SL Monetary Policy & Upcoming Changes...Discuss!

Same here, Kate.
I create for fun and only have a few of my things for sale.
When I hear someone's bought something of mine, I'm flattered that someone likes it as oppossed to thinking "hahaha! Money money!"

Most of my money is spent downloading textures and aquiring land (for projects, not for profit) . I make my own avitars, clothes and builds.

As much as I'm dissapointed to get a lower stippend each week, I'm way curious to see how the economy will react and how it will affect prices. Part of the fun of SL is watching society as a whole and how it evovles and changes. This should prove interesting

I think I saw this episode before. Its the one where the Lindens change something money related. Someone runs around in circles like Chicken Little, and threatens to leave, but doesn't. Next, the change goes through, and the world keeps on rezzin' like nothing happened. Then some noob puts a cabin on his head, everyone starts laughing, then there is a freeze-frame. Yep, I saw this one before...

Teeny, but that was my point above. No one has threatened to leave. Some people wonder how things will turn out but that seems to be the extent of the worry.

Look out for stripping classes, escort schools and whatever worse 'educational' ideas they can come up with

A lot of biz plans has to be reworked, I bet many clubs will have a hard time to adapt and go down the drain. Huge amounts of uber-raters/clubbers will have less cash to spend on skins, clothes and accessories.

Exciting times ahead!

I would like a Linden to define "educational"
Notice I said a Linden, thanks.

Shhh! That part comes up in Act 3.

This News Rocks


If LL cuts back on stipends and the L$ becomes less available, it'll start pushing up the valuation of the currency. In theory, those who load up on L$ Cash will get richer because L$ will be less abundant.


Could we see L$6.00 a Block on GOM soon? (Formerly: L$250 = $1.50)


Mo'Money

This biggest issues with this are simple:

LL is wasting time worrying about an economy that has already been tainted by the likes of IGE and GOM, both companies known for destroying the economies of games such as Linage 2, City of Heroes, Everquest, Final Fantasy XI, Eve Online, Ect. I personally don't want to support them, but the lindens leave me no choice with this change. I get about $1000L per week, that is my only form of income.

So, my $25 per month is buying me the need to waste hundreds of USD I don't have on GOM's scam, BETA level software that is so full of bugs, its pathetic, and a company that cares more about lining their pockets than they do taking care of the players. Instead of worrying about this why don't they:

A: Fix the ATI AGP Bug, LL is the only company in the world that dosen't support the #1 Video card maker in the world. I have a $300 video card that dosen't get me anywhere in SL except for frame rates of 10 - 15.

B: Fix the over use of CPU cycles. Currently, without AGP support all of the graphics are rendered using the CPU, which means my CPU is running NewView 100% of the time when Second-Life is running.

C: Fix the object/avatar ghosting syndrome, that is the most annoying thing in the world, having to relog every 20 minutes simply because the game dosen't like deleting an object or picking it up.

D: Fix up the server farms, if a sim is full, it should take precidence over other sims durring the musical crash game. Gama is home to two clubs right now, one of them 25k - 30k dwell club, the other one a 6 - 3k dwell club, the sim fills quick and ends up lagging, which destroys our dwell and takes away from our events.

I'm not asking a whole lot for my $25, only to fix whats broken and to leave alone whats not broken. I find it utterly humorous every time they "update" just to find even more bugs than there were before. I'm in the 10% of america that makes less than $20,000/year. I can't afford to waste money buying Lindens, and if this keeps up, I won't be able to afford to keep paying them for my plot of land. I'd be better off to take my money else where, where I will be able to spend more time having fun and less time worrying about an income.

-Ramoth Darkholme

Silence Hippie... Your missing the picture. If LL doesn't curb inflation, SL will be awash in L$ and that land you bought will be half price overnight.... This is a good thing for all... SL is more than a game. Its a virtual world with its own economy. Following the economic trend is just as important as following prim rich land.

SL's economy is nothing like that of a traditional mmorpg. GOM and IGE have been a very good thing for SL's content creators and casual players.

Interesting timing of this announcement considering I just halved all my clothing prices a few days ago. I must be getting psychic in my old age.

I expect this will mean that those who have access to rl money will have more access to Lindens than those without. Yes this happens already but this will make it more so.

This will probably kill a lot of the game events.

As a basic account holder, and event host this is terrible news. I can't afford to pay to play, and this looks like that through the backdoor.

i think cutting stipends, more so for basic members, is a bad thing. a basic account newbie (which i have no stats on but i assume is most newbies) starts with only a few hundred lindens. most need at least a few weeks to learn a way of actually earning money (other than free money events).

if a basic member is only making 200 - 600 or so a week (numbers more or less made up, trying to remember what my stipend has been like), and that is going to be cut, a large % of the population that aren't creators of some sort will have to cut back on what they spend (having a lesser income) or go to more 'rate parties' to try to make up the difference. if all the basic members cut back on their spending that would seem to have a more serious impact on the economy than the current inflation is having.

perhaps only changing with the stipend of premium members? the base amount a premium member gets 500L base, instead of just the 50L a basic member gets a week, before bonuses.

my 2¢


jester

IGE and the like ruin the economy and the only thing this "fix" does is up the price of lindens online, which Im sure is the real motivation.

I have seen IGE come in and destroy to many games to waste my time here if the only people you support are the people that "buy" there game play happiness.

I havent been playing long and I already have so much competition as far as clothes designers and that sort of thing. These people have been doing this from day one and for me to come in and now and start learning when there is so much better already puts me at a disadvantage but I keep trying cause I enjoy it.

However, if I dont even have the lindens to sustain some form of happiness in game in the mean time I really dont see me staying either.

Thing is I have seen IGE, GOM and the like ruin to many games for me already, wont take much for me to pack up and go and if your gonna support them fine but dont kick the rest of us to the curb with this reduction in pay your proposeing to.

I read the post and frankly its laughable that your worried about the economy of the game on the one hand and then on the other you support openly companies that sell linden to people online.

The only thing this will do by lowering our pay and not paying for events is, raise the price for those companies that sell it.

Its your right to do so as is my right to take my US dollars elsewhere, good luck in that decision. I already made mine if this change comes about.

Have a great day!

I agree there should be more classes on building and scripting and clothes making, I would love to learn more in these areas. I also really enjoy making money at hosting bingo games, money that I spend in game and not saving it to sell for $. If this is cut off for me and my stipened is also cut yes, I will seriously consider leaving the game because right now these are the highlights of the game for me, except for my new husband of course. I just think it sucks if they do this and is going to take a lot of fun away from the game. Not everybody enjoys or is interested in building and creating, a lot of us are here for the people and the way we get to know each other is through the different events, yeah a lot of em suck but a lot are fun too, even the noneducational ones. Looking on the brite side maybe this will cause me to pay more attention to my RL.

Folks who blame GOM and IGE are fools.


GOM and IGE are nothing more than the face of player to player trading. Somebody has L$ to sell and somebody else has US$ to buy (or vice-versa). And the place to make that happen is on GOM or 'sorta' on IGE.

These folks aren't the problem and if your unable to understand that, go take an Economics class. If GOM and IGE didn't exist, people would do the same thing using ebay or forums. Any place that brings Buyers and Sellers together isn't the problem.


Jesus Christ. Save these poor soles from their lack of understanding.

I don't see how they have been good for this economy, and I also don't look at SL as a "virtual world". It is by no means a virtual world for me, just a way to kill time between shifts at my job in the real world. If you pay attention, land prices have been rising since GOM and IGE began peddling linden, and because there is alot less land availible. The land barons jack up the prices of the decent sized plots which sell for USD, and Linden alike. The economy is doing just fine as it is, but this change will make the rich richer and the poor poorer. Its fine for people like you chip, with existing product lines and clients. For people like me who have no other source of income aside from stippend, and no knowledge of the scripting lanugage, animations or building/clothing deisng this is a devistating thing. It means that I /AM/ forced to spend the money I waste 50+ hours a week earning on linden instead of other things to make my life easier. Its a deadly game the lindens are playning now, they toy with the addictions of mankind and human nature's greed and money lust.

Like I said, instead of focusing on minute things like an economy thats been doing just fine since the creation of Second-Life, LL needs to worry about fixing bugs and finding new clientel.

Is it April 1st yet?

Or you could just go barefoot.

Let me ask you this.. Whats the difference between having L$100 and having L$10,000? Absolutly nothing. Unless you wish to purchase something (ie: A Tshirt) and the vendor asks you for L$10,000. Then lets say LL cranks out the Stipend Money machine and everybody is getting paid L$100,000 a week. Do you think that vendor will raise or lower their prices in SL, since more people now have more L$?? Inflation buddy.. Inflation..

Inflation:
A persistent increase in the level of consumer prices or a persistent decline in the purchasing power of money, caused by an increase in available currency and credit beyond the proportion of available goods and services.

Translation: Too Many Dollars Chasing Too Few Goods.


SL is more than bug fixes and pretty rainbows.. When you see the light, you'll understand.

I think the big thing that most people don't quite realize is that you don't NEED linden bucks in this game really. Everything here is being created by other residents, who have access to the same tools that you do. You technically don't need to buy anything, because you can make whatever it is that you may need, you don't need to buy land because we have so many sandboxes, unless you want your item or thing to stay in world for all to enjoy.

Sure, alot of people may say they don't have the talent or the skills to do something like that, but hey, practice makes perfect. You get from this world what you put into it, and they give you the tools and the chance to learn these things for a reason. Learn how to do some basic scripting, go out and build that couch or that hat you've been eyeing, or design some of your own. I think the focus has been TOO much on the Linden Buck recently, which is why the inflation we've experienced in world. No one in world has ever told you you cannot use any of the tools that you have in world.

Unfortunatly, there is no in world texture editor, so not everyone can get into that. But there are some good programs out there, that really don't cost much that you can use to create the clothes you may want to.

Granted, this way of thinking doesn't really help those who like to shop in world, unfortunatly, cutting the amount of money that they get each week will make it harder for them to do the things they love, but this may force some of them to try out the tools in world and see if they can create things rather than rely on everyone else.

This is just my opinion though.

Good. That means we can finally see an end to:

1) Shirtless male avatars
2) "bling" jewelry (with particle scripts that "shine" in light)
3) 102 clubs
4) Money balls
5) spam in the events listing
6) get rich quick schemes
7) roflolasl people with nothing to contribute

LF

Stick it out for a while Antiquity and you may come to see things differently. One thing you'll find in SL is that people have an insatiable appetite for new stuff. Clothiers are very non-competitive here. We all pretty much just cheer each other on. As you improve your skills and define your style you can't help but develop a following. It will probably happen a lot sooner than you think. When it happens you may start to see GOM and IGE as a true benefit. You can start to use your income from clothing sales to pay for your monthly fees. After a while of that you should be able to tier up in land, or upload a lot more textures, and keep on expanding. The beautiful thing about the ability to convert L$ into USD is that it allows you to do more, develop more content, buy more land... whatever you most enjoy. The more content people create the more there is to draw more people into SL. It's that cycle that drives SL's economy. Far from ruining SL's economy, GOM and IGE have done a great deal to help it grow. Economies in traditional mmorpgs are far more tenuous because they are based on resources that have to be created on the fly, like loot and crafting items. The ability to make real money causes people to farm, causing too much loot to be generated which unbalances the whole game. SL doesn't share those same problems. Our economy turns on land ownership and player created content.

I'd really like to see LL eliminate stipeds entirely for anyone who makes more than a certain amount in sales the previous week or whose balance is above a certain amount, then take that money and give new players as much L$ as possible.

If there is no difference then why cut the stipend to start with. There is a difference and what really burns me is there guise that this is to help the game , when the true issue for those not so ignorant to economics Alby is there doing it to line there own pockets with kickbacks from IGE when the price of lindens goes up from the demand it will cause. Supply and demand, ever hear that term? Its a pretty basic one, I think in Economics 101.

Nuff said

LL doesn't make kickbacks from GOM or IGE. We do!

Blatently false on two fronts. Firstly, GOM only deals in Linden Dollars; it's previous excursions with other games were temporary and low volume.

IGE ruins economies that are ripe for exploitation. You cannot "print" money in SL like you can in WoW, EQ, EQ2, etc. (you print money by farming certain areas, and getting the loot/selling it for gold, selling the gold on IGE). It is impossible to force LLabs to "print" more money on a massive basis that IGE is used to. As such, IGE cannot ruin the economy in SL.




GOM has scammy, beta level software? Really? Where? How have they scammed you? How much did you lose? Did you talk to them about it?

How about coming up with proof instead of posting wild, accusatory flames?



ATI is trying to fix the problems. It's ATI's issue, mostly, not SL's. SL uses advanced OpenGL calls that ATI cards can't do correctly with the current drivers. Talk to ATI, no SL.



Your CPU is the one streaming in megs of content a second, not your video card.



Yeah, welcome to distributed computing. What's your solution? If a sim is full, it's running at 100% CPU. If a sim is empty, it's running at 100% cpu. Where do you get the extra CPU from? Neighboring Sims? Wait, then their performance is degraded....

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I'm not asking a whole lot for my $25, only to fix whats broken and to leave alone whats not broken. I find it utterly humorous every time they "update" just to find even more bugs than there were before. I'm in the 10% of america that makes less than $20,000/year. I can't afford to waste money buying Lindens, and if this keeps up, I won't be able to afford to keep paying them for my plot of land. I'd be better off to take my money else where, where I will be able to spend more time having fun and less time worrying about an income.
[/QUOTE]

You get a weekly stipend every week. You are perfectly free to make your own stuff (you have the same scripting, texturing, and 3d modelling skills as everyone else in the game, use them).

They're working on the bugs. Every game has bugs. Cutting edge games have more bugs than sedentary, "safe" games. Get used to it.

And if you're going to take your money elsewhere... well, cya. Can I have your stuff? I'd like to sell it to pay for college.

LF