Step 1: Eliminate the Basic Membership lindens giveaway effective now!

SL is what you make it. And what you make it, may not be what someone else makes it. And this is the real beauty of SL.

This beauty however, is ruined by those of us who label it what we think is, without taking into consideration that what it is to us, may not be what it is to someone else.

Please don't get stuck with the impression that SL is to everyone, what you believe SL to be for you. It is a different experience, and fulfills a different purpose, for all of us.

This is not to be mistaken with our individual attempts to influence SL to be more like what we want it to be, which is entirely different than what it really may be, or what it eventually will become.

It is your world. Your imagination.

Or one world. 150,000+ imaginations.

Well, um.. what are they supposed to be doing, then?



But as long as those creative people expect to make money rather than spend it for doing so - and that is a completely reasonable thing for them to expect - then we will need the people "playing bang-bang games" to actually put the money in. Remember, they're the people who pay the tier fees for the businesses that make profit.

LL gave theuser the ability to create the world to how they see fits to make the game fun and exciting for there own indiviual prefferance.. there way of saying well you are our customers the reason why sl exsit so we will allow you to mold it and create it to your vision, without a tight rope hold on it.

it was not to be like well you "have" to create or your "suppose" to create its not a mandatory requirement to play sl. the freedome of creation was given so for those who enjoy to build and create beautiful things wouldnt be limited to a structer of preset items already made by ll.

for some of you who played TSO would know there was a preset of objects to build with if you wanted a window in your house it had to be one of the given contents already there and there was no way to manipulated the design to the way you like it or even the color or texture..

thats where LL went above and decided you know let the users decide what size they want there window what shape what color and how they want the texture.

ll is a virtual fantasy world where you the user gets to have ALMOST(obviously there needs to be some sort of control) full control to make your experious as fun and as well worth it as you please..

thats the beauty of sl it allows you to for most engage in things they wouldnt imagin doing in rl and its not limited to 1 way or the other

This from a deceitful, lying zombie farmer who thinks giving away scripted fetish objects as "prizes" in their zombie contests at a club/zombie farm is "creative".

I'm not surprised that an engineer knows grammar, hon -- my dad was an aeronautical engineer, and was an excellent technical writer and systems analyst. He always said that the hardest job he had was training the people he worked with to write clearly.

Unfortunately, Argent spends so much time trying to avoid admitting why he's taking his positions in these threads that he can neither think or talk straight about anything. He has a vested interest in keeping Basic account-holders in SL, hanging out at his zombie farm/club/casino, and participating in his bogus "contests" for various items he supposedly gives away (evidently scripted junk given away in dressup contests/"events". He and his landlords/business partners apparently operate a casino/club/zombie camp for the DI the Lindens hand out, but he spends so much time avoiding saying anything specific (apart from whining) that he can't talk straight about anything.

He doesn't seem to get the point that renting land to create a zombie camp (which is basically a whorehouse, as I state in another thread) isn't quite the same thing as someone who buys land and puts up a home (whether a prefab or not) and makes a neighborhood. I'd rather live in a neighborhood stuffed with newbie prefabs than next door to one of the trashy zombie camp operations, whether they call themselves casinos or nightclubs. They're whorehouses and dwell farmers, nothing more. He just tap dances around admitting it.

Elsewhere, you state that there were no Basic memberships when you signed up... ergo, you appear to have been a paid subscriber at one time, but have downgraded to a freebie account, and since you can no longer own land, you rent it.

I think I've finally figured out what you're so diligently tap-dancing around... you don't want to admit that you and your landlords/business partners run one of the casino/clubs/zombie camps and YOU ARE A DWELL FARMER. The items you "script and create" to give away are junk that you give away in bogus dressup contests at your club, which is one of the RESOURCE HOGS I discuss in my thread about zoning. You don't directly pay LL anything, you pay rent to some big landowners, to whom the dwell created by your zombies and club crawlers accrues, and they split the DI with you.

The reason you're staying basic is because you're a cheap sleazeball who is nothing but a sponge and a resource hog.

True. I aint here to make a buck just cuz someone doesnt have photoshop or can build/script, etc.

Funny isnt it
now matter where we are it all boils down to ......MONEY...... ok is fun on SL but oh! so dear, I a new, and apart from getting the full membership, and paying for all thats needed ( wish so far has cost me an arm and a leg, and can no more afford things ), the basic items is really basic, I can understand whay your all saying, but can you all for once and think
what is SECOND LIFE?????????
Please dont spoil it
I am not wanting pity nor people being angry, yes the internet is now a big thing, yes there is enough on the internet to keep all happy, but do you all reolise 87% of those ppl can not rreally afford to join alot of things...SL has given them a chance to jolin and have fun, as well as meet lots of ppl.
Try and think of another way to put cash back

These these are just baka! The people who make a lot of Lindens want to be able to get more American dollars or whatever for their Lindens. The buyers dont want to have to pay American dollars to replace their stipends. This includes both basic and premium memberships.

My thoughts are that if they get their way and the stipends stop, the Linden will go into a destructive deflationary cycle. It will drive a lot of basic members offline and sales will drop like a stone.

The joke is that the big land barrons will find that their income will actually drop as residents stop buying and renting.

notice you dont see any big name land barrons up here screaming about the issue. most who have established a business that brings in a very nice flow of linden most likely have a grasp on how business and economy works and know enough to know that most "quick fixes" my sound good at first, but could very much hurt them in the long run of things.

anyone with any business knowledge knows enough that you dont go agreeing to something or proposing an idea without know a great deal of facts to how it will effect you. today , tomorrow, a month from now or a year from now.

we can all give out the facts of how things stand today, but no one knows the facts on how a decison on basic stipen will effect people in the long run. We dont know how many basic account user would stay or would leave or would upgrade to premuim..

Not only does knowing them facts important to the people who have business in sl. those facts are important to LL themself.

For the people asking LL to stop the weekly stipen on basic accounts you basicly asking them hey take a chance yes we understand you could be shooting yourself in the foot but we want more money for our L$

I don't get it...

I have never personally played World of Warcarft because i didnt really like video games before SL but I know there are millions of people playing that game as we speak. To the best of my knowledge, World of Warcarft doesn't have a "free" basic membership offer. But there is no doubt in my mind that a large majority of the basic members in SL right now either still have a World of Warcarft account (seeings how they have had millions upon millions of memberships), or have played World of Warcarft in the past, and had no problem paying $15.00 per month for that game.

Yet they are too poor to pay $9.95 to play a game that, judging by their heated responses on this forum, they equally love to play.

What is that about?

Neither did Linden Labs when I signed up. I paid $9.95 just before it became free, so I figure at the "Premium" exchange rate my "free Lindens" are paid for through the end of the year.

If you want to cut the stipend for "free accounts", you'll have to start by getting Linden Labs to distinguish between the three kinds of Basic accounts, the paid-for Basics, the free Basics, and the tiered-down-from-Premium basics.

No, I said there were no Free basic memberships when I signed up.

Err, if I was a dwell farmer, why would I be arguing against making Basic accounts more dependant on camping holes by killing the Basic stipend, and proposing that Basics should't be included in the calculations for the dwell bonus?

You're welcome to come by my land (it's the pretty blue crater at the south of LostFurest dAlliez) and see if you can find any camping chairs or gambling machines (or anything resembling a 'club') there. You can pick up my freebie items while you're about it, I'll even refund you the L$1 you paid for the box.

Hope you get this before someone locks the thread for personal attacks. I don't hold 'em against you... you're obviously upset about something and nobody's polite when they're not thinking straght.

Cheyenne-

WoW charges what they can get away with. They have a clear and obvious product/service for sale at a flat rate.

SecondLife is bizarre to most people, too open ended, no clear goals or purpose until you find something that appeals, and that's very individual.

but to answer your question... billing for SecondLife isn't flat rate. some pay nothing, others pay hundreds every month. Folks might have a few accounts in WoW and pay more than $15 a month... but none are paying $195 a month for one account that I know of.

$195 per month for 1 sim's worth of land = almost 20 one-time new membership fees per month.

In SecondLife, those that pay more are helping Linden Labs charge the rest less... or as it is at the moment, nothing.

Is that right? is it fair? Well... it seems to be working for the moment regardless.

I don't think so. Firstly, "tierd-down-from-Premium basics" doesn't matter. They've stopped paying their premium fees so deserve no special consideration.

As far as the $9.95 basics... I can accept the arguement that they paid for a contract that specified they would receive L50 per week and are owed that. However, how long has Free Basic been out now? (I'm not sure). Eventually the $9.95 basics will end.

Even for those who purchase alts at $9.95, LL can at any time they choose cancel the stippend policy for new accounts. So it could all be eventually ended once the initially contracted period ran out. But at worst, only 2 types of Basic account would have to be tracked-- which is what they do already.

No offense, but I don't really believe this. 87% of people on the interenet can't afford things? That's hard to swallow. Do these people never go to movies? Never buy a book? Don't have cable TV? Don't have cable internet or DSL? I think they're pretty able to afford what's important to them.

Thinking of "another way" to put cash back seems easier to say than do. When LL is flooding the market every week with L$ people don't pay for, that's quite a bit to try to overcome right there. Anything that LL would do to curb the L$ glut would first of all have to completely override that weekly stippend to non-paying players. So who are they going to take that from... the paying players?

I'm not saying everyone doesn't have to chip in. But the concept of leaving the freebie players alone and sticking it to those who are already paying to support the game seems unbalanced and unfair. Any way we look at it and as much as many may hate (or refuse) to admit it-- that Basic stippend is a core economic problem. It weekly floods an already glutted market and discourages people from buying L$ on the open market.

Now, if people have paid the $9.95 yearly Basic fee, they have pretty much paid for their weekly stippend. But for freebie Basic members? Handing them free L$ each week is the equivalent of handing them US$10 a year, gratis. Maybe LL has their reasons for doing so (maybe it's worth it to them for some reason). Without further data, it's difficult to know.

Ok people listen very very very carefully. Linden Value is not detoriorating because people have alot of L its because people are trying to get a quick buck and sell it lower. It has nothing to do with stipends or anything. Basically ur saying give away the newbies lindens which for some they dont even get if they dont log in that week. It is also a hurt to store owners as the newbies all have to find jobs then and msot places wont hire you without a certain look. Now if people would stop trying to sell fast linden value would go up. I've heard mentions of people saying do away with the stipend. You do realize taking away people's money will have an overall negative effect on the economy in the long run. Most of these idea's to get linden value up are short term quick fixes that ultimately wont help in the long run. Sure you get a boom of L going up but then it drops again and you have a bunch of pissed off people again trying to find another way to raise it and by the time we are done no one has any money and the economy falls thru completely. Please think about more then yourself and start selling ur lindens for more mabye then the linden value will stabalize.

Condescending attitude aside, where do you get this?

I agree, that people are selling L$ low to make a quick buck (which has been the subject of many other threads asking LL to take steps to stabilize the L$ market) but how do you figure there is no glut of L$? On what statistics is that assumption based?

Where demand is greater than supply, prices generally go up, not down. All market indications are that there is a severe glut of L$ right now, and current sinks are not sufficient to correct that situation.

And lowering or eliminating the stipends is a sure way for LL to shoot themselves in the foot

It's not about the stipend. When dealing with problems of balancing over time (Hasn't ANYONE heard of L'Hopital's Rule? Sums? Big-O notation?) you have to look at the largest problems first -- the basic stipend is ridiculously low-priority compared to the amount of $$ that users are making through camp-chairs and dwell-exploits. A basic user can easily amass more than L$2000/week through camp-chairs, and more by a scalar amount if they buy multiple basic-accounts for $10/account. L$2K/week is 40 times as much as the basic stipend.
You want to stabilize the L$, then control camp-chairs. How to control camp-chairs? Read that thread on avatar limits in sims and land.

This is off topic..

but.. I LOVE your name Cthulhu

lol thx ... Yeah, I've been bummed out for some time over the misspelling ...

You wouldn't want the full name spelled right Way too much spam with people doing finds and such. Not to mention Cthulhu has one HELL of a copyright legal team.

Well my basis is that fact that jsut because people have more L thru Stipends doesnt mean thats what is decreasing the value of L as they dictate what they sell it for. Amount of linden available doesnt really dictate its value here its what people sell it for that is leading toe deterioration of the value. If you look at how things actually work in SL instead of thinking up quick fixes the statistical fact in any economic system would be if you take away people's money the economy ultimately fails. If it doesnt it becomes trade/barter related which just leads to ultimate stupidity overall. The only thing doing away with any type of income will do is make a quick fix and ruin any chance of linden value going up over time. It'd basically become very worthless to even enjoy second life at all with an economic downfall. Sure the newbies are making alot off camp chairs but they are using it to buy stuff in world alot of the time like the rest of us do. Its the fact that the ones that do sell the L opt to sell it at a low rate to make a quick buck. if it had to do with the amount of L available then linden value would be pretty worthless. Check out how the exchange actually works before saying it needs to change it fluxuates like its supposed to you guys dictate the price stop trying to ruin how other people play to benefit yourselves. Because I for one am not here for money!!

more ppl = more dwell = L$
more ppl = free advertizing for LL = US$

I don't see LL doing away with the free basic accounts.

Cat