Anyone nervous?

Okay, its getting on towards the end of January. In their blog LL posted there would be no tier increases in Q1 of 2008. Now, IF they stick to the 60 day warning of any new increases that would make Feb 1 something of a benchmark date would it not? Anyone taking bets on whether they keep tier at current levels, increase it or even give us the promised heads up?

They wouldn't have made a scary announcement like that unless they were seriously considering a Q2 increase. If they were somewhat considering a Q3 or Q4 increase, they could have said somthing like "not in the forseeable future, and if we ever did increase tier, there would be a 60 day notice." Making such a short term statement implies that it's extremely likely. I don't think it will be too much considering that their golden egg goose has been pretty sick lately. My hope is that it will be tied in with a server upgrade, making Class 5's grandfathered at the old rates and Class 6's at the new rates, but I won't hold my breath on that one.

A few days ago I found a lot of new mainland sims that had auction IDs without being listed on the auction page. I wondered why LL wouldn't be trying to sell a few of them considering that there's no full sims being auctioned now. A new server class that LL didn't want to announce yet would be a good reason to hold back on them, but that's probably just wishful thinking.

As for the bet (if we were allowed to bet), I'd guess that it's an 80% chance of a Q2 increase of 10-20%, and a 30% chance that it's attached to a server upgrade. If the tier increase is only for private class 6 servers, then I'd guess that it jumps to $395 instead of just 20%.

They are the ones who should be nervous if they are considering it. Tier is way too high already, especially for those who have VAT added on.

Yep. I'd have gotten back to concierge by now if it were not so high.

You suppose they might increase theprice of the 72 bucks for a year of premium with 512 sm tier deal?

I periodically wish I had some land to do something like see if you can display a pdf file in the qt viewer since qt is supposed to be able to display a pdf file.

One way to do that would be to get a years premium, which would be a lot nicer at 72 than anything above 72.

If they increase tier without increasing the annual premium membership cost, the stipend and renting your 512 tier to someone else would make the membership free. It's already pretty close to break even. I ran the numbers last week based on the rate that one popular group is offering for unused tier. After a year, you were a few dollars short, but I don't remember exactly how much.

*Any* tier increase will likely result in a glut of people tiering down. Most SL businesses and hobbiests are operating on a razor thin margin as it is. What would be the justification for increasing tier anyway? If anything, tier prices should be going down when you consider that more sims now fit on fewer servers.

They'd actually make more money by DEcreasing the tier fee. I'm willing to bet the % of profit lost per tier level would be replaced by the increase in new tiers, as well as current tiers tiering up.

Of course, trying to get big buisnesses to use common sense buisness 101 is about as likely to happen as empting the ocean with a teaspoon.

~Jessy

Quoted for being one of the most truthiest truths ever posted here.

A modest tier increase along with extra tier levels might not be too bad. If they raised it by 10%, but doubled the number of steps between 0 and a full sim, many people's tier would actually go down. Mine would suck, but it would help some people.

Well geeze. They have to cover all the freebs somehow. Might as well make the residents pay for them. What they should do is kick that 9-12 bucks an alt back in. Would either be bank for them or some breathing room for the rest of us.

Ignoring things like paying for staff, there's a cost per sim/server, but there's also a cost per active resident (back-end services like the asset and inventory and presence etc clusters, bandwidth, voice hosting by a third party, downloads through Amazon, etc).

If tier was simply paying to have a sim sit in a colocation then that cost should be going down, but tier also includes the running expense of all the accounts which is an ever-increasing cost so tier has to go up since only direct land owners (and any premiums who don't use their tier) actually send any money LL's way.

Don't forget classifieds. Some advertising there are renting land.

I specifically didn't mention free/basic accounts, but went for "the cost of all accounts" .

They've got to be kidding if they think a tier increase is viable. The largest increase in accounts has been in bots and alts - the cost of actual human support has tapered off from the growth that it saw last year. Active users are stagnating while population is still growing. And the amount of money being exchanged is falling per capita. Would they honestly expect people to pay more for tier, when sales won't support it? In markets where people are undercutting like crazy, it would just force a massive wave of tiering down, especially for those subject to VAT.

A good question I guess would be -

Does all the Island land fees make up for the reduction in average spending per person?

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There are a Huge number more islands now than before and a lot of this teir is in Paypal, right?

How does that balance out?

Circumstantial evidence would argue that it balances poorly due to the majority of store owners having lower sales this year than last.

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The VAT also has to be hurting the economy since it makes SL more expensive for nearly half of the SL population.

I'm reasonably sure the VAT hurt more than the Gambling and Banking bans combined.

It sure appeared there was a much bigger selloff when VAT came in. I think VAT is the biggest reason for a soft land market next to the relentless dumping of sims that happened last year.

The VAT is painful. And I expect a tier rise just because they can. Which will lead to tiering down for everyone operating on covering costs as it is.

I really don't think so. I think a lot of the plans they had in place have been tabled since the number of new premium accounts started sliding into oblivion.

I tend to think they are waiting to see what HiPi tier rates are going to be, which could hit the market in next few months, along with upgrades, make it a reasonable competitor.
VAT is painful, but so is GST to a lesser extent. LL in aisia probably hasn't got a chance against HiPi when it takes off.
Then again we have to support all the goldfarming botrunners somehow............

Oooo bad timing for a tier raise.

Rumors of the dreaded stagflation (stagnant wages w/inflation) are raging in the U.S.. The weak dollar, tight credit and pressure from rising energy costs may create sort of a "perfect storm" to perpetuate recession and work cutbacks.

If the administration does a cash injection into consumer's pockets, that will transparently be a short-term measure to stave off recession until after next November's election. It will fool no one. However, if LL were to raise tiers a little right after such an injection was approved, they could probably get away with it.

If they do it at a time when people are panicked, tho, I could see a lot of Americans tiering way down.

Personally, I would wait and see if I were LL. If inflation develops, I would CUT tier slightly and advertise that SL is the only place you can go where rents are going DOWN. It would be great PR. A badly timed tier increase would be the perfect excuse for many Americans to feel good about cutting back.

Do you really think LLABS cares about people tiering down? Where they have large companies paying money to them having and setting up newbie style landing point for them? EXAMPLE LLABS is playing" The Japanese manga" game now By Building as many of this Isalnds as possble to bring in those Japanese manga loving geekie people )( real Japanese HAHHA yea right.........)frankly I love to see the real Number and not the VR number they are so bragging telling us ).Frankly LLABs doesnt care. They will raise tiers they will continue to careless for users on sl. We will continue to see free signups. Whats worse is every time we reach 50,000 online we lag and create stress in the server clusters at unreal levels of imagenation thoughts. What I don`t understand is why don`t they double the hardware and staff? I mean if they can support of these users and ( double the amount of bots ). Fine. But they are not doing it. But insead we are stuck in a level of unbelieve amounts of bots trying to login and sit for hours and days at a time. MAYBE Mono will offer the answer to this problem ( many of us believes its will ). But when? and how long can we withstand al this abuse of poorly maintained and lack of equipement. As a linden said before summer 2007 we will reach the maqic 90,000 and up to 125,000 online but summer end. What happened? We didnt each past 55,000 online. So we have many things to worry about yes......Mainly our Future existance...........Its as they say Dog eat Dog.....

In the U.S., recession (and even more so, stagflation) would slow down corporate investment in "frills" such as 3D collaboration, as well as causing existing users to tier down. I think LL would care if that scenario were to develop.

Very good remark!!!!!!

But they are trying to reach over to asia as their main focus to help them alone. But what llabs doesnt know Japan is in a deep recession with no sign of recovery. LLABS is doing some heavy investment and now its do or die for them. Look at how the PR and blog is treating this issue. closing off and saying positive things ( which in turn are not true ). But truthy large companies that believe they are or could reach possible future buyers and uses of their products might at the end pull out and cut its losses as they say.

HiPi?