A brief note on pricing changes, which ran long.

[TheaDee]

5 hours ago, Kat Linden said:

[snipped]   but you can still receive all of your offline IMs by checking the box to receive IMs via email. If you do not know how to do this, we support folks are happy to walk you through it.  [snipped]  

So, those of us getting IMs via email are not affected by this?  That part was a bit confusing to me.

[Selene Gregoire]

40 minutes ago, Grumpity Linden said:

Whew, I'm having a hard time keeping up. Calling in reinforcements! And thank you for the overnight ponies... 

There's still confusion about the pre-pay option.  Not surprising, because it's a bit different from how we usually do things, but here's what it will look like.  Say you're a monthly premium member today.  When you log into your account after June 3, you'll see these options:

If you chose to extend by one month, you will be billed $9.50 and your new billing date will be +1 mo from where it was. 

If you want to extend by a year, you'll need to change your membership type to annual, then do the prepay flow.  You'll be billed $72 and your new billing date will be +1yr from where it was.  The next time you get billed will be at the new annual rate (unless you change your premium membership before that).  But it will also be year 2020!

Hope this helps.  

Just trying to see if I can get it to work. I just can't stop myself from trying to be helpful sometimes.

Oh well. Can't even upload it as an attachment and it's not due to file size (1.8mb and limit is 4.88MB) and none of the other usual workarounds are working. 

Maybe, if you have the time, redo the vid and try again? Or just wait until the traffic dies down a bit and try again.

 

Edited May 30, 2019 by Selene Gregoire

[Kimmi Zehetbauer]

1 minute ago, Mouse Bakerly said:

I think it's pretty sad LL doesn't appreciate what they have. 

You use to care about your community and worked towards making it a great place for everyone. 

Over the years, I have watched you have sink money into alternative projects such as Sansar... Not to mention the embarrassing Minecraft ripoff that was Patterns. 



 

I tried Sansar and it didn't float my boat. It looked nice and stuff.

I think they were gearing towards the VR thing, but I think we're too early for that to get more popular.

[Theresa Tennyson]

1 minute ago, Kendall Ferryhill said:

I'm not for any type of micro transactions my self,  whats next Loot boxes ?

So, you're saying that you don't buy and use "Linden dollars?"

And a brief search will let you read a wide variety of comparisons between Second Life gacha and lootboxes.

[hippopotomonstrosesquipedalian]

17 minutes ago, Grumpity Linden said:

Nope! You can pre-pay on June 4th and your renew date will be September 2020.  

So if I get a premium membership today, I still pay the old price, and on June 4th, I can lock in that price for another year, so I get two years at the old price?

Asking for a friend fellow alt... 😉

(Pretty good value if that's the case...)

[Phoebe Avro]

1 minute ago, TheaDee said:

So, those of us getting IMs via email are not affected by this?  That part was a bit confusing to me.

My im's to email get capped, i often do not get im's sent to email its broken and always has been.

[Blueray Darkes]

10 hours ago, Grumpity Linden said:

We're open to suggestions, quite seriously.  One project currently in progress is an update to Events.  Hopefully by making events more useable, some of the group functionality can be absorbed there.  

From what I know most people want Events to die out, they are not doing SL any good at all. In fact they are killing creativity and have over-saturated the market, less events would mean creators would be more likely to sell items.

[Coffee Pancake]

2 minutes ago, Blueray Darkes said:

From what I know most people want Events to die out, they are not doing SL any good at all. In fact they are killing creativity and have over-saturated the market, less events would mean creators would be more likely to sell items.

The staggering number of people climbing over each other to get access to packed event regions kind of disagrees with you.

[AutresDeSade]

Get rid of the groups, get rid of all the 10 year old freebie places and stuff.Get rid of all the defunct stores and stupid events that dont make sense. Concentrate on sl only and fixing lands up. If they keep groups they should charge no more than 50L( which still doesnt make much sense because most i know join a group for gifts then drop the group). Get rid of all the ugly governor linden buildings around. I just went premium and gave up a great skybox rental to get a linden home which im waiting for. I decided to go month to month to make sure its right for me. I even bought all the furniture and decor to make 351 prims look good. Its 9.00 u.s i think a month but for me in Canadian dollars its like 14.00 for premium.

[Blueray Darkes]

Just now, CoffeeDujour said:

The staggering number of people climbing over each other to get access to packed event regions kind of disagrees with you.

What part of "From what I know" didn't you understand? Also personally I don't go to many events anymore, I don't even spend money at the ones I do go to. Rarely I might purchase one item where as years ago before all these events, I would purchase a large amount of items before leaving said event. Cutting down on events would be a good idea, perhaps mashing those with similar themes together and give creators a breather.

[Theresa Tennyson]

 

7 minutes ago, Blueray Darkes said:

From what I know most people want Events to die out, they are not doing SL any good at all. In fact they are killing creativity and have over-saturated the market, less events would mean creators would be more likely to sell items.

 

3 minutes ago, CoffeeDujour said:

The staggering number of people climbing over each other to get access to packed event regions kind of disagrees with you.

Not to mention the fact that Grumpity was talking about something completely different (i.e. the Events section in search.)

[Blueray Darkes]

1 minute ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

 

 

Not to mention the fact that Grumpity was talking about something completely different (i.e. the Events section in search.)

This was not specified by what events was being spoken about

[Malin Sabra]

7 minutes ago, CoffeeDujour said:

The staggering number of people climbing over each other to get access to packed event regions kind of disagrees with you.

Yep, and I still hate events and wish they would die out! lol

[Kimmi Zehetbauer]

4 minutes ago, Kendall Ferryhill said:

I'm not for any type of micro transactions my self,  whats next Loot boxes ? 

 

Some localities are already getting on some games that has those nasty things. One of our nephews played a train game that heavily uses them and he quit a few months. Some of the loot boxes were offered as "High Risk" where you could lose your game currency on it.  And many MMOs use them too, sometimes disguised as "Lucky Boxes" such as one game that allows the toons to have pets help fight things.

[Selene Gregoire]

5 minutes ago, Blueray Darkes said:

What part of "From what I know" didn't you understand? Also personally I don't go to many events anymore, I don't even spend money at the ones I do go to. Rarely I might purchase one item where as years ago before all these events, I would purchase a large amount of items before leaving said event. Cutting down on events would be a good idea, perhaps mashing those with similar themes together and give creators a breather.

Heh. I've never even been to one of those "events", whatever they are. I probably wouldn't be able to get in anyway what with all the premiums having ... precedence... over basics. Don't much like crowded places anyway.

[Vick Forcella]

59 minutes ago, Brett Linden said:

Hi, everyone. Jumping in to add that we are reading through the many questions and listening to all feedback and suggestions. Please be patient as various Lindens read through the comments and respond with some answers.

Once a blog pot has been done you are not looking for comments for change. The policy has been set and carved into stone.
The blog post presented the change as something good, it is not.

There were better moments to announce this and better ways to present it, instead you have chosen to post the 37.5% price-increase just before SL16B.

I have seen Lindens make similar blog posts. Jack and Blue, as their farewell. I have a double strange feeling.

[roseelvira]

Ok  i will be the one to write what  perhaps  most of us  are  thinking ,,,,,,, FIX THE @#*T THAT IS HAS BEEN BROKEN,,,,,,, AND THEN THE INCREASES IN MONIES  WE HAVE TO PAY WILL BE LESS HARDER TO SWALLOW ,,,,,,, I AM TIRED OF SENDING IN THE TICKETS ,,,,, GETTING THE SAME OLE SAME OLE ,,,OR NO RESPONSE AND A NOTE SAYING SINCE WE HAVE NOT HEARD FROM YOU WE CLOSED THE TICKET ,,,  AND TODAY THE ISSUES I HAVE BEEN COMPLAINING TO THEM MONTH  AFTER   MONTH   YEP  HAPPENED AGAIN TODAY ,,,, AND THE GROUPS NOT LOADING  CANNOT SEE IF ANYONE FROM THE GROUP IS ON,,,,,

                So  if they fix the problems that are still there   BUT  instead they put a new coat of paint on it and  say hey, we will give you this  PERK ,,,THE OLD SMOKE AND MIRRORS 

, but if you can.t log in /keep getting logged out/ if your avi keeps getting STUCK into the linden home wall and  stuck there when you change your linden home ,,, if you cannot get  the market place pages to load /  if you cannot get items in or out of inventory  or not able to rez anything ,,,, nothing  working  and the locks on  profiles ..... 

and number one  complaint ever  so   near and dear to all our  hearts ,,,,,,,  the every so weekly stipend delay ,,,  !!!!!!!!!

Edited May 30, 2019 by roseelvira
spelling

[MBeatrix]

11 hours ago, Grumpity Linden said:

We're open to suggestions, quite seriously.  One project currently in progress is an update to Events.  Hopefully by making events more useable, some of the group functionality can be absorbed there.  

I'm still to know why my events only show for me on the dashboard — no one else can see them. My events are rated Moderate in a Moderate region. More: I don't even allow any nudity there or anything related to Adult behaviours.

- - -

By the way, all the "perks" mentioned are uninteresting. But since the prims allowance was raised, and land prices dropped a bit, I've been waiting for a counterbalance, so not really a surprise that premium membership prices go up. Those two changes won't be an increased benefit for premium memberships anymore, as in the end we are going to pay more for them (possibly the same as before they were introduced — I haven't done the maths yet.) I'm sorry, but it all sounds like a magician's trick to me.
I don't believe that raising the premium membership prices will help SL's economy in general, nor will an increase of 100% to the credit processing fee, but it sure will help LL's own economy. I just wish LL uses the money to actually make SL work better because, you see, it does look better than it did when I joined, almost 7 and an half years ago, but the only thing that I notice working slightly better than it did by then is the inventory system.

Edited May 30, 2019 by MBeatrix
correction

[Vick Forcella]

56 minutes ago, Jo Yardley said:

Write "fewer groups" in stead of "less groups".

Good catch.

[Callie Cline]

I can't believe that the fee to cash out DOUBLED after it just went UP 10X (from 25.00 to 250) and before that it went up 10x (from 1 dollar to 10) 

i know that Ebbe said in a live event a few years ago when pitching Sansar that his model was to attract creators from around the world and make land free and make the money off the economy. I cringed when i heard that rationale as I really don't think he understands what is attractive about SL to users and creators. 

To charge creators from 1 dollar to 500 in a few short years is crazy. that would be like making Land charges go from 200/month (for a sim) to $100,000. usd. how can that be anywhere near fair? 

LL's income from creators' work has gone up THAT much. 250% wasn't enough? I'm just flabbergasted. I can't imagine charging my customers 10x what I charge them now, in fact we've not raised one price in 8 years because many are on fixed incomes to begin with and one must take that into consideration. this is all discretionary income they bring into SL, so we can't really pass on these huge costs of doing business onto them. They'd leave the game if we all did that. 

if all creators start charging more to make up for this, SL will become far too expensive to do business in. We've already lost many amazing creators over the years because of what is perceived as "greed" and sticking it to creators/land owners/ etc. 

I just can't believe something this drastic could even be justified. so basically in a month you will be doubling your income with this change. It's not in proportion to the other adjustments and I would appeal to LL to reconsider this. Content creators are responsible for so much growth in income and economy you'd think you'd want to reward that, not penalize it. 

AND, with such an increase one would think one would take time to meet with creators who are now losing 2.5% MORE of their income (and going from 1 dollar to now 500.00 per your limit of 10k in just a few short years) to get them on board (if possible) instead of losing more. 

In the end, we build communities via our brands and keep people IN second life via those communities. it really saddens me to see something this drastic AGAIN after it just happening a bit over a year ago (from 25 dollars to 250 dollars per 10k) 

I recall when Pierre Omidyar (owner of ebay and paypal) who was an early investor and used to hang out on the grid (and how i found out about SL) was singing the praises of it and he told me about the "sweet deal" that was made with paypal for only a 1 dollar cash out... and at the time i didn't understand what he meant until he explained it to me, and i thought it was really cool that PayPal did that. (made a low fee) but now i truly can't understand this and it just really does seem suspect. 

anyway my question: Is there anyway you will reconsider this drastic action? I am honestly asking. Will the Lab go back to the drawing board and reconsider not a DOUBLE fee? I'm guessing my fellow creators will be very enthusiastic if you would do so. As some are already leaving, some that are really amazing. 

In the end many are artists and this is just ONE place to make art. I'm sad we'll be losing more than we already have over the years when cash out fees became so high. 

so, will you reconsider? 

sincerly,
callie cline

p.s. i think it's great that this time you left a thread open for discussion. it's very important. thanks. and i apologize in advance if this sounds mean or attacking, it's not, i am shocked though and would love a reply and some authentic engagement. after being here 13 years and quite an advocate in RL for Second Life, I am finding it harder and harder to sing it's praises. 
 

[MoiraKathleen]

While I'm not overjoyed with the changes, I'm also not angry or disappointed about them.  I've only been here 5 years (and premium since the day after I joined) and this is the first increase in the cost of premium membership during that time.  That's not bad considering the increases that have occurred with other services during the last 5 years.   The premium membership is still less expensive than Amazon Prime (which I dropped after the first year because I felt I did not use it enough to justify the expense) and I think the new monthly premium cost is not any more expensive than my family's Netflix subscription after their recent price increase.  It also seems like most services that increase their subscription cost do so without any tangible increased benefits.  (The household entertainment expense I would like to reduce or get rid of is our monthly cable expense - to have all the premium channels my husband insists on costs more each month than an annual SL premium membership even at the new rates.)  So, for myself, I feel the new membership costs are still in the ball-park for subscription based entertainment. 

For myself, I find the value for the premium membership in the tier allowance (the 1024 free tier on mainland or the linden home) and in the weekly stipend.  Although I am currently renting a parcel on a little estate region, I also have (and almost always have had) both a mainland parcel and a LH.   There are some months where it's harder for me to arrange things to allow for buying L$'s, so I find peace of mind knowing that if nothing else, I could retreat back to my mainland parcel or my LH if necessary.  I recently took 2 alts premium so that the 3 memberships cover 1 LH plus 2252 sqm mainland without any additional costs each month.  If I dropped the 2 alts, it would cost me $13.00 month for the mainland tier, plus I would lose the extra L$600 a week combined stipend - and I would not be able to make that up with additional L$ purchases each month, so for me I think keeping all 3 of my accounts as premium will make the best sense even with the new rates.

I'm neutral about the increase in groups.  I've been getting rid of some groups recently as it is, and really thinking about the ones I have remaining.  I'm not a huge shopper, so I've been more critical of the shopping groups I belong to that are taking up slots.  I recently got rid of several groups from active stores where there had been nothing in notices from the store for several months and rarely any group chat.  There are a few that I still have that I should probably look into switching over to subscriptions rather than group membership.  The increase to the number of kept offline IM's makes doing that a little more feasible. 

Edited May 30, 2019 by moirakathleen
missed closing )

[Asadora Summers]

29 minutes ago, CoffeeDujour said:

The staggering number of people climbing over each other to get access to packed event regions kind of disagrees with you.

Oh yeah, that's one of the premium perks to be able to get first priority spot into one of those many events. 

[Adamburp Adamczyk]

Holy penguins on pogo sticks, "let's moan about nothing" thread here.  1st time since I've been here that proces have risen for premium, by about $20, that's £15.86 a year, approximately 4 pints of beer in my local pub.

 

By contrast, my RL car insurance went up by £68 for absolutely no reason at all.

 

Sure, I'll be switching to yearly to save on that £15.86 a year, but hey - 10 years and no prremium price rises isn't exactly a bad thing.

[Coffee Pancake]

1 minute ago, Asadora Summers said:

Oh yeah, that's one of the premium perks to be able to get first priority spot into one of those many events. 

Still worth it for that alone.

[Kadah Coba]

6 hours ago, Pamela Galli said:

@Kat Linden  what about concierge membership (without Premium) — will we get IMs capped like basic accounts or premium?

How is that even possible? I thought region ownership also required premium.

5 hours ago, xxSaltandPepperxx said:

For creators it's the main advertising tool. Now it will be even harder for especially new creators to bring people into their groups to get the word out and to bring more content to SL. As a premium myself I would rather not have more than 60 groups and therefore the basic accounts maybe could keep theirs. As @Blueberryxx already mentioned, maybe there is a way to fix those group issue as many jiras have been filed. The impact on cutting groups is tremendous for SL population 

Offline group notices fail 50-95% of the time going back at least over 2.5 years. The causes for these issues and others with groups is often very hard to determine and solutions may not even be possible without complete replacements.

Any project to fix the group problems is going to be a very long undertaking and massive scope.

2 hours ago, Elvina Ewing said:

*I* didn't see any reduction on *my* rent. Not even a 1$. And my landlord seems to be doing just fine to this day. I was hoping he would indeed need to compete, but apparently not at all.

Mainland or private region? The previous discounts were only for mainland.