SL Monetary Policy and upcoming changes

If the Owner has to pay out of his pocket, you won't have to worry about Clubs period, unless someone has plenty of money from some other ventures and is very generous to the Public of Secondlife.........GET REAL!!

Yes. Its amusing now I've been through the v1.2 hysteria.

yes, quite amusing. BREATHE PEOPLE!!! Your fake VR world money is going nowhere LOL

Glad people being upset entertains you. I've noticed that many of the established and wealthy players in SL are "entertained". Of course they are...

However, many folks that don't have two pennies to rub together or hours of time to spend on building thier designing or scripting skills, are not all that entertained by LL's ever more obvious greed.

I've been in SL for a tiny bit over a year,. I have never been greedy, I've worked hard, and I've tried to contribute to both the attractiveness of SL, as well as introduce fresh ideas and helpful services. I certainly havn't amassed any money doing so, which is fine by me. However, I am a tad upset with these latest changes.

I don't find them amusing, and I've gone through many of the changes in SL. Should we dive out of buildings? No. Should be express our concerns and dissapointments? You bet.

If someone *wanted* to pay someone to rate them, I suppose they could... but why would they want to spend their money like that? I suspect that the cost of several triple positives would be far greater than the benefit in weekly stipend/bonus.

Yes. Giving people lifetime ability to log in and enjoy SL for a sum total of $9.95 and on top of that giving them free $L that has a real USD value... those bastards!

Secondlife Businesses that support this will learn very quickly.

Fine. You're upset, I'm entertained. Imagine, a world where people see things differently!!!!

And btw, nowhere have I said that people shouldnt be expressing thier concern.
Quite the opposite. I want people to say how they feel about it, as I am completely fascinated by the reactions that are happening here.

*HUGS David* We disagree David, but you know I adore you and wanted to give you a hug in the hopes it could maybe cheer you up a tad.

I wish I could stand by your side and agree with you that this is a bad thing that is happening, but I honestly do not see it that way. I have played SL over a year and I have always been poor. Yet always manged to give out money during events, donate money to other event hosts who could not afford to give out their own money, buy the few odd things here and there, and just in general have a blast in SL. The items I sell are priced so inexpensive that while I do sell items on a regular basis, it has never brought me a great income.

When the changes of 1.2 came about, I had to teir down and lost a great deal of land due to the fact that I cannot invest more RL$ into SL than I do currently. I pay $25 a month total and that is for my monthly playing fee and land tier. I can't afford to pay anything more than that. So in a lot of ways some could consider me poor both in SL AND RL. And yet still I see these changes as a great way to inspire creativity, bring groups together more strongly, encourage serious players to go beyond a basic account, encourage more classes to come back into being, encourages retailers to re-evaluate their prices and possibly lower them in order to meet the current market, and so on.

And to top it all off, Philip himself stated that they are constantly watching the trends. If this truely turns out to be a horrible thing for SL (which I still don't think it will be), then I have full confidence that LL will increase the flow of Lindens back into the economy to spur growth.

I am not in the least bit worried about these changes, and in fact I welcome them greatly.

To say that this is absurb is too simple. You don't want us to think of the Linden family as a bunch of money hogs, this raising of rating justifies all of us who hold this opinion

You expand and your updates usually make things much worse than they were before. Things, such as clothing, disappear - who cares - certainly not YOU!!!!!

The high cost on other online games are why you have gotten a lot of member who WILL be moving on if you continue on this path.

BTW, Phillip, most people think you and you remarks on mettings are nothing but HOT AIR.

Most people believe that Black Wendsday killed There as we knew it, l saw the decline before that mess occured. The bumbled press release just sped up the dying of a great game.
I use to play There, it was a great game, I can't say that anymore. A few monthes ago There removed thier hosting credit and it totaly changed the quality of the events. Events went from being community oriented to friends based and the world suffered from it. It use to be any time you logged in to There there were many areas that you couldn't go into because there were just too many people. Now... there are mostly only the dedicated left playing. Look at how many people are in SL who came from There. I can't prove it, but alot of poeple (many of whom are in WoW and assorted other games) would still be in There if were not for the economy taking the dump it did when There made its economic changes.

I stayed in SL mostly because i enjoyed the events I was attending. The building and scripting were second. My friends might read that and think i'm overstating, but i'm not. If SL didn't have the entertainment value it has (had?) iI would have stayed in with my friends in There.

Rafe Phoenix

How exactly does this make them money hogs? They aren't cashing the money out.

This is almost exactly a repeat of the changes the Lindens made at the same time a year ago.

* They slashed the stipend from 3,500 max to 2,000 max
* The introduced land tiers

This is much the same thing again. As has been said, it'll hurt, but SLs economy is made of stronger stuff. It'll survive.

And here's the best point of all:

6 pages of discussing this and it wont do a bit of good either way. They wont be changing anything. I'm glad i skipped pages 1-5.

Why do I get the feeling this move is more geared towards eventually eliminating the Basic account type, rather than anything to do with the in-game economy? Ie. it's a Linden Labs economic change, rather than a Second Life economic change...

I think making ratings more expensive is good in the way that they now maybe will be used as they are intended for...
You can rate someone on his looks at first meeting, but as behavior and building?
I admit to have rated people for behavior and building while i have no idea if they indeed behave good and are good builders.
Now i will rate for looks, but not anymore for behavior and building except when it actualy deserve a rating.

For event payout, i did 8 events long time ago, asked support for them, not once did i get the support, when talking to a Linden about it he said they were behind because of the large amount of events. So for me this was already a fact, if i do an event i pay it out of my own pocket.

I so like to upload stuff, i will be more carefull now and always look at the preview as this will be a moneysink for me personaly...

I don't know what to think of these changes, time will tell i guess.
For all those worried: steal your husband's Visa like i do

Ah yes. But Im upset by the changes and you are entertained by folks being upset. We see things differently indeed...

Selling listings on ebay. Moving the ratings out of reach of most non-wealthy Sl'ers. Cutting off all support for contests. Selling virtual land with only the real US$ amounts and cutting down the weekly stripend. All geared toward greed and raising the real world value of L$.

And I pay L$86 a month compared to $14-15 a month for other online"games". My choice of course. But seeing Second Life become a money grabbing virtual enterpise instead of a creative, fun and social exercise means it's just taking one step closer to an already fucked up real world. Something I like to escape when i can.

Yes, I can just tier down, chose to build on whatever land I decide to keep, and socialize. None of these changes will effect my ability to do so. But seeing the decay toward toward more real word money matters will still dampen it somewhat for me.

I quit SL 5 days ago because of my RL friends & family hollaring about me spending too much time on my computer so I really don't know how much my input counts.

My concern is not about the economy or anything else. I hadn't been playing SL very long, but I did notice some things about SL.

The interface for SL is clumbsy and hard to learn.
There are a lot of 3rd party programs you have to learn / buy if you want to make things. (Photoshop, Poser, Paintshop Pro, etc...)
The Building Interface is pretty complex.
The Scripting Interface (or lack thereof) is horrible.
The Scripting Language is nice and is a definate feature of SL, if you have the time to learn it.

New people in SL start in SL thinking, "This is a neat game." over time they generally adopt the "SL is more than just a game" attitude that is more commonly found.

Everyone is taking the attitude "who cares about the people that pay the one time fee of 9.95, that should not be LL's focus."

and I could ALMOST agree with that, however, it is going to be those people that decide whether or not they want to upgrade their accounts to premium account to start buying land, for building or other things. If you say don't focus on them, your saying don't focus on any potential future premium customers that those people might turn into. Usually it is a natural progression, they start at the onetime fee of 9.95, see SL, meet people, decide they want to make things, own land, whatever, then they upgrade to a premium account for land, then they buy more land to expand and viola, you have a premium account holder who is paying land tier fees. If you attitude is to hell with that guy from the beginning, you lose him as a customer, he never gets to the point where he wants to become a premium member.

The Rating system.
Yes, it was horribly abused. HOWEVER, it's nice to be rated, and it's nice to be able to rate back. Rating someone generally strikes up conversation with them. It's a neat social aspect (something you eliminate by making rating cost 25 per). What is going to happen is either noone or rate, or only the people with a lot of money are going to rate, and the people they rate (if they are new) will feel badly because they can't afford to rate back. Making people feel badly in something they view as a game will probably not keep them as a customer.

The Events change.
Yes, there were a lot of stupid events. BUT those events were SOCIAL events. Classes are not social events, they are generally instructor lead (which SL has made a requirement) and do not generally make interaction with the other students a priority. It's generally two way communication (if you account for questions) between each student and the instructor. There is no socializing, just learning. What makes SL so wonderful to many of us *IS* the social aspect of the game. New people are going to come in just like I did going, okay, what now, they are going to want to meet people and interact with the world and other players. Interacting with the world is damn hard to do, the interface is not the most user-friendly. So wonderful, they take a few classes to learn to interact with the world, but where has your social aspect gone?

You have made meeting people much harder to do. Ratings allowed for some social interaction to occur between people and acted as sort of an "ice breaker" for people. Events allowed all kinds of interesting people to gather and talk about whatever and gave incentives to these social events to be held. What replaces that? Classes? It's a completely different environment!

So, we are here.

We have an unwieldy, complex interface.
We have a lot of reliance on third party programs that are complicated and require a steep learning curve to use.
We have a steep learning curve to use the in-world build tools and scripting language
and now we add the fact that we have limited the social interaction and things to do for new users who are just coming into SL and we have an attitude of "I don't care about the 9.95 one time fee person."

The new user STARTS SL because of the social interaction, because of the people, by making it more difficult to socialize and fewer social encounters, your making it much less fun for the person who is just starting out in SL.

How do you expect to grow?

Best Wishes,
Jessica

I understand Pen, and I'm not saying it's the end of the "second" world, but I am saying the Philip's trend watching will be purely in the form of how much money LL can make, which I suppose is good for a CEO to do.

It just seems with each passing month, Second Life is more about real world cash and economy instead of rewarding creativity and letting folks live, and build, thier fantasies. Perhaps Im just disillusioned, but I see this as a clear case of class division and an attempt to draw more RL $ into SL.

I've lost money on every contest event I've ever hosted, but it wasn't usually enough to break me. With less of a stripend and no support ofr contests, I will no longer be able to continue any of those kind. Not a big loss I'm sure, but folks enjoyed them. And with the more wealthy folks able to afford to rate, only the wealthier folks being listed in what used to be top picks and only the wealthier folks benefiting for the rise in GOM prices for L$, I just don't see many boons for the poor players out there.

Needless to say, I have alot of friends at a certain Club and I consider them family; not so sure how much longer they will be around.

Indeed we do.
For instance, you are seeing negativity in my comment.
Fact of the matter is, I have a lot of sympathy for those who are upset over this. Large changes always cause ripples of concern, its natural. It is also very, very, very interesting to observe in action- some people are handling it well and remaining rational, some are moving forward with cautious optimism, some have a "We'll see what happens" attitude, some are detatched emotionally from the entire debate, some are convinced its the death of all they know and love. Thats interesting stuff, the wide range of human reaction to a stimulus.

NOT that you bothered at any point to verify if i indeed meant it judgementally or negatively before you opened fire.

I have been considering buying land in SL, now i doubt I will. As i stated above i am very likely to leave the game now. The one time $9.95 got me to buy a membership, the economy got me to stay. This change to the economy just might chase me away.


PlaneShift anyone?

Rafe Phoenix

As a card carrying capitalist and lifetime member of the VRWC, I understand and accept the need to manage the market.

However.....

When I signed up for a premium membership-and paid for the full year up front-it was with the understanding that I would be getting a $500L (edit:amount corrected) weekly stipend. So my question is-will my stipend be cut in half as stated in the LL post or will it remain the same? If it *is* cut in half, will I be receiving part of my premium membership fee back?

My thoughts...

And Kiamat, Premium membership comes with a L$500 a week stippend and whatever bonus your ratings give you. Only the ratings bonus will be cut in half.