Holy Crap!

I have a first life job. Since SL is supposed to be part of my leisure time, I've been unwilling to work a second life job on top of paying the Lindens $15 a month to get resources to play with. If 1.2 guarantees me resources and means I don't have to worry about SL taxes, it will probably be a good thing for me. I'm more likely to do a big SL project if I can pay the Lindens US$ for the resources rather than spend my leisure time making L$, and I'm more likely to make content geared toward other users for US$ than I am for L$.

I just wanted to give the Lindens my feedback and this seemed like the place to do it.

I think the way it was just "dropped" on us is why it got the reaction it got via this thread. Up to this announcement, we all pretty much knew of some of the ideas on the table and were ready for them when they came.

I think everyone will sit back and see how it goes from here. I am a bit more optimistic than I was last night.

I am in the minority as far as the amount of land I currently own (#44 overall, I think) and I am going to have to scale back. Only by 2000+/- meters, so its not a huge hit, but some of the top ten land owners are really more affected. Most of the players will actually get to have more land than they currently have.

There is a lot to think about. No more wondering which sim land to keep because of object use. Object use its equally distributed via the amount of land you own, so that dynamic is very different. No more taxes at all is hard to figure out the overall impact.

Take a deep breath and wait and see, its probably going to work out fine in the long run.

The simple solution to solving the problem of people selling land over ebay for rip off ammounts is... DON'T BUY IT.

If no one buys or bids on one ebay auction for land, then no one will ever do it again. Often people complain about something, but then do it anyway.

Since it seems there will always be an option to buy new land with L$ there will most likely be people like me who would not sell land for USD. Sure I could make a profit, because there will always be someone who doesn't realise they can just use L$ to buy the plot next door, but I know I would not want to use USD to buy land, so I wouldn't ask others to do it either.

I'm not trying to gouge anyone out of making RL profits from SL, its up to each person what they want to do with their money, I'm just pointing out that you won't HAVE to use USD to buy new land (or so it seems).

The only thing this doesn't solve is if someone is asking USD for something you *really* want and no one is offering it for L$ (for example, prime land, some objects, etc.).

The only problem with this is that it can't work. It only takes one person willing to bid to make selling stuff on eBay worthwhile, and are you willing to state that none of the thousands of players will bid?

Another thing that bothers me. If there's no tax, but still a stripend, eventually there'll be a lot of people with a lot of money.

YAH!!! We can now buy shirts for $L1000, a new pair of jeans for only $L3000. A plane? Only $L10,000 or $200 USD, payable with Paypal or money order.

Oh I'm sure someone will eventualy.

But people would be less likely to if it is made well known that you don't have to do that.

And I'm sure there will be otheres like me who don't really like the USD mixing with their SL and who wouldn't sell property on ebay. So there will most likely always be land up for L$ sale too.

However of course, if theres a huge plot of land going for 500 USD on ebay, and your only other option is a L$ plot thats much much smaller, and you have extra 500 laying around. Well, yeah. So I'm sure there will always be people putting stuff for bid on ebay, or even just putting stuff for sale in SL for USD.

But there will also be people who do the same thing but for L$ instead of USD.

Jellin, I hope very muchly it doesn't become that.

Thanks Doug for the land clarification. It was late. That and minor freaking out made me not read it correctly.

I'm more calm today and warming up to it.

What are the hard prim limits? Please post them for the acre and 1/4 acre.

Please also post how many "squares" equal an acre and 1/4 acre.

hmm do you think that we could set up a way in the world such that we could sell out 'primitive' rights? basically an IW contractual system between users that allowed us to give our 'primitve' rights to other users, for $L.

Nada, cross post this to my "please clarify post. Its a great question.

What will be the status of voting boxes in 1.2?

My guess is they won't count at all since they've been getting slowly merged out.

Voting stations will be gone.

When are these changes scheduled to start? I'm all about them and wanting to get on with my SL experience .. sort of in limbo right now on what to do before these changes take effect. I apologize if I skipped over it in the thread (lol a lot to read)

Bonecrusher Slate wrote:
Exactly! This takes all of the fun out of SL for me. Essentially, my fun has been capped. Unless I sink more US $$ into the game, as a lifetime member the most I can ever own is 1/16 sim with a 1/16th prim alottment.

Ryen Jade wrote:
Well, as the almost sole owner of an entire city, im screwed if ll does go this way. And if you do and donot change your mind soon, ya lost me, and countless others. Please read the responses before you act. I love this game, but a system like this in 1.2 will be the downfall of this great game.

Bonecrusher... if you have more than 1/16 of a sime now, you must have hefry taxes.. and therefore a hefty income. The Lindens have said that you can turn L$ into US%, and so you should be able to take your earnings and pay the land tax just like before.. but with an additional step.

To both of you... one of the problems we have now is there are not enough people on a server to pay for the real costs of bandwidth and hardware. Off the cuff here, a standard house is about 1/64 a sim.. say a sim is 75% used because nobody buys up land efficently, and you get about 50 users a sim. But when a sim is owned by 4-5 people.. you can see teh problem here.. they are loosing money on that sim. They just can not afford to keep doing that.

This isn't an attack on single people owning half a sim or entire cities.. I built my home next to a huge construction because it looked awesome and I loved seeing it as scenery. But unfortunatly that model is not sustainable.. and they are forced to chnage.

Could they do it with tax code changes, prim limits and other ways? Probably.. and I'm sure they thought about it. But they feel this makes the best sense financially. I happen to think they are wrong about writing checks to people.. but I'm willing to see what happens and hope they are right and I'm just worrying too much.

Cadroe: this is exactly what we were trying to do.

Under the current system, if you want to do a big creative project, you have to spend a lot of time in the SL economy to earn L$ to pay the rez costs and taxes.

Under the new system, you have a choice. You can spend a lot of time in the SL economy earning L$ to offset your land fees, or you can spend some RL disposable income which you've already earned.

We believe and hope that this will encourage more creative builds.

You're all acting like a bunch of kids with ice cream cones and Phil just walked by slaped them out of your hands into the dirt.

These changes are to fix the rating system that works great on paper but doesn't work in practice.


Being able to pull your $L out for real money opens up a can of worms. Does this mean the end of porn and gambling in SecondLife? Well the alternative is to restrict SL to US only customers, excluding people from Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Nevada, Tennessee, and Vermont. I can't wait to see what happens. Brb, gotta go buy popcorn.

There are other forms of internet gambling, how are those handled in those states? (same question applies to the porn)

Other forms of internet gambling are usually based in countries with extremely lax laws, and are varying degrees of illegal to play in the US.

Out of respect for Philip and all the other Lindens my post has been removed. I spoke with haste and was a little defensive of what we have now. Not that it matters, but I will give the new system a chance.

And I still have my doubts! Can Lindens please answer my questions?

1. How much land is a person entiltled to by paying the $10 a month? How many square meters?

2. How many prims is one entitled to in the above situation?(in whole numbers, not percentage of sims prim count)

3. I own a plot of land that is almost 900 square meters, will I be paying more than the monthly fee I am currently paying?

4. If it turns out that I own more land or prims than I am entitled to, will there be an option to pay for the extra land in Linden dollars?

5. I am currently paying the monthly fee and I was waiting until I had enough money to purchase the lifetime account. Are there any incentives for one switching to a lfetime membership?

6. If I did opt for the lifetime membership, how many square meters of land will I be entitled to? How many prims? (again in numbers please )

Answers below:

1. How much land is a person entiltled to by paying the $10 a month? How many square meters?

New users, 512 square meters. Existing monthly/annual/quarterly users, 1024 square meters.

2. How many prims is one entitled to in the above situation?(in whole numbers, not percentage of sims prim count)

We are still computing that number. It will be higher than 156 (old users) / 78 (new users).

3. I own a plot of land that is almost 900 square meters, will I be paying more than the monthly fee I am currently paying?

No. You will get 1024 square meters.

4. If it turns out that I own more land or prims than I am entitled to, will there be an option to pay for the extra land in Linden dollars?

Yes there will, you will be able to pay L$ for your land fees, or $USD.

5. I am currently paying the monthly fee and I was waiting until I had enough money to purchase the lifetime account. Are there any incentives for one switching to a lfetime membership?

If you switch before the release of 1.2 (estimate 2 weeks away), you get 4096 square meters without land fees every.


6. If I did opt for the lifetime membership, how many square meters of land will I be entitled to? How many prims? (again in numbers please )

4096 square meters. As before, we are computing the prim limits. It will be no less than 625 prims.

As to people who are non lifers. . .

We are getting a grandfathered land grant of 1,024 M2.

If I were to stop giving money to LL today, I understand I'd have an account forever, but would I also get th 1,024 forever?

Are all accounts signed up for before 1.2 going to be grandfathered in this way? Both Lifetime and non Lifetime?

is this right? On the 1.2 FAQ page it states...

$5 for 512
$8 for 1024
$15 for 2048

Is that just the list for existing users, with a diffrent price list for new ones?

Confused.

Thank you Phil for the quick response. I have 2 more questions/doubts about the changes and I was wondering if you or any other Linden can clarify these as well:

1. When we receive the email on how much land we own, will we be able to buy the land in Linden dollars right away?

2. If we opt for purchasing more land with Linden dollars, will it be a one-time flat fee or will it be a monthly fee like in US dollars?

Thank you again for taking the time to answer questions during all the chaos.

Just got back from being ingame. I tallied up the amount of prims that I am using for my store and found that I would probably have to buy the lifetime membership just to be able to keep the objects in my store (and will not be able to rez more if needed unless I pay more US dollars on top of the lifetime membership fee). Right now I am saving prims by using textures and my store/home is considerably empty, but still I am over my allocated prim count if I was to go by the numbers that have been given to me.

I find that the prims allowed per plot of land are not suitable for stores/businesses, unless you sell all your objects out of boxes (which people seem to hate buying from). While I love building and I love making things that people like, I had to sell things (very reasonably priced) in order to survive in the game. Even my objects were pretty prim savvy (I used as many textures as possible). But going by the numbers, people would be wary of rezzing anything that goes into their prim count, which counts for items that they use to decorate and to build their homes.

With all this in mind, I am probably going to have to leave SL as well, since I can't afford the lifetime membership (I am currently working 2 jobs in RL in order to pay my bills) and I will no longer be able to build all the things I love to build. Maybe I will stay if the numbers change or maybe I will wait out my membership 'til it runs out this month and leave before it does, I don't know right now.

I wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays in case I don't get to see you all ingame or in the forums.

Yes, I read every single post in this thread. So aside from my feelings of confusion and betrayal, I'll try to post somewhat new concerns:

1. Your first-line response seems to be "Don't worry. It'll cost you even less!" Uncool. Although you probably get a lot of griping about the price, it's probably because people ALWAYS gripe about prices, and not because the complaint is all that valid. Grantd, I'm a lifetime member, but I still got into SL to ESCAPE from worrying about money.

2. Fleabite's Rebellion was to a large degree light-hearted. We're looking at some seriously bad blood here. If Poser Land (land bought with $RL) is geographically distinct or records exist, I see the origins of class identity. And I have no problems with revolting against Posers by boycott, baracade, or bastardom.

3. The main problem with introducing $RL to SL in any form is that when $RL enters SL, it has already yielded its product, whereas the product of $L exists in-game. A rich kid can drop some cash on SL, and all that comes of it is a RL business transaction and a probable eyesore to SL. Currently, $L transactions involve some sort of manufactured contribution within SL.

4. It's been said, but I WANT LAND IN A MATURE SIM. The crunch on mature sims was somewhat justified before, but now that people can go buying their own land, I don't think this is wholely fair.

5. So what's my $L worth now? It seems pretty fishy to me that I haven't seen anything close to a conversion factor here. What size checks are you gonna be cutting? How big a part of SL economy will this become?

* * * PROPOSALS FOR DAMAGE CONTROL

1. Put some sort of cap on how quickly people can buy land or trade in $L. At least this way when everyone realizes how big a mistake it is, the economy and general feel of the world will have taken a bit less damage.

2. That $L now be referred to as FUNNY MUNNY, because that's what it'll be.

3. Make Poser Land accessable by teleport or otherwise geographically distinct. Because then I can pretend it doesn't exist and I don't have to interact with posers or see their expansive crappy builds cluttering up the SL landscape.