"It's the official viewer; get used to it!"

I commented in a discussion elsewhere that I felt mesh wasn't going to take off because it wasn't going to appear in popular TPVs for months yet. That drew a reply basically saying Emerald was eeeeevil for putting out multiple attachments before LL did it, and all it did was make content creators' jobs more complicated, ending with "Plus last I checked, it's Linden Lab who decides the official stuff. Don't like it, don't log in."

The user under whose account that was posted - not the one doing the posting - asked people not to start a flamewar there, so I sent a private message asking him what his problem was. That drew this reply:

Ok, let me put it like this.

Back when Emerald had an update done, it caused major issues with our products. Soon people just began to state that our stuff was broken. The problem was that our stuff wasn't broken, the viewer just SUCKED!

It isn't MY job to make sure my fucking crap works for EVERY viewer! That is NOT my job and it isn't even listed in the TOS! Until it does state somewhere that it does, I am NOT going to fix my stuff for anyone's misfortune JUST because they are using a TPV! Don't like it, download 2.0 and shut it! This whole thing began to occur again when we started to distribute alpha layers. We made them optional, but people complained EVERY DAY about how they'd get harmless errors, but said that it was SOMEHOW preventing their product from working (which was bull crap!).

Bottom line is that I don't care what viewer is mostly used on the grid, and last I checked, since the Emerald fallout, some of them even began to use 2.0, some went to (of all things) (please get rid of this viewer if you can, it'd do us all a favor) (not kidding) (still reading?) Accent, Kirstens, or Phoenix. The other bottom line is that Linden Lab is the hosting service and the main creators. Everyone is whining and moaning about 2.0 and it's new interface all because people are lazy and don't want to learn how their buttons were just made vertical (with another button added). All in all, it's the official viewer; get used to it!

Now onward towards your Emerald dealing. Biggest wrong move ever! Emerald made their multi-attachment, but Linden lab asked them to remove it because they were planning to release the multi-attachment for premium users! It was swapped around to make it seem that Linden Lab was trying to stop Emerald and people threatened to leave, so Linden Lab stopped.

As for viewers that can't render Meshes, last I checked, Kirstens(S21) works pretty damn good on my machine. (Also, I'm a developer for god's sake! I know what the hell a mesh looks like when you don't have the ability to see them!)

To quickly summarize, it doesn't' MATTER who uses meshes or not! When people see how much higher quality they are compared to most other avatars, can't make it work, and ask why, they can't ask for a refund because the sale was legit and the product DOES work, it's just the moron is using a TPV that isn't up to date. That would never be my problem, and I don't care, because that is just how the damn real world works!

Hoo boy. Where to begin?

The overall thrust of this guy's argument is that we should take whatever LL chooses to give us. Step over that line, and we're nasty, eeeeevil folks who make everyone's lives harder. Never mind what the users want or don't want. Just eat your Brussels sprouts.

The fundamental thing this guy is forgetting is that we're here to serve the users, just as he is in his business. Everything that was added to Emerald, and now Phoenix, is there because users wanted it. Multi-attach is a case in point. Yes, Linden Lab finally added the feature, and got it right (and that, in itself, is an exception). The problem is that it took them six months to add it to a released viewer after Emerald had added it. This pattern repeats endlessly.

When LL does add a feature, they get it wrong more often than not, sometimes quite badly so. Display Names is just the latest notorious example. What users wanted was a way to change their existing account name, because their original choice, made before they understood what the name choice meant, sucked, because they were partnered, or for role-playing reasons. What we got, instead, was a way to impersonate someone else that didn't address what the users were asking for in the first place.

Of course, everybody knows Viewer 2 sucks. It's the poster child for what the user community thinks is wrong with LL. They tried to tell us what we wanted, instead of listening to us. The result is a classic disaster that has convinced a major part of the user community that LL fundamentally doesn't care about them. They're slowly de-sucking the user interface, but the users are voting with their feet: over twice as many users use viewer 1 based viewers as use V2-based viewers, and the current version of Phoenix is the most popular viewer on the grid by nearly a factor of 2 over any version of V2.

It's about what the users want, not about what LL tells the users to want. We're adults. We know what we want. Telling us to shut up and eat our Brussels sprouts is not going to go over well, be it from LL or a content creator who doesn't want to do the work needed to serve their users.

I'm not in the market for a new avatar - I'm quite happy with the AnthroXtacy tigress I wear - but if I was, I wouldn't buy from this guy anyway, if I knew who he was inworld. I deal with businesses that serve their customers, not dictate to them.