Midge: A Chance for Projects

Julian, it doesn't matter whether you call it charter or life-time or jello. The point is, the deal is this: you get this paid-up-tier account. It's golden. If you have trouble seeing its value, well, put it up on ebay and you'll see its value.

I have to say I am clutching my sides here with laughter.

Paid $250 once and it's "gone for ever"? This is some kind of monkey math. Er, you paid $250, and it's a gift that *keeps on giving* because you DO NOT HAVE TO PAY TIER and you are STILL HERE. Each month, that investment pays you off in the form of a tier-free life with 4096 big meters in SL. That's enough for quite a large store, even a club, not to mention a mansion. It's a really big size. And you don't pay on it. Now...are you have trouble getting that still? Do you want to give it to me? Why? If you don't think it isn't worth much?

Then your dilatory explanation about how this isn't about "old players"....God, the blinkers are on tight! Julian...you ARE an older player NOW. If you were young in those glory days, ok, great, if they offered the deal to everyone regardless of age BACK THEN, grand, but now YOU ARE ALL OLD. You are old and feted players with 4096 square meters of prime tier payment-free! Geez, that ought to be clear!

This idea that it was an investment not a reward for seniority completely overlooks the situation now -- it was an investment that rewards you WITH seniority if you stick it out because now you have tier-free land, duh! You are rewarded, and senior! Congratulations! You've arrived.

Yes, I do view a reduced price, especially a price that drops out after a year, as something for free. Because it is something for free! It's a reward! That comes with seniority! After an investment!

I'm not certain of the motivation that makes you want to deny that you are in a privileged class. You paid up front when the company was young and you were young, and now the company is old and you are old, and you both have sweetheart deals -- they have you around as uber-content makers par excellence (as a class) and you have a tier-free life. Everyone else coming in is second class

Is this directed at me? I'm not sure if it is.

Er, I'm not trying to lead anyone into a project. I'm pointing out an opportunity, and offering to put in some tier. It wasn't my intent to once again flush out the idiocy of privileged older players who are smug and self-referential and don't see their own privileges as what they are, or flush out their hatred of the wealthy and the large land owner, but there you go, they do it all on their own.

Um...I'm not being snarky about despicable money-hungry people, if you meant me. Here I am accused of being an owner of a whole sim, as if that is some class to be strung up by the lamp-posts as taking away from widows and orphans. I actually don't see a thing wrong with anybody being money-hungry, it might drive them to be more productive and do more in the game than those who got handouts, and continue to expect them.

The blessed proletariat could very well up and buy a huge parcel of land, Enabran. And that's precisely why I'm being contrarian, sharp, and verbose: to make this point.

Anyone, anyone at all, you, me, or the guy next door, could take their tier, pool it, take their $100 or their $50, pool it, and have a sim. Anyone at all. You don't have to be rich. You don't even have to like capitalism. You can just cooperate as a group and you can do it. Can you hear it, Enabran? It is the sound of liberty. Anyone, anyone at all can go get that sim, they just have to cooperate and plan just a little bit.

But they don't.

What I seem to be proving once again, at least

1) Older players want to go on sleeping and only be woken up if it is a group on par with Bedazzled -- all lessers need not apply. This is uber-content snobbism at its worst, making it seem like owning a whole sim can only be allowed those who put on a Neverland, but never owned by those who just want to make sure it doesn't lag with a laggy club or mall.

2) People hate buyers of sims because they have money, and that must mean they have RL wealth status, and therefore are to be hated and envied, especially if those players don't have $5 to pay tier

3) Those with privileges not only don't recognize them as such, they don't think to put them to collective good use, they just sit on it.

I think that this was more a "Give Prokofy a new reason to whine" thread than a bona fide invitation to try and do great things.

And it's been said more times than I can count, but if you want to make a point, being concise is much more effective for that purpose. I skim all your posts.

edit: Oh, and Bedazzle rocks. Don't resent excellence. It broadcasts personal dissatisfaction.

In my opinion it does matter because charter membership and lifetime accounts are different things. One is an indicator of when you signed up and the other is a type of account. Conflating them is like saying that joining SL in January 2005 is the same as a premium account.

It seems as though you give player age a negative connotation here. If they begin offering lifetime accounts again, any players who buy them would be in the same situation I was when I was young and the same condition I am now when I am "old". Age seems irelevant. If privilege is somehow the issue, it should be considered that players now have the option of a one time membership fee of $9.95, an option that was not available to older players until December 2003. When I joined and for some time before, the cheapest account was $15.95 each month with no guarantee of land. Conditions come and go.

Only inasmuch as not cancelling your account rewards you with seniority. If I have seniority now, simply the quality of being senior, it is the passage of time that is to blame. I disagree that Linden Lab was somehow rewarding me for hypothetical potential seniority by offering lifetime accounts to all members.

It only "drops out after a year" if you divide the price by 12 months. It is an artificial and subjective way of viewing it since you could say the price drops out immediately after paying the lifetime membership fee, or that it drops out now after fifteen months of paying $15 per month, or the price drops out after I finally quit playing SL in 2007 after paying $4 per month, or it never drops out since it was a one time instant payment. It is simply a question of point of view and not relevant.

I suppose it's because I see no evidence in my second life that I am in a privileged class. No honor comes to me. My lifetime status is not visible to anyone. No newbies hold me in awe. Before reading your posts I never considered the possibility that I was a member of a privileged class and after reading them I'm afraid I don't agree with your assessment.

As for sweetheart deals, I have one, yes. One which was available to anyone who wanted it a little over a year ago, for less than the price of some auctions of much less than 4,096 square meters. It certainly wasn't offered to a privileged few, except perhaps if you consider membership in SL in 2003 to be a privilege in itself. As for Linden Lab, they did not get a sweetheart deal. I pay them nothing now and since I sell no content and am rarely in SL they can't even use me as vicarious advertising.

And as for everyone else coming to second life, how they view themselves is their business. If you choose to see yourself as second class no one can stop you but I have not seen any indication that this is a widespread opinion, nor that there is a feeling of elitism among older players. Whatever your true feelings and motivations, you give the impression you are motivated by jealousy. Take that for what it's worth.

'm sorry that I'm not interested in seeing something horribly banal and pointless being done with the sim. I'm sorry I don't support the talentless rape of a parcel of land.

I guess suggesting that I'd like to see a Chinatown-quality build is ridiculous when we could have a sim with crappy housing or shitty clubs. Because no one has ever done that before...

oh yes you are right. how horrible of me not to want higher quality builds in sl. how insensitive to people who are bad builders. their cubes full of lame scripts are a valid expression of their tortured lives. also i now read nothing but shitty live journal poetry because it would be snobbish of me to like ee cummings hehe.

Prokofy thinks it's totally wrong to hate people because they have some irl priveleges or money but it's his duty to hate people who have sl priveleges or money. at least you got your priorities in the right place there.

you're sick dude. get some help before you end up writing 2000 page websites with giant red text on flashing blue backgrounds all about your conspiracy theories.

/me does a double take and waves at julian

i was wondering around your big empty building the other day wondering if you were off cutting an album or just off or just...

In Prokofy's perfect world, those with superior builds would be limited to X visitors per month, to make the opportunity more "equal" for others.

In Prokofy's perfect world, everyone would have the same size of land, no exceptions.

In Prokofy's perfect world, all like objects and services would be priced the same, enforceable by suspension.

In Prokofy's perfect world, toothbrushes with colors not sanctioned by the state are sold on the black market for obscene profit.

Thankfully, Prokofy's perfect world ended with the fall of the Berlin wall, with the freeing of a dozen Soviet satellites. That world will never be again. Forgive his disappointment.

I am very very jealous of the lifetime membership.

However, there is a lot of so-called "elite" people who post on these forums as if they were so called old timers and are somehow special.

Geez, you're out of control here. Read my post. I suggested that people get together and make a better sim than the usual crappy housing and shitty clubs. So for you to be laying that at my door now, just because I don't want to genuflect to Bedazzle and never do a thing unless it is Bedazzle is just plain ridiculous.

Why can't there be decent sims with some modicum of zoning and planning, without having to make them frigging feted incubated projects???



I don't know where you get all of this except from your feverish mind. I hardly call zoning a sim with a modicum of planning to make it residential or commercial and plan it a bit as being "perfect". But which is it? Either I'm criticizing for demanding utopian perfecting, or I'm criticized for being less-than-Bedazzle. Damned if you do, and damned if you don't. The point is to get players to cooperate and make the sim less of a slag heap than most sims -- it wouldn't really be that hard.

Why should everyone have the same size of land? Huh?

The pricing of objects the same? Not on your life. You've got me confused with socialists you find ranting here on the forums. I'm not a socialist.

I'm only too happy that the Soviet satellites are free, you simply know nothing. You've come to the wrong address.

Oh stop. You can have a sim that looks better and isn't a slag heap with a little cooperation and planning. It doesn't take the tremendous resources and talent of Bedazzled or Neverland (especially Bedazzled with inventions like Field of Dreams, which has really beautified SL). It can be something less than that that can scale better, and can be more accessible to the average player. It just takes a dozen or so people to put in some tier and some effort to prevent a sim from going to the dogs. The idea that it has to be at the level of Bedazzle or it's shit is just plain wrong. Simply by laying out the first land and the public space better than the Lindens do, players could save themselves a heap of ugliness.




I don't hate people, I just point out that they have SL privileges that are not available to all that they got by dint of their older-player status, incubated status, or other subsidized status. That's all. That's not hate, that's merely pointing it out. Critical appraisal of a stagnant situation and obstacles in the game is hardly "hate". What's astounding is that these privileged types go on denying it's a privilege. And I could hardly hate anybody who has SL money, because in most cases, they got it by cleverness, talent, and hard work. And that's what we need more of in SL.



Oh, grow up. Exposing the do-nothing whining privileged elite as failing to put their money/subsidies where their mouths are is hardly the stuff of conspiracy theory or Internet wackiness. It's just plain statement of the fact that the SL Emperor Has No Clothes. And you all think you're seamstresses. The point of this thread is to indicate there's a good sim that people could make use of if they got their act together. But instead of hearing creative proposals about how that could be done in a short time, I"m hearing the usual crankiness and ad hominem attacks and wild exaggerated notions of what I'm saying.

If you spent less time bitching, and more time building, then you wouldn't lack these talents and you'd have no need to lash out at anyone. But no, you waste everyone's time by attempting to blame everything on class differences.

Get a clue, Prokofy. People work their asses off to produce high quality content. They don't just wake up one morning, atfer having been here for a year, and start shitting out glorious content.

Er, why do I need to have talents in building? It takes all kinds to make up the world. I work had at my chosen occupations, and I don't think only building or designing is something of merit in the game -- you obviously do. That's where we differ greatly. I couldn't possibly be wasting anybody's time who didn't bother to read the forums, hmmm??? I don't hate, and I don't blame, I *write about* and *describe* class differences. They exist. And you can't wish them away.

Get a clue, Ardith. If you people could work together and form groups more often and pool all your tier, you all would have a lot more to show for your two years in this game. Instead, you prefer to sleep and have someone wake you up only if they can dazzle you with Bedazzle. And you ask me why the world is filled with stupid laggy clubs and malls???

You mean you all had two years, and 4096 meters of tier-free land, and you couldn't get together and form groups and keep some sims free of all this shit? Huh?

I don't expect to wake up and shit out glorious content after one day or one year. I do intend to step around all those who think their notion of "glorious content" is the be-all and end-all of this game. It's a lot bigger than that. And I don't intend to wait for content kings and queens to wake up and make Bedazzle just to have a sim without lag. I'll be waiting for hell to freeze over if I do that.

Ahhha. Your rhetorical talent is endless! You, Prokofy, are the reason why this world is filled with crappy builds. Your philosophy, of cranking out shit because it takes too much effort to build well, is what leads to the pollution of this world. Why should I fund some half-baked venture intended to promote mediocrity when there are REAL projects accomplishing GOOD work?

Geez, I don't know where you got the idea that I advocte cranking out shit because it takes to much effort to build well.

I just proposed that a group of people get together, pool tier, pool dollars, and either work with a wholesale purchaser or nominate one from among themselves, and plan a sim for a zone, so that better building could be accomplished in it. I don't see this as "half-baked" but as merely laying down a better substrate so that more people could be free from laggy clubs and stupid boxy malls. It's about creating the conditions necessary for a better build to happen. I don't see how on earth that could be confused with laying down mediocrity, which is what happens when you all do nothing.

And you are suggesting that if people don't build Bedazzle, they are crap. But they aren't crap. They are better than laggy clubs and malls and morasses of 512-diseased land. Promoting mediocrity is to do nothing. That's what you're doing -- nothing. You're waiting for someone to come along and do something for you -- and they don't come, so sleep on. I'm willing to put in tier and work to get something accomplished, even if it is less than perfect and less than Bedazzle, just to raise the bar higher than the sprawling malls and ugly 512-ed crowded parcels.

You can't have an entire world of Bedazzle, and you seem to take a smug pride in the fact that Bedazzles are limited, and you want to shit on everything that isn't Bedazzle and call everyone who wants to have something a bit shy of that as mediocre. That's just plain ridiculous. You are sitting in your ivory prim tower, out of touch with the rest of the world.

Your comments are especially vulgar because you have no idea what I've been doing, really, which is to provide good architects a chance to showcase their works in a residential sim and make sure they sell their houses at a good price to compensate their hard work. It's only a tiny contribution and I don't make more of it than it is, but it's certain many steps up from crapping up a sim and filling it with malls and 512 boxes.

What stops people from having better sims? Attitude, attitude, attidude. There should be a hundred Lusks, but there's only one.

I have a suggestion for you. Why don't you stop flaming and ranting on the forums and visit me in world and tell me what you think of what I'm doing with communities to my face? Then you can show me what you've accomplished in world and I'll tell you what I think of your work to your face. Then we can put each other on ignore and mute if we don't like it, OK?

Sorry, I have to say...go DO meet or at least IM Prokofy in world. He has some great ideas! He is actually GOOD for SL. He's not mean. He is, at the very least, misunderstood. But really, he's smart. Take the time to tallk to him in world. See, then, if he is still "cranky" in your mind.

Why must every thread end up in personal attacks?
Jesus.
Anyway, Prokofy, here's the deal:
I am not in SL to make money. It doesnt matter to me how much the 4096 could net me on GOM or somesuch crap. I have a life, generally a very busy one with far more interesting things to do than sit at a computer and put up with IMs from the random noob du jour.
I ran a casino once (the second casino to ever appear in SL, actually, and the first was linden-made) and I still have a bunch of neg rates from people who lost money in it. It's a casino, not a charity, you win some, lose some. Jeez.
Besides, I dont even have a credit card. GOM is not an option. Wouldnt be if I had one, anyway. The L$ is still play money as far as I'm concerned, and in fact I gave away most of mine.
What matters to me is that before 1.2 I could be a global leader and start gigantic projects without putting any money into SL, and now I can't do it. I can work with other people, sure, but its not the same thing. There was a time where you couldn't go anywhere in SL without seeing a bit of Eggy.
The tier fees dont even come into the equation. When we got our lifetime memberships, we got them off of a wacky startup with an empty world - an element of risk - and a world that functioned under entirely different mechanics.
It wasnt just the FETED ones who could own as much land as they wanted. ANYONE could own as much land as they wanted. Land was essentially free to buy since you got your money back when you released it, ratings could yield up to 10k a week which paid for one heck of a lot of land, and if you ran a business somewhere you could use the lindens earned to pay for even more land. Earned, not bought or sold.
I guess you had to be there to get it. Projects were about creativity and innovation, instead of money. These days you either have to put a lot of money into SL, or constrain your creativity to whatever will yield enough profit to pay for itself. Which is why we now live in a world covered with malls, clubs and casinos.
I'm not really complaining as much as I want you to try and understand that we feted inner discounted leeches were all very much PISSED OFF around 1.2 - just search the forums, plenty of juicy drahma.

Nor do you have any clue what I do. Nor what anyone does. Nor how anyone feels. But if they ever dare to oppose your own viewpoint, they're either part of the over-priveleged content elite, or they're just sitting around doing nothing, or they're too old, etc. You are the one who regularly and vociferously casts stones of ignorance. From the start, you resorted to ad hominem attacks against my character, typifiying me as a "content baron" and dismissing my concerns. I, however, am very well aware of what you do. I recall very well your previous tirades about "ugly builds" which devalue your Ravenglass project. I've personally gone and observed the builds out there, and I was underwhelmed. However, I generally have the good grace not to publicly say as much. Meanwhile, all you do is complain and criticize.

If you can find people who like the idea of joining such a community, then godspeed. I do not have any desire to donate my time or money to such an effort: there exist a hundred sims which are exactly like the one you want to produce. There are only a few sims which attain truly amazing quality. Given the choice between funding a project which amounts to imposed banality, or funding a project which is unique and creative, I would much rather fund the creative project, as it's the project which actually gives back to the community.

Ardith, you yourself said "wake me up when there's a Bedazzle." So it wasn't as if I had to wait for you to oppose my viewpoint, or consider that anyone who opposes my viewpoint as somehow evil. You laid it all out yourself. I don't have to make up this stuff -- you said it all yourself.

I didn't call you a content baron, I spoke in general about the attitude of content barons which is a rather precious one -- that nothing is too good for them. And frankly, you're exemplifying it by your constant insistence that only Bedazzle-level of activity is worth it. I think that paralyzes more widespread initiative. You're the one who was telling us all that unless it was like Bedazzle, it wasn't worth bestirring ourselves to try to keep a sim from going to ruin.

Your concerns were all misplaced, and were countered by pointing out that your accusations about mediocrity were coming to the wrong address. I don't believe that what I do is mediocre nor do I believe that even if it *is* mediocre that it doesn't represent a great improvement over the usual SL chaos.

I never once published *any* tired about any "ugly builds" devaluing Ravenglass. What are you smoking? You're confusing my advocacy on behalf of a tenant who innocently asked whether a small patch of water was for sale, because it had odd builds in it, as a "tirade about an ugly build devaluing Ravenglass"? Get a grip. This constant propensity for exaggeration and mispresentation on these forums is EXACTLY what makes me bound and determined to keep fighting back. It cannot stand. I never said any such thing, and for you to portray that flame STARTED by Pahoa Jade as such is an outrage. I have had a dozen experiences where people ask me if they can buy my land or water adjacent to their parcel, and I never tell them to they are not entitled to do this, and scream and rant in forums about them as was done in this case.

Nobody devalued this sim. People bought on it, built their own houses, or they bought houses by some of SL's top architects. It has value because people put into, and kept that value. You can be "underwhelmed" all you like, but guess what, we're not impressed. You can't have a game made up only of the superior and smug elites. There has to be something in between ugly malls and laggy clubs and Bedazzle. That's an absolute requirement for this game to grow.

As for your claim that only Bedazzle-type grand projects "give back to the community," I can only tell you to stuff it. Fortunately for us all, it is not just you who determines what "giving back to the community means" because you alone are not "the community" and your value judgements do not constitute "the community". This community depends not on the feted elite to provide it the landmark builds, it has to have something else in it besides only what the snobbish consider "good architecture." Why *the hell* does a sim have to achieve "truly amazing" quality to be rescued from malls and clubs??? We're talking about where the vast majority of people need to live, damn it! Are they all supposed to be consigned to laggy sims with ugly builds just because they can't all be Bedazzle???? That's insane.

The fact is, there aren't any 100 sims that are free of ugliness -- there aren't even a dozen. That's the whole issue. Clubs, 512s, and malls ruin nearly every single sim except a tiny handful that Linden support or extraordinary efforts put forth usually just by one individual and his or her alts holding all the tier. I just spent *two hours* this evening struggling with owners, neighbours, and Lindens to tame a monstrous laggy club in a neighboring sim, filling abuse reports on shooters and script-bouncers. I don't see why that has to be my fate, or anyone else's fate, without putting up some kind of fight!

There has simply got to be a better way. Everybody understands that you personally want to put your tier and money only to the creme de la creme. That's your right. But can you not see the value of trying to organize people to do something that is merely about zoning a sim, making it possible for people to get a little bit free from the horrors of lag, mall, and clubs? Why can't you concede them that freedom? Why does it have to be only about you and your snobbish friends having only a tiny handful of excellent sims, while the rest of us eat shit and die?

Let me once again point out that the biggest obstacle to this game's growth is attitude, attitude, attitude.

I enjoyed reading your take on SL history. But the more I read about it, the more that I see that my intuition about the feted elite is right on target. I'd like to be disabused of my notions because then I'd have more hope for this game. Yet I'm not.

You hit the nail on the head when you summed it up this way "What matters to me is that before 1.2 I could be a global leader and start gigantic projects without putting any money into SL and now I can't." Bingo. This is exactly the screaming I hear from many an older player and it just frankly annoys me.

You write of a glorious era when the whole world had a little bit of Eggy everywhere. And that's just it -- you and others who roamed free in this world in its early stages got to be content kings -- kings of content showing up around the world everywhere -- just by virtue of having shown up. That's all understandable. But it also constitutes an obstacle to growth. When you write touchingingly that "it wasn't just us FETED ones but ANYONE" who get all this largesse, you're not seeing that today, in this day and era, this "anyone" of which you speak is now the feted!

Everyone who benefited from these heady days of 10,000 rating stipends, oodles of land, and tier-free lifetime accounts is now position today to be the feted elite. Yes, this phrase has become the laughingstock of the forums, but I can think of no better way to describe this very, very obvious phenomenon: that the two year beta test love fest which is now drawing to a close created a population of feted, cossetted, billeted, and fussed-over players who essentially got paid to play the game, got loads of space in which to be creative, and got rewarded by "going everywhere and seeing a little bit of Eggy" as you so touchingly put it. And now...they are sour, jaded, resentful, bitter, and spiteful that they have lost all this socialism, and they take it out on these forums by being as vituperative as possible to anyone new who comes along.

They are now howling that change has come to their utopia, and they really resent anyone who has a different perspective than they do, or plays the game differently than they do.

Can such glorious socialism last? Not on your life. SOMEBODY has to pay for it. And the Lindens obviously didn't want to keep it going forever. So they flattened out the game and let in a lot of people who aren't content barons, who don't have the talents and skills of some of those earlier players, and who gravitate to other kinds of activities. And you -- and I don't mean you personally but the oldbies who lived in the glorious era -- you are HOWLING because the party is over. I find many, many of these content kings who are simply no longer on line, they probably just come in once a week to collect stipend and collect the pay from their many vendors all over this twittering world of empty malls rezzing up garish advertisements and whispering buy, buy, buy.

I wonder if you have ever once listened to all the spam on a vendors' list and seen the slavish way in which the content barons crawl all over land barons offering malls at new telehub sims. It's quite a sight to behold, and it constitutes the engine of SL's growth and the heart of its nature, and it is the ultimate paradox: that content kings who rule the world and believe that their aesthetics are higher than the masses are the ones most dependent on the volume mall machine established by the land barons and therefore perpetuate the ugly mall phenomenon.

We wouldn't have to constrain creativity or live in a world consigned to malls if people would just cooperate, pool their tier, multiply their purchasing power and try to take over quarters of sims, halves of sims, whole sims.

I just go on being amazed that people haven't done this, and that it isn't the norm. Of course, I'm skewed by TSO, where getting 18 people together to cooperate on a lot and start and develop businesses was the norm, not the exception. Of course that was all silly play money and silly chalkboards and gnomes, and SL has real-life money and real-life merchandisable objects based on playor creativity. But if anything, that should suggest that people would be even more determined to multiple their efforts by pooling tier and purchasing power.

I just don't get it.

Hug, anyone?

prok, are you trolling or do you really buy into your foolish rants?

wondering the same about you.

haha billy you got me good! wow! zing!

bing bang boom.