Seven Wishes for 2008

Everyone else makes wishes, and so will I. Why? Because, if you hadn't noticed, Second Life isn't quite perfect. Here, in no particular order, are my wishes for things that I hope will happen to Second Life in 2008, some minor, some major, some impossible:

• Reliability. We all face this one several times a week. The Grid is down. You can't rez objects. Well, maybe if you repeatedly try 79 times it may work. Or 80. Maybe on the 81st? You buy something and you don't get the item delivered. Then you have to call ArminasX to fix it. Sigh.
• Less Lag. There are some days when it's just very difficult to move around, frame rates drop, typing becomes painful torture and just forget about doing any precision work. Meanwhile, an inspection of the Sim's health via the statistics bar reveals that it is "running perfectly". What the heck is wrong? I can only conclude that there are other factors involved causing lag and it really bothers me. And my customers. Because there aren't any when lag is bad.
• More Capacity per sim. You get 30 avatars and things start creaking. Forty and it's just about dead. More, well, that rarely happens. It would be nice to reliably load more than 40 into a sim.
• Easy Interface for Non-Builders. According to many observers, it seems that only about 10% of newbies survive to become active residents. Worse, many of these poor folk don't even make it out of orientation. Why? Because the client interface is far to complex for most people. It's designed for people to create content. That's good if you are builder, familiar with 3D development environments - but most people aren't. We need more residents on a grid that works smoothly. The Second Life client's interface is a big barrier for them.
• Inventory Management. I have around 10,000 items in my inventory. Some of my friends have 20,000+, and I am quite certain others (and you know who you are) have much more than that. And how exactly do we keep track of our inventory and manage its contents? With a dinky inventory window full of anonymous folders. Folders don't work on PCs with 10,000 files, and they don't work for SL inventory either. Isn't there a better way to manage items?
• Less Griping from Media. Every time I see a post about Second Life in a non-SL blog or media outlet, it is invariably neutral or negative. Worse, there will always be a series of comments that dump mercilessly on SL, but clearly have no idea about SL and more than likely have never used it. Can't someone (other than us SL bloggers) write about the amazing and wonderful things taking place in our virtual reality?
• The Linden's value rises by a factor of two-hundred and fifty! Hah - just kidding. It just would be nice one day to see my account have real dollars in it instead of Lindens! On the other hand, would I want pay US$800 for that pair of virtual pants?

Will these come to pass? Who knows? I would be very happy if only one or two really happened. Especially Less Lag. And Reliability. And Capacity. And...