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What are your opinions on the new "Land Price Reductions, New Premium Perks, and Pricing Changes "?


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26 minutes ago, Kilolo Jenkins said:

While I think that it's great that LL wants to reward premium members by increasing their group space and their offlines, I don't think that it's right to penalize non-premium members by taking away from the little bit they receive.

As a non-premium member, we usually get shut out of key events because premium members have reserved space above and beyond most sim limits.  We already have a select few groups we can join to the max and often times have to leave a group to join another.  We already have limited access to past transactions, offline messages and even support as we can only file a ticket.

Now don't get me wrong. There should definitely be differences between a premium and non-premium member.  I fully get that and accept that differences will be had.  But perhaps instead of shrinking non-premium group memberships to 42, increase premium to 84.  Offline ims...why should they have been affected if the messages are being received offline via email? 

And then on the paid side of things, how is it that after 15 years of premium increases, premium members are still only receiving 300L in weekly stipends?  The value of the linden as a currency has changed many times over throughout the years; why not the stipend?

I think it's great that changes are happening. But if it is to the detriment of the people who login on a daily basis who, paid membership or not, are contributing to the ebb and flow of not only the value of Second Life's citizenship but their commerce as well, then who does this truly benefit?

I agree with this comment. I have multiple accounts, some are premium some are not. My premiums receive about 300L weekly, which all of their upgrades and change in currency shouldve been increased as well. I also think that basic accounts should've stayed the same and the premium ones boosted. There is no need to take from basic members what they already have. However, I do appreciate the premiums upgrade and even as a premium now I have maxed groups and need more (Lol).

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As far as it impacts me, I'm okay with it, I understand operational costs go up and all of that fun stuffs.  I am a little depressed that I will not likely be able to afford three premium accounts, but it is not the end of the world.  1024 sqm and $300L a week are still a pretty good deal for a yearly premium membership, I can't complain too much about it.  The benefits that come along with the increase of price do not impact me, so I do feel like I am paying for things I will not use.

I do feel bad for the basic members who love to have access to a lot of groups, I also feel bad for people who have multiple premium accounts that will have to drop a few.

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From my point of view, as an aspiring designer and store owner, this is terrible news to me. For the last few years I have been able to squeak through with a quarterly earning target of just over $6500L. With careful uploading accompanied by testing out my uploads on the Beta grid as I could find a sandbox over there, I could slowly add things to my store inventory. The $300L a week stipend helped offset my premium fees. This quarterly target is now raised to $9000L and the stipend will not cover the difference.

 

So my suggestion, if you truly want to add value to the premium then raising the stipend from $300L to $500L a week is a good start. This would greatly assist and more importantly alleviate the incurred extra cost to the premium users. Further it would put just a tiny bit more disposable income in the hands of users and by extension help to stimulate spending in second life as is being intended by these changes.

 

The alternative for me right now .. and I am certain I am not alone .. is to close my in-world store, sell my land and for the first time in I believe 7 years return to being a non-premium subscriber. This will greatly temper my participation in second life particularly as I do take advantage of the premium access sandboxes from time to time to prepare things for my store. In short, this update to the premium fees may well price me out of premium.

 

Edit: Now I may be making an assumption that I can not retain the rate I have been paying for the last 7 years, and that it is new subscribers who will have the updated fee. A clarification of this with a clear declaration of weather or not the current fee will be grandfathered and renewed until the subscription is ended. The wording in the announcement about the fees is a bit ambiguous to me.

Edited by Hagdrisil Shilova
added request for info clarification.
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I'm a non-premium person, I do understand there are costs and such, and they need money too.

  1. BUT, taking 7 groups from our group limit, after we barely got the 42 ?!
  2. Increasing the fee from 2.5% to 5% and unlimited?!

and for what exactly? They increased the premium prices too, they lowered the full sims w/ 20 Dollars?! And got nice homes for the premium people?!

Tbh, this change has screwed us the ones who live in EU A LOT! Because, when I take money from SL I am loosing already about 20 Dollars BESIDE their fee, because Dollar is lower than Euro and now with this increase on the fee, I'll be cashing out even less, and on top of that I'm also loosing my groups.

 

I'm really upset. I'd understand the fee increase but why take out groups away? How does this helps you "save" money? If Premium can have so many, why we can't keep ours @42 AT LEAST that. This is a very fast change and if someone wants to join SL they'll be very disappointed because everything is expensive right now in SL and now we have less groups too on top of everything else that goes so amazing. Even us w/o premium, we're paying things in SL, working and cashing or adding money. They increased the premium price too, i think that would've been enough to recover some of their looses on the sims prices w/o adding the fee, but..... what do I know right?!

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I've already posted in the other thread, but why not do it again. Besides the more I think about it, the more awful this "new exciting change" looks. Kinda funny it's posted around SL's bday, as a positive thing, while there's like.. almost nothing positive about it.

8% price decrease for ~8938 full private regions (stats from a week ago or so). No decrease for ~8013 mainland regions and ~7070 homesteads. That's compared to last year's 15% decrease for all islands and 10% for mainland.

Processing fees increase from 2.5% to 5%, which will most likely result in higher prices for new creations, because creators (especially ones who make a living in SL) need to get their money too, so to make up for all those $ that will now go to LL, they'll probably increase prices and rightfully so. So even if you're not a creator (or have some other good business in SL) and don't cash out so this change won't affect you directly, it will still affect you if you shop at all.

27$ annual premium fee increase with rather small benefits and even those come at the expense of basic accounts. "We're going to take 7 groups slots from each basic account and give them to you for a mere extra fee of 27$ a year! Perks, benefits!" They didn't even try to sugar coat or justify the basic downgrade so the premium would look better. Nothing about "the server space" or anything like that, just plain downgrade in order to make (now more expensive) premium look better than it is, without actually making it almost any better.

Way to spoil the upcoming SL's 16th bday, LL.

Edited by steeljane42
more typos
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What I want to know is who at the board meeting suggested reducing the basic membership group sizes down. Also who else at that meeting thought it was a great idea that would be well received? Cause it sure isn't. LL don't do it to yourselves. The backlash is going to be horrible.

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Working on the assumption that you like SL enough to want to keep playing.

Look at it from the perspective of "how much are we willing to pay to keep all this going".

Nothing lasts forever, and there is almost nothing online now that was online when SL started out. No really, I can't think of anything I was doing online in 2003 that still exists.

By tech life cycles, this whole mess would have been sold for parts years ago.

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9 minutes ago, CoffeeDujour said:

Nothing lasts forever, and there is almost nothing online now that was online when SL started out. No really, I can't think of anything I was doing online in 2003 that still exists.

I can. Active Worlds. And it's been going for almost 25 years now. And in case you don't know what AW is, it's SL's predecessor. No, it's not as graphically pleasing as SL but at least Enzo knows how to keep the doors open without running off more than half the customers. 

There used to be an AW refugee group in SL. I don't know if it still exists but at the time (2003-2004) most of the SL residents were AW refugees, myself among them.

Thought you might like to know that some things do last a long time, just not forever. ;)

Edited by Selene Gregoire
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1 minute ago, Alsatia said:

What I want to know is who at the board meeting suggested reducing the basic membership group sizes down. Also who else at that meeting thought it was a great idea that would be well received? Cause it sure isn't. LL don't do it to yourselves. The backlash is going to be horrible.

Look at this realistically -- not from "your" point of view (and I know that is always difficult). 

It cost LL almost nothing (just some programming time) to switch some group slots FROM "free users" TO "paid users".  Personally I care nothing about group slots as I use 20. 

LL is trying to balance things a bit better. Most "free" folks have the option to go premium if they choose. If groups are all that important to them, then perhaps they will. 

IF a ton of free members leave and THAT translates to a HUGE reduction on the Marketplace, then maybe The Lab will rethink, but honestly I don't believe  it will happen. Most of the basic membership folks that I know (and I was one for over ten years)  spend some money but not tons. There are oh so many "free" citizens that NEVER spend money -- hence LL gets no income from them in any way. The freebie society is a good and viable one, but it doesn't pay the bills on the servers and for the employees.

 

We all have choices. It looks like this will cost me about $150 US more each year.  I could leave my new premium and give up my Bellisseria home and get rid of my land and only sell on the Marketplace.  That doesn't make much sense to me. That is $12.50 a month or so.  Many folks pay more than that for an online game that they play once and discard.

 

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56 minutes ago, Tippi Dagger said:

removing groups will not help people want to join premium specially when the price is going up this is crazy we fought hard to get those 42 groups y take them away most have been maxed as is now have to leave groups to be able to join anything else specially when a lot have been paid groups u really need to rethink this drop in group slots big time 

I agree that lowering group numbers isn't a good thing.

The increase in price for premium I can abide. All things adjust for inflation and I feel LL has been reasonable over the years as far as that, but if you are going to increase for inflation, do it across the board, increase membership fee, increase stipend.

Just my opinion. 

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6 minutes ago, Chic Aeon said:

Many folks pay more than that for an online game that they play once and discard.

 

Many folks are paying that for a WoW sub and not even logging in because the current expansion is a literal stinky soap on a rope you're forced to wear.

Edited by CoffeeDujour
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2 minutes ago, CoffeeDujour said:

Many folks are paying that for a WoW sub and not even logging in because the current expansion is a literal stinky soap on a rope you're forced to wear.

But, they are bringing back classic :) I'm hoping for a WoTLK expansion, admittedly not as popular, and seen by many as the downfall of WoW,  it was my favorite :)

Edited by WillowTenage
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11 minutes ago, WillowTenage said:

But, they are bringing back classic :) I'm hoping for a WoTLK expansion, admittedly not as popular, and seen by many as the downfall of WoW,  it was my favorite :)

Can you imagine SL classic ... now that would be something (like wow classic objectively terrible, but fun nonetheless) !

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2 minutes ago, CoffeeDujour said:

Can you imagine SL classic ... now that would be something (like wow classic objectively terrible, but fun nonetheless) !

I think, way back when the dinosaurs roamed this earth, I briefly logged into SL 😁  I never gave it a fair chance, back then I was too involved with EverQuest and WoW.  When I log into Open Sim, I imagine that must be how it once was.  

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1 hour ago, Alsatia said:

What I want to know is who at the board meeting suggested reducing the basic membership group sizes down. Also who else at that meeting thought it was a great idea that would be well received? Cause it sure isn't. LL don't do it to yourselves. The backlash is going to be horrible.

Yeah, this is something that is likely going to really screw with me since I'm already in 42 groups total at this point.

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This is starting to feel like American politics

Up the taxes claiming things are going to be better for the middle class (Premium users and small merchants) while taking things away from the poor (basic) and giving the rich (Land barons) new tax breaks. 

This is basically a gigantic F you to me. Not only does my premium account go up, you are taking more from my cash-outs. I don't want or need a linden home. I am actually knowledgeable enough to buy one of beautiful homes made by creators and use it and don't like kicking it trailer park style in a Linden Home where dudes with their junk out try to come into my house. 60 groups is no benefit to me as I don't use what I have now. It's the freebie hunters and group gift lovers that seem to value a high amount of groups. I'll also bet the Chungs don't drop my rent. I mean, I do well, but I have no desire to own a sim I have to go through the trouble of selling if anything goes wrong.

 This also drives out basic members that prefer to spend that money on buying things and renting land instead of a few more groups and crappy mainland with fewer prims. Those wallets are going to tighten up on the creators as well if they have to go premium to enjoy SL. 

 I also think many people forget that marketplace sales take 5% of creators revenue. That ads up as well. Most sales come from there for a lot of us.

Why are you punishing people that help keep SL more interesting, LL? Personally, the less I make here, the less time I can devote to creation in Second Life. I am not stuck at home with nothing else to do. I have a real job. But, this helps me keep food on the table. If it stops being worth it, I am going to have to find something else more profitable to do. In this case I am not whining or anything, it's just true, as it is for many others I'm sure.

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1 hour ago, steeljane42 said:

Way to spoil the upcoming SL's 16th bday, LL.

I think it is way better they tell us now rather than after the birthday.  People would be upset that nothing was said.

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