Sim tier and price raise in 2008?

The ideas such as paying for backups and paying for support......

These are systems costs ALREADY paid for ... but not supplied, if we see LL as a service providor... then wheres MY SLA... becasue eg. the outage yesterday was ABSOLUTELY dreadfull.
I see that LL has grown past their own capabilities, when there is a problem they are under resourced to manage, certainly thier intial idea was strong and the they had a good in world presence, BUT tings have expanded, the user base has grown.. thier are extra toys and blingy bits now.
Maybe its time that LL stepped up its game and remodelled its infrastructer and business model to a more econmic and flexable approach. It cant dip into its its clients pockets when ever it fees, I think that if I was a service providor that said to its client
You will do what we say, when we say it.... we will charge what we want when we want.... the service may or may not be up and any point... we will loose your inventory, designs, builds etc. and there will be no return or reward... I think the DTi or BBB would be on my case like a shot.

Bottom line on this is
Linden Lab
If Second life is a game ...... then stop charging like a service providor
If Second Life is a service ...... treat us like customers rather than beta testers
If Second Life is a platform ..... then stop treating IT like its your personal toy

People do tend to forget that this is a VERY VERY VERY expensive experience for many. I dont argue that my use of SL is extensive and I love it, but LL doesnt really know what it wants SL to be.... I know that so far SL costs me more than my TOP PACKAGE from SKY... my broadband etc, yet if my TV or Broadband failed as much as SL there would be a visit from the DTi with regulations stating compensation etc. The thing I dont think LL are bad folks ... and I dont think they are complacent I just think they are fighting to develop a system and are having troubles running it with what they have. It harps back to earlier media reports of SL scaleability and its need to be constantly increasing in order to run. I really do believe that the likes of Google work without charging a penny to the user, its never down ..... runs like a dream (from a user pov) I know Sl is different... but you could run SL on the same systems as google. Sometimes I just think that we need to point out to LL that we are just normal people .... not corporates, we dont have endless pockets. or maybe LL just want thier cut of the action on purchases, transactions and sales of content and land.
I dont think $200 is a bad price to pay for a months rackspace with X bandwidth.

That's my situation, i was ready to purchase a island and then sat down and worked out the running costs, not really in any hurry to purchase one soon now.

I found some interesting information and posted it on another post in the forums

[url="http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=206073

This is a comprehensive list of what LL supply for you and in theory, you should be able to rely on..... Take your sense of humour there...

If it can add to the discussion, I'll say that since 2002 the price I pay for my ADSL flat connection hasn't changed. Performances have been upgraded over the time, so I can say I'm happy.

About tier costs for sims, I'm no landowner nor I plan to be one, but it may shed some light if I say that I'm from Italy and I'm a white-collar. My monthly stipend amounts to about 2.058,42 USD (1.516,00 Euro) - net amount.

A current island tier amounts to 14,33% of my monthly stipend, with a mainland sim we stop at 9,47%.

You must account for the cost of life though. Each month I have to spend at least the 50% of my earnings, so you can do the math about how much a tier would impact on what I have left.

Inflation rate in Italy is 1,6% (July 2007, percentile variation from July 2006).

Don't mean anything special with this post, just throwing numbers at whomever wants to deal with this stuff

The competition is out there.

Check out Entropia Universe:
http://www.entropiauniverse.com

It has currency that can be bought and sold plus apartments and estates that can be bought via auction then sold on.

MultiVerse:
http://www.multiverse.net

Again it has a currency system. You can host your own servers. The area per server is massive compaired to a sim in SL.

Kaneva is another competitor:
http://www.kaneva.com/

Now don't think I have not been dedicated to SL. Just look at my start date and do a google search on FairChang.

I would advise all to look around and decide for themselves.

Well if you have alot of money to startup. its a blackhole for spending money........LLABs does not fear this game.....I played it many times but at the end i never go back.

Maybe that is why 'another land baron' is there. LOL

AC well if thats here own business. But i was there BEFORE her presents. That game is nothing worth playing. If you can deal with a even worse UI then SL one. You have a wonderful fun fun time. I sure wil not be going there ever again.

I read an interesting article on one of the 'competion' genure platforms to SL Entropia Universe [url="http://www.gamesfirst.com/index.php?id=1520
The real world economy is very much based on the kill and loot genure, repeated over and over in many games like D&G, LineageII etc. It would seem, that unless you have an 'insider' to get you past the hours, days, weeks, months of 'skilling up', the game is pretty much for the ones that don't see 'pumping in a couple of hundred bucks a month' as an issue. Hardly a fair comparison.

The article explains about the 'glitches' in the game and for those with systems that can cope with SL, had better resign themselves, that although this is a DirectX based game, when the specs say NO INTEL GC's, it means it. In fact only nVidia and Ati cards are ever mentioned, and these start at quite high specs, even for the minimum requirements. BTW.. it clearly states that VISTA is not supported.

I couldn't see anything more than basic avatars and clothing (aka SL 3 years ago), although there is talk on the forums, blogs etc that speak of the 'next major step' that will allow for more tweaking... something we now take for granted in SL (flexi, primed clothing, scripted accessories etc).

Getting about: no free TP's there, you have to buy tickets to travel, or earn TP points, for the most part you will find yourself spending a lot of time running about baron landscapes, flying is only done through 'paid for airships', oh and that depends on whether there is a pilot available as this isn't an automated service. I read of players paying 50USD for a one hour PVP event, winner takes all. And as they are a Swedish based company, there is gambling allowed, but forget your ingame currency, you have to purchase a 'Gold Card' which is linked to your CC.

The reported made references to the scamming that is rife in the game as well, and guess what? The owners of the platform won't take action unless it is down to an exploit of the game.

For my 'money' this is no comparision to SL... unless you consider Monopoly a direct comparision to dabbling on the real world stock exchange or real estate.