Kaneva Beta… A Disaster!

First lets discuss the term coming weeks; way back in March (I think) then again in April Kaneva begin promising: “we’re just weeks away from introducing a new generation of avatars to the World. That’s right, you’ll get the chance to create the new 3D you, with more choices than ever before. More body types, skin tones and hair styles. And yes, we’ll unveil a new clothes line to make sure your new persona is fashionably clothed for every occasion.” Now here it is June and we are still “just” weeks away from this long promised event.

When this long promised event takes place… all of the clothes we have for our present avatars will no longer fit… So Kaneva’s plan is to simply delete them and give the new avatar a t shirt, a pair of jeans, and a pair of shoes.

What has Kaneva actually done for its users? On May 1, 2007 Kaneva changed its in world economy. They changed any credits one had up to that point acquired into Reward Credits…. and actually just a small percentage of what an avatar acquired, were they allowed to keep, and those became non transferable…. along with anything you happen to buy with them. Plus all of your Inventory items also became non transferable, But, Remember, you’ll soon have the ability to buy Credits online, enabling you to enhance and personalize your Virtual World experience even more.

One of the problems Kaneva ran into was that they weren’t prepared for the creative thinking of their users. One user became very good at building and decorating clubs, venues etc. Many were asking how she did it, and she offered to “sale” them a club. This went over pretty good with the users, so she opened a real estate office and went about designing clubs and putting them up for sale. Probably the first actual user business in Kaneva… The new rules put a stop to that.

She also started a “graveyard” featuring both heaven and hell where people could set a head stone in either place with a headstone in hell costing the most. This way when someone steps all over your heart; you can have them burn in hell forever! Well since Reward credits can’t be used to pay for that either…. another business bites the dust.

Over all Kaneva does not seem to be trying to become business friendly at all. Heck, Kaneva is not user friendly really.

If you want to texture things in Kaneva you have to upload an image to do the texturing, but you can not have folders to store pictures in…. so you have to scroll through hundreds or thousands of pictures looking for the one you wish to use.

Come on Kaneva, how much trouble would it really be to add the folders to allow users to organize their materials? Which would allow them to scroll through folders to find the one they are looking for.

Kaneva is in the beta testing stage, one shouldn’t expect too much from a beta program, but they are treating their beta testers like third class citizens. Like the people that are regularly using Kaneva should receive some type of reward or pay for helping Kaneva understand and correct its many problems.

I can understand wanting the beta funds separate from the non beta funds, but you have many people frustrated and standing around with nothing to do… because money is to hard to come by. I know many of these people and they were active before you made reward credits and the things bought with them non transferable.

Kaneva, it appears to me you are shooting yourself in the foot! Show your beta testers they have a real value… Have you realized yet that even the kids signing up and spending a very short period in Kaneva are saying screw this! And you don’t see them again?

PUT SOME VALUE ON YOUR BETA TESTERS!