers, new marketplace, new friends made and old ones returning, as well as some old friends lost. It has, for all of us, been a pretty radical year. One particular event this month has made me more aware of how different things are, and can be, than they were before, and I wanted to share it with you.

For about the last six months, I have been searching for a community to connect with Rustica. As a single island region, it can get pretty quiet working by myself there for 60 hours a week, so I decided to search for a new home, intending to find the right fit aesthetically but also socially. The right people were a key factor in my quest. I had considered a variety of locations, preferring to join a medieval or fantasy RolePlay community because of the nature of my design work, with the limiting provision that Rustica would not become a RP region in order to remain open to my existing customer base, which spans across many genres and styles.

After much deliberation, I am happy to announce that I am joining with the Kingdom of Taure Ru and the Shadow Empire, which some of you may know also as Sylvhara. The sim should be moved over to our new home any moment now, which has me very happy. I am excited for the future and look forward to becoming part of the wonderful community of established RPers there.

My main reason for mentioning this is to make specific mention of just how amazing the Linden Lab Support Team has been during this process! I know this statement may have made some of you spew coffee across your computer, which I apologize for. It is important for me to mention their actions during this process. As much as I have lamented and lambasted them in the past for things they have done wrong during a variety of situations with me in the past, I feel it is equally important to mention how happy I am with the most recent transaction. While it is easy to complain about things when they go wrong, I feel I must in good conscience also give them praise and credit when, as most recently, they do something amazingly right.

Having placed a support ticket to move the sim, I was told that in order to move, I must get permission from several sims which were adjacent to my northern corners in the new spot. Unfortunately, the owner of those sims was no longer in SL, yet the sims had remained there for several months. With no possibility of getting permission from those sims, and no way to move to the new location without doing so, I was forced to close the ticket, which cause me to post my displeasure vociferously on my Plurk page. How could rigid adherence to a policy which was clearly not covering all the bases destroy my plans, after the weeks of meetings and planning! I was pretty livid at the failure, and having no further option, closed the ticket and abandoned the move. This, I commented, was typical of the support system and indicative of a lack of change, in contrast to what Rod Humble had stated as a primary goal this year.

I am here to redact that statement! I was wrong, and wish to explain why. Several days later, a support group manager re-opened the ticket, apologized for the problem, admitted that some mistakes had been made and rectified the situation by removing the two sims which were stuck in traffic and offering to move me to the new location. THIS, dear reader, is NOT the Linden Lab I have known for 5 years. This was something new. I almost fell out of my chair. As he stated, Mr. Humble has apparently empowered Support Group managers to go across channels and departments to fix problems like this when they arise, and I want to loudly applaud them for doing what amounts to a radical and much needed shift in policy control. It is indicative of some new shift in how things are handled by them, and it is very welcome. In the course of operating such a complex company, one which can have such a variety of problems, it is clearly necessary to have this level of authority in order to solve those problems of a more obtuse nature when they arise. If this is the new Linden Lab that Rod spoke of, then it, and he, gets my vote and will continue to get my tier. Kudos to them for doing what should be done in order to support the customers who work as hard to make SL the place it is. This is the best gift I could get this year, not just because my sim is moving, but because it means change - REAL change - is happening behind the doors there in San Fransisco. That, my friends, is awesome.

Kudos to Rod Humble for the finesse to follow through with your statements, and to Teeple Linden for making the system work. You win one internets.