The real danger of the L$50 Stipend

Philip once said it is impossible to dupe currency because there is nothing that generates new currency (like killing monsters).

That was well and good until he went and created free accounts. I think if you track when significant and accelerated L$ inflation occured it was always a little bit after they started giving away free accounts.

When you have 120K people signed up but only 5000 people logging on, you have to wonder what those other umpteen people are doing.


That's right folks.. CHUMPS like you and me are trying to make L$ the hard way (working for it) while it's quite likely that people are signing up in droves for free accounts and farming the L$ 50 stipend.

It's not that hard. Getting free credit card accounts and massive IP addresses off of seperate networks is not some crazy challenge you might think it is. And so what if they find an account and close it down? That's just overhead.

Philip - KILL THE L$ 50 stipend! It's the major leak in your otherwise watertight ship.

Gee, Lordfly, let me guess .. you don't know how to write a program to automate your computer.

Any other punters.. please do your research before joining in.

Correct me if I'm wrong but the $50L stipend only kick in on weeks where free users, like myself log in. Now myself logging in almost every day anyhow am not part of the problem and I understand your concern. But as a newbie, let me tell you that the $50L stipend does make a huge difference to the quality of life (after all, what's the point in creating if you don't have any money to upload). Would you rather the free users who are actually active be forced to sit in camping chairs? Perhaps so since that gives dwell where the stipend does not.

While I understand the inflation that this causes, the solution is not to get rid of the stipend all together. Perhaps raise the amount of time one has to spend on to receive it. Or, set a trigger where free users have to spend a certain amount in that stipend in a given week to receive another one.

I would think that the $500L stipend for inactive paid users (which kicks in regardless) is really more of an inflationary effect on the economy than $50L stipends for inactive free users. Why not instead ask to reduce that rather than picking on the free users?

Again, I'm not talking for myself since I've actually made a lot more money in the few weeks I've been on winning contests and such (though I couldn't have done that without $10L per time to upload textures) but it's something to think about before you drive out legitimate free users by getting rid of the stipend entirely.

Automating computers to log on and perform various tasks is the first thing all farmers learn how to do!

Yes, automation, WE FRIGGIN GET IT ALREADY.

Still doesn't answer the "you can only ever get one free account, and if you're using multiple credit cards, somebody's going to notice all the cards with the same address" rebuttal.

GOD TY, at last someone saw what i see. And to go back before L$50 give away.
LL PLEASE MAKE 4 or 5 SIM AUCTION VIA L$. This will save ECONOMY.
for example new island sims at south start auctions from L$250000. PLEASE, PLEASE.
only 4 or 5 NEW MATURE GREEN SIMS for L$250000.

Yeah, like, getting stolen credit card #s is a particularly daunting task.

Would somebody actually risk prosecution for theft, mail fraud, etc. for what amounts to, uhm, twenty or so cents a week?

Just my $50L...

If you're based out of china I can't imagine it would be a big deal.

This is also where all the farmers are based out of now. They're going to be making a lot of money and they'll want to expand. They see SecondLife - and they think, oh this will be pretty easy pickins.

Are you just trolling, or being obtuse?

Did you read too many gold-farming Wired articles or something?

You can make more money goldfarming in WoW than you can in SL, hands-down. A big-fish Chinese company isn't going to bother diddling with hundreds of stolen credit cards to get like, 50 bucks a week. The risk is greater than the reward.

Hell, Ultima Online has a bigger payout for goldfarming than SL ever will.

Discussing on reasons of creating accounts for L$50/week is not making sense. The important thing is results of it.

I agree..lol... There are definitely less "unauthorizedalts" than ANYOTHER GAME that i have played. And i Have been playing MMOG's since b4 cable internet was around... and b/c of the steps that you have to take to get an extra acct with SL (totally new info) with a card that will run a validation transaction.. so stolen cards they dont work if they have been reported.


and the 50L per week that they would get is nothing compared to the 100's of other ways to make Linden in SL.. they set the stipend to 50 for a reason ... what does 50L get ya nowadays thats NOT a "freebie" 1L item.. @ 50L a week for 52weeks that is 2600L..and even at the generous rate of 250/1USD that still what 10 bucks and some some change?.. seems to me that you would be runing low on valid CC's and address's. for a whole 10 a year per account you open.. and with the market now.. prolly closer to 8 or 9..lol

/3/8f/84479/1.html#post861940

Go get 'em!

actually only yer first account is free, the others cost 10 bucks a pop i believe

The point here is, it is more probable that, every day, someone breaks into your house and replaces all of your appliances with the exact same model, than the gold-farmers are abusing the stipends. There simply isn't enough money there when they could farm WoW Gold for a MUCH greater return.

I heard WoW wasn't accepting any more users.

For what it's worth, I think Anna is correct.



Get CC # and address, log in, refer next account, log in next week, next week, next week &c.

Folks, there are massive, unlawful lists of credit card numbers and addresses for *sale* on the internet, tens of thousands at a time.





1) The idea (fact?) that 90% of 120,000 accounts is what drives this home for me.

The 'churn' rate for any online world is way too high for 90% of all players ever to have logged in last month.

Older players - who has seen 90% of their old buddies logging in?


2) We grew our *all time* population from about 100k to 120k in January alone. But demand for the $L is falling? Hah!


How are these things possible if there *isn't* massive farming going on?

Interesting Post Anna,,, though you sure do know alot about farming and seem to be a lil to passionate how people can hose money out of SL... maybe if you put this much time and effort into making money... you wouldnt be in the forums trolling and causing useless un nerve.

Just my 300KL cents

I fear you may have a point, Anna. Eliminating the stipend isn't the answer, though. Getting rid of the free accounts (also perhaps getting rid of free basic accounts) could be. What if everyone had to pay $10 to start and $5 monthly? Then, if you wanted more money or land ownership, you might pay $10 monthly? I think it would be little enough money to keep users coming in-world. The money generated by the additional $5 charge could be used to do things that keep players coming to SL because it's fun (not logging on to sit in camping chairs).

Eliminating the stipend harms the honest players as much as the dishonest players. Actually charging credit cards, even if it is only a few bucks, not ONLY dis-incents farming, but prevents perma-banned griefers from returning in dummy accounts.

"What if everyone had to pay $10 to start and $5 monthly?"

Then I would not be playing now. I'm a free acct that converted premium. And has steadily increased my investment in the game over the past several months.

My ideas

1. Kill the free stipend. $50L/wk isn't hard to get in game, people yell about sending players to camping chairs, at a rate of $2L/10 they could make their lost stipend back in just over 4 hrs. Anyone here sleep more than 4 hrs in a wk? $50L a wk isn't significant help to a newbie IMO esp since alot of basic stuff they need they will want before they get their first stipend payment. The free stipend is just inflatation that doesn't really benefit any real player.

2. Raise the starting cash for newbies to 1000L. For a frugal newbie that gets proper help from a greeter that could get them looking presentable without needing more L than they started with just to look human. That will help real new players FAR more than getting it spread out over the course of 15 wks. And its a 1 time expense instead of a recurrent one.

3. Kill the referal bonus for free accounts. Allow entering a referrer but only pay on upgrade to premium. Unless a free account upgrades to premium LL makes nothing so why are we paying people before then?

IMO killing stipends and referal bonus's for free accounts would more than pay for the 1000L starting cash, which would benefit everyone far more. I wonder how many newbies burn through their $250 still look wierd and give up before they figure out how to get enough money to look human.

I say remove all stipends

I'm in a very combative mood.. maybe I'll lay off posting

Any proof of this going on, or are you just talking out your *ss?

I find this extremely hard to believe. From where did you get this statistic?

It's either:

1) SL is suddenly a smash hit growing like wildfire (20%) this month, 90% of all members who ever played have returned and the whole lot of them became monks with regard to spending $L, so the $L actually fell during the explosive growth, or

2) account farming.


Which do you honestly think is the more likely scenario?