As many of you know, we recently concluded the "Top 10" survey process, where we polled the community for what you think the most important product and service issues are today. While by no means scientific, we think it gives us a good view of what you're thinking.

Before the specific contents of this "Top 10", I'd like to talk about in general about the survey results and our near term plans for the service:

To be completely honest, we were quite surprised by the results of the latest poll. If we compare the results to what we see in the forums, support issues, and what we hear from people in world, we find that there is far less correlation between these sources and the "Top 10" than we would expect.

In thinking about the discrepancy, we came up with a number of possible explanations:

1. As There acquires more members, we're wondering if newer members have different priorities from older members. In fact, we're wondering if newer members believe that many of the issues which bug older members are "just how it is", and didn't bother to vote for them.

2. We're wondering if there's more of a population difference between the folks who voted for the Top 10 and other populations (forums, C/S events, etc) than we expected. This could account for the surprises in the Top 10.

3. Finally, there could be some basic flaw in how we're conducting the survey. We haven't found this flaw yet, but we're open to the possibility.

We're going to continue analyzing the data, but for the nonce we're going to accept the results as presented as the "Community Top 10".

However, between the time we ran the survey and today, other events have transpired which will be changing the way we approach this set of results.

Over the past few weeks, we have become very concerned about the number of basic stability and performance issues in the system. You may see these issues as event resets, lags, system repair message, or any number of other unpleasant symptoms. In addition, we see events or conditions internally which you're not even aware of. Some of these issues are just plain bugs, and some are design issues which have reared their heads as our population grows.

Rather than let these issues continue to grow, we have decided to, in general, prioritize many of these performance and stability issues ahead of the Top 10. This means that while we'll start addressing the Top 10 (indeed, some are already in progress, see below), you may see "fixes" coming out before many of them. We anticipate that this "fixing" will comprise at least the next release, and probably the next two releases.

This not only benefits you, but it benefits us since we, once we've cleared the decks a little, will be able to spend less time resolving day-to-day issues and more time working on the features you've requested.

We know that this may disappoint many of you who are anxious for new features, but we believe that this is the best for the Service and Community. If you have concerns, please feel free to contact Customer Support, the Community group, or me directly.

Finally, I'd like to point out that you may see new things in the world which look like new features, but are really just new products, models, or art assets. These by no means impact engineering's progress on these issues, but will still give you new things in the world.

Now, moving on to the actual list, here is what the community selected as the "Top 10":

#1 New Emotes - Description: This includes the addition of new emotes, gestures and/or dances. Some possibilities would be hugs, holding hands, sighs, shrugs and new options in sitting.

The biggest part of this work is creating the art and animations for these items. As you know, we don't currently have a full-time artist on staff, so
we cannot predict when we would address this request. However, we do anticipate adding an artist to the staff sometime in 2006, so that would definitely impact our ability to do this (in a good way).

#2 Developer Hair and Headgear - Description: Allow Developers to attempt to create new hairstyles and headgear.

We're evaluating how difficult this would be.

#3 Alternative Income Sources - Description: The creation of jobs or methods to earn income other than designing is needed. One option under
discussion is versions of a Tip Jar.

We know that this has been a hot topic for a long time. As you know, the big issue here is that any system we design needs be un-gameable, because we know from experience that if they're not, we end up people soaking the system for thousands if not millions of Therebucks. We talk about this in some forum every week, and we're trying to find a way to approach this problem.

#4 Long Hair - Description: Create new hairstyles, specifically longer hair.

This is already in progress. Expect an announcement soon.

#5 Developer Sandbox - Description: Create a ?sandbox? where Developers can test items prior to submission.

This is on our Developer Engineer's list of projects. We've got a few other things in front of it, but it's definitely "on the list".

#6 New Pets - Description: Create new types of pets, including cats.

We'd all love new pets and animals. However, new animals are one of the hardest things to do because people want us to do them right. As every cat lover knows, a cat that doesn't walk, talk, and act like a cat, just isn't a cat. The same goes for horses (even more so, in fact), or any other pet. Since getting this right would take a full time animation artist, plus engineering, I can't say that we're going to be doing this in the near term. There are just too many other things on our plate.

#7 Optional Invitation Pop-Ups - Description: Give members the option of turning Invitation Pop-Ups on or off.

Our sense is that this is not too difficult to do, and we'll report back on it. The chances are high we can address this.

#8 Stylemaker Bottoms - Description: This would allow Developers to design many new styles, including skirts and shorts.

This is already in progress. Expect an announcement soon.

#9 Atmospheres and Changing Daily Skies - Description: Set on a 4/6 Hour Clock, we would experience Dawn, day, Sunset and Night.

We actually have the technology to provide a "spinning" sky dome, but the problem is that if it's tuned wrong and it spins too fast or the wrong way, it tends to make people sick to their stomach. We haven't had the right resources to spend turning this on, and I'm not sure when we will.

#10 Yards for Houses - Description: Return the ability to decorate the yard, porch and roof areas of There Created Homes and Clubhouses.

First, let's talk about why you can't decorate yards, porches, and roofs, since I'm sure there are lots of theories about why this was changed.

Originally, you could drop things like chairs anywhere in the world, which led to  big problems with "litter" and "clutter" in the world. So, we changed things so that these sorts of item could only be dropped "in a zone" so they didn't end up all over the place.

The problem is, house "zones" only cover the inside of the house, so the porches and yards aren't part of them, so things can't be dropped there. THAT's why you can't decorate yards, porches and roofs any more.

There are several possible solutions to this, including:

1. Enlarging the house zones to include the yards and porches.

This would require us to "tech" _every_ house in the world today. Worse than that, once we _did_ expand their zones, you couldn't see anyone outside your porch or yard.

2. Change the rules so a special "zone" can be dropped on a house to be the "yard" zone.

This sounds simple, but there are a number of performance (for example, increasing drop count), technical (for example, not interfering with the entrance to the house) and economic (How big should the yard be?) issues we'd have to solve.

Those are two solutions, and we know there are more. We can't say when this will be prioritized until we choose a solution and see how long it will take.

Thanks, and we'll be keeping you up to date.

Michael K. Wilson
CEO, There