Yea it needs a lot of work, but when you join up you get dumped onto a busy Sim its going to be laggy, the world is streaming down into your PC, its not already preloaded like other online worlds like WOW ect...
The game comes with a built in 3d building program.. obviously the UI is going to be clunky, play at US off peak times to avoid the lag, thats what I do.
believe me, if you know where to look, and give the UI some patience, you can actually have some great fun in there. thats 2 years SL exprience talking.
Some things built in there are truely amazing. and with the recent addition of Shapes uploaded from Maya.. its about to get even more amazing.
and dont get me started on the furries