A brief note on pricing changes, which ran long.

[Cinos Field]

31 minutes ago, Marie Sims said:

What??? All ads now are on FB,Flickr etc... who really need the groups to promote ? sounds funny

I buy a lot of stuff and the only place I see new products being announced are in groups, in-world.

[Beth Macbain]

28 minutes ago, halebore Aeon said:

Okay, that's the thing. You are expecting them to shut up, and just take it. You really don't understand the implications this has. Some people use their SL jobs to Maintain their RL. So cashing out, is pretty pertinent to them. And when you start stacking costs, like if they are not from the US you gotta factor in exchange rates, and if they are in the EU VAT will be added on. There is so much that goes on in the background for creators, that yeah they have a right to be perturbed. 

I'm expecting those costs to be passed on to me as the consumer. I want those costs to be passed on to me as the consumer. I want LL to be a vibrant, healthy company. I want the creators I buy from to actually make money for quality goods and services. I will pay for that. 

I want to pay creators more money in response to their costs increasing. I may not be looking in the right places, but I'm not seeing anyone anywhere saying that they won't spend money in SL anymore if the cost of a pair of shoes goes up 5%. 

Raise your prices. 

[Asadora Summers]

1 minute ago, Sasy Scarborough said:

This made me laugh, because it made me realise since the linden homes went live I have had to join four groups, one for the community group, one for the paper and two land groups for friends homes. That was what took me up to 60 finally.

See!  

 

[Sammy Huntsman]

1 minute ago, Beth Macbain said:

I'm expecting those costs to be passed on to me as the consumer. I want those costs to be passed on to me as the consumer. I want LL to be a vibrant, healthy company. I want the creators I buy from to actually make money for quality goods and services. I will pay for that. 

I want to pay creators more money in response to their costs increasing. I may not be looking in the right places, but I'm not seeing anyone anywhere saying that they won't spend money in SL anymore if the cost of a pair of shoes goes up 5%. 

Raise your prices. 

So I am right, you want the creators and consumers to sit down, shut up and just take it. Without voicing their distaste with this decision. That seems kinda harsh, don't you think?

[Jo Yardley]

17 minutes ago, Blush Bravin said:

These are both functions currently available to group owners. You can define them in the roles section.

I'd love to know how I can start a chat with or send a notecard to only people with a certain title in my group without everyone else getting these.
Is there a page where I can find out how to do this?

[Blush Bravin]

Just now, Jo Yardley said:

I'd love to know how I can start a chat with or send a notecard to only people with a certain title in my group without everyone else getting these.
Is there a page where I can find out how to do this?

You have to exclude the other roles from receiving notices or chat abilities. 

You can do that temporarily if you don't want that to be the case at all times.

[Pamela Galli]

3 minutes ago, halebore Aeon said:

So I am right, you want the creators and consumers to sit down, shut up and just take it. Without voicing their distaste with this decision. That seems kinda harsh, don't you think?

We know our opinion has no weight, but if we were silent someone might misinterpret it as acquiescence.

[Jo Yardley]

4 minutes ago, Blush Bravin said:

You have to exclude the other roles from receiving notices or chat abilities. 

You can do that temporarily if you don't want that to be the case at all times.

That isn't really what I had in mind.
I want to be able to quickly start a chat with only those who are admins, only those who are tenants, only those who are law enforcement, in stead of all the other members in the group at once without having to start deactivating and re-activating everyone's permissions every time.
I think adding the option to have sub-groups and chat/send notices to just certain roles would be a huge group improvement and would cut down on the amount of groups needed.

[Dove Darkfold]

Just now, halebore Aeon said:

So I am right, you want the creators and consumers to sit down, shut up and just take it. Without voicing their distaste with this decision. That seems kinda harsh, don't you think?

I don't think that's what's being asked here. Linden Labs is a business, and as with any business, they need to be able to adjust their prices accordingly to afford upgrades, keep their business viable, and to move with inflation. The fact they haven't done this in a decade shocks me. They should have raised their prices at least three or four times by now. They are a company that's very conscious about their community. "Just shut up and take it" is very harsh.

Most creators, myself included, understand the need to raise prices and to keep a business viable. I'm going to adjust my in world prices accordingly. For my customers, that's a 2.5% increase. The groups is a completely technical issue that they are working hard to resolve. This is a patch until they can upgrade their equipment. EACH GROUP is counted as a separate FORUM in coding. Can you imagine the server load on hundreds of thousands of forums? It's immeasurable to the human mind how much coding and upkeep that takes. 

They HAVE to upgrade, but in order to do that, they need money - more income. Just like creators on SL need more income to provide more products. If they can acknowledge that businesses in SL are viable options for RL income, why can we not understand that this is a viable option for Linden Labs to produce more income, ease the load on their servers, and in the long term - upgrade our experience? You don't have to just 'shut up and take it,' but at the same time, have a business minded approach to all this. It's a necessity for Linden Labs to do this. I, for one, am okay with the changes to support the company that's supported me for 11 years. 

[Phoebe Avro]

Many years ago I proposed an idea that all messages were transferred to another system using an 'app' in your OS much like ICQ, then LL could use brand new tech for that and would not be tied to old code in sl.

[Blueberryxx]

2 minutes ago, Dove Darkfold said:

The groups is a completely technical issue that they are working hard to resolve. This is a patch until they can upgrade their equipment. EACH GROUP is counted as a separate FORUM in coding. Can you imagine the server load on hundreds of thousands of forums? It's immeasurable to the human mind how much coding and upkeep that takes. 

Hi Dove,

Perhaps I missed something, did they say this was a temporary patch and they were working hard to resolve it permanently? 

[Marie Sims]

7 minutes ago, Cinos Field said:

I buy a lot of stuff and the only place I see new products being announced are in groups, in-world.

So this only one reason to pay 100$ for premium to have some more groups. OMG Customers need to pay for more groups for to be informed about news and go to buy the new items. Where is the logic? People always pay yeah

[Dove Darkfold]

6 hours ago, Grumpity Linden said:

• We’re making lasting investments into SL in infrastructure, features, and content.  While we set aside some special morsels only for premium members, the work we are doing benefits everyone - region crossings, attachment reliability, marketplace improvements, inventory stability, land auctions - are just a few examples.  No one project will please all of our residents, but we make an effort to address the needs of all communities in turn. We can’t get everything done immediately, but we’re focused and determined to keep SL successful and evolving. It’s a unique and thriving world we work hard to support. 

@Blueberryxx Right here. We've known these upgrades are coming for a while. My husband is a technical help desk specialist with a degree in network coding and explained this to me. A single network set up that can support just 10,000 forums costs over $200,000 USD. That's not even talking about the labor and manpower needed to run it - and Linden Labs has at least ten times that amount in groups. What they're talking about is a massive undertaking. 

[MayaSkyrose]

7 hours ago, Grumpity Linden said:

Hi! This started out as a brief clarification on some things causing confusion, and has turned into a long bullet-point list.  Rather than replying to the numerous threads on the forums, I'm going to try to put it all together here.  As long as the conversation remains civil, I'll do my best to respond to questions. Please point the pitchforks away from my eyes though...  

• Land prices:  Full estates get ~$20/mo reduction in price. For the first time we are also reducing GF/BD region pricing.  This is not a frivolous gift to the 1%. This has real and proven effects on the rents many more pay.  Okay cool for people who have land! & The grandfathered pricing wow.. That's neat too but then again their are abandoned Sims all over the grid with no one using them.. Do you honestly think just because you down priced this more people will pay 160$+ for virtual land? I know ALOT of people who have Sims but that is because they are rent Sims! Will this effect anything they rent? Or are renting out? 

• Premium prices are going up on June 24.  Starting June 3 and until June 24,  Premium accounts have 3 weeks to pre-pay an additional cycle of premium at the old rates.  Best deal is, of course, prepaying for annual regardless of your current level. We hope you can take advantage of it. If you’re paying quarterly today, you can continue as quarterly. We will no longer offer it to new premium signups.  With the new prices, VAT will be charged on monthly and quarterly but not annual (of course only in the countries where VAT applies). Okay, so I have a question are you taking away the quarterly only? Or the annually as well? And I'm not asking about the VAT either, this is just the plain question will a new member that gets premium after JUNE 24TH be able to do annually payments? Because if that is a no or LL is going to take that away in the near future then I don't want premium because some people want to pay in the lump some and get it paid and over with.. 
   
• We looked. We hadn’t raised premium prices in the history of premium prices in SL. Crazy! A lot of value has been added to premium over the last few years (new Linden Homes, double tier, reduced mainland prices, premium access, more offline IMs, more transaction history, more groups, more animesh, experiences, and yet more to come) and we are raising prices to reflect that.   

• We’re not lowering limits out of spite, groups really are quite a strain on our back end for a variety of painful historical reasons, including overloading group functionality instead of having other tools.  This subject alone is worth a novel liberally sprinkled with tears. So anyway, we don’t hate basic users, and in fact we work hard to retain our free-to-play offering as one of the most generous across many industries. But yes, no big surprise, we do want to nudge active residents to become subscribers, because we think it’s a great value, and - as many have noted - we’re also running a business. But no, we're not shutting our doors to non-premium residents. Rumors of our insanity and villainy have been slightly exaggerated.  The free to play is still great but WHY take away our group space when you just used uped it the last time to give 42? & I would HOPE NOT that you ain't shutting the doors on non premium members, because some people don't want premium they would just rather have a big piece of land they can decorate. I for one can back that up.. I used to have land I decorated years ago, & I had bought & paid for all of my things I owned! I hope to God you people at LL ain't going to just up and decide to take people out of groups they are in because the limit is only 35 now... But my question is why does canadian server or whatever server it is, non premium gets 100 groups? Or is that a rumor going around? & If it is indeed true why can't LL just leave the non premium as 42 groups or even make it 50? And give the premium like 15 more then the non? And also if the groups is causing lag & what not.... Why not just go through the groups and delete them that are not active? I could probably spot groups that have not been active in years! There are designers who do gifts for their loyal customers in world.. & doing this dang change up of groups is really annoying.. just saying.. I'm out spoken and im not trying to be disrespectful but this is the most stupidiest thing y'all could of done to be honest... Couldn't it of been done another way I hhooe you all know what your doing! 

• Fees to process credit are going up, effective June 24.  L$ buy fees are not. Yes, this is another step in rebalancing the economy.  It’s also the right step, because the regulatory climate has evolved dramatically since SL first started out, and in order to continue to offer a platform for creators to actually make money, we have a lot of ongoing work to keep up with those regulations. Compliance is generally no fun (shh don’t tell our compliance people I said so - they’re wonderful and actually think it’s fun!) but it keeps all of us in business and the bad guys out. If we weren't doing this work, we would literally have to stop offering the ability to process credit. Well, since it is trying to keep the economy not going back to utter complete crap, I won't say the other words I'll be nice about it... Then I am all for getting SL a better economy but even if we get a better economy the things designers release will most likely go up in price! To get their share of what they make... This puts alot of thinking into this... I have several questions.....

• We’re making lasting investments into SL in infrastructure, features, and content.  While we set aside some special morsels only for premium members, the work we are doing benefits everyone - region crossings, attachment reliability, marketplace improvements, inventory stability, land auctions - are just a few examples.  No one project will please all of our residents, but we make an effort to address the needs of all communities in turn. We can’t get everything done immediately, but we’re focused and determined to keep SL successful and evolving. It’s a unique and thriving world we work hard to support. I seriously don't see SL going anywhere anytime soon... Secondlife is turning a big whopping 16years old next month! & I seriously think any virtual world would be almost dead by then lol... But SL is still up and roaring!

Look, this is obviously a bitter pill.  We can't keep slashing land prices at the rate we did last year.  We can’t raise other prices and yet keep everyone happy.  But we sincerely believe this is the best path forward - and hope you will come around too. People will come around but it is going to need time & patience! Because alot of people are royally pissed excuse my language but they are mad as heck! but then again I understand why they are... LL is only giving us roughly what 3weeks to deal with it or basically cry a river & get over it because it's going to happen anyways? 

P.S. we haven't given up on Last Names either.  

I'm so so so ready! For this to come! We've been waiting for over a year now to get this & to have any information! So! Do you have any information you would like to share with all of the rest of the community that would possibly like to know when we might get this? 

My replies are in red!

Edited May 30, 2019 by MayaSkyrose

[Phoebe Avro]

3 minutes ago, Dove Darkfold said:

@Blueberryxx Right here. We've known these upgrades are coming for a while. My husband is a technical help desk specialist with a degree in network coding and explained this to me. A single network set up that can support just 10,000 forums costs over $200,000 USD. That's not even talking about the labor and manpower needed to run it - and Linden Labs has at least ten times that amount in groups. What they're talking about is a massive undertaking. 

A sl group is nothing like a forum, forums store threads and posts groups don't.

[Blueberryxx]

1 minute ago, Dove Darkfold said:

@Blueberryxx Right here. We've known these upgrades are coming for a while. My husband is a technical help desk specialist with a degree in network coding and explained this to me. A single network set up that can support just 10,000 forums costs over $200,000 USD. That's not even talking about the labor and manpower needed to run it - and Linden Labs has at least ten times that amount in groups. What they're talking about is a massive undertaking. 

I appreciate you explaining that to me. It didn't clear up for me that this is a temporary patch or that they have been working on fixing the groups. Which would be such welcomed news. Like we have to pay fees, Linden Lab have their own overhead. Groups are important to SL economy. I politely again request Linden Lab to reconsider taking away group spots from basic accounts. I will be watching this thread and hope for a compromise.

[Selene Gregoire]

No I haven't read all 9 pages. I just woke up from trying to sleep off a migraine. Migraine 1 Selene 0

Sorry @Grumpity Linden , nothing you said makes up for the fact that I am being driven out of SL. Slowly but surely. LL has no appreciation for anyone who has been here for 15 years and shelled out thousands of dollars to help pay your salaries.

The worst part about it? No one cares. 

Thanks for all the fish.

 

 

Edited May 30, 2019 by Selene Gregoire

[Salt Peppermint]

27 minutes ago, Blush Bravin said:

I actually get more sales from my subo group than my regular VIP group. But I don't have a huge customer base like you do. So perhaps my experience is closer to the majority of merchants in SL. I decided a long time ago that having the VIP group isn't all that beneficial with how often people drop one group for another just so they can get the free gift or a store discount. I've been around SL for a very long time. My main from 2003. I have seen the evolution of groups. They were not originally intended for how they are being used today. Does that mean we just stop using them? No, but to think that they can be fixed by simply adding more groups, as they've done over the years, has only compounded the issue. We need a solution. And thinking we can go on as we've been doing is only putting our heads in the sand. We need a better method.

it very much depends how your group is run. if the chat is not active , a subscriber will just work fine. There are plenty of perks you can give with a group that no subscriber can. But nothing absolutely nothing beats an active group and the direct contact to your customer base. 

[Beth Macbain]

19 minutes ago, halebore Aeon said:

So I am right, you want the creators and consumers to sit down, shut up and just take it. Without voicing their distaste with this decision. That seems kinda harsh, don't you think?

It is a cost of business increase. No one likes those. 

Do you believe that the cost to run LL hasn't increased? 

[Blush Bravin]

12 minutes ago, Jo Yardley said:

That isn't really what I had in mind.
I want to be able to quickly start a chat with only those who are admins, only those who are tenants, only those who are law enforcement, in stead of all the other members in the group at once without having to start deactivating and re-activating everyone's permissions every time.
I think adding the option to have sub-groups and chat/send notices to just certain roles would be a huge group improvement and would cut down on the amount of groups needed.

Ah, I see. If I were wanting to do that I would use the calling cards to organize the groups and then open a conference call with each group.

[Asadora Summers]

2 minutes ago, Phoebe Avro said:

A sl group is nothing like a forum, forums store threads and posts groups don't.

Well, technically group notices are stored for 2 weeks before they drop out of notices. 

[Sammy Huntsman]

2 minutes ago, Beth Macbain said:

It is a cost of business increase. No one likes those. 

Do you believe that the cost to run LL hasn't increased? 

But I do think like in RL, people have that right to voice their concerns. Say they don't like it.

[Phoebe Avro]

Maybe LL should move its data centers to Iceland or to parts of Russia you know where its cold and its cheaper to run?

ohh I forgot LL moving to the cloud!

Edited May 30, 2019 by Phoebe Avro

[Dove Darkfold]

3 minutes ago, Phoebe Avro said:

A sl group is nothing like a forum, forums store threads and posts groups don't.

Actually, when comes to coding, Second Life Groups are similar to SQL and Oracle forums when it comes to storing notices, chats, and group activity. They keep it all on the servers. They take up massive amounts of valuable data. Especially very active groups like advertising groups and large store groups. I, for one, will not drop groups I paid to join. That might be something to consider if wanting to combat people dropping your group to get down below 35 slots. 

[Pamela Galli]

@Grumpity Linden Do you know if Concierge level members are treated as basic or premium?