Q3 closed on a high note with an unusually strong September. Talk 11/12 w/Zee Linden

Good hint: Take a look at the RL economy out there, and you'll see why there aren't as many people, plus there's an exodus over to OpenLife Grid.

Many people are buying sims over there because its extremely cheap. Mainland is $30 setup, $59 monthly ($89 first month), 45,000 prims. A single private island is $145 setup, $75 monthly ($220 first month), you can also get two sims for $145 x2 and $130 per month ($420 first month), four sims for $145 x4 and $230 per month ($810 first month). And not only that, you can have water only sims with 0 prim allowance for $10 a month to put around your private islands.

OpenLife is still in a basic beta stage, so it isn't as realiable as Second Life (very laggy and lots of failed tps), but is apparently doing better than Second Life did at the same stage. However, I think Linden Labs would benefit greatly by lowering their prices to match these (or maybe just a little bit over OpenLife's prices) as OpenLife will be and is their major competitor.

I dont agree !

BOTS if they are premium accounts they are perfectly for support in a fashion shop or another business, because they dont moan, dont eat and dont complain about long working hours

I agree !
to ban the bots that are used to RIPP ooffffff my PIGGYSPLODER or other camping I foresee for my customers. Because of that reason I stopped all 'free money' programs here, despite the fact this affected my customer base, cause they all wanted free money .....AFTER ALL ....

and me who thought they were going to buy stuff from my shop *sights*

Anybody at or over 1/2-sim tier gets concierge support.

I'm at the 1/2 sim tier, all mainland, and my experience is less than 'bloody awesome.' Some Lindens are absolute aces - Guy, Teeple, Joppa (and others) have been great. Some of the others: not so much.

I'd be happy to tell you about my support ticket that went _6 months_ , 6 @#$%ing months, with no answer aside from it being closed by LL after 4 months without comment. Of course, I reopened it and it then it only took another 2 months for an actual respose.

Or about how just a week or two ago, we were getting griefed (again: mainland) and the Linden on live chat wouldn't do anything without an RT number from an AR. Of course, the AR reply email didn't show up until almost a day later (for me, _and_ for others who AR'ed it) so zero help there. I think it took doing live chat 3 times before I could find somebody to act like they gave a damn.



Many strong words lately, Katt. Little respose from LL management. Very, very little.



At the risk of sounding like a chronic Desmond suck-up, please talk to this guy, Zee.

Really Zee, how can an imaginary currency that YOU DO NOT PURCHASE!!! factor into this situation? Premiums are pure profit, you have to deliver NOTHING but an imaginary book-keeping entry to those who pay you real-world $$

Show me the LL real-world books, with L$ paid to premiums as a debit.

I double dare ya!!!

Max

Don't get me wrong I do not say everyone is like me, but please agree that everyone is not like you also transfering money form one to the other ALT and back again, in fact I made the same argument as you just did, not everyone is like you and not everyone is like me. On the other hand the only way LL can present these numbers is the way they show them now, because when you make a payment to yourself you are in fact making a transaction and th only way LL would be able to distinguise that is if they had a special ALT that transaction do not count when giving and taking money from it, until they do (if they do) make something like that, they have no way of knowing.

That won't work, because many users have a dynamic IP. But there are alot of bot-farms around, rented windows-servers from a hosting provider who never change the IP. I don't want that all bots are banned, because some bots makes sense - as example invite to SL-Groups, professional greeter, help systems etc. I only hate traffic bots, because they use resources for nothing except traffic. Suspending from accounts who break the DMCA is a good start, but it shouldn't end here. Due to limitations to get real names behind the IP, this is a good way what LL can do (hopefully not the only way).

4 logins from one IP will not work. You could potentially cut off tens of thousands of real clients.

the very nature of tcp/ipv4 makes it impossable for every single individual with internet access to have its own private internet address.

People who use city public wifi, many major isp's, many schools some cell internet all service clients in private address ranges. You could potentially limit a an entire city to 4 logins.

Annual is US$72 (not that it makes the L$300/wk a wash).
It's really not "lots to do" at all: Traffic just needs to be eliminated for any use other than the landowner's own edification. Traffic and dwell and any other measure of "popularity" merely encourage unscalable congestion. Traffic would need to go away for technical reasons, even if it accurately reflected the construct it proxies.

Well you will have to agree that if "I" decide to pay SL for premium services "I" want something in return, and if "YOU" want a free account that is fine you already are getting allot of freedom from LL, no need to divide yourself from me, or any other primium member, but I might also be a scripter who would not mind paying a small monthly fee to have a nice private sandbox, right now my WOW account costs allot more and I don't mind paying because I get value, I would like to see some more value here in SL for the people that spend money to hold a premium accout.

Eheh Zee, it's not needed to go for theory, when i pay LL to purchase Linden Dollars or to renew my premium subscription, you gonna account these money into your "RL" papers (finances), and LL pays the taxes on these money > profit.
When you just give L$ out, you not account anything (minus), because you are infact not giving anything (if not an immaterial currency) > no profit.
So you would even fill the demand, but at the end of the game (if there will be an end), you would NEVER convert the circulating L$ into US Dollars, so you aren't giving out anything (!) ...i mean if Second Life will close tomorrow, that amount of L$ circulating will vanish instantly, so (again) it would NEVER go "even" with the (real) money we pay, someone must remain with the match in the hand... and it's not LL.

They better not do that, I would have to raise my rent and possibly lose my tenants that are renting land from me (as small as my business is currently, I have only half a sim of mainland, and its very difficult to make a profit with that little amount of land)

Most bots are on full SIMs, so there is no change for OS. But OS shouldn't be themed here, thats another discussion in a other thread.

But IF Linden Lab remove the traffic counting for popular places and all the traffic bots are senseless, we will see, that Second Life will have at least 20.000 less users online. With other words, in prime time 50.000 only.

Ah, sorry. I checked my "Upgrade account" option and forgot that VAT was factored in there. (Yup, 25% VAT on top of the subscription, but LL is not to blame for that.)

U anticipated me... it's what i just wrote: the L$ gave out are not accounted as debit on their books. In fact Linden Lab paied me (RL job) with US Dollars, refusing to pay me with L$ because they can't account em. But i think that have been cleared from the start.

Well, you get more, dunno what you want. You have a better support from Linden Lab, you get a weekly stipend, you have a small piece of mainland (i don't like mainland, most places aren't really good) and you have the livechat feature. So what?

If i went in trouble with some in-world things, i only can file a standard support ticket with less chance for help and i don't get a weekly stipend.

I agree that premium users should have more then 25 groups, maybe 50 or 75, i don't need that much groups - actually I have memberships for 11 groups, no need for more.

But there is another mischief with your list. With that LL will generate two classes of users. I don't think that Philip want this. Second Life should be a place where all users should be equal, no matters of color, ethnic and account status. Please keep in mind that you in Second Life talk with people you would never greet in RL.

As a business, SL should want to make Premium Accounts the majority not the minority. I do not believe we should be limiting other users experiences. But Premium Accounts as they stand now are simply not attractive to the Majority. People who can afford them, don't want them. The point is not to make it so that people need to have Premium Accounts, but that they actually want them. My ideas for Premium Perks:

1) Increasing free land tier is a good idea and great way to use up already available resources, while encouraging economic growth. I really like this idea for obvious reasons.

2) Put stipend back at 500L per week. 300L only encouraged tightening of belts and contributed to the immaterial Premium Account theory.

3) Give traffic bonus presences to Premium Members. One Premium Member could be equivalent to ten Basic Account Avatars. Keep it a number that could easily be subtracted from official number data. Thus granting traffic bonuses to places Premium Account Members visit. If someone decides they want to purchase Premium Accounts for all their bots, good. They are paying for used resources. But I'm thinking those that sit around and just collect free L might not want to pay for it.

If we do away with traffic fueled search, number 3 is pointless, but I'm not opposed to doing away with traffic fueled search. Just hasn't happened in the three years I've been here.

I see. I was looking in the land-related articles, since it was a land-related question, and they didn't actually specify. Good to know if I need to sell one of my islands. Hope not. *crosses fingers*

No one will pay a premium account for a bot But that could work too to reduce the bot usage in Second Life. Otherwise it will also remove some really usefull bots.

I hope this will come, because the traffic fueld search is really senseless. I feel more then uncomfy on a place with 70 avatars and you see 2 or 3 only, because the bots are in a skybox. I prefer places with real users and communicate with them, thats why I'm in Second Life. If i want see stupid bots i can enter some IRC chatrooms.

You have 2 and 3 wrong I do not mean restrict what is already there, I mean add better features for primium accounts not take away from what is already in place but add more for people that wish to pay.

We'll get there? You've been saying this for as long as I've been in SL. 5 1/2 years it's taking you to "get there".

I really think, and I don't care if you are the CFO, that you should pull your head out, stop playing the corporate lackey, and look from the Community viewpoint. THESE are your customers, if they disappear, so does your job. If you really think you are going to get Corporations to come into SL without any Residents, then you should share what you're smoking; California Sensimea, good for a buzz, bad for BUSINESS.

Ms Linden,

I notice that yo have answered several frivolous questions on this thread, yet you continue to dodge the issues of substance.

LL's introduction of Open Spaces caused demand for my sims to plummet to the point that they were unviable. I was forced to spend thousands of dollars as a direct result of LL's policies, now you are increasing my tier 66% making my land business unviable again leaving me with no option but to cut my losses, and leave SL thousands of dollars out of pocket, as a direct result of your policies.

Please explain to me why Linden Labs finds this sort of contemptual behaviour towards the very people that pay your salaray acceptable?

Yeah, land owners.

Oh My GOD! And you have the gall to say I post attitude? REMEMBER KATT, you are a representative of Linden Lab. You are supposed to be PROFESSIONAL, and not give quip answers to someone that is frustrated with the whole system. Why is it you ignored his WHOLE post and focused on the LAST Sentence? This is the problem with Linden Lab employee's, they think they can do whatever they want and treat their customers like crud, and no one will say anything.

So, let's add Katt to the "Residents are idiots" list, which also contain some other wonderful Linden Lab employee's such as BUB, BLUE, PROSPERO! How many others are going to kick a Resident and not care?

Oh, there's a few good ways. I'd say allow only verified accounts, so you really know who's at the other end of the client. One or two alts, fine, but 50 alts on at the same time? Mmm, I'd say maybe one or two of them are a bot. You'd also nip the throw-away alts used by griefers in the bud too. A lot of us have been hollering about this for ages, and it's never been seriously considered.

Also, since you guys are oh so concerned about resource utilization "abuse" wrought by the "misuse" of the openspaces, I would have thought that bots would have been another thing "looked at". 10-15k bots on the grid is a LOT of resources being used for nothing other then to manipulate your "popular places"list. The "approval" of bots, in my opinion, damages LL's justification for their recent actions regarding openspace sims.

The onus is on you (not you, but LL) to provide us the proof, in metrics that at least us Computer Scientists can comprehend, to illustrate how openspaces have been so terrible and how bots have not.

I agree with better features, but I do not think those features should take the form of restricted content, additional or not. That would effectively be taking some out of the communications/social loop and block the spreading of knowledge, and I believe that is a wrong way to go.