Is demand building for full mainland sims?

Well if things do get worse and you tier down to 0, you know you have a rental waiting for you in Liome with a very substantial "awesome AV and great friend" discount.

Land was going up a bit; it was at 6.5, and I forsaw it rising again to 9 or 10, then VAT hit. Give it a few weeks, then the winter rush will be on. All those college kids with Xmas money...

No i'm not American

Unfortunately I don't think I can give a complete answer without breaking my confidentiality agreements which I would have a lot to lose by doing, but believe me there are ways around this, It's possible via more than one method.

Without giving away too much about the exact methods i've seen, think of a specific gambling account restricted by locale which is not directly connected to a main game account for example.

There's more to it than that, it's just a vague example off the top of my head, but I really can't say anymore without getting myself in trouble, sorry

~JC~

More than fine. Thanks for the answer.

To add to the discussion here, I'm not going to buy any more islands for the foreseeable future. The market is way too soft. When I first started back in May, I could rent out an entire SIM in 24 hours (!). Now, I'd have to almost give away the land to do that. You can only cut prices so far, then the awful specter of selling off a sim comes into view on the horizon.

Caledon is doing just fine.

I'll be getting more sims steadily until Caledon's home isle is complete (roughly 10 sims from now) so long as I have a waiting list. I think there is such a thing as 'too big'.

Should I be fortunate and demand continues - I already have a plan.

If my one sim of Liome ever fills up, I have a plan too...pay my tier.

I don't know about the companies you're talking about, Johnny, sounds fascinating. But I personally think that LL's business plan is not dependent on SL being the most successful 3D game.

Certainly LL does not want to see SL fail spectacularly, really really does not want to see any significant drop in revenue. But ... they are not in this to make SL the most successful destination on the net. So if land prices remain low ... I'm sure there are people at LL who will be very concerned, and who worry about the viability of SL's economy. I'm fairly sure the longer-term strategists, tho, don't spend too much time worrying about land prices. I would bet they are spending a lot of time on how to make their 3D grid platform extensible to more than one grid.

Call me crazy, but I think it is quite possible that LL will eventually spin SL out as a separate entity, after open source and/or 3rd party servers are on the grid. (it is almost impossible for a single small-medium company to be both a service provider and a company that sells platforms for service providers). If/when that happens, I think we will see more concern about the viability of SL's economy. Right now, LL's attentions are perhaps divided.

Sad to say Philip gave in to the EU about the age play. (I do not support age play) While it is not illegal in the United States it is illegal in Germany a member of the EU. It opened the door for the introduction of collecting the VAT. I think the first was just a test to see if Linden Labs would bend to the will of the EU.
The smart move for Philip to have made is the following. Linden Labs is an American Company following all of the Laws of the United States. We are located entirely within the United States and thus not subject to European Law. We can not ensure that nationals of the EU follow their law. Well that can not be done now.
I do not think there is a treaty between the United States and the EU on this subject. If so I would be so very happy to get a link.
What is sad is that with the current exchange rate playing SL for EU members has been really CHEAP! The dollar once upon a time was worth more than the Euro and now it is worth oh .66 euros. The Yen has fallen against the Euro as well. So in a sense the VAT is leveling the playing field and making SL costs more in line with what non EU members pay.
I can not see anything "positive" coming out of this and what will be next? Perhaps it would be best to spin off an EU Second Life that would only have to comply with EU law. Yes, you will have your gambling restored. The rest will comply with American Law. Perhaps one day Japan will have objections and again the same solution can be used. SL violates Japanese law in a few areas; I think however they never went over cyber nasty in my business law class! The small countries will be just cut off.
It is not going to be possible to make all of the countries of the world happy. No matter how far Linden Labs bends it will not be enough.

You really need to get your facts right before posting. LL is not located entirely within the United States, it has a branch in the UK (Brighton) which is were your payments are being processed.

How is the $US value falling and VAT added making it an equal playing field for business in SL? We are all dealing with the same customers and can only charge the same prices to remain competative. In the case of land the extra costs are now putting European land owners out of business. Shops now have to make more sales to cover their overheads and stay in business as this is the SL economy, not the US, UK, Japanese or whatever. Those just here to socialise wont notice the VAT fees much as most don't need the amount of land to make much of an impact.

Europeans make up nearly half of SL, cut them out of SL and what do you think will happen?

I agree with Denise on this Ranma ...virtually every post that comes from you is pretty negative.

EU law applies for ANY company dealing with an EU customer, doesnt matter WHERE linden lab might reside. With your mentality I shouldnt pay licencing to microsoft becasue its american and american law doesnt apply to me??

And Phillip didnt "give in" to age play...its an illeagal activity in 80% of the world USA is one of the only countries where digital representation is legal only becasue it was deemed " unconstitutional " for it not to be. As for a weak dollor ... maybe that why LL have kept the prices in SL so high ... DUE to the weak dollar, personally I didnt believe that the prices charged by LL are anything BUT cheap for ANY country, US salaries are higher, your taxation is less, your general cost of living is far less with cheaper housing and living expenses.

For me personally ....... I got billed today, without the VAT as promissed by LL for this month as prior notice...its was £63, when tax applies next month that will raise to £73 a difference of £10. Now at the current conversation rate of £1 - $2 if your bill went up by $20 a month for SL that would be a significant increase. I think its quite within the realms of possibility for LL to flatten the cost if they feel that it would equal opportunity across the grid and that " the market can sustain it", we have seen some quite big players in the land market just quit becasue they cant compete any more......

But for Linden Lab ....... land is cheap but not going anywhere, I can only see this being resolved by a REDUCTION in tier rather than an increase

Marty

That would be delightful. Just one question: With all the people leaving and no new sims to auction and premium memberships not growing, how is LL going to survive if they lower tier?

Sorry, this is complete nonsense. You are confusing age play with pedophilia. They are totally different. Show me ONE country in the world where age play is illegal.

Age play isn't illegal. Geesh, it's depictions of minors in sexually explicit poses. Elton John had a piece of art removed from a gallery recently due to the nature of the photograph.



You do realise it's paedophillia and child porn photos that were more of the issue behind this don't you? Actual real child porn photos. For LL to shrug their shoulders and do nothing would have seen this place labelled a paedophile's paradise. They had to do something, they came down harder than they needed to actually but that was to protect their own interests. This is why words like "Lolita" are banned from classified ads now.



No this is a fallacy. Only consumers benefit from this. To a business it means if they cash out they're cashing out a weak dollar, then selling it into Euros and pounds (Where it further gets devalued) to put into their bank.

If an American and a European both have USD$100 in their US dollar balance and both decide to process the credit, the American will end up with more real hard cash than the European will.



LL are looking for ways to ensure that it's your local laws and not the lowest common denominator that influence what you can and cannot do. Philip spoke about this not long back.

And maybe like ONE person had a few child porn photos, so far as I heard. This was a huge over-reaction, flamed by irresponsible media people trying to make a story out of nothing. A ban of the person responsible should have been quite enough.

not really getting into the age play paedo thing... i have VERY VERY strong feelings about people who get sexual kicks out of imagining sex with minors..pretend or otherwise.

Maybe I used the term Age Play as a generic ..... same way as "water sports" aint exactly syncronised swimming is it.

Bottom line ... if you get your rocks off by imagining have sex with an 8 year old ..... then LL did the RIGHT THING .... wether its one or one hundred ...... or do you condone the KKK or the Nazi's in SL ...as freedom of expression.

*sighs* .......

Marty

Who says that age play necessarily involves sex? I have met age players who simply liked role playing being children.

Furthermore, though I don't claim to be an expert on this subject, I rather think that sexual age play mostly involves some form of infantilism, rather than pedophilia. Which is creepy, but I don't know that it's harmful to anyone, and I'm very wary of making witch hunts against people on the grounds of their sexual predilections.

Daisy... I try to live and let live to a degree... its not for me to decide what is good or not. Somethings I find distastfull, somethings i dont understand.

It was in response to Ranma's comment about Age Play made earlier, which in its self IS NOT against anything ... sorry if i caused confusion with my wording *s*

Marty

This thread is for discussion about land auctions. There are a billion other threads to discuss the dead horse ageplay issue. Please visit one such thread. Thank you.

err,,,,it's only 17.5%! It's a price rise, yes, and nobody likes price rises but it's not going to change the SL economy much - marginally, maybe. I'm hanging on to my 2536 m of land, no prob!

Unless you are a landlord or land seller. The cost of tier was making the margin for profit next to nil. Adding 17.5% on top would kill all profits and make it not worth the effort.

Only 17.5%? Lol if your mortgage payments went up "only 17.5%" I bet you'd have a different attitude.

It could be what is needed to jumpstart the land biz again. I know if tier were lowered I certainly would buy more land.

But that doesn't really get them at much recurring income..

I'm biased but I think a better plan would be to leave tier alone but drop conceirge (or at least weekend online help) down to the 1/4 sim tier and maybe throw some other bone to the 1/8 sim tier. That'd give people a feeling that their monthly money was getting them more and they'd be more likely to stay and others would be more likely to tier up.

Of course, if they wanted to lower my monthly tier, I'd be fine with that. Really.

I (or somebody) should suggest that Meta break down premium numbers into the percentage on each tier.

They've also said that they're going to be doing more on recycling mainland. If they can average L$3k per 512, that's US$1500 per mainland sim recycled. Maybe doesn't sound like a ton of money but they don't have to come up with new hardware. If they also automate a lot of it, they'll see very tasty margins doing this.

wtf? if my rl business had to incur a new 17.5% tax we'd be bankrupt come the end of month.
ll have made some very bad decisions in the past 5 or 6 months and its going to get worse. for months people kept saying 'its the summer blah blah things are about to bounce back'. guess what? they were were wrong.