The L$ is up!

Personally, I think shopping days are on Saturdays and Sundays. That's when the value of $L goes up due to greatly increased buys (Limit Sells sell like crazy), which suggests a lot of people are out there sitting at home from work, buying up $L to spend on trinkets.

by the way, watching the market early this morning, Here's pretty much what happened (paraphrasing due to not remembering exact figures):

About 9am

$323 $4,000
$322 $120,000

About 10am
$326 $10,000
$325 $15,000
$324 $4,600
$323 $6,000
$322 $80,000


About 10:30am

$327 $150,000
$326 $70,000
$325 $120,000
$324 $40,000
$323 $26,000

About 11:00am

$327 $150,000
$326 $480,000
$325 $120,000
$324 $420,000
$323 $26,000


Looks to me like SOMEBODY, or rather a lot of somebody's, were being complete f-tards. $420,000 on the $324 level would be a guaranteed sell in an hour or two if they weren't undercut. There's no reason to undercut unless the level you are at is over $1,200,000. And it seemed after a bunch of TINY orders that should've dissapeared within 30 minutes, people all went "zOMG, I'm undercut by TWO to THREE WHOLE LEVELS!" and all piled up at the top, with all the new (current) sells piling up at the high $320's / low $330's levels, even though EVERYTHING between $322 and $330 can sell within 5 to 10 hours. Sheesh. Idiots.

Keiki,

In watching the volume today it occurs to me that another phenomenon is effecting the LindeX on Tuesdays. There is the L$ farming (probababily not as widespread as originally thought) the increased spending that you see due to an influx of 10,00,000 new L$, and the reduction of L$ buying because of stipends. With this many variables it very difficult assertain how much of the runup in the exchange rate is due to content providers cashing out, L$ farmers cashing out, or consumers not buying L$. I expect to see a sizable drop in volume over Monday's.

Ingid, I checked your website and wanted to buy your Sky Garden but your shop is missing! And you have no picks! So I must derail this forum... I'm here to spend my L$ not argue about them!

Unfortunately just the way the market moves. Lindex has a lot of "retail investors", although using that in the context of people just using the market to either sell or buy small quantities of L$ for their own usage.

Also I suspect Traders were clearing their postions as well, most traders seem to be still relatively small so they need to buy and sell quickly. What we probably need are Traders who are able to put up much larger positions that can soak up the L$ being thrown at the market.

With confidence in the L$ seemingly to be low, people are liquidating their holdings to store it in something that has better value, IE the US$.

Bit of a vicious circle. Still I've noticed that its hovering around 330 at the moment. Which seems to be the current resistance level at the moment.

Agreed. That's why I tend to be skeptical of any claims that one thing or another is killing the economy or driving up this number or that. The SL economy is a complex system with many, many factors affecting it. To say 1 factor is the direct cause of 1 statistic is foolish, especially with the limited data that we are privy to.

I will tell you if it does get to US 1$ = 4000 Linden Dollars I will buy 50 dollars worth

It is eh?

Well

If I had wanted to work in a Virtural World, I would had gone to the Sims on-line.

I come to SL to enjoy and relax, not to work.

arent you a charter mag? so in what is the issue concerning you?

"I come to SL to enjoy and relax, not to work."

And you pay for that relaxation by working to earn money, either in SL or in RL, just like you have to pay for most other entertainment.

SL is rare in that it is absolutely free if you want it to be. It's like going to the cinema for free, only paying for the optional popcorn if you want it.

Musuko.

You don't actually NEED $L to enjoy SL. I got my collection of clothing and trinkets from learning how to build myself, trading stuff with friends, and from various friends who wanted to make things for me. To me SL has a business side, where I make money, and the SL as a game side, where $L doesn't even play a part. Only $L I spend is usually on the upload fee, and even that has ways around it (use already available textures etc.)

In other words, "you don't need money but _someone_ better have it _and_ like me enough to share, or we are all screwed". Because at the end of day someone still needs to cover the upload fees, even for these things you can then re-use for free. And we won't even go into the whole excitement of "learning how to make my own clothes" when you can't upload stuff.

I had people make about three things for me: a sword, a scripted door, and probably one more thing. Most everything else in my inventory was just thrown at me. Most of it doesn't use or require textures (prim details bikes, coctails, weapons, and other random weirdness). Heck, my avatar is a perfect example of a (I think) well done zero cost object. While Luskwood was spending money uploading textures for their AV heads, such as eyes, muzzle colorings, etc, I built up my av's entire face out of prims (another bonus is that I can animate it by moving prims around). Textures used are just darkened default asphalt for fur, and default wood with color tint and repeats for hair (nice to be inventive). After so many years I am pretty sure that almost any texture you want to upload to SL (aside from maybe some clothing) someone else has uploaded already. So I guess the point is that yes, you needed a lot of money flowing in to get this place filled with stuff, but nowadays there's plenty of stuff already here. Check out Yadni's Junkyard. I'm sure you can save a bundle on upload fees there.

Oh, and if you're not likeable enough in SL that no one is willing to part with a few $L to let you enjoy the game, then I think you have other issues there than just the lack of $L. (I don't mean YOU specifically, I mean "you" as in some person in general)

OK, but that's quite specific situation of non-human avatar which goes out of its way to not utilize much of textures to cover the prim-based body to begin with, isn't it? This doesn't have much application for a human-like avatar who wants to actually dress into something, or for a furry who'd rather not wear asphalt and plywood. And while most of things in your inventory was just 'thrown at you', someone still had to pay the cost of upload for sound, textures and animations utilized by these things.


Without doubt. Most of it with intention to make money off sales of them, though (while there's very nice selection of basic textures at GNUbie store and such places, in the end they're just that, basic selection) ... and playing with just the 'same old' that's been around for years gets well, old... pretty quick.

I suppose in the end this boils down to: while _some_ people can have 'fun in SL' without ever touching features that require you to spend money, this is valid only for these 'some' people. Others might derive their fun from different sources, which makes any sweeping generalizations on if it's possible to have fun without money or not... just that, overly broad generalizations.

Um, yes and yes. And the outcomes will be either
A. person finds ways of having fun without money
B. person is bored, wants money to have fun, but can't get any and doesn't want to pay $US, so ends up leaving.
and
C. person wants to have money, breaks down figuring the fun will be worth it, and buys a few $L off Lindex

Person B. esentially makes no contributions aside from possibly social ones. And not being able to get any money means that either they aren't trying hard enough (meaning they're not wanting it enough), or are just bored with the whole SL to begin with. We'll loose some B.s no doubt, but we'll still have A's and C's.

I think it's a bit different thing, since we are talking mostly about new person's experience right after they join. There's very little reason to require such person to either turn into A or C right from the get-go, especially when there's plenty alternatives for online entertainment with relatively easier barrier entry.

And with basicremium current ratio hovering around 4:1, its' quite a nice indication of just how big group B makes, even vs A+C combined... (obviously that's not straight relation but yes, most people _are_ drawn in by the promise of free lunch. What keeps them stay long term is another story, but you need to have them stick around in the first place, to even consider long term incentives)

Ok, I'm quoting my own thread but I wanted to report something I think is significant. I reported that the peak seen on Monday's peak residents logged online may not be real. Here are the numbers for Tuesday and Wednesday.

Tuesday 6/6
1900 - 6,932
2000 - 6,946 Peak 7,017

Wednesday 6/7
1900 - 6,723
2000 - 6,924 Peak 6,953


This is very encouraging news, it appears there are now more active players and if the recent trend in new accounts keeps growing maybe this number will grow to 9000 by Christmas. To be perfectly honest I am happily suprised and hope this trend continues.

"especially when there's plenty alternatives for online entertainment with relatively easier barrier entry."

Is that really true? I was under the impression that most online-only games require some form of monthly fee and/or initial purchase.

Musuko.

Entropia Universe is a free download and has no monthly fee. Their website as of this moment says it has 445,173 people signed up. The game has been around since the mid-1990's (as Project-Entropia). Has stable economy (10 ingame dollars = 1 inreal US$) since the beginning.

Slightly more difficult at moment to get inreal money out of but can be done. They have a sort of ATM like thingy coming to make withdrawal easier.

Not saying its perfect but it has been around for a while.

Depends on the game, really. One one hand there's brand new games which indeed require you to either purchase a boxed copy, or pay monthly fee, or both. On the other hand, there's a number of games which are running free trials, that can range from week length to eternity (Anarchy Online, eg) ... and then there's increasing number of games which earn their profits from 'micropayments' -- the basic game is absolutely free and allows one to compete with all players on more or less equal footing, but there's extra options like additional clothes or game gear which are purchased with secondary currency purchased for RL money. Pangya or Audition can be example here.

If they all "tried hard enough" and could get money, then none of them would be paying US$ for L$ and the economy would crash.

It's not a pleasant choice, but it's there: either some hard-working people can't earn, or you depend on the lazy people to survive.

"and then there's increasing number of games which earn their profits from 'micropayments' -- the basic game is absolutely free and allows one to compete with all players on more or less equal footing, but there's extra options like additional clothes or game gear which are purchased with secondary currency purchased for RL money."

That's exactly the catagory that SL falls into.

Entropia Universe seems a good example. Again, however, that game has ingame currency to buy things:

"Has stable economy (10 ingame dollars = 1 inreal US$) since the beginning."

So are there any out there that are absolutely 100% free?

Musuko.

Well, these other games do provide starting player with some small amount of money, or make it generally quite easier to earn that in-game money without having to pay with RL cash for it, so this is where the whole "less of entrance barrier" thing i mentioned comes in...


Yes, Anarchy Online for example is absolutely free to join and play. There's actually a web page dedicated to finding these free MMOs, and they had ~75-100 titles (very rough estimate) listed last i checked. Not sure if i can find the URL for them in my mess of bookmark files though, it's been a while since i checked it so can't remember off the bat.

They do, but a) you get access to everything for that money, and b) the payment is the same for everyone.

In a conventional MMO, you might know that your character can become king although it'll take a lot of grinding. In SL, you know that a) you might never become "king" (or whatever goal you want), and b) the person who is "king" probably isn't paying anything. That's a discouragement to put any money in yourself.

When the people who get to be pop divas or fashion models or grand architects or game designers aren't having to pay, where is the motivation for anyone else to pay for a lesser experience?

But in answer to your actual question: http://play-free-online-games.com/games/games_rpg.html

"When the people who get to be pop divas or fashion models or grand architects or game designers aren't having to pay, where is the motivation for anyone else to pay for a lesser experience?"

We do have to pay. I pay premium fees, land tier, upload costs, vendor space rental. We DO pay. We pay more than most.

Where on earth did you get the idea that we get a free ride?

Musuko.