Banking and In-world currency exchange

I'm not good at putting my thoughts into words as eloquently as some, so let me just say this:

This is sounding very "There"-ian.

There would have to be controls on how much could be released into the public at any given time especially given the recent controls on the L$ to control the value, but giving individuals the ability to bring more money ingame without regulation totally negates the purpose, unless it is in favor of eliminating more of the "free" money.

Despite everyone saying it's a good idea, I personally am against it. I don't like the idea of an economy that is more governed by how much RL money someone can afford to pump into a game than what someone does.

Everyone is thinking "just a little here and there" but all it takes is one person to abuse the system and everything goes to heck in a handbasket. Granted, you can do this now through 3rd party, but once it becomes integrated into the game itself, everyone who can, probably will, which will cause there to be more money inworld, prices to eventually rise, and raise the gap ingame between the haves and havenots.

Granted, this would more than likely be a very profitable option for LL to do, as I seem to remember There making quite a lot of money off sale of money ingame, but I think it would cheapen the quality of ingame life for players. I keep thinking back to 1.2, and how everyone was crying that SL was turning into There economics.........

......again, just me. But I'm disturbingly reminded of the link in the There inventory that said "Buy Therebucks".......

I actually like the idea that how much money you have in second life is in some sense related to how much you put in. I'm not sure newbies becoming linden millionaires on credit is necessarily the way forward. I know people can buy on GOM now - but I still think that people should have items that they can't afford to buy on their first day.

One of the benefits of GOM (as a non-American) is that they take paypal - and paypal takes UK currency. The exchange rate for pay pal is better than that from a bank as there is no minimum charge. Paypal is significantly cheaper for small amounts.

What I would really like is for the Lindens to work on internationalisation issues first. Once there is a level playing field so that we can pay LL in other major currencies, and that they accept international debit cards then maybe they can consider making it easier to buy currency.

I'll try and give an example. My bank charges 2% + for foreign currency conversion, with a minimum fee of £2. At the current exchange rate £2 is approx $4 US. So if I were to buy a block of $1000L via this method I would end up paying $8 rather than the $4 a US player would pay ($4 cost +$4 fee). Paying via paypal I still pay more - but not 100% more. If one can buy currency in game (on credit) then the old way of buying via paypal will be depreciated.

Even allowing us to pay via WorldPay or something (even if we pay a premium to cover their fees) would be more accessible than the status quo.

I'm sorry if this is turning into a whinge. I'm really looking forward to 1.6 recognising international keyboard layouts - this is a great step forward. I'd just wish that some effort was spent on making the economy accessible too.

I'm going to have to humbly disagree on this one, unless you guys have it very well thought-out. While it could potentially be a good idea, there are several variables to be mindful of.

1) Accountability: This form of exchange would hold Lindens accountable for much of the actual trade existing in Second Life. A part of the reason I don't think this is a good idea, in the present time frame, is this would bring the burden onto Linden Labs, not third party traders, for any legal action relating to (as examples) -

- Breach of Contract/Fraud
- Intellectual Property Infringement and Protection
- Copyright Clarification
- Abuse/Antitrust (maybe)

This can be good or bad, depending on the system you wish to undertake - but this can become highly cumbersome if no formal plan is thought out.

2) Market "Rigging": Going in and facilitating trade puts Linden Labs in a position to "rig" the market and exercise control over it, at the first party level. Again, good or bad - ethically, though, this can be potentially volatile.

3) Regulation: Doing this at the first-party level will put Linden Labs at the top of the list for virtual market regulation and standardization of legal ethics relating to buying and selling of virtual property. Yet another mixed bag.

4) Weak Technical Position: This, however, is not a mixed bag. A first-party support network for buying, selling, and trading puts Linden Labs at a relatively weak position to keep Second Life stable, because any form of unforseen database failure/rollback would be difficult to account for. This is not a good thing.

5) Taxation: If you would elaborate on this point, specifically, I would appreciate it. The point being: Is Linden Labs intent on facilitating any form of taxation in line with the laws of the state of California?

6) Business Sense: Is Linden Labs intent on hiring support representatives to monitor trade in this manner?

I would appreciate a response from the Lindens on this, thanks. I see it as a very slippery slope, purely because first-party support for currency trading is a very difficult issue, even if it's routed through third parties.

Edit: Huh - old thread. Still applies though.

Amen, brother.


Is this still something the Lindens are even considering? The recent economic changes were designed to reduce the amount of money floating around the economy, while the idea being considered at the top of this thread would open a limitless spigot that would immediately crater the value of the L$ and necessitate even more Linden-run controls on the economy, which, in my understanding, is something the Lindens are trying to avoid.

Could we get some Linden input on whether this is still on the table?

While we continue to look at the economy and how to best balance the currency sources and sinks, we haven't come to any final decisions about banking or what role (if any) Linden should play in currency exchanges.

I'm sorry to be vague, but as you know these are very complex decisions, and not to be made lightly. We'll continue to get the opinions of the community, and of experts in the subject, and when we have something more concrete to propose, we'll make sure you have a chance to respond.

I really dont think this is that big a deal *shrug*
Why not just throw in a few pop-ups for newbies saying something like:
"Running out of money? You can buy more with GOM or IGE!"

I would like to see a way to buy LD from Linden labs Like they did in there and keep th e3rd party vendors out of the In game leave them where they are. I trust Linden labs moe than i do the others i do not know. i do not care if some one wants to buy our play money or not the option would be there non the less out side of game. I dont trust 3ed partys.

Even though i see no reason to buy too many of them once you have land you can make and sell anything to get more or use the sand boxes LL does "pay" us weekly.

Thank you, Robin. I appreciate the response.

Eggy: In the short term, no it probably would not be a big deal. In the long, though, I see something like this as potentially a very big deal, perhaps liability, for Linden Labs. So it's really unclear, in my opinion.

A 4-month-old thread is sometimes too much for me to read and follow with attention, but I think that several people pointed out what I feel is the most important aspect of this "feature": get more things integrated into the SL UI.

Unofficial statistics SL has around 5,000+ residents who are professional software engineers (or at least pretty good amateurs). All of them seem to have an extraordinary amount of free time. Many of those are dropouts when the Internet bubble blew up. They are experienced with dealing with highly complex e-Commerce issues. Several hundreds have run their own two-person companies selling products and services using some sort of web-based technology, they know about web marketing, they have experienced all sorts of legal and technological issues, they have built up communities using their products and services.

Since the Internet New Economy "blew up", they are unemployed or doing odd jobs to pay their rent and bills, and turn their skills and efforts towards open source projects (which have never grown so much since 2000...) or, of course, amazing new things like Second Life.

LL proposed, with this thread, to incorporate a small change on the UI, to enable easier money transactions. After a few dozen posts, this was analyzed, discussed, broken up to its finest details, legal and technical issues discussed, and some people even agreed upon the same conclusions. While certainly everybody agrees with at least some of the issues here, I also think that the "problem" is not having LL as a "broker" for US$ vs. L$ transactions. The "problem" is that those 5,000+ programmers could build amazing technologies interfacing the LL VR and the "real world" (on web sites), without LL's help.

But currently we cannot touch the UI.

The next time LL proposes a new "feature" to be incorporated into the UI, the same sort of discussion will be analyzed in a similar fashion. Again, people will give LL (and the rest of the residents as well) their opinions on what makes sense and what doesn't, based upon their experience in providing Internet-based services during the Golden Age of the Internet. And we probably will come to the same conclusion again: we, the programmers, would easily do things, if we just could touch the UI.

Now imagine that the UI was fully programmable and accessible to us. GOM and IGE would simply have a link on their web sites "Click here to add a buy/sell menu to your SL UI". You'd click on it, download a plug-in, and the next time you log into SL, you'd be able to have precisely the same functionality that LL is proposing to give us (well, to be perfectly honest, this wouldn't simplify the necessary setup of an account with PayPal, so the billing issue would not be solved, just the buying/selling aspect of it would be much easier). LL wouldn't have to raise one finger. GOM and IGE programmers would happily spend their free time developing a few menus/voice commands/popups/whatever to be added to the UI - if they only could do that! - just to make the customer experience much better, easier and friendlier (and yes, I also agree it's hard to think on how to make it even more friendlier!)

As a side note, a similar issue was raised when LL added the "sponsored links" thingie, and the promises of getting the Find engine working on all sorts of objects (besides people and places). Again, if SL Exchange or the Gigas group would be able to change the UI, they would simply provide a few lines of code to access their web catalogues from in-world. Their cataloguing features are way better than anything we have in-world. And again, the LL programmer team wouldn't have to do a thing beyon "opening up" the UI.

According to one of the Town Hall meetings hosted by Cory, one of the next versions - more likely 1.7 than 1.6 - will offer a "skinned" UI, but not much more than that (while Cory also promised to look into more flexibility). The way I see it, the SL application client should be seen like a 3D browser. Skins are cool, yes, and will certainly appeal to the geeky among you. But, like you can skin Mozilla and have lots of fun with it, the real cool thing about modern Web browsers (and other types of programs, like chat systems or streaming clients) is that you can add plug-ins to it, which are freely available and downloadable by everybody. Even companies like Adobe do that for years

So, instead of discussing "is LL going to be a broker, a bank, a competitor of GOM/IGE..."? I would really prefer to discuss "what is this change about?" My own answer is: "it's just an add-on on the GUI" (since we have several statements of LL saying that they don't really want to sell currency and prefer to leave that to 3rd parties). Oh, so it comes into the category of the 100 or so features that need to be implemented by LL into the GUI to make several aspects of SL more interesting.

I guess that the correct approach should be to concentrate all programming efforts which are currently targetting the UI into two areas: skins/mods (which are being addressed), and the allowance of third-party plugins, under the control of the talented programmers who are members of our VR community. Once that comes out, in about a month, you'll have all the extra features you've ever dreamed of, integrated into the SL client. Things like unified instant messaging, voice communications, "hidden" information for special types of games, in-world web browsing - they could all be developed in a few weeks (not months or years).

And yes, this could also be exploited to abuse - like having malicious scripts completely wrecking your UI or something like that... or plug-in nightmares, from "incompatible plug-ins" running at odds at each other... I can understand that this will need much planning and thinking. However, I have also seen that the in-world LSL is pretty "secured" in its own "memory sandbox". While there certainly are lots of ways to make a script run amok and make sims reboot and such, the truth is, in the past years, LL has developed an incredible amount of experience with "protected-mode" programming. I guess they have experience enough to think about how they should allow "plug-ins" to be "attached" to the UI. I'd say that having them running inside virtual machines and having a button somewhere on your SL client to "stop all plug-ins" or something would be more than enough. After all... in-world, if you suddenly have a script which runs wild for some reason, you can usually stop it fast enough (say, by running towards a no-script zone as fast as you can...).

But then again, I'm just a humble resident and not even a programmer and these are just my L$0.02 I may be utterly and completely wrong on all the above.

Thanks for your response, Robin. And I have to qualify my last post. Looking again at the original feature posted, I don't think the scheme proposed here would necessarily lead to a flood of L$ being created in the economy. But providing a way to buy from IGE/GOM but only sell for account credit would create an artifical distortion in the market that would make it very difficult to manage, in my view. Real-world economies generally get the most benefit from either having very few constraints on trading in their currencies (and managing the exchange rate through market interventions) or by having well defined and explicit ranges within which the currency will be allowed to trade (which also involves market operations on the government's part, which are often difficult to finance in the long run). What's being proposed here is essentially a repatriation control (not uncommon among developing economies), which would allow people to bring their money into the "country" of SL by buying L$, but would not allow them to "repatriate" their cash by selling it back in exchange for their home currency. The real-world effect of this is *always* to drain investor confidence in the currency after a relatively short period. While SL's economy naturally has limited correlation with those of the real world, I suspect similar effects would obtain in this case.

[/QUOTE]



WOW Thats a Hell of a 'humble' lol

I am lost! Lordy Lordy.

All I know is.. as a newbie or as good as... like all businesess, you have to speculate to accumulate and this applies to SL too.

I started in SL after 8 mths in There.com and 12 mths in TSO.

In There I was one of the 5% that actualy MADE profit I was slagged off, hated..verbaly abused in forums because of it as it seems unless you are one of the 'unfortunates' who have to BUY There bux, your evil!

There.com created so much ugliness and greed due to the way There handled their economy. As I am sure you all know they encouraged 'buy' but removed ANY opportunities to earn Tbux either from hosting ..well actualy thats ALL they offered...hosting credits.

And of course designing which ALL new players tried & most failed as teh cost to submit, advertise and stand out from the thousands of other potential wanna be designers was grim.

people lost lots of Tbux ( and of course REAL bucks ) submitting designs based on the 'easy peasy lemon squeezy' instructions There.com left to encourage players to plough even MORE RL cash into their game.

I tried designing ONCE and knew I didnt have what it took..I really loved the idea of seeing 'my 'designs on other players.

So if you cant use photoshop or arent a graphic designer...or cant afford the sub fees & advertising fees...your left with no option to buy Tbux or scam them

There.com created virtual snobbery where I suspect ppl with little RL self esteem bought *literally* into the whole ' My dolly has the latest designs, buggy etc' you would see them all standing in groups constantly changing outfits every 30 seconds..Christ! there was even a program designed that had your clothes on a constant revolving changing system keeping your dolly upto date every 30 seconds!

I became a trader in There.com had my own website..I offered instant Tbux for players unwanted items they didnt wish to wait to sell in the auctions..so I watched the auctions trends closely..i also saw the amount of stuff ppl purchased..so much so they told me as much as they would love to off load their 'junk' for Tbux there was too much to go through and didnt even know how much to ask for in auctions so just kept on spending!

I met one woman who had ran 3 credit cards into severe debt all in a bid / war to out bid another player on properties and funzones..she admited she didnt even WANT them but was tired of being 'put down' by this other womans attitide of ' I have more money than you and I'm going to prove it by out bidding on everything you want'

I could go on & on ..the horror stories..it was sickening.

I HATED There for that...they banged on about creating a REAL economy but it wasnt anything LIKE real...'real' is going out and earning money for little luxuries..

What kind of world makes you pay $50 a MONTH to run a funzone for THEIR players to use & enjoy?? Not to mention the $500 they paid to buy the deeds to rent it!

OK...rant over...

So i came to SL very reluctantly despite the above ( as I said I was ok regards to Tbux..had my rear end covered and wasnt scamming any-one)

I came here and i LOVE it.

But i know now..as cheap as designing is compared to There..the competition is huge.its not so much if my designs stood out from the rest but rather, the odds of any player actualy seeing them as its a very big platform and stores ate scattered about with maybe one or two players passing through a day on most Sims.

Also...at least There DID give you the chance to resell your items!

Took me weeks to realise all this stuff I was paying real money for ( in the long run ) I couldnt resell..or set up some kind of store to 'resell' my stuff...so I carried it about unused or gave it away..so everything I buy is LOST..gone..

I found that really weird..I mean even in RL we can resell our stuff in auctions or different ways..why cant we do this?

So in closing.. after the rating stipend has been stopped..and now this..is SL turning into another There? I do hope not...or I will no doubt be jumping ship again when the next 'new world' is created

I love SL..its amazing on so many levels...but we need to create a economy as close to RL as possible...designers...scripters..and if you lack creative or technical know how...sell your virtual behind on a poll in a club wiht your tip jar.

hmmm?
Maybe closer to RL than I thought!

hahah...I hate TSO but it offered a more erm challenging and fair way to earn currency..i liek how EA Games dont sell Simoleans, they dont need to, they offer enough earning potential in the game and those who DO buy it are again usualy sadly lacking in RL interests and feel owning the biggest and best virtual property makes them the bees knees...if only in fantasy.

Lilly, while I feel that your post is addressing a slightly different issue - how to sell things in-world - I think that your trouble with SL is that it mimics RL too closely

I mean, imagine that IRL you have a product to sell for a community of 20,000 users. How do you advertise it? How will you make that product known to this community? IRL, you don't simply state that you're selling a product and tell all your friends about it. No, instead you do some market analysis. You try to see where your customers are. Do they use the Internet? Do they read some kind of magazines? Do they listen to radio? What TV channels do they see? Are they usual customers of malls? And so on. And you target your advertising on that media.

Some items are "easier" to sell than others. If you live on a 20,000-sized town, and everybody uses the train station for commuting to work, and you sell shoes, a safe bet would be opening a shoe store right near the train station, where everybody can see your wares. You don't want to put your shop in the middle of nowhere. Or, if you do - because land is cheaper there - at least make sure you have some advertising at the train station, or at the newspaper stand at the station, or even inside the coffee shop if people go there before catching their train.

Surprisingly enough, the same happens in SL. After 6 months of trying all sorts of locations for my vendors, I found out three things:

- nobody wants to buy my clothes, no matter how cheap they are
- SL Exchange users buy gadgets that are available there, even if you can get similar gadgets on "hidden malls & shops"
- opportunity sales are easier to do on websites than on laggy malls

So I got rid of all my vendors and shops (there were not many) and concentrated on selling gadgets on SL Exchange, and started giving the clothes away. The net result is a steady income of L$.

My point is, you need to know where your customers are and how their buying patterns are. Another example. Owen Khan sells dance animations. If you go to his shop, you'll see it's very, very small and quite uninteresting (but it usually features a "human attendant" which is great!). He found out that he sells more if he has vendors where people will use his dance animations - inside clubs! So he has agreements to set up vendors on the biggest clubs. Since he's one of the finantially more successful animators, I guess that worked fine for him.

Yet another example. The Avalon group (apparently pulling out of SL now...) created some expectations by bringing in RL clothes brands into SL. They rented locations in the best malls (Luna, Midnight City...), and made a big fuss about it - on forums and by hosting events. But of course they only sold clothes. So they invited other merchants to display accessories in their shops. At least for some female residents, the accessory market is closely tied to the clothing market. By selling both in the same shop, they enabled to enhance customer experience - you just have to go to a single, laggy shop instead of running around malls wildly bumping into half-rezzed walls. This meant that the accessory merchants inside Avalon got an increase of their sales there, and were quite willing to bring in their vendors wherever Avalon opened a new shop.

And no, this was by no means the only example...

The point being, selling things in SL is as hard as in RL. You're right - you really have serious competition here, and not everybody is so willing to exchange US$ to L$ and buy everything they see. Unlike perhaps other online games, where you can easily pour in more money into them just to get "that" gadget, in SL things are more balanced out. Since joining SL is so cheap - US $9.95 for a life account! - this virtual reality appeals to the very low-end consumer of online entertainment. He'll always be virtually broke and unwilling to spend more. So it's not just a question of putting a nice object in front of your customer and expect him/her to buy it, just because "it's there". Most residents balance their own budgets and know how much they are willing to spend every week, and which items are more important.

I'm not 100% convinced that the "problem" with SL sales is that we don't have good tools to locate what we want. That is certainly one problem, but not the problem. The problem is mostly that good designers are bad salespeople, and vice-versa. Marketing does not always go hand in hand with technical and artistic ability. They are different skills. Good SL marketeers may know all the tricks in the trade to capture the customers' interest, but don't have the necessary skill to build items. Excellent designers have often wonderful products to sell, but that nobody knows about, because they're not good at marketing their own products. There is an old war going on between "established clothes designers" and "promising, new designers". People grumble at the "establishment" - how the "top designers" rely upon their fame and glory, but aren't really as good as the "promising new designers". The reason is, the "top designers" are a mix of being good designing clothes and being good at marketing their wares!

Should LL create more opportunity for making sales "easier"? Again, I'm not sure if that is the problem, really. Imagine the world market for computer mice. You can buy all sorts of mice from Amazon, e-Bay, or any retail shop. By Googling around, you'll find all sorts of brands and designs. However, when it comes to spend your money to buy one, you'll probably go for a Microsoft or Logitech mouse. They're probably not so good as other mice, but you trust those companies to make pretty reliable products, even when they're not state-of-the-art. However, Googling around, reading reviews on online forums, or at Amazon/e-Bay, you may find out that the XYZmice brand from southern Pakistan is, actually, a much better product, and far cheaper. Will you buy it - despite the good reviews and the XYZmice URL links being at the very top of Google? I wouldn't. I trust Microsoft and Logitech, because they have a much better marketing campaign and brand recognition

There was an old saying in the computer industry: "You won't be fired by buying IBM". IBM is not, by far, the "best" computer brand in the world. However, the truth is, it's the best known. Similarly, in SL, if someone asks me "who is the best clothes designer?" I will probably forward them to either Chip or Torrid Midnight - my reasoning being, even if there is somewhere in-world a tiny vendor of an unknown masterclass designer, either Chip or Torrid (or a few others as well) will have enough quality to satisfy any customer, for a reasonable price tag. Sometimes, you know the brand, but you don't recognize the merchant's name. You may never heard of Francis Chung, but everybody knows that even Philip Linden has bought a Seburo gun from her. The same applies to dance animations - go to Owen Khan or Cristiano Midnight, and you'll get high-quality stuff, and everybody recognizes the Owenimations or ANOmations brands. Nobody buys Gwyneth Llewelyn's utterly amazing and dirt-cheap dance animations (uploaded from Internet freebies, lol), even if they are so good that whole clubs are now dancing to them because I gave them away for free I simply don't do the proper marketing of those animations. Who is to blame? The quality of my products or the way we have limited tools to promote our products? No, it's only me that I have to blame - I do poor marketing, and thus I have to accept the consequences of not selling them

So, again, I don't think that the problem is in "lack of tools" to promote new products. Top designers, merchants, real estate agents - all of them don't complain about lack of sales, brand recognition, or the difficulty of reaching their customer base. They sell like crazy because they know how to sell, beyond knowing how to apply their artistic/technical skills. LL's lack of good searching tools is just a lame excuse for bad marketing.

No offense meant

yes..and running out of Rl money? geez don't play anylonger, you're unworthy !!
very discriminating i guess for those that just WORK hard hours in rl and look only for some relax and time with friends in SL. Do we need another job in SL? isn't the rl one enough? what is the point of it all, making people earn money from the game?
You won't have mine
many old players have left or are leaving, many other will leave once they realized they've been exploited. congrats

esmay, I think that you're missing the point.

Second Life is way much complex than a simple light/dark side - you're rich, you're respected, you have fun. You're poor, you're shunned, you're an outsider.

However, SL, like RL, has all the "degrees of greyness" in-between. And sure, if you pour in a few thousand US dollars to buy a few private sims, you'll get the attention of everybody. At least for a while. But I would think that someone starting with a Basic account and "working the way up" to buying those private sims just by building a reputation, working hard and becoming an established member of the community, will earn much more trust, respect and admiration - there is the kind of person you can admire for his/her work. But I really think that both cases are extremes and most residents are somewere in-between - neither ruining themselves in RL just to be able to buy a few extra items/land, neither being complete workoholics with a basic account and never making the effort of going to GOM at least once.

SL is just like RL in that respect - some people ruin themselves buying on credit which they really can't afford. But the "fault" is not on the credit card companies! The users of those services should be mature and know what they're doing.

Last but not least, I think that the question of "enjoying SL without money" also pops up once in a while. I certainly agree that you need to have at least some money to enjoy yourself - for instance, now that contest events are not sponsored anymore, it's usual for the best event hosters to ask a small charge for you to attend. If you're on a Basic account and earning L$50 per week, the amount of quality events you can attend is certainly much lower than someone earning a few thousands of L$ per week. Of course, you can get lots of free enjoyment in SL - after all, SL is (fortunately!) not only about going to clubs yelling "woot!". The point is, like all other issues in RL, SL is a "hobby" which comes with a price tag - either in money, or in time. You can use either to increase your level of enjoyment. Some prefer simply to drop in a few US dollars and be rich enough in-world to afford whatever they please; some prefer to work as hard in SL as in RL, spare the US$, but have access to entertainment by simply contributing their hard work to SL's community. Not only either way is possible, but all degrees of mixing both "lifestyles" is certainly possible. I enjoy weeks of going to free clubs and just dancing around; or weeks of just chatting; but after a while, I take a deep breath and assume that I should be working on some things to improve my income in SL. I cannot tell you what is more entertaining to me. All of them are fun in their own way, and I'd say it's much more a question of your own desires and character.

You mentioned "many older residents have left or are leaving". Hmm, that is anecdotal evidence and not really statistics (almost all "older residents" that I know are still around and I haven't missed any of them...). Remember that a big advantage of "older residents" is that they have long ago established their balance of pure entertainment and "hard work" in SL. They're still here because they have a reputation that allows them to work well and sell their products easier, if they wish; or, contrariwise, they have long ago stopped to care about L$ anymore (they're rich enough from unused weekly stipends, anyway), and concentrate only on enjoyment. I don't see a big difference between "older residents" and "newbies" - perhaps the only difference is that they made their choices long, long ago.

And also remember that they have had years to get used to all kinds of changes. As a simple example, yesterday I got an IM from a 2-month-old resident telling to me "hey, SL is so unstable, I crashed twice today, this game is really getting worse and worse every day". I laughed and told him that 6 months ago, even on a stable day, 2 or 3 crashes per day were USUAL (remember, this guy has been in-world for 2 months and never crashed until yesterday!). And even a new resident like myself can only listen to tales of terror of 2 years ago, when a group of 15 people on the same sim crashed the sim. Nowadays, with proper tweaking of the Preferences, I can go to a sim with 40 people and still extract 5 fps from my lowly Mac - laggy, yes, but working fine.

So the longer the time period taken, the more improvements in SL you see - and I guess that's the reason why the Beta players are still around. At least most of them. Go to the memorial of the "150 beta testers", look up their names, and see how many of them are still around. I was surprised to find so many!

... and this thread is getting off-topic, hehe

Robin this is where you lose me. I see no motivation or point in trading through LL for account credit when I can get the cash to put where I want it.

I missed this thread before.

I very strongly support concept of allowing Second Life businesses charge customers' credit cards via Linden Lab. This is one very good idea

It would also help protect privacy as people would not have to register on multiple websites like GOM, SLExchange etc.

Besides selling and buying L$ I would also like to offer monthly subscriptions in US$ for property rentals. I currently use PayPal for that, but would prefer some system run by Linden Lab that can be accessed by customers in world

This is the part that mainly interests me, since I don't personally deal with the exchanges (yet). If what you are doing would also enable better two-way data links to outside servers and better in-world UI design, it's probably worth doing. Hopefully you aren't investing a lot of effort to solve one problem only....

Another status update would be good.

neko

FBSL currently offers L$ based mortgages and L$ based CDs/Bonds in SL. Will there be any mechanism added to scripting to allow us to store data to the dataservers so that we can realize ATMs, full banking services without the need to contact external servers?

Heres something about banking and stock exchange aswell, as i am going to start SL First Bank and the SSE second life stock exchange

THREAD ABOUT BANKING AND STOCK EXCHANGE

got 3 things that are the sad reason of all this

- clothing market is flooded.. dont go there.. its like starting a new car-brand irl
- SLEXchange looks different feels different.. go there with your stuff while not everybody does.. as soon as everybody sells there.. you wont be able to get ur product sold there aswell
- youd rather want 1 big shop on ur own land then 5 in malls.. i dont rent any malspace.. coz a shop is
a. less laggy and
b. you get your very own commerical in the search option.. insted of just a big mall description.. bad side about ur own shop.:. u gotta own land..

make your shop look good, and people will go there.. just 4 card-board walls wont attrackt any customers

I will put in my 2 cents as a new player. This whole spending real money for lindens thing is just insane to me. I will and am gladly paying a monthly fee to Linden Labs but I would never purchase lindens either outside or inside the game from someone like IGE. If you haven't played other mmog's maybe you don't understand my absolute loathing for those companies and what they have done to online gaming. But if you have played other mmog's like final fantasy and lineage you know where I am coming from on this.

These companies are nothing more than leeches that are rapidly destroying online gaming. They hire farmers (foreign and domestic) to camp anything that they can milk real money out of with no regard as to how that impacts a player that is just trying to eke out the enjoyment they have paid for. They run trains on people that enter "their" areas, they ruthlessly gank anyone who gets in their way if it is a pvp game, they are rude and obnoxious all around and they are a pox upon the mmog world. That is without taking into account the fact that they pay slave wages to third world children to do this work for them.

So I will get by on my weekly stipend and make any thing else I want, they won't see a dime from me and as soon as someone comes out with a "clean" game of this type I will be gone so fast that I will leave cyber-dust billowing behind me.

There you have my 2 cents, do with it what you will.

I have a number of problems with this proposal and most of them revolve around legal issues. Most of which were discussed earlier in this thread.

I don't see how LL could enact this and then find a way to hide behind L$ being some sort of virtual currency that current laws shouldn't apply to. I also feel that if LL is selective about who will be allowed to setup operations in-world then they are in effect sanctioning the activities of those groups.

If however, they say that any schmuck who deposits x amount of US$ in escrow and meets y technical requirements will be allowed to setup operations in-world, it is a whole different ballgame. The key will be whether they will support a monopoly or allow for an open market. If they allow for the open market, their liability will be limited. If they select only a few chosen entities, they bear responsibility for ongoing oversight and some responsibility if one of those entities f's up.

HUH?

even with a standerd 9,95 one-time-fee subscription you can start a business... just hire some land and create something.. its not that difficult... i started that way too

I'm not sure I follow your reasoning here. Second Life is not an MMOG. (People often argue about what it is, but it's not an MMOG, not entirely anyway.) The key difference is that anyone can create unique items and sell them in SL, and LL has been quite clear about who owns the intellectual property -- the player. Anyone who has an account in SL can create their own game or items, so as far as the limited access to certain items goes, the system is already completely broken. If someone else has an item and you want one like it, you can build it. Being able to do this in SL depends on your real world "level," not some peculiar status in the game. Being able to gain RL compensation for RL skills (3d modeling, scripting, etc.) seems completely reasonable to me.

My take on the whole "buy L$" angle is that LL provides a more than adequate stipend for people who plan to do a little something to contribute to the world of SL, on the reasonable theory that many or most players will want to do that. This helps keep the monthly cost down for that large group. For those who don't want to contribute content to the world (and be reimbursed in $L which they can use to buy the content of others), they can arrange to buy more L$ instead. So you can put RL skill into the world, or RL money, or just be a tourist and not worry about how much stuff you've got, and spend nothing. I like that flexibility. (But then again, I'm not trying to "win" in SL, whatever that would mean.)

neko

Did you read the whole post neko?? My distaste for those companies stems from the problems they have caused in other games, illegally selling others intellectual property in such games as Everquest, Lineage 2, Final Fantasy XXI and others. While they may serve a legal and valid role in this game that does not excuse their behavior elsewhere. The fact that the Lindens do business with these companies is regrettable to say the least.