Lindens have made SL for the rich now

Guess what? You don't need an island to be happy!

Julianna, it sounds to me like you're having a bit of "keeping up with the Jones" issues. LL is encouraging people to buy islands, yes it's true. They are money makers for the business. But that doesn't mean you have to buy one. I have several nice plots on the mainland that I'm very happy with.

I admit I see alot of "exceptions" given to those with more money. They influence alot of things.

But I must also admit i'm not sure if this is partially by chance or totally by design.

So right now i'm asking questions, not making judgements.

They're broken ? I've been using them since version 1.5.8 with success


You have my vote, it'd be a nice addition to SL

Other than that, Philip has always answered the couple times I spoke with him in SL, although there's a delay (too many IM sessions I think). Didn't try with Jeska.


Woah, do tell me please, I could use some exceptions too I tried to convince Pathfinder Linden to remove my name from the tier database but that didn't work out

My own experience some days the treatment is good, others IMs to concierge are ignored and we do better lining up with all the mainland owners to get the attention of another linden. Same stuff new day that its an isalnd doesn't matter.

I think though that the privacy controls on an island in many cases are overrated. Yes we have the capability of totally isolating ourselves from the rest of SL. BUT if there is a business on the island we really cannot afford to do that. So we are left with the same issues inadequate security bars or scripts (albiet we are less likely to get reported for script use).

The tools that I think would be most useful to every mainland owner are the new Script and COllider lists. It would help to know what the top causers of lag in a sim are.

I wish there were exceptions (not really but its a nice thought). I guess our family group doesn't qualify since we are not rich although we do own an island. We certainly have not recieved any special treatment.

The Lindens I deal with on issues with the island treat me just the same as they did when I was a newb with my 512 first land. SOmetimes they arrive quickly and sometimes slowly and sometimes not at all.

You certainly don't have to be rich to enjoy SL. You don't actually have to be rich to own an island, people spend far more money than that on random crap (I've spent more the monthly charge in the last week on taxi fares for drunken friends - grrr - let us not go in that direction right now).

What I do object to though is that the pricing scale seems to be based on the idea that you are going to use the land for commercial purposes, and if you don't engage in SL commerce you pay more. My tier and rental is within my budget given my income, and quite reasonable given the amount of time I spend in SL, but the fact that, say, if I set up a museum or debate society, I end up paying far more than if I set up a casino or shop selling knock-off goods, annoys me.

*GASP*
You couldn't possibly mean to imply that the ability to communicate well would be a requirement for becoming a greeter? That is absurd. No one should be discriminated against simply because they didn't have the money to go to school and learn proper communication techniques like spelling, grammar and puncuation.



<3 Kiari

It's not so much privacy.

It's just that if you own 128m2 on the mainland, or 128,000m2 (contiguous) on the mainland, they're treated in the exact same manner.

As I've said in other posts: because the islands -do- have better controls to keep griefers at bay, the ne'er-do-wells tend to opt to find "action" at the larger mainland sites because there really isn't a damn thing we can do about it.

It seems to be presumed that there -are no- large mainland operations. We pay the same amount as Estate owners do, (including upfront, in auctions -- probably more) we just don't get the same options they do.

So I don't think this is directly related to 'how much money people pay LL'. I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who thinks someone like us (Luskwood) gets amazing favors done, different CS, and some sort of 'premium' handholding only afforded to the ""rich"" (I use that term lightly, because those seen as 'rich' in SL generally have something amazing like 30 bucks US in their account)...

I gotta say that such a concept is almost comical. If someone is crashing our sim, and we can't get rid of them, I get told to 'ask livehelp' just like anyone else. Occasionally a liaison is available. More often, they aren't. The only difference is that estate owners can take care of the situation themselves without having to run to LL.

Now, on the other hand: Do the VERY RICH get special treatment? (By 'very rich' i mean people who er, have employees working for them on SL, and pull in 6 figures US, if you know what I mean.) -- I would guess, more than likely, yes. But I don't think the original poster is aware of the scale on which this happens... You're talking one or two people, here, who may get special services and capabilities. Not 'anyone who owns a sim's worth of land'.

One thing I have found is that LL seems not to play favorites (for the most part.) -- and when they appear to be, it's usually just the fact that they've lapsed in making absolutely sure each waking moment that what they do doesn't -look- like favoritism. Because admittedly, sometimes things just end up looking that way.

I guess since I work in fundraising I can see the direct equation between what someone who donates $10 gets over someone who donates $1 million dollars. Its just how the world works. You can't treat your base of $10 donors like they are million dollar donors because it would be a daunting task and you would spend more money than you are receiving and if you treated your $1 million dollar donors like they were $10 donors than you wouldn't have any million dolllar donors because they would wonder what their return on investment was. Linden Lab is a private business nonetheless and their bottom line is profit.

Well, I think that no matter how much land you own on the mainland, you should be treated in the exact same manner.

On the other hand, I think you should be treated in the exact same manner as if you owned a private island, as well. I am very opposed to the idea that private sim owners get all these fancy tools that other landowners don't. I don't have anything against private sim owners here, you realise, it's just that there isn't a proper equivalence; there are powers they have that aren't directly connected to the fact that they own the entire sim that should be more equally distributed.

DO we have better controls on islands? Looking over what I have available to me it amounts to. We can boot/ban/AR and so can you. We can hide the island but that is not feasable for many as there are businesses on the island.

THe one advantage I see is that because we do not have neighbors at our boards a nogoodnik can't atack us from there.

Usually the "very rich" also have invested heavily in Second Life not only fiscally, but by investing time and other resources. If you have the disposable income to throw around that is great. I understand that not everyone does. I think since the majority of businesses in SL do not release their profit information people think we make more than we actually do.

The thing that bugs me about Linden favoritism is how it is such a damnable offense anymore. The Lindens are humans nonetheless and are bound to make friends from time to time with different avatars. Personally speaking, I am more prone to do a favor for my close friends in SL than I am for complete strangers.

We have boot and ban? Where?

Oh you mean that 40m thing? And where you can like, "boot" someone to the edge of your property?

Yeah. That's cute. Real cute. Sometimes it even annoys them before they come right back and drop a massive push on the land they're "banned" from.

Pie Menu: Slightly Inconvenience This Avatar?


Darkness, I read the release notes. I know what Estates have. All we've got is a "ban", which yes, indeed, does force troublemakers to taunt you from a slightly elevated angle.

As I've said repeatedly, ban on the mainland is a symbolic gesture and nothing more. 40m is nothing. Really. Try it. Building something at 45m is not a "skybox". Its the second floor of a building.

Script control? You got it, we don't.
Access lists for groups? You got it, we don't.
A -real- ban that keeps people from even showing up? You got it, we don't.
An eject that actually significantly removes them from the area? You got it, we don't.

"Ban" should really be renamed "Make Float". The ban list could be called the "Force Levitate" list.

I dunno Jennyfur. A lot of folks think that Luskwood has sold "a couple hundred avatars", and I will say that this number is... quite underestimated. We've done better than that -- but obviously not well enough.

But we've certainly never had favors happen from LL. And perhaps we -aren't- rich compared to other businesses; maybe that's why.

I've got nothing against in world folks being friends with Lindens, and that may indeed cause some inequitable 'help' - but yes, they are human; I never really cried favoritism... I just think it's pretty obvious that it's out there.

(There 's probably not a business in the world that doesn't have 'preferred' clients.)

I guess I just don't know at what level a group or project ends up being an 'asset' to SL and LL.

I do believe, correct me if I'm wrong, but wasnt it mentioned at the last Town Hall that most of the new island options being used on islands to see how they work before they would be brought to the mainland?

No. It was said that they should have waited until they could have applied those options everywhere, before deploying them to islands only.

They did not say that they were ready to apply those options to the mainland. Philip explained that yes, at some point, the mainland will get 'better tools', but he then switched the subject to that of groups , which I don't really see as related.

I have been told repeatedly that the reason why the mainland doesn't have effective tools for bans or access, is because they want the mainland to be a 'contiguous experience'.

I just take exception to that when someone takes their 'contiguous experience' of being an asshole from wherever they began being an asshole on the mainland, to my front porch, as it were.

I suppose when that happens, I can IM livehelp and they can tell me where in the menu the 'report abuse' function is located.

Its hard to gauge anymore with how the population has grown and the oversaturation of content creators on the market selling their wares. I honestly don't know the ranking and couldn't even begin to speculate between how much revenue each SL business pulls in. Plus I am no good at math. When it comes to favors I guess it depends on how each person defines it. I mean I considered it a great favor when Flipper accidentally drunkenly deleted Indigo a couple years ago and Andrew Linden came to the rescue in the middle of the night to do a rollback and prevent it from getting bought out from under us. But, the world was much smaller then and a little less conspiratorial.

Well, I can only hope that if something similar happened that we'd see at least half that response... I'm not about to make any signficant gambles on it, though.

I'm not saying there's a conspiracy. I'm not hoping for 'favoritism' or linden buddyship; I'm just saying there need to be some changes in perception of how certain things are handled -- because yes, Alice, large projects *do* still operate on the mainland.

I think too often, LL assumes that every plot on the Mainland is the lowest common denominator, and that somehow, 'estate owners' are a separate sort of of entity from those.

Indeed, they probably are, but that leaves us "two sim mainland owners" kinda in limbo, where we're given functions as if we were managing a 512m2 plot, when in reality, there's a REASON estates have those extended tools, and we need them too, because we're doing the same thing they are.

Islands shall now hereto be referred to as "gated communities on the sea" well at least by me anyways. I understand what you are saying totally. I don't know that we would receive the same treatment now, but we all hope and pray that flipper never deletes indigo again. Heh.

I see no reason that someone or some group which owns an entire sim on the mainland shouldn't be able to take it on as an estate.

Lusk and Perry, at this point, are pretty much effectively a Luskwood Estate. Luskwood should get all the same tools on those sims that Anshe Chung has on Dreamland.

This is my experience too.

As for being rich ... heh!

It took a year to build up the biz and save enough to get the island with enough overhead to keep me afloat for a few months....

... within days of getting it, LL break my vendors and the L$ soars... hey ho! ... maybe won't be that long before I go back to 512m lol


... oh yes, and there's a free event going on my island right now, this one runs until Sunday , I've donated the island and I'm paying the tier for it out of my pocket. A lot of very generous souls have donated prize money and goodies. But last year when I suggested LL should let me use a sim to do this same event a certain vocal forum poster called me a commy bitch for even daring to suggest it! So even if we own an island and let it out occassionally, we still get accused ... huh, it makes me laugh really!