Canceling Premium due to 300L stipend base

I didn't say the market wasn't free. What I said what that there is nothing about the traffic system that inherantly supports the free market, and in fact, because it artificially, arbitrarily, and unfairly highlights certain businesses, and because it is a government created construct and not born out of the market itself, it actually works against the free market very significantly.That is not exactly true. Linden Lab has repeatedly said that they recognize the problems with the current traffic system and have in fact indicated that they intend to change it in the future.

But what is the cause of all the lag? Is it more and more residents? If that's the case, and I'm certainly hoping we all want more residents, then Second Life is doomed. If it can't grow new players without exponentially increasing lag, it's never going to grow as much as hoped.

What's needed is a mentality change or a reality check, not catering to laziness or an unwillingness to spend.

I've been asked a few times recently, but it only hit me today while I was talking with a newbie, the question "so what do you do for work?" and "how do you make a living in SL?" kept popping up from newbies again and again, but it never made me wonder until I got a perplexed "buy Lindens?" as if that concept was so incredulous to grasp or hadn't even occured to him.

Hanging out at a welcome center, newbies en masse are getting told "go camp, here's some places" and "find a job" to "so how do I get any money?". Everyone is making the "newbie experience" about the quest for a few measily L$, not about exploring or learning about SL and that's more existing residents' fault than the newbies' fault.

My experience was: rez, learn, explore, buy L$ and spend, learn, explore, go premium, buy land, build, etc.
The current experience seems to be: rez, camp, camp some more, stay stuck in one place, never exploring, camp, rinse and repeat

It's people who are instilling the whole "spending real money on SL is dirty, don't do it, yuck, leech off the rest instead" who are ruining things, not the ones who decry that advice, or anything designed to instill the mentality that you're entitled to the world for free.

While people were stuck last week, I stopped by the welcome center at Bear, after a while there were 4 relative new residents chatting and having fun gawking over all the ghosted zombies until one wanted to take a snapshot but couldn't cause she was L$4 short and said "oh well, time to go camp". Scenes like that are just beyond sad to witness when people stop having fun because they think the only way to get more L$ is to go sit on a chair and come back a few hours later.

Right. If one actually wants to live something of a second life in here, there is little actual WORK to be found other than whoring yourself out for tips, unless you have an edge and are a graphic artist/programmer and can pick up the building tools easily. SL has a HUGE learning curve when it comes to building and the building tools can be immensely frustrating. If you come into the game casually without those skills, it's extremely time intensive to learn. It's clearly obvious that people want to earn money in this game and not have to pay more than they have to. Camping provides this means, although it takes time for most people to move on.

I believe that camping can be a good thing when used with discretion and see no disgrace in camping when it's strategically used. Most campers are not draining money out of the game by earning and cashing out. It takes too much time and isn't worth it. Most are buying clothes, skins, textures, cars, whatever. I know that when I camp, I am looking around... and I often shop when I camp. I may spend much, much more than I will ever earn from the store owner.

If you are so opposed to camping, please put up a sign that L earned by camping are not welcome. Because chances are, someone is buying your stuff earning camping dollars.

Do not blame the camper for the abuse - the abuser is the owner of the parcel, for putting in too many and being inconsiderate of their neighbors.

Yes and no. Yes traffic is the reason why people fund camping chiars, but it is not the reason why newbies camp. Newbies camp because that is the easiest and most accesible way to make a small about of money. I am constantly amazed at how little money it takes to keep players active and interested.
Many people, very much more deadicated to the notion of virtual worlds talk about camping and clubbing as evils. These people largely ingnore that fact that most people come to SL to chat, and be social with other people, in an environment where what ever limitations they face in the real world can go away. Camping provides an easy way to get a little money, and to intereact and meet people.

So the large majority of SL users, based on my wandering about the grid. Come here to socialize, be sexy or cool and hook up. They don't need property , aren't going to upgrade, and the darw of land holds no appeal.

So a few of us want land, want to contribute to the world, and want to invest in being a more permanent part of the community. The stipend is a way of saying thank you. Its not a lot of money but its enough. SL is competing among many entertianment options, some with substantial advantgages in customer service and numbers of players. Yes, SL is different, but that means new members should be coddled and developed, not ignored and chased away.

That would be great if campers socialized. What I found when I did camp as a newbie is mostly people parked thier avatars there and then left. Needless to say I only needed a few times sitting around in a beanbag or on a dancepad talking to myself, to realize camping wasn't for me.

That's true - but there's a reality check for you, too: people don't like having their mentality changed, and they don't play online worlds to have reality checks! Remember, Second Life itself is a product that has to be sold, too.



When someone actually directly asks how to get money, it's only polite to answer that question rather than telling them to go and do something else. When I'm asked that question I will usually also mention to people that they should make friends and explore around because they may well find a way to achieve/get the things they want without needing money.



I'm convinced that isn't the mentality we're dealing with here though! The mentality seems to be far closer to: "don't spend real money on SL because if you just spend real money then where is the challenge or growth?"

Most MMO's have a culture that views "twinking" in a very negative light.
The idea of "buying game resources with real money" is very much like twinking one's own characters.


There's also an expectation that comes with thinking of SecondLife as a "Game" ... games are usually closed systems where outside factors, like money, steroids, favoritism, rank, popularity are out of bounds.

When someone relies on elements outside of the game to improve their chances inside the game.... it is unfair... and often it counts as "cheating".

This is just one of the several reasons why I really dislike when people refer to SecondLife as a "Game".

SecondLife is more of a "Recreation" or a "Hobby" or a "Pasttime", or "Entertainment" [ edit: or a "job" for those that use it as such. ], where one CAN fairly use their personal finances or connections to attain their own self-set goals more easily... without being considered a "cheater".

Huh? You lost me with your thesis statement Jake. I have no idea what you mean.

I have never said anything of the sort. People find camping chairs by searching for the word "camping." Land owners install camping chairs and advertise them to make themselves appear more popular than they really are. Linden Lab created traffic with good intentions. I don't see anything magical here at all.

But why are people even searching for camping chairs? Camping isn't a "traffic exploit" in the sense that it just makes traffic appear on your parcel. People have to choose to search for "camping" - why are they choosing to do that? Why are people ranking very slow free money above every other activity? Now we can assume they're doing that because they aren't properly informed, which is certainly a possibility, but it could also be because they can't find other things that do help work towards what they want to achieve.



The difficulty is the feeling that, if they put in enough money, they'll attain their goals straight away and then there will be nothing else to do. They want to live in a mansion, they can pay US$ for a land parcel and then buy a large prefab and rez it and.. um.. they're done with their goal.

I have spent thousands of real dollars in Second Life, and continue to invest hundreds every month on my business. Believe me, this presents me with far more challenges and growth opportunities than sitting in camping chairs or receiving a stipend ever will.

Yumi, you are confusing the reasons for camping with the reasons for installing camping chairs. You are right, camping isn't a traffic exploit. But installing camping chairs IS a traffic exploit. People camp to get what they think is "free" money. That is not at issue here.

That's fantastic, but not everyone wants that kind of challenge, nor do they want to spend that much to get it. Goals like, (as in my example) to get a nice house or to look good on SL, and therefore not that much to do with business or personal growth.



Installing camping chairs is only a traffic exploit because people choose to camp. You can't just dismiss it as a traffic exploit, because those are real live people making it work. Camping chairs don't make the traffic meter tick up. Campers do.

Honestly Yumi, and with all due respect, I really have no idea what your point is. Everybody agrees that camping is attractive to new residents. Everybody agrees that if camping was not attractive, nobody would install them. The problem is not that camping is attractive, it is that Linden Lab encourages this with a ranking system that no longer works for its originally intended purpose.

But isn't there a contradiction inherent in those statements? You agree that camping is popular, and attractive to new residents, and - apparantly - gives them something they want.. but then say that by sending people to it, the traffic system isn't working properly.

A lot of people say that camping is popular because it is free money. But as others have pointed out, new players who camp often haven't made the link between US$ and L$, and I don't think anyone cashes out camping earnings. I tend to believe that camping is popular because it gives people control over their own environment - albeit in a very limited fashion via small amounts of L$, but it's still there - as opposed to letting them only join in with environments where other people have made all the decisions. And that it's very significant that even offering that tiny and slowly attained amount of control has beaten everything else in terms of popularity. Now I know that this is an awkward viewpoint because it's very hard to work out what to actually do about it, but it's something that I think it would be good if existing residents did think about, rather than just wanting to ban camping by fiat.

Of course there are good reasons to do technical things about the lag that camping causes, and that may include banning excessive camping that damages the surrounding sim. But as a social phenomenon it seems to be something that could be thought about more. Just my thoughts.

I don't even think I am getting a stipend! If so I haven't noticed.

We don't want camping banned Yumi. We want Linden Lab to stop using traffic to rank searches. Traffic is no longer an indication of the popularity of a location.

And of course, that which can be gamed will be gamed. As this thread started with differing stipend levels, it points out a large flaw in LL policy toward change: LL is deathly afraid of making change that upsets anyone. Why won't the traffic numbers go away? Because some people will be unhappy? Why was there the "telehub land buyback program"? Because some landholders were unhappy. Why the stipend-by-date levels? They didn't want players getting L$500 to be unhappy.

To address another point in this thread, it occurs to me that LL might actually like campers. Suppose you wanted to boost your concurrency numbers for marketing purposes but wanted to minimize impact on the system. The best you could do would be to create a "zombie class" that boosts numbers but uses as little system resources as an avatar can. If this conjecture is true, there's something a little creepy about that.

I can understand why the OP is annoyed. I have never invested any rl money in sl. A friend bought me a membership for my birthday, the 500 stipend, dwell, and occasional tringo win covered my membership fees. The first few months I learnt how to build and sold a couple of houses a month on slx. This allowed me to upgrade to a 1024 sqm plot and open a store in world, splitting the tier with a friend. My point is I now own a large plot of land and my L$ income still covers membership, tier, upload and in world expenses, not to mention leaving enough left over for me to have cashed out thousands of US dollars. This would have been a lot harder with a L$300 stipend as I refused to use any rl money so i would never have become a resident. I remember in the early days being overjoyed at winning L$100 at tringo because that was allot of L$ to get in one hit. If your wealthy enough to buy L$ then L$100 is a pittance. So I think the L$ is allot more important to those players not wishing to invest rl money and cutting the stipend makes it allot harder for a player who's goal is to be entirely self sufficient. Nowadays I only think of sl as a tool with which to make money. i look at it as a second job and force myself to devote time to it every week in order to maintain my second income. If you nuckle down and learn your craft and are able to produce something unique or fill a niche then there is some serious money to be made here.

I think Yummi is intentionally playing the innocent on this in order to get us to cede to his point.

Camping chairs are a tool to increase traffic. Its why they were designed.

Increase traffic and you increase the visibility of your business. In fact its the best way to increase your business currently. It far exceeds quality of goods as services as a draw. In fact becuase it draws people away from quality areas it actually leads to their demise.

If you had a wonderful place but no one ever came - why keep it up?

Dont bore me with additional "what places?" and "why do people camp?"

Camping is the same draw as Sale prices, free dinners at Denny's on your Birthday and Two for one specials.

If you give away free money people will accept it. It simply isnt confusing at all.

All right Ill try to answer this. Of course we want more residents.

Camping residents camp when they are not at their keyboard, or else off surfing the web or whatever. They are not logged onto to participate in SL - they are camping to get money for second life.

This keeps the number online at any given moment artifically high.

Thus is a drain on resources that could go to people actively participating.

I think with the Traffic metric gone - more places would have to survive on Merit - this leading to more employment.

And for everyone who says they should never have a job on SL .. they miss the fact that a Job is an excellent way to be social.

In fact it beats wandering the earth looking for things to do in my opinion by a Large margin.

Of course an entirely seperate issue is people need to look for jobs in a bit more tactful way.

Sorry if new folks only get 300 a week. You started too late. Just as Im disappointed I wasnt here early enough to get that lifetime 4k in land/500L a week package deal for a one time fee. You'll be glad you got here when you did when the stipend goes down to a 100L a week. Once the stipends are gone everybody will be in camping chairs. Ummm, maybe not. Camping chairs blow. Ive checked out the most popular places. Zombie campers saying nothing, zombie dancers swaying mindlessly on their dancing pods. BLahhhhh! Ive stood in these giant box clubs/ casino's and stood in the glue of lag wondering why the hell I was there. Traffic scores mean nothing of value as far as finding a decent place to hang out. Now what was this thread about?

for as badly constructed and confused post seems to be at first-

I think it sums up the entire issue quite well.

lol =)