Does Philip know that large tier customers use less bandwidth (on average)?

I think before he goes around freaking everyone out he might want to crunch a few numbers.

And less human resources. 10 sims owned by one person or 10 sims each with 10 in. ooo toughy.

I am reposting this in the hopes that someone at LL reads it.

I am absolutely disgusted.

I am not too sure who the hell is going to buy $1000+ sims if the tier is higher and people are selling off their land en masse because they cant afford tier.

LL must clarify their intentions, because they are about to cause panic amongst their largest customers.

Such a panic will cause a ripple effect that will have profound effects on the SL economy.

They're causing panic among their smaller ones too. I wish he would have brought up some hard numbers when he mentioned the possibility of a tier increase.

I do agree that just making an aside about tier payments changing in the future was problably not the best idea in the world. If there's nothing concrete to say then it would normally be a good idea to say nothing.

Aren't people already selling their land and cashing out through GOM?

(1) Land is now dirt cheap'
(2) GOM has been sliding downward... currently there is more than L$1,000,000+ for sale at $3.95 USD and under.

You haven't seen anything yet.

If he takes the arbitrage out of the tier system you will see MASSIVE devaluation of land and and the $L.

Then again, maybe its just a tactic to get land barons out of the market so they can consolidate and return that profit to their own pockets.

Nah. That's too convoluted. I'll stick with the 'growing pains' theory.

Cienna, tier increases would affect everyone, not just land barons.

I know that. I was aiming for humor. Sorry, I obviously missed. =/

Agreed. I'm not happy about this either. My business partner and I have been planning for sometime to be able to afford a sim to expand our business on. We have been doing well to afford our current tier, but this, coupled with the drop in the linden is making it very hard to stay self sustaining.

Add this to the possibility that we will be charged for our inventories and I see a very dampening effect on content creators as a whole as well as re evaluation of land usage.

Personally, I think it sucks.

-Taylor

How do you work out that large tier customers use less bandwidth? I'd of thought bandwidth used was directly proportionate to traffic and as most of the top popular places (based on traffic) are on land of large tier holders, I'd of thought your assertion would be less than correct. After all the more people you have in a place, the more bandwidth that place is going to be using.

Do you have any figures for this that you can backup your very definite point of view with?

Doubtful. He's very good at running into the room and yelling 'fire' then laughing from the corner as people race about looking for where it is to put it out.

Wellll...

A 65K m2 sim is equal to 64 1024 plots.

What is the bandwidth consumption of 64 individual players versus 1?

Or, take anshe for that matter, pretty much all of her plots are empty. People who buy 1024 plots usually fill them up.

Generally, from a resource consumption point of view, from a support point of view, from a bandwidth point of view, large tier customers are godsends to LL.

All that I gleaned from the transcript regarding changes to tier specifically:

Let's say you have a $40/mo tier fee. You use MORE than what's allowed on a $25/mo tier fee, but LESS than what the $40/mo allows. So, instead of paying $40/mo, the "flat fee" per m2 would mean that you pay LESS than $40/mo but MORE than $25/mo.

That is ALL that I got from the relatively small bits about changes to tier fees, so I'm confused as to all the confusion about THAT part specifically.

As to the bandwidth being less on average for large tier customers, I suppose that makes sense, as I'm sure a lot of it is that larger tier customers tend to keep on their own land a fair amount of their in-game time. Which means a little less roaming from place to place, perhaps, and therefore less bandwidth spent on downloading the objects/scenery in other places.

As far as I can tell, LL is raising the cost of private sims because, they are buying better equipment for them. If they are a business (and they of course are) they are going to naturally want to make a profit. If the new servers for new sims are costing more... that's just logical to me that they are charging more. Which, to me, isn't even figuring in bandwidth use, or no more than it ever has. Philip DID mention that the price per month ($195) was not changing. It's a raise in the cost of the initial purchase and setup price.

I'm not by any means saying that we should not question the wherefores of the decisions made, but I do wonder where some of the panic is coming from.

Prices increase as costs increase to the providers. Saw it years ago when I was a member of AOL and prices for that went up. Lots of people screamed and yelled that they were cancelling, and you know, for all that at THIS point I can't stand AOL and haven't used it in some time, I hear tell they're still going strong.

Yeah but then you have the people who have used the 10% group bonus, blah blah...

heh, ditto.

I'm assuming you are refering to discounts at high tier? If so, yeh, of course people are posting about their own ineterests, a lot of money is at stake. But it's not all about that. What about all those that prefer to rent in SL? It's not just about the landlords.

I am going to assume that, not wanting to shoot themselves in the foot, LL will figure out a way to incorporate the 10% bonuses for groups into things, if they do change tier charges.

But, I understand what you mean, too, Ingrid. It would be nice to get some Linden feedback on THAT aspect of it.

yeah, some of us like zoned sims.

I'm just going to throw in a bunch of angry faces for no real reason now. Just because.

Hah! And I'm going to roll my eyes at that because.... because... because.... becaaaaaaause, because of the wonderful way you does!

Wow. That was intense.

This stuff is all way to complex for me to grasp.

But my major objection is it seems it will make things even more difficult for (a) people who want to just set up something neat, like Touchstone Fair, and (b) renters. Losing the creativity cause people just can't afford it (it already isn't easy) would be bad.

coco