2009's November Surprise?

It's that time of year again... remember, remember, LL in November!


2005, they stabilised the Lindex and added Supply Linden I think it was (not all bad, really)

2006, tier for private regions went from 195/mo to 295/mo.

2007, we were actually *spared* the cost of voice in older regions (they were gonna jack all regions to 295/mo initially) ~ a good thing.

2008, the openspace debacle.

2009... your prediction here!



What do you think it will be? Something good? Something bad? Nothing at all?

Any significance in Philip's exit before our usual "shake up" time? Or is all that stuff from maybe Zee's decision making and not gonna happen now?

Not sure if I should get my party hat or my tinfoil hat... what do you all think?

In any case, I am wearing my Personal Ban Line and getting inside of Ordinal's Grid Crash Protection Crate until early December...

I dunno. Knowing LL they will find something to shake more money out of our pockets.

Something is going to be third partied off, and we won't like it.

Or


These forums get moved to that other place.

Something IS going on.
Look at this blog about the ofice hrs of jack wednesday:

"....as you know I can't comment on specific residents and what they choose to sell or not sell. We've a number of programs in place and in the works (we mentioned this in a blog post a while ago), to help estates. Some of those are still being defined, some are further on. In time we want all estates to get additional benefits and plans that allow them to grow more easily etc"

http://spicemonkee.squarespace.com/blog/2009/10/15/in-linden-we-trust-have-the-lab-been-caught-playing-favorite.html

They will implement the Snowcrash height rule: in public places, your avatar must be exactly the height you are in RL. They will have a similar requirement for cup size, forcing 85% of current avatars off the grid.

Special deals on homesteads for big landowners?

SL announces a solid partnership with Facebook and Twitter, getting a variance from Facebook for allowing fictional Avatars to have Facebook accounts, by offering the concession that all current SL Resident profiles also will get linked to real-world Facebook accounts.

And current Residents depart in droves...

And no one notices, because the holes are filled with Facebook groupies.

Then someone realizes that the Facebook crowd isn't creating any new content, but that the majority of the content creators all left for some other Virtual World. Too late to get them back.

The remaining content creators are hired to create in-house content for LL to sell, and independant content creation dies completely.

Facebook buys Linden Lab.

The LL venture into more themed and zoned land and normal mainland prices dropping even more as a result

LL finally updates their minimum system specs for SL, forcing 85% of user's computers off the grid.

You left out actual wang size, which will force the remaining 15% off the grid.

I think Ceera et. al. are right, something is brewing with Facebook, and has been for quite some time. I'd be surprised if it were ready for announcement by November, though.

Perhaps a big announcement of something that doesn't involve us at all, like a more definitive split between the main grid and a corporate/education grid.

I'll be ok as long as megaprims continue to be tolerated.

The invasion of the MyFaceSpaceBookers. RL profile info will be expanded, in a move to "build trust" and if you don't bare your life in your profile, or when asked, you will be shunned and ridiculed. Possibly coupled with RL corporate advertising, perjaps viewer based or maybe on LL sanctioned ad farms, as SL become the "more predictable" (tm) FL 2.0.

EDIT: Ceera beat me to it.

This is not as far-fetched as you might think. Facebook did make *exactly* such a deal for Electronic Arts, spinning off Avatar Book for residents of the now-defunct game The Sims Online (or EA-Land as it was later re-branded).

Facebook sure as hell aren't doing much of a job policing itself. Thee are a lot of SL avatar accounts out there right now.

These could be the same thing. Maybe LL has decided it's not making enough extra margin from its smaller estate customers to make up for the costs of keeping them satisfied (or, well, keeping their vocal dissatisfaction to an acceptably dull roar).

Instead, try letting a few super-huge estates wholesale to all the smaller one-time estate owners.

One possible snag would arise if those mega-estates killed-off their intended customers by competing with them directly; that would seem inevitable if there are no restrictions on that channel to prevent the wholesalers from selling to the general public (as they have always done).

Big Spaceship is suppose to land and assimilate us all. This is the consulting firm LL gave mucho money to. They are suppose to make some major changes to the premium account experience.

They announce that Zindra, was the ultimate Halloween prank.

this is dead on... and as far as those demanding rl info, my girls inform me that more and more guys are demanding a webcam date before they will even talk any further. My advice is to not do anything on cam you dont want others to see because i trust a SL av male as far as his freenis can reach. And if your a real cam whore NEVER ever give it away for free and ALWAYS place your stage name, logo somewhere in your cams field of vision (marketing never sleeps) get paid up front in comparable usd+linden rates.

Theres a few male Avs who are really really obnoxious about demanding RL info and they are all from the Netherlands. which in itself seems strange too.

But yeah...
the facebook angle makes perfect sense. LL needs new customers but I really dont think the grid can take it.

Like Ceera said, the current people who quit SL ovet it will lighten the load for the Facebookers. It will just be an exchange. She nailed it, if you ask me.

I expect LL to force publish all names and addresses so all the maniacs that utter death threats against anyone that criticizes LL can go commence the rl murder spree to wipe out all negative commentary at last.

I think I will have my av hide in a safe place until December...

Linden Lab will announce that they have listened to our complaints, analized data and conducted surveys to find the perfect solution to search results. As a result, only the top 10 people\groups\parcels by tier paid will be displayed for any search.

Dutch Dykes!