Sellers get ripped off by Market Place and Lindens won't help!

[Porky Gorky]

---

Herkimer Highmist wrote:

---

Porky Gorky wrote:

Doing business in SL is fraught with risk. It can be an unstable and unsupportive environment in which to conduct business. As a merchant you are prone to having your business affected without notice by policy change, prone to loosing work due to server issues, prone to loosing business due to griefers, prone to loosing market shares due to content thieves and prone to loosing income due to MP and inworld techinical problems. You need to accept all these issues as a part of doing business here and learn to roll with the punches. It's not perfect, but it is what it is.

My advice, suck up the loss and get on with your virtual life.

---

/sarcasm on/

 

Leaving your house is fraught with risk. People are rude, noisy, and smelly, and you can  have your pocket picked - or even worse, be mugged. As a human, you are also prone to thieves, murderers, arsonists, and rapists. You need to accept this as a risk of living life and learn to roll with the punches. It's not perfect, but it is what it is.

 

My advice, suck it up, and get on with your life.

 

/sarcasm off/

 

 

---

There is no need for sarcasm here, what you said about real life is perfectly true. Just as in SL you need to roll with the punches and you cannot and should not assume that when something bad happens to you in life, that you will always receive justice or recompense.  Real life does not work like that and neither does SL. So a person can spend their time bitching and moaning every time something bad happens to them, but unless the bad thing that happened is very serious, then no one in authority really cares both in RL and SL. 

So a person can choose to go through life getting angry and resentful every time something bad happens to them, or they can choose to accept it as part of life, shrug it off and get on with their existence. 

Unfortunately most people are unable to do that which is why the internet and these forums are full of people moaning and complaining all the time.

[Porky Gorky]

---

Rya Nitely wrote:

I agree

 

As for me, the only real concern I have is if LL goes belly up, taking with it my 5 years of work and a part of life that gives me so much satisfaction. Short of that, I will put up with the problems and be grateful for its existence.

 

---

This is something I have been thinking about allot lately too. Some of my work has been exported for use on other grids and nearly all new content is mesh, but there are still  thousands of creations that only exist in SL and I really need to start exporting the best of it in preparation for the inevitable. 

[Trinity Yazimoto]

---

Porky Gorky wrote:

---

Herkimer Highmist wrote:

---

Porky Gorky wrote:

Doing business in SL is fraught with risk. It can be an unstable and unsupportive environment in which to conduct business. As a merchant you are prone to having your business affected without notice by policy change, prone to loosing work due to server issues, prone to loosing business due to griefers, prone to loosing market shares due to content thieves and prone to loosing income due to MP and inworld techinical problems. You need to accept all these issues as a part of doing business here and learn to roll with the punches. It's not perfect, but it is what it is.

My advice, suck up the loss and get on with your virtual life.

---

/sarcasm on/

 

Leaving your house is fraught with risk. People are rude, noisy, and smelly, and you can  have your pocket picked - or even worse, be mugged. As a human, you are also prone to thieves, murderers, arsonists, and rapists. You need to accept this as a risk of living life and learn to roll with the punches. It's not perfect, but it is what it is.

 

My advice, suck it up, and get on with your life.

 

/sarcasm off/

 

 

---

There is no need for sarcasm here, what you said about real life is perfectly true. Just as in SL you need to roll with the punches and you cannot and should not assume that when something bad happens to you in life, that you will always receive justice or recompense.  Real life does not work like that and neither does SL. So a person can spend their time bitching and moaning every time something bad happens to them, but unless the bad thing that happened is very serious, then no one in authority really cares both in RL and SL. 

So a person can choose to go through life getting angry and resentful every time something bad happens to them, or they can choose to accept it as part of life, shrug it off and get on with their existence. 

Unfortunately most people are unable to do that which is why the internet and these forums are full of people moaning and complaining all the time.

---

you seem to miss a point here. Not everyone have made the choice to accept silently how things are working and to suffer without any word. Im not talking specially for SL but for life in general. Some of us dont want to be sheeps and follow and do what we are told to do if things should be better for the general interest if they were managed in a different way.

I do trust and believe in the fact that everyone have to express their opinion (bad or good) and to stand up and protest when they see something is going wrong. As far as i know, this is still not  illegal in my country. If more pp would act like this, i m sure the word would run better. I know. Human is not good by nature, but i do really trust that a great organisation and, above all, a good sense of the responsabilities for everyone would avoid a lot of unfairness we see everyday. This is applicable in every group composed by more than one person. So this is also applicable in SL. As far as i know, there is nowhere in the TOS saying that ranting is forbiden or will cause the end of SL. 

Rants and criticism can be also constructive and can help to build a better way of organisation. If LL team is clever they surely know that their interest is what is best for the collective interest and so they will fix. If they prefer to stop SL bec its too much for them to fix and they cant handle any rant, so i wont regret such SL.

I wont never accept to kneel before a blackmail saying i have to prefer **bleep** than nothing. I will still believe there is another possible choice.

[Porky Gorky]

---

Trinity Yazimoto wrote:

you seem to miss a point here. Not everyone have made the choice to accept silently how things are working and to suffer without any word. Im not talking specially for SL but for life in general. 

---

I have not missed the point at all. You are right in that not everyone chooses to accept silently how things are working, and my point is that these types of people will not likely survive as merchants in SL long term. All they will find is frustration and irritation as they are continually ignored or misdirected by LL and their affiliates, I've been a merchant here for nearly 9 years now and the only way to survive long term is to adapt and roll with the punches. Plenty of people have trouble doing that and end up RAGE QUITTING because LL will not listen or act upon their grievances. Those who do not quit just end up wasting their time fighting the "system" for improvements that never come and end up feeling bitter and resentful towards LL and SL in general. A merchant is much more likely to be successful if they accept SL for what it is and then work within those parameters rather than wasting their time trying to change it. 

So yes, it is not illegal to stand up and protest for improvements in SL, but it is a complete waste of time. We've been there, we've done that and in response LL has just got worse and worse at supporting their customer base over the years.

 

---

Trinity Yazimoto wrote:

I wont never accept to kneel before a blackmail saying I have to prefer **bleep** than nothing. I will still believe there is another possible choice.

---

Well this is certainly your prerogative. But every second you spend protesting for improvements in SL that will very likely never happen, is time you could have spent plying your trade in SL and growing your business. 

 

 

Im not trying to diminish a persons right for free speech and I think it's admirable that people care about SL enough to want to change it for the better. However, past history has proven that where LL is concerned, this is tantamount to flogging a dead horse. 

[Dartagan Shepherd]

I get the point about complaining, believe me. Used to think it was a contributer to SL declining and thus was against it completely.

When we lost enough momentum in growth and new users, and given the reach of the complaints, it appeared to not be an issue of the decline at all, and of course many of the complaints turned out to be founded, even when overly expressed,

Personally I think that SL will still decline more (not in a sky is falling kind of way) but that there's still a way to stop the bleeding and that's through SL standing on merits of stability and reasonable price and catering the product more to the users than company goals (which after all this time should be more in synch).

The kicker for me is that I know there's a great demographic for SL still ... intelligent people with lots of time to get into something like SL. And some of them have lots of money to burn. The problem is that I know these people have a low tolerance for what they would perceive as incompetence.

The first time they clocked 500 hours and ran into a few bugs that caused them 5-10 extra hours of work due to SL being buggy or not up to a certain level of quality, they'd be gone.

Some of us die hard users are here because we believe in SL, that it has merit and that it "can" be a good venture, whether that's on a hobby or full time level.

I think in trying to reach the millions they've lost what any virtual world that came before SL has learned ... it's not the day old users you need to capture, it's the ones that have lasted more than a few months. Those will be the ones that if the relationship is pleasant between the company, the technology and the user .... will be here for 10 years.

They already know how profitable long term users are, but in seeking the millions and billions they provide the long time users with costs, bugs, lack of communication and bad management with something that will make the difference in whether or not they come back in a year, or two, or 5 years from now.

I think this is the play to stop the bleeding is to up the quality of the product before they can't afford to put so many resources behind it.

Because of the lack of the communication the only thing that seems to stand a chance is to keep them aware of it.

I want to see SL here in 20 years ... the rate of decline doesn't support 20 more years, so you know .... bang your head against the wall until someone that matters in LL management has that light bulb moment ?

Phil Rosedale had said with his "fast, easy and fun" strategy was to get LL to not grow by bringing people in but by tearing down the walls that are the pain points to using SL. I saw some wisdom in that and then LL turned around and added more pain points, less communication, etc.

We plod onward in this world or the next.

[Rya Nitely]

---

Dartagan Shepherd wrote:

Some of us die hard users are here because we believe in SL, that it has merit and that it "can" be a good venture, whether that's on a hobby or full time level.

 

---

 

I'm not a die hard user. That implies I'm clinging on, no matter what. I think people leave SL because they don't find anything to hold them - their projects or social lives don't work out, they get bored or frustrated with the problems. Like Porky said - they didn't survive. So instead of calling us die hards I prefer to be called a surviver. It's working for me and I love it. The good things about SL far outweigh the bad.

The only problem with SL is that it isn't advertised. It was advertised in 2007 and that's what got me here, along with crowds of others. SL was full of newbies back then. And that was a very bug-ridden SL. So much has improved since then. The introduction of mesh is a big step forward - and it's only just starting to take off.

The wheels are turning, so the time to worry has not arrived..

 

[Dartagan Shepherd]

And here I was about to sneak rubber tubes into your veins to siphon off some of your optimism, while LL was sneaking up behind me to insert a suppository of account cancellation because a credit card expired thereby rendering one of our premium accounts completely invalid rather than bumping it down to a basic account until we discovered the issue.

It's harder to be optimistic when you're puckered up at both ends.

Will get back to you for more optimism after I figure out if they've broken any anything on that account after I give them yet more money.

 

[Trinity Yazimoto]

---

Porky Gorky wrote:

---

Trinity Yazimoto wrote:

you seem to miss a point here. Not everyone have made the choice to accept silently how things are working and to suffer without any word. Im not talking specially for SL but for life in general. 

---

I have not missed the point at all. You are right in that not everyone chooses to accept silently how things are working, and my point is that these types of people will not likely survive as merchants in SL long term. All they will find is frustration and irritation as they are continually ignored or misdirected by LL and their affiliates, I've been a merchant here for nearly 9 years now and the only way to survive long term is to adapt and roll with the punches. Plenty of people have trouble doing that and end up RAGE QUITTING because LL will not listen or act upon their grievances. Those who do not quit just end up wasting their time fighting the "system" for improvements that never come and end up feeling bitter and resentful towards LL and SL in general. A merchant is much more likely to be successful if they accept SL for what it is and then work within those parameters rather than wasting their time trying to change it. 

So yes, it is not illegal to stand up and protest for improvements in SL, but it is a complete waste of time. We've been there, we've done that and in response LL has just got worse and worse at supporting their customer base over the years.

 

---

Trinity Yazimoto wrote:

I wont never accept to kneel before a blackmail saying I have to prefer **bleep** than nothing. I will still believe there is another possible choice.

---

Well this is certainly your prerogative. But every second you spend protesting for improvements in SL that will very likely never happen, is time you could have spent plying your trade in SL and growing your business. 

 

 

Im not trying to diminish a persons right for free speech and I think it's admirable that people care about SL enough to want to change it for the better. However, past history has proven that where LL is concerned, this is tantamount to flogging a dead horse. 

---

well thanks for the lesson, but its your point of view and not mine. I still believe i can be active in my life and not stay passively accepting what i dont agree with and are my concerns. And i do firmly think that if more pp were acting this way, the world would be really better. 

And sometimes yes, i think we have to stop focusing on our daily tasks and stand up for fighting for something we think fair. Thats my opinion and as you said that s also my prerogative and my freedom. You can still judge my point of view if you want, but again this will be YOUR and only YOUR judgement. 

Btw you shouldnt condamn too much those who have already in the past stand up for rights or fairness (RL or SL) because you are also benefiting from what they have won.

[Dartagan Shepherd]

Still nothing to report on the account that was disabled rather than bumped down to basic, but like a dog with a bone I come bearing further thoughts ...

Didn't mean to put you in a box of die hard user, I really do try not to put people into boxes based on forum posts. And with the disclaimer that I know you've made some great contributions and feedback to the marketplace (wink, wink, nod, nod).

Perhaps your thoughts on SL's latest tactic to suck more of the finite spending dollars from our "economy" rather than reduce costs or prevent mishandling of advertising funds, as this one affects you directly: Click on the Deluxe Vehicle Pack

http://www.amazon.com/Second-Life-PC-Game-Connect/dp/B00AM2IOL8/ref=cm_rdp_product

So now you're competing with LL. For the today-only-super-low-price of $14.95 you too can have not only a sailboat but a hoverboard! Or perhaps it's a hoverboard sailboat which is something different completely. You can't tell from the wording of the ad or the picture ... they probably should have hired an SL merchant to do the ad.

But you also get L$2,000

If I were a new user, I might turn right around and buy yours, but probably not for a some weeks if I'm still around. (Don't tell anyone but I'd actually buy yours before I paid LL for any "stuff" ... you get better customer support with merchants than LL and most likely a better product).

Although I'm not a new user that matters to you, because while these deals ran last week, we also lost 80 something regions.

In fact, if regions and/or concurrency continue to decline or stay flat, I'm actually an existing user taking advantage of this deal and not in the market to turn right around and buy another sailboat. Unless I'm really into sailing ... which might happen that I turn around and buy your sallboat. Then again, probably not ... there are so many things to buy!

The likely scenario here is that it's biting into that finite pool of spending available to merchants and in some (small?) way biting into sailboat and hoverboard (or sailboat hoverboard) sails .... err, sales.

I'm still digging for optimism, though.

It's just that somewhere along the way I caught something contagious from LL and I wander the ruins of SL malls and corpses of campers that used to make hundreds of L$ a day.

My knees won't bend, my arms stick straight out as I wander the land in search of management with a clue and I go "braaaaainsssss" a lot.

 

[Darrius Gothly]

I notice that the makers of the Fennux breedable have linked their "Customer Image" to that listing. Hmmm .. suppose that's a free way to "tailgate" off of LL's advertising?

[Dartagan Shepherd]

Not sure how you mean. Maybe as an Amazon associate link to LL product?

Now that would be something new ... forget being a merchant, just link to LL's own products on Amazon and earn some change for those vehicle packs. Who needs merchants anyway?

[Darrius Gothly]

One of the bigger problems with New users to Second Life is .. they arrive with zero knowledge of what to find, where to find it, what to do .. etc. Since LL is selling "Starter Packs" on Amazon, and since it appears that you can link your own image to their package, a savvy Merchant could link their advertising image so that potential buyers would have at least one name in their mind when they log in for the very first time.

"Hey, I remember seeing XYZ Super Stuff advertised with this Second Life thing. I'll use search to try and find them!"

Just an idea. I'm not sure what requirements there are to upload and link your own image to the Starter Pack, but clearly Fennux did it, so it must be possible.

[Rya Nitely]

---

Dartagan Shepherd wrote:

Still nothing to report on the account that was disabled rather than bumped down to basic.

 

---

That's no good. I don't know what to say, Dartagan. I remember you being positive once. I guess it takes a few bad experiences like this to change ones view. I haven't had any yet, so maybe my day will come.

But for me right now, it's an escape from my RL problems, where I do shout and carry on about injustices and unfairness and the faults in the system blah blah... it gets me nowhere and just makes life harder. Here in SL I don't need more of the same bsh*t.

[Darrius Gothly]

Rya makes a good point Dart .. about you "Once Upon A Time" being steadfastly positive on LL and SL. Someday if you get the chance, I'd love to read the full story of how your attitude was changed as I think it would make not only a very educational read about what NOT to do to customers, but also because I like the way you write and would love to read something with more meat than just a forum post.

[Ciaran Laval]

I think we wore him down! He was certainly Mr Positive at times, although always reasonable and well worded, even when people were preparing to mob him with pitchforks and torches for being so positive!

[Dartagan Shepherd]

@Rya Firstly, sorry Rya for dumping that on you ... I get escaping RL crap for SL, and I think my angst comes from just that LL forces that RL nonsense into my SL.

---

Darrius Gothly wrote:

Rya makes a good point Dart .. about you "Once Upon A Time" being steadfastly positive on LL and SL. Someday if you get the chance, I'd love to read the full story of how your attitude was changed as I think it would make not only a very educational read about what NOT to do to customers, but also because I like the way you write and would love to read something with more meat than just a forum post.

---

Ugg, ok ... as short and sweet as possible, you can probably guess this would fill volumes. To everyone else, this is a two part post and it's tldr; so don't bother if you don't want to be bored to death.

Background first not to be pompous but because it's impossible without the context.

Was always into "virtual worlds" user generated content, etc. Started with Interactive Fiction and BBS game dev, then the internet came along and with it early MUDs, Talkers, IRC (which was originally intended to be a MUD rather than a chat network), etc.

Built tons of these things, hosted them, ran them, hosted archives of codebases and patches and hacks and all of that "stuff".

Together with some awesome minds and creative people we built every type of system you can imagine. Currency? Been there done that. Economies and multiple currencies, different currencies for different regions, different currencies that only worked in parallel planes of existance within the same space, currency exchanges, and yes ... a thousand ways that you can monetize virtual currency and goods.

To this day, the scripting engines and languages we used were more robust (and faster and leaner) than LSL, so you could experiment pretty eassily with all this conceptual stuff.

These were mostly free ventures, open source with custom licenses before open source came around and later a bunch of open source and quasi commercial stuff. Nevertheless as a bunch of different groups of developers and communities, we learned about everything there was to know about world building, user generated content, currency, virtual goods and more importantly what makes successful communities and what doesn't. What lasts and what doesn't.

Early on we were experimenting with and then VRML comes along, so on one project (forgive me for not naming names here, although public information if you can find it, I don't want to go throwing names around of people without permission who were pioneers of all this stuff from various universities, game studios etc., who now work at places like Adobe or current game studios).

But anyway, on one project we merged VRML with MUDs and ended up with something like SL, except it wasn't a commercial project. 3D ... check, user generated content, check, currency, check... blah.

One thing I learned back during the dot bomb days when you could pitch anything and get funding was that user generated content and virtual worlds were an extremely hard sell. There's no corporate value in them, as you can see from SL. It won't help Mercedes sell more cars or cause enough people to buy more Pepsi. It's just one of those really difficult concepts to peddle and monetize for business use. I pitched the concept to high heaven and while there were some commercial use cases and implementations it wasn't there yet in timing, computing power, scale of the internet and sheer numbers, etc.

So at some point SL gets on my radar, (I vaguely remember something called LindenWorld and a LindenScript language way back but I'm not sure if that was an early LL venture or not), and while at first SL wasn't designed to be a virtual world (the joke back then apparently was that SL didn't know what it wasnted to be at first ... the goals would change almost every month), it eventually started using more of the concepts that had gone before and coalesced into more of a proper virtual world.

So when SL started forming as more of a virtual world thing, it got my attention and I'm happy. When it generated traction to me this is awesome, finally virtual worlds created by users are getting their day in the sun.

Except LL was winging it. An experimental management mingled with culture. People hired that had no experience or knowledge of virtual worlds and communities and worse they don't understand the "people" or the driving force.

Thankfully the hype covered all of that up, and I'm still a happy camper because the hype buys LL time to learn all the stuff we learned 10 years before LL came around. I'm smiling at their growing pains and mistakes.

So this was supposed to be short right?

Fast forward to a company that over monetizes, this automatically puts a end of SL into play. Why? Because if you're taking too much of the revenue for yourself you create an unsustainable "economy" for your users. When growth stops there simply isn't enough money out "there" for the users to keep it going. Mix that with a lack of checks and balances, let a glut of goods over saturate the virtual goods market and you're shortening the lifespan of the world even further.

And another big lesson that further shortens the lifespan of SL ... the complexity of the business model. I mean this in a good way and not at all insulting. The model is too complex. Users of virtual worlds relate better to simple business models, not complex ones.

While SL monetizes for its own benefit and it's a great financial success to be sure, it creates this disconnect with users who would trust it more and grok it better if it were a lemonade-stand model. In other words, no exchage, flat rate currency prices, sinks structured as flexible and more understandable fees, etc.

In other words the monetization model is overly complex, unfriendly, harder to maintain and more costly and less "honest" than simpler models (Example: Cloud Party is closer to the mark here with flat rate currency and no sinks and a more easily understood accounting of resources. In cloud party it's polygon/material count and size. Simple, honest, no underhanded monetization).

This complexity while profitable is not best for longevity. A lesson that they're refusing to learn in favor of keeping existing profit margins to the point where it looks more attractive to diversify into new products (and possibly sacrifice SL in the process) that they can in turn monetize to the hilt later.

So like most of you, I'm also watching one stupid mistake after another as they follow tech startup mentality, culture and monetization rather than focus on what's actually a more traditional model that would more closely match the needs and profit of their community.

But they're not interested in a more humble but very profitable and long term niche, they want the startups and millions and billions.

In all of this, they held back virtual world development by years, because creating a new virtual world in the shadow of SL isn't really a driver. Good for them, bad for virtual worlds in general. As can be seen in virtual worlds that try to follow in their footsteps too closely with flawed design elements (Opensimulator) or worlds with their own spin (Blue Mars, Lively, etc.).

Ending this post here, will work on the next part where I'll share what my personal beefs actually are that tipped me from cheerleader to critic (although still positive in many ways but not vocalizing it) in the next post hopefully shortly ... lots of distractions for me today though.

[Dartagan Shepherd]

Blather and Babble Part Two

SL is now booming and I'm ecstatic. Finally, like horror and fantasy finally made their way into mainstream film, Second Life validates user generated virtual worlds. It's still a walled garden and will always be by design, but it's all good, despite the warts.

As will always be true users of virtual worlds will be highly independent, critical and the best of all, highly creative and endlessly suprising in squeezing new uses out of the technology that the makers of that technology never envisioned.

I was in love with (and still am) SL, although management is not budging on the things that matter most, which are the pain points of using the viewer and the world and the economic issues of the merchant/land baron/clubs/services communities.

Fast forward some more and I'm seeing the endless negativity work its way into the press, they start to parrot their own interpretation of random feedback and I think it's hurting SL.

Having a love for virtual business and goods especially, I'm looking at the merchant community as the most powerful driving force of both the primary virtue of SL (the ability to change lives by creating jobs and incomes) and the greatest source of negative publicity.

So I start debating with all of you on the virtues of business-folk putting our best foot forward and promoting SL as only we can do. Content creators after all are the largest of the monetary communities and the best suited to understand how positive press, publicity and "selling" our world to the public can stimulate growth.

Along comes M Linden as our newest CEO.

For the record, while many of you have issue (as did LL employees) with M Linden, he is the one that started the ball rolling on getting old promises of features. Mesh, media on a prim and other things were promised before M was hired. It was M Linden that finally jump started Mesh and other features and at least an attempt on a viewer re-write, not our newest CEO Rod Humble. Rod was picking up where M left off.

So apparently LL likes my positive attitude and points because they invited me to the Viewer 2 beta. Which was a really, really big deal to the Lab. Every employee was involved in testing it or giving feedback (and in a couple cases caved into peer pressure to like Viewer 2).

So this is awesome, the energy seeing so "many" Lindens in one place and getting to see how bright and passionate these Lindens "can" be.

Along with me were some other advocates, that's why some of us were chosen after all, because if we liked it in beta, we were sure to be helping promote it.

In defense of the V2 beta, I can say that the first thing we heard and our prime directive was to only look at V2 in the eyes of a new user, not existing users.

Ouch, but fair enough, because now M and LL have a plan to really make a push to drive LL further and to remake itself. All great stuff. And it was understood that LL would be focusing on the pain points for existing users with V2 after its unveiling. Ouch again, but fair enough ... my recommendation was to push it out as the official viewer sooner rather than later to minimize the outcry and pain of a completely different interface. Do it in a blast, get the drama over with and fix the rest quickly. For that (not that it happened based on my recommendation) all I can say is oops ... sorry guys?

About that time Pink Linden was here and if not always agreed with, she was a mover and shaker and was at least communicative with us.

Also about then, V2 was launched at SLPro, a merchant/solution provider event, that had great positive energy and a sense of renewed direction for SL.

So I'm advocating hard, debating with you guys, trying to say things that I couldn't because of the beta ... just relax guys, great things are coming down the road. Stay positive.

So V2 being the disaster that it turned out to be, LL turns around and admits this, fires M Linden and over 1/3 of the employees in a really tacking display of Phil Rosedale announcing this at SLBB and coming in like a white knight to save the day.

Effectively throwing us advocates under the bus. That's fine, I can live with that. Not so fine for some of the other people in the beta who are no longer with us and have moved onto other things.

Things like trying to promote media on a prim to people only to have it with security holes that LL would not address or fix later. Ah well, it really would have been a game changer to some people to bring the full power of the web "into" SL.

So now I'm a little less optimistic, but hanging in there.

At the same time I'm preaching to you guys how great of a business investment LL is and taking some flak about mistakes and issues with LL and SL>

Fine, you bunch of half baked whiners just aren't seeing the vision, so I'll keep at it a while, we can DO this!

To make sure I was capable of practicing what I preached (having been all out of pocket thus far as a merchant myself and just dabbling with this and that) I decided to put my money where my mouth was. Looking ... looking ... ah, there! Breedables seem to be a good target project ... I certainly understand the monetization of them so we'll give it a go. And there were less than a half a dozen breedables at the time and certainly enough room to grow without biting into other breedables markets. No harm, no foul.

Sucess!

Doing pretty well financially, probably grossing about $50k USD per year and it's looking good. Except that coding these little buggers was more about working around the bugs and quirks of LL and LSL than it was about building. Not a problem, I'll build them to last and avoid as many quirks of SL as possible. And to be fair without an update in 2 years those fairies are still ticking.

Of course because of the lack of upgrades due to my increasing awareness (and decreasing enthusiasm) of LL making the wrong moves (at least to me) and seeing the complaints prove true more often than not, I'm becoming a bit more cynical and less optimistic (and SL starts decliing at a steeper rate).

So I decide to wait it out and do a new version after mesh comes out (which took longer than expected and was convoluted with Land Imapact and yet more sinks). My problem, my fault ... LL was not and is not responsible for my profit or success level, such is business.

So as we're doing better financially we request to get more money out. After jumping through hoops, we were finally approved. And then we try to get more money than our current limit out. And we get more run-around. And more, and more. At that point I'm feeling ripped off by a company that won't let me take out the money that I'm earning, that's also letting other people earn a lot of money (the breeders) and paying hundreds of dollars USD to staff. I'm "good" for the economy in a way that LL can relate to in monetization and applications that entertain and keep people vested in SL and breedables cause people to buy more land to breed more critters.

And yet they give me the run-around on approval to get money I've earned. Told my wife to give up trying.

So I'm invited to the earlier marketplace beta and I'm less enthusiastic and I can tell that suggestions for the marketplace are only going to go so far, mostly I feel like a glorified bug reporter on decisions that have already been made.

Not enough enthusiasm left to re-up for the next generation marketplace beta, so I let it slip by and didn't sign the next beta agreements. Nothing negative to report on marketplace of course, just that I felt that you could handle more issues in marketplace feedback on the merchant forums than you could in beta. In the forums you can at least have discussions about LL management, goals and deeper issues than talking about bugs on pre-conceived features.

So here I am with a dated product, not making a lot of money these days and still paying staff about $100 USD a week to support issues on our product. And that's ok, except that I'm supporting bugs and quirks of SL more than flaws in my own product which were built to be as stable as they could possibly be in their own right.

SL isn't dead, I'm not saying it is ... it's awesome, some of the people at LL are awesome, it's not going to die tomorrow and there's time to turn this boat around in a better direction but they have to be willing to listen where it REALLY matters and some of that involves the money and the business model.

They do seem to be focused in some areas in fixing old bugs and that's great, because it's the pain points of the software that's already here that causes people not to stay, not a lack of features.

And then of course there's the Marketplace which comes off as amateur hour in the world of commerce.

All told though, I'm actually still pro SL. They just need to stop letting employees make decisions that have anything to do with product. They're not good at it, they don't understand the community and they need to be technicians not conceptual monetization freaks.

The market is already here, the profit is already here. It'll last 20 years if they play fair, don't be too greedy and don't have an over inflated ego over what they've got in their hands.

It's a virtual world. Their job is to build an abstract yet reliable framework, nothing more. The rest will take care of itself, perhaps not to 2006-2007 numbers, but in time that may come again in a world that structured not upon dependency of growth but on finite resources.

Whew ... nuff said?

[Darrius Gothly]

---

Dartagan Shepherd wrote:

[snip] ... Whew ... nuff said?

---

Nope! LOL Just kidding. Yes and yes again. And perhaps surprising to some, not others, you and I hold now very much the same positive belief in SL as a viable platform to sustain a company for the long-term.

What killed it for you (as I read it at least) is the same thing that has soured my belief in the LL Management AND also destroyed my previous (more than a decade ago now) partnetship in a potentially very lucrative venture ... Greed. In the latter case, we had an innovative high-tech product that accomplished a specific task much better than the high-end Gubment Labs versions, at a much lower price point, and with an interface that human beings could use. We started to get real notice, even got an appropriation shoved through government channels for a massive contract. And then my partner sat down at the contract signing and "Announced" that the price would be double what we'd bid.

After the brass got done laughing, they tore up the contract, walked out .. and that was the last time we ever talked to anyone in authority again. That was also when I decided that my best strategy going forward was .. elsewhere. I remained positive and hopeful for several more years. Like now I kept up the hope and did what I could from the inside to try and remove that greed element, but eventually realized that it was the sole driving force of my partner and removing it would never happen. So I left.

Your reference to the "dot bomb" era (in part one) really hit home with me. That Greed factor was the same poison that killed off far too many promises. Rather than realize that what they held in their hands were tools, products or services that would provide long-term, satisfying and reliable business models, the promoters and investors pushed and squeezed, demanding more and more "fast bucks" .. until the whole enterprise imploded under the pressure. (Very much akin to a giant star going Super Nova ... all that's left is a Black Hole and utter destruction.)

Nowadays, you and I seem to champion a very similar "slow and steady" moderate approach because we've learned by our various paths that meeting the bills, making steady progress, and being able to relax at the end of the day are MUCH more important than fast hitting, high reward, pie in the sky dreams. But maybe that's age .. or wisdom .. or just being too old and tired to run sprints anymore. *smile*

Thank you Dart .. very much. I've learned a lot and gained a lot from your effort. To me at least, it's been immensely valuable. I can only pray that it has a continued benefit to "Others" that read this forum every day and come prepared to find ways to help us Customers of Second Life.

[Dartagan Shepherd]

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Ciaran Laval wrote:

I think we wore him down! He was certainly Mr Positive at times, although always reasonable and well worded, even when people were preparing to mob him with pitchforks and torches for being so positive!

---

Heheh, that you did, and I'll gladly face those pitchforks again, the debates were great.

Update on the account because I made a big stink of it. A glitch or two accepting the card and a short time with live chat cleared it up.

Business account is renewed at annual premium, as is the wife's account, and Dart is bumped down to quarterly just because.

The reason it particularly irked me is that it was the account I need to pay staff with and those guys deserve it.

Still stand by the fact that it's dumb as bricks not to not downgrade accounts to basic ... that's not how you keep people. It makes them feel second rate and they go away.

Now that I paid at least enough to stock a Linden beer fridge, I'm wondering where I put that cheerleader outfit. It's here somewhere.

[Rya Nitely]

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Dartagan Shepherd wrote:

I'm wondering where I put that cheerleader outfit. It's here somewhere.

---

uh oh, is this yours? :smileyembarrassed:

[Couldbe Yue]

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Dartagan Shepherd wrote:

All told though, I'm actually still pro SL.

---

We all are lovey, we wouldn't be here otherwise.  The thing we'rve stopped doing is giving LL the benefit of the doubt.  Did you ever see that Japanese game show called endurance?  That's us more than anything, I think.

[Dartagan Shepherd]

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Rya Nitely wrote:

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Dartagan Shepherd wrote:

I'm wondering where I put that cheerleader outfit. It's here somewhere.

---

uh oh, is this yours? :smileyembarrassed:

---

I appreciate you keeping the outfit warm for me ... but what did you do to this thing, use it for a sail? I'll need to mend and wash it you understand, which is something like wiping the mouth of your bottle before I share a drink, but not meant to be insulting.

 

Patchwork sails made of cheerleader uniforms though, it's a thought.

 

 

[Dartagan Shepherd]

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Couldbe Yue wrote:

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Dartagan Shepherd wrote:

All told though, I'm actually still pro SL.

---

We all are lovey, we wouldn't be here otherwise.  The thing we'rve stopped doing is giving LL the benefit of the doubt.  Did you ever see that Japanese game show called endurance?  That's us more than anything, I think.

---

That's certainly true, didn't mean to elude that we're not all here because we don't support the world, although probably not the company itself at this point.

 

Haven't seen that show but will try to look it up later today, sounds fitting.

 

So just when you thought it was over with my card issue and paying for the premium accounts? Noooooo ...

 

So after paying LL to re-up 2 annual premium accounts and a 3rd quarterly account LL flags that card we payed with and we can't use it until we call the card company.

 

Probably caught by the fraud prevention for paying for multiple premiums under a single card.

 

But let me repeat that so that it sinks in ... AFTER they take our money, it's flagged as potential fraud. Not BEFORE they take the money, but AFTER.

 

Busted.

 

But this cloud has a silver lining, although it doesn't belong to LL.

 

So how do we find this out? Because we're playing WoW (which is not stressful and likely to hit you with bugs at every turn for entertainment) and we both get booted out of WoW at the same time as billing on the card kicks in for the Blizzard accounts.

 

So we call the card company, find out it was LL that flagged it, get it unflagged and then go back to Blizzard to explain the situation.

 

In less than 10 minutes and letting Blizzard know what LL had done (a few jokes on both sides at LL's expense, because Blizzard support is always "fun" and prompt and generally solves any problem in a single support call, doesn't send you off with no solution and doesn't suggest filing a bug report as a support tool).

 

So Blizzard says "yeah, we generally don't get couples and family accounts flagged, we understand multiple accounts under one card".

 

While it will be sorted out today, Blizzard says "Here's what we'll do, we'll give both of your accounts 5 free days so you can get it sorted out and the 5 days will get you through the holiday weekend, because we understand you'll want to be enjoying your game through we weekend. Enjoy! May you earn tons of loot!".

 

And that my dear LL ... is how it's done.

 

Not by holding a premium account and its inventory hostage until you cough up the cash.

 

I mean god forbid that I would have gone tooling around in an unauthorized premium sailboat or dune buggy until you got paid!

 

Also, in RL when a company botches things like this on a professional level, my company turns around and sends them a bill.

 

In RL, I'd be sending LL a bill for the partial handling of their mess.

 

Amateurs.

 Edited to clarify that it was 3 premium accounts, not 2.

 

[Pamela Galli]

I read it all -- I always read it all sooner or later. Interesting and candid read!

[Couldbe Yue]

and how much do you pay blizzard a month?  A damn sight less than you pay these monsters I bet but then that's the difference between a company that's thriving and LL.

here's a snippet of endurance..  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=109-5Q5S3tU  search you tube for clive james endurance for more (if you can bear it)