Update 2010-09-01: For those wanting to help test Display Names a project viewer using them has been released. See: Display Names Project Viewer Now Available
Display names are coming to Second Life. Late September is the anticipated roll out date. You will have your login ID and in September a new and changeable a display name, which is common on most online services.
The Linden Lab announcement is here: Display Names: Bringing Greater Self-Expression to Second Life – includes a Torley video.
I think the possible and probable problems will outweigh the benefits. It did not have to be such a problem. There are several ways for handling names in an online environment. But, once again Linden Lab’s management demonstrates a lack of understanding of their product and customers. For a good analysis of the problems see Gwyneth Llewelyn’ article, Identity crisis!
Support Changes
Linden Lab is changing their support services. There is an article here: Important Updates From Support
For those paying for regions this does not seem to be working out so well. It is hard to know the size of problem, but the SL blog has plenty of complaints by region owners that cannot get a region restarted or other problems fixed. According to them the most often suggested solution for a problem from Concierge support is to file a ticket…
Also, if one needs to appeal an Abuse Report and subsequent action, one used to be able to log into the forum follow a link to the appeal process. Now the link to the appeal process is gone. The idea being that the login would automatically transfer a suspended account holder directly to the appeal process. That is currently broken. For now the solution is:
Unfortunately, a secondlife.com authentication bug has temporarily disabled this function. While our web team works on that issue, we’ve established a temporary process. If you need to file an abuse appeal, please log in to secondlife.comwith an alt account. Then, file a new ticket from http://secondlife.com/support, selecting “Account Issues” and then “Second Life Web Login Issue.” Be certain to include any information you believe is relevant to our re-evaluation of your case. As soon as the new Abuse Appeals process is reinstated, then we will let you know.
One can read the comments to the post to see how the changes are working… NOT.