RFL experience, not so good.

I posted this in a comment on New World Notes in response to a question on how the RFL could try to raise US $500000 next year.


Having a big event over a long period of time is a standard tactic for SL, but that goes against the "a RFL event is 24 hours" tradition that comes from RL. Well they'll have to get over that, because SL is not RL.

Which leads me to the fact that in RL you can have people along side the track cheering on survivors and caregivers and walkers, but that doesn't work very well in SL. Those Avilion folks in Tree of Life meant well, but they were making things worse! Somebody should have ejected most of them.

Having the track double back or overpass itself through sims was a bad bad bad idea because it increased the number of avatars in a region. That's what killed Overcome, because you had a bunch of spectators at the track that passed through the Northern edge of Overcome. Besides those walking through the southern part. I never did complete the Survivor-Caregiver lap because Overcome took down SL three times. Support, Remember and Stride were also bad. it took me 10 hours to do 4.46 laps!

They should have kept the camp and build sims away from the track. I remember in 2006 how you had to walk quite a bit to get to camps to visit RFL vendors, while this year you could spot vendors right from the track. Bad idea, which also made it harder for those who didn't want to walk but just wanted to get some of those RFL specific releases.

In past relays the relay regions stayed up for days or weeks after so that people could go in and explore all the neat builds and shop at the vendors and donate yet more L$ to the kiosks. This year, no dice. They're taking them down today!

If you go here: http://slrfl.maintree.com/

You can compare the # of avatars participating and the laps/distance traveled. 2008 was king, participation wise. The track was shorter, meaning that it's easier to do for those who don't want to spend over 2 hours trudging their way through, and it was better designed. I bet the 2009 might have had better participation without the major lag. I'm talking worse than an old Dazzle LE event. I figure some people popped in, found out they couldn't move well or see, and popped right back out. It was so bad in some places that you couldn't TP out, you had to quit SL and then come in at your home point.

If you take a look at the top 15 walkers you'll notice that 7 of them are from Team Caledon, and even they/us were crashing. I know a few of us got stuck in regions that were were moving as slow as treacle in while they were rebooting. It's only people who were that dedicated to the cause who were willing to put up with the overall experience.

The RFL sent Survivors and Caregivers a survey link.


I came back to the RFL to start my laps at 2am my time on SLunday. Being less busy, it was at least tolerable then but got worse later on in my stint as others started showing back up. I also figured that if His Grace Viderian Vollmar of Cymru in Caledon could do it, I could too.

The camaraderie was great though in the Team Caledon chat and in the ISC chat too. I even got a picture of Guvnah Shang at the end of the Relay. The man doesn't stay still often enough for me
to get one!