After development bonuses are gone

He-he ))

This is what was thought before Linden event funding was cut. Many people thought and hoped (me too), that it will clear up the calendar. That people would finally get creative. That the event quality would become better.

It didn't happen.

Then, when the classifieds were revamped, people began polluting the 'free' event calendar as an advertisement platform for their yard sale/store.

Today, I'd better not even check the event calendar... no sense in it. While the disappearing DI might clear up things a bit, I fear we'll have enough bad quality left.

Maybe clubs will begin charging small fees to enter. But they can still use the event calendar to advertise, attract people. Or they will just lower the prizes.

People sitting in camping chairs are costing LL money not only through those who cash out the money they're being paid for it, but in wasted bandwidth and of course the extra lag to servers that shouldn't be there.

If it means that people actually have to work to be popular, and create original exciting interactive content and events, that can only benefit the game overall.

I can just imagine what it's like to be a new player, heading to what appears to be the most popular spots in game, only to find it full of corpses.

Lewis

Thanks for the links Alan I will take a look.

Unfortunatly your probably right about the events list. I think we will see money being offered until ppl figure out they are not making a profit off the prize money given.

I think we will be seeing a lot of copyright infringment going on Along with more pushing the sex envelope for money. Also a "anything for a buck" attitude becoming more prevelant.

I would like to think that a lot of the garbage will go away and SL will evolve once again in a new posiive direction.
Some ppl assume that their monthly fees pay for an entertaining experience. Make no mistake the current trend of SL assumes that SL is a business platform, and not a social enviroment.

Mar

You're right, its NOT welfare. Welfare in RL is given to people for food and shelter; the base staples of survival. NEWSFLASH: avatars don't need food or shelter. So its much worse than welfare - its more like if welfare money is used to go to the movies or a concert or some other form of entertainment... or when Ol' Dirty Bastard from Wu-Tang Clan picked up a welfare check in his limo. (Although I'll admit I laughed my ass off at that!)

Can you provide some evidence of where the Lindens promised DI to "many SIM owners"? If they provided it to "many SIM owners", surely you can find a quote, a post, or an announcement where it was promised that it "would go for quite a while"?

I don't remember any such announcement and find your entire post to be nothing more than wishful thinking, coupled with your typical lack of grip on elementary economics.

Regards,

-Flip

IMO Traffic is definately going to go the way of DI.

Nothing will change for us in Chaos. Our business model never included give aways from LL. We may end up adding another sim as content wins out over camping.

Think land will be cheap when traffic dies? I imagine it'll have to be, once that silly model is dead, what will be left for people? Actually making something interesting? Obviously that's a challenge for people, so they'll liquidate their landholdings cheap.

Should be interesting to watch that market.

In every bust there are opportunities for the prepared. There may be some good deals on used sims soon.

Well yes i think dwell maybe next, then stipends, and ultimately rather than spawing a burts of creativity and a willingess to invest more time and effort in SL, most will simply leave to play games where they get something for dollars invested.

SL will then be a platform with all 120 remaining users selling things to each other and remembering the good old days when there were 100,000 people on the grid. LL will repackage the enviroment as corporate training and education, and realize a nice profit letting coproation develope in house with the platform neatly installe don thier own internal servers.

Gosh, that sounds eerily simliar to Active Worlds.

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Overall I don't think there will be a huge change once things settle.

There will be a land glut for a time as people dependant on DI and/or traffic tier down either completely or to a point their budgets will support. But with so many new users every day the land will be bought by somebody and the glut will eventually pass.

As long as Popular places remains and the auto sorting of find by traffic numbers the big dogs will continue to spend obscene amounts of RL cash to do payouts to keep their top spots on the lists. Only change may be that it might be possible to do this with lower numbers thus being cheaper to do. Events will remain a disaster for this very reason.

For all of us that have been around awhile and "remember when" there are hundreds and thousands of new AVs that do not and think right now is just peachy. Making change a challenging situation.

I think everyone here needs to lift their head up, and think positive for just one freakin’ second. Listen to you guys, you sound like a bunch of cry babies who want stuff for free and when you come to find out you actually have to work at this thing to make some money off it you wanna jump ship!

Look at the positive side of this, if LL (aka the Government) is no longer “giving” people money based on the content they create that means that things will only be created out of demand, and that is more like a real buy/sell market.

Don’t think that people won’t demand things! They will, and in numbers too! Think about for just one second…supply and demand in a virtual world, it’s the next step on top of the exchange rates that change every day, so should the market! There is going to be a demand for “jobs” and this will make this online world explode. People are going to need scripter(s), builders, planners, hosts, creators, buyers, vendors, and many other things! And they will pay good L’s to have you in company, but if you charge to much they will just get someone else who is cheaper and better than you which forces people to keep up with “standards” that change over time in a constantly evolving online economy.

So what’s going to change? Ugly malls, useless builds, boring worlds, wasted space, yard sales with nothing but junk, sex rooms (quality/detail/animation market here will be huge), camping chairs, etc. along with pretty much anything else that sucks right now in SL in terms of content.

Ahh Pollyanna, here are the keys to the Sandbox sim. LoL

But seriously, I wish I shared your optimism, I really do. But I think all the opportunities to create jobs in SL are bypassed by technological solutions, just like the need for stores is bypassed entirely by service Like SL Exchange. For every nich we create in SL we find a solution to bypass it. Right now SL has some potential in the educational and training markets. But the most power it has is as a social platform, a glrofied chatroom. Most participants are not going to want to invest the time and money to buy and learn another program, like Photoshop, just to spend all thier free time running a business in SL.

There is serious potential, they are in limbo now with this program being in the midst of shutting off. Just wait, the demand will grow and there will be people there to fill it. I think maybe you took me way to literal when I said "job" I don't mean there would be a building you goto and clock-in or something.

I had imagined something similar to www.rent-a-coder.com where you put up a project and coders bid on it until you select one that you want, you give your money to an escrow service (ingame or maybe Linden based?), they code the project and you recieve it, you say it works, the developer gets the money.

The way SLExchange works is very professional and I like it alot. The future of SLExchange might be changed if we soon will be able to view websites IN-GAME and hopefully navigate them then that eliminates the need to leave the game again, especially if they allow us to use tags for things like usernames and passwords which would take it to a whole other level (ex. default.asp?user=Maxwolf Goodliffe&pass=UWISH&item=1234).

Alot of stuff is getting ready to change in this online world, especially with the intigrated browser. How big of a change kinda depends on what I said in above paragraph.

Would you agree?

Lets just say that I find it odd, and some what sad that with all the talk of SL being a metaverse, a 3-d replacement for the web, we still rely on plain old 2-d websites to shop, and that we think web-on a prim will make SL more usefull. I see this as turning SL inot another browswer skin and not a browser.

Dude, stop being so narrow minded! Nothing is going to replace going to a prefab house and looking at it. You can post all the damn pictures you want but it's not as "cool" as walking around it yourself.



I am not talking about SL replacing the web, I am just talking about what matters to us as users. I might just be too optimistic but I find that better that taking your own attitude, nothing would ever get done if everyone was like that.

So then its your opinion that I should be happy knowing that the same oh I don't know lets say 25 bucks I spent a year ago will now get me less in 06. Meaning at least with dwell, DI, event hosting money, free advertizing and the like I got something for my money. Now I am paying for my land and soon zero from LL in return EXCEPT the ability to build on that land.

Sorry but when I signed up for SL it was with the understanding that certain perks would be provided for all accounts. I understand they have a "right" to do so at any time for any reason. BUT I have a"right" voice my displeasure with LL when they continue to take every perk away. That is not welfare nor is it getting something for nothing, it was advertized whole heartedly by LL.

What is my reply to their right to take things away, well that's obvious I won't spend as much as I would have with their company. At least until something better comes along, and it will. This is a bummer I don't care for being bummed out when I am spending cash on entertainment. As far as I can tell SL is little more than entertainment. Where is the metaverse everyone was so jazzed about? I see porn, I see slutware, I see a few wanna be cities, I see casinos, and games. But I see no signs of a metaverse.

Perhaps companies are already using sl on private islands to hold meetings we don't know unless they are open to the public do we. Which means they are not a part of any metaverse they are a private island nothing more. Wells Fargo for example.

Thats not to say SL hasn't been used for good projects because it has they are just very few and very far between.

I have no idea where this is all headed that is why I asked the questions I did. I am open to the answers when they do not put down parts of the population for what ever personal agenda a person might have.

My personal agenda, to enjoy SL again without worrying when the other shoe is going to drop. Kinda hard to make any plans either entertainment or economic wise. When LL is constantly doing something that negativily affects a great deal of its subscriber base.

Hell in recent weeks I have even been pissed off because a well known land barron or two were getting screwed over.

MM

Quotes and links please. I have not read Philip saying that LL was in serious financial trouble. Nor have I heard anything about LL being so bad off financialy that they would be to the point of pulling the plug either. Please provide proof of this.

Waits for rumor and panic.

MM

Jake has pretty much expressed my own answer to this question.

coco

Ummmm, well joining SL is last time I checked 100% FREE. So no, there are no special perks for you. Sorry. If you want more out of the game than what is offered with a free account (only an entire universe) you must upgrade and then you may own land rather than rent.

I hate this tone people like you have with this online world, like you are owed something or you are being cheated or something. There is a diffrence between an inconvenience and being cheated.

And also, please keep in mind that what Linden Labs is doing has never been done before, at least no as beautiful or in-depth as this. This is still a new thing to "gaming", even though it's not really a game at all because there is no story, plot, missions, etc.

All I gotta say while you are waiting for something better...I will be building and messing around and hanging out with people on SL until whatever it is that you are waiting for comes along.



No, no, not shutting off the grid. Read what I type. I was talking about the developer program, that is being phased out right now if you are new to all of this.

I had a chuckle at this. Well said.

yeah well apparently active worlds has some advantages, if you ask wells fargo

We spend vasts sums on ways to reduce the consequences of distance in the real world. Improving transportation is the old way to reduce the effects of distance on human activity.

Now we work wonders with electronic communications devoted to overcoming the effects of distance.

The same desire to overcome the effects of distance occurs in users of a 3D virtual world as occurs in physical reality.

Thus people will want to do their shopping for the virtual world on nice efficient 2D web pages.

SL should make a browser plugin to show the merchandise in 3D form right on the SL shopping web pages.

It could access an avatar belonging to the viewer and display clothing and skin and attachments on the avatar in 3D right in the web page. No need to even go into SL to ry on the demo model.

You misread what I had to say also as it was not based on freebie accounts. Although I seem to be the only one who gives a shit about social players right now.

Rely on it? there was shopping in world long before Merwin's first post about 'how usefull would you find THIS?' (and a lot of people 'not getting it' -- ah why? when we can fly around in world and shop? - but thats besides the point).

The reason that SLExchange, SLBoutique, et al. do well is because they are convenient. They can do things that are difficult to reliably do in world. For instance SLBoutique lets me buy something as a gift for someone else - regardless of permissions.
In world that can be done - but it does it so much more efficiently, simply, and with less in world overhead.
So we have to wait for in world object to object comms - data saving - and other things catch up.


It's like berating computers because we still read books...

Next time I want to jot down my buddies phone number I'll set up my laptop.

I see web on a prim as helping make SL something MORE than the web.

Just as Mosaic made something much more than Gopher.