Cost Of Name Changes Out Of The Bag

[Syo Emerald]

36 minutes ago, Alwin Alcott said:

perhaps not noticed, but this is Second Life, not one you mention... go for namechange there?... LL wants to bills this amount.. their loss if many skip it.
Nobody forces or demands you change your name, everybody is totally free to get premium or accept the costs for this.

And for the totally customizable name?.. use the display name function, totally free, for premium and basics..and you even can use some unreadable unusefull fonts.

Thats a strange string of arguments to be made. "But this is Second Life", does that mean a name change has to be above and behond expensive by nature? Does "this is Second Life" equal to "this needs to be expensive"? Its absolutly valid to point out, that its kind of extreme to charge 4 times the amount of money commonly asked for a name change in other...virtual environments. 

"Go for a namechange there" - What is the point of that argument? This only make sense in discussions involving substitute products, that are both equally suited to fullfill a task. Like chosing another company to purchase a smartphone, when apples prices are too steap. Changing your characters name or account name somewhere else on the other hand is in no way connected to your Second Life name. Its not like there is a competitive market, where you can chose who does the name change for you. Its "eat or die", a monopol on offering name changing service for SL avatars.

Of course, nobody is forced to do anything. But that could be said about absolutly anything in and around SL. Costs rising for premium? Don't complain, you aren't forced to be premium. Owning a sim is expensive af? Don't complain, you aren't forced to own land. New fees are implemented for existing features? Don't complain, you aren't forced to use this feature... and so on.

 

I think its valid to question the pricing on this. If I would be a bit pessimistic, I would assume LL saw the great desire for lastnames within the user base and is now looking to see how much cash they can squeeze out of the cow.

Edited December 17, 2019 by Syo Emerald

[Fauve Aeon]

For some people it’s just not going to be a good $40 value. For others it will be hallelujah and more jazz funerals for the soon to be shrinking ‘Resident’ clan. I can see some people wanting to change both first and last names because now the first name they smooshed together is going to feel weird with an added official last name

Maybe the Lab will offer some kind of a price special or a first name last name combo change bundle at some point in the future.
They also auctioned one custom first and last name at Fantasy Faire this year during the Linden Jail and Bail,  maybe they will do one or more again. It raised a decent amount! 
Then there’s this... http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:Custom_Name_Program 

but if $40 ‘rustles your lindies’ then $500/year might just cause a conniption fit. 
 

Edited December 17, 2019 by Fauve Aeon

[Alwin Alcott]

23 minutes ago, Syo Emerald said:

What is the point of that argument? This only make sense in discussions involving substitute products, that are both equally suited to fullfill a task.

 

23 minutes ago, Syo Emerald said:

Thats a strange string of arguments to be made. "But this is Second Life", does that mean a name change has to be above and behond expensive by nature? Does "this is Second Life" equal to "this needs to be expensive"?

just turning your remarkt the other way round gives the answer ... there is no reason at all to compare those rates.

Because they do it, LL should do that too, is nó reason.

[Beth Macbain]

34 minutes ago, Syo Emerald said:

If I would be a bit pessimistic, I would assume LL saw the great desire for lastnames within the user base and is now looking to see how much cash they can squeeze out of the cow.

They are a business - that is precisely what they are supposed to be doing. 

$40 is relative when it comes to defining it as expensive or not. I know for some people, that's a lot of money. For others, not so much. It's actually a lot less than what I thought they would charge based on speculation from others and I'm really surprised at this backlash. 

[Cindy Evanier]

3 minutes ago, Beth Macbain said:

 I'm really surprised at this backlash. 

Not me.  People love to complain about LL.  They could have said $10 and JoeIWasn'tbrightenoughtocomeupwithsomethingoriginal Resident would still be moaning

[Alyona Su]

2 minutes ago, Cindy Evanier said:

7 minutes ago, Beth Macbain said:

 I'm really surprised at this backlash. 

Not me.  People love to complain about LL.  They could have said $10 and JoeIWasn'tbrightenoughtocomeupwithsomethingoriginal Resident would still be moaning

I concur. Then there are all the entitlement-attitude types who expect everything for nothing, Linden Lab business-sustainability be damned.

[Solar Legion]

Heck, if my suggestion is taken and if this includes the ability to change the First Name as well *which at one point I could have sworn a Linden said it was) then I have told my Partner (my SO offline as well) That I'd pay for her to go Premium for a month and pay for her to change her name to match.

And I am on a fixed bloody income!

Edited December 17, 2019 by Solar Legion

[Alyona Su]

3 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

Heck, if my suggestion is taken and if this includes the ability to change the First Name as well *which at one point I could have sworn a Linden said it was) then I have told my Partner (my SO offline as well) That I'd pay for her to go Premium for a month and pay for her to change her name to match.

It has been confirmed by Oz Linden (I'll not spend an hour trying to find it) as I had the same question and tagged - The choices are: Change first name ONLY, change last name ONLY, or change full, first and last names together. 

Edited December 17, 2019 by Alyona Su

[cheesecurd]

1 minute ago, Alyona Su said:

I concur. Then there are all the entitlement-attitude types who expect everything for nothing, Linden Lab business-sustainability be damned.

The issue is that the username holds the exact same value as any other platform and the ones that have paid name changes are a lot cheaper. It’s just a name, but if you want to change it there of course needs to be some kind of fee designed so people don’t do it frivolously. The idea of username changes on these other games is not for profit, it’s so people don’t change their name whenever they feel like it and abuse that feature somehow, or use up all the “real” usernames.

Roblox has that 1000R$ or 10$ USD fee because they have too many users, there aren’t any 3 character names left, there aren’t any 4 character all letter names left, they’re running out of 5 character names that don’t have underscores even. That’s why they charge for it, people wanted the feature but due to there being a finite quantity of names that didn’t look like XxUsername123xX it had to cost enough to be prohibitive to random changes but also enough to be reasonable to purchase rather than just make a new account and then buy back your crap.

Runescape made it a bond for the same reasons, but they cycle out usernames too. You only save your current and last, after the 2nd name change your original is open to use again.

40$ is an insane price for the sake of a username, especially when we have nicknames for cosmetic purposes. And even moreso when you’re limited to a list of premade last names. If I’m paying 40$ then at the bare minimum I want to customize both parts of my name. 40$ is still steep then, wether it’s a first+last name or not.

[Alyona Su]

1 minute ago, cheesecurd said:

The issue is that the username holds the exact same value as any other platform and the ones that have paid name changes are a lot cheaper.

This is not an issue because this is not one of those others with paid name-changes. This is Second Life, operated by Linden Lab. Any comparison is moot at best. If you feel the other company is better for charging less, then I recommend you go to that platform to change your name. Otherwise we'll record and respect your disappointment with the Linden Lab, Second Life platform pricing for said name-change and move on.

[Solar Legion]

Except ... it isn't "just a name" in the system. It is - or was - part of the data used to identify an individual account, linked quite tightly to the UUID (and in some earlier functionality, interchangeable with such).

It is not a simple User Name/Battle Tag/Other Cosmetic Identifier, stop trying to equate it to such.

[Eva Knoller]

But, it’s optional, and something LL does not have to provide. If $40 is too much then don’t change your name. I swear I feel like I’m in the twilight zone when I read this forum sometimes.

[Solar Legion]

7 minutes ago, Alyona Su said:

It has been confirmed by Oz Linden (I'll not spend an hour trying to find it) as I had the same question and tagged - The choices are: Change first name ONLY, change last name ONLY, or change full, first and last names together. 

Well that is a relief.

Now to hope they accept the suggested Last Name ....

[Oz Linden]

11 hours ago, Fauve Aeon said:

I don’t think a 1 time of charge of $40 is way too much for changing something we use as often as a name but I think that’s per name so to change both, $80?

A change of either or both is just one charge; it is not per name.

[cheesecurd]

Just now, Solar Legion said:

Except ... it isn't "just a name" in the system. It is - or was - part of the data used to identify an individual account, linked quite tightly to the UUID (and in some earlier functionality, interchangeable with such).

It is not a simple User Name/Battle Tag/Other Cosmetic Identifier, stop trying to equate it to such.

That is exactly the same as it on any other game. That is not an excuse. The names are not cosmetic alone like our nicknames are.

2 minutes ago, Alyona Su said:

This is not an issue because this is not one of those others with paid name-changes. This is Second Life, operated by Linden Lab. Any comparison is moot at best. If you feel the other company is better for charging less, then I recommend you go to that platform to change your name. Otherwise we'll record and respect your disappointment with the Linden Lab, Second Life platform pricing for said name-change and move on.

It being SecondLife and not another platform is not an excuse either. 
 

2 minutes ago, Eva Knoller said:

But, it’s optional, and something LL does not have to provide. If $40 is too much then don’t change your name. I swear I feel like I’m in the twilight zone when I read this forum sometimes.

oh I do not intend to, as I doubt many people actually will with a price like that

its just a big flag that says “we can suck more money out of these decade+ playing users. They’re just trying to trick the oldschool users. 
“finally, we can change our names after so and so years of waiting! Who cares what the price is?”

Theyre pricing at at 40$ because they know that those people will pay that 40$, and they could make more money on them than the hordes of newer generation users who don’t care and if they did, would only bother if the price was cheaper.

This kind of system is a standard feature in other games and on other websites, hell, Twitter lets you change everything you want for free any time, steam let’s you change your own profiles url any time you want, this isn’t exactly some niche feature. Username changes aren’t special, the monetization of them is exclusively to keep people from changing their names all the time when there are only so many usernames. LL wants to specifically make a profit off of this with a price like that, that’s not prohibitive to keep people from wanting to change their names, that’s priced to be sold to people who don’t care what the price is.

They could make it 100$ and I’m certain that the same amount of people would actually buy into it.

[Solar Legion]

No, it is not "exactly the same" - in most games, your Account Name and your User Name/displayed name are different data points. Here, the User Name is the Account Name and your choice of displayed name is treated the way any other service would treat a "User Name".

Gripe about the price all you want, don't confuse the system Linden Lab uses with the systems other services/MMOs and such use.

Do remember that it has taken well over a year or more for them to figure out how to allow for this at all without absolutely breaking the existing system.

Edited December 17, 2019 by Solar Legion

[cheesecurd]

To anyone who has used any other social platform in the last decade it looks like this:

LL: “Hey guys, we’re bringing back last names! And you will be able to change your name.”

Giant crowd of people: “yay!”

LL: “Except we’re still going to use premade last names.”

Slightly less people: “Ok, yay!?”

LL: “You will need premium to change your name.”

Even less people: “yay”

LL: “On top of a flat 40$ fee, to pick a non custom name from a list.”

Literally just the SL boomers: “yay”

 

[Solar Legion]

In short, anyone who (wrongly) assumes it's like every other system out there.

Your point was ... What again?

Some will find it worth the cost while others won't. Some that find it worth the cost were here when the initial systems went online. Some understand or educated themselves on how it actually functions here - that last part being all that matters: How it functions here.

Edited December 17, 2019 by Solar Legion

[Beth Macbain]

3 minutes ago, cheesecurd said:

Literally just the SL boomers: “yay”

But what about those of us who are SL Boomers, but RL Gen-Xers? 

Not everything is about generations or age. 

[cheesecurd]

2 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

No, it is not "exactly the same" - in most games, your Account Name and your User Name/displayed name are different data points. Here, the User Name is the Account Name and your choice of displayed name is treated the way any other service would treat a "User Name".

Gripe about the price all you want, don't confuse the system Linden Lab uses with the systems other services/MMOs and such use.

No, it is the same on many platforms. User ids being tied to your actual name. Runescape in particular, your username changes your user ID. Everything attributed to that ID changes with your username.

Roblox is a bit different, your user ID is basically your join date order, but your usernames are also permanently tied to your account and your user data that gets picked up in games or whatever. Your previous usernames also remain as your functional name, say you were set up as an admin that just uses a username list and it uses your old name, your old name is technically still your name, as it’s on your list of user data, you will still have your admin status with your new name.

This isn’t some special thing that only SL does. And even if it was that your username is your user ID, what does that matter? Changing your user ID on everything attributed to your old user ID wouldn’t exactly take a lot of effort.

2 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

In short, anyone who (wrongly) assumes it's like every other system out there.

Your point was ... What again?

Lol? Let me rephrase this in forum ban terminology 

If you buy into this, you are being played by LL, who is trying to sell this feature to users who don’t know any better. They are scamming you, they are doing that because they know a solid chunk of their player base is so out of touch with the modern internet social sphere that they can say whatever they want to them and nobody will think any differently.

They are bending you over and viciously pushing your intestines in and expecting you to ask for more. And they won’t even give you the reach around.

Its the most blatantly obvious money grabbing monetization of a basic feature I’ve ever seen, phone app micro-transactions targeted at children are more ethical than this. 

[Alyona Su]

13 minutes ago, cheesecurd said:

It being SecondLife and not another platform is not an excuse either.

No one is saying it's an excuse.

Why does one store charge more for the same product as another store in RL? What is their "excuse"? Answer this question, friend, and you will have the reasoning for the Linden Lab pricing in comparison to other platform pricing. The fact is that it is what it is. You can other participate by investing or not. There's nothing wrong with complaining about it as long as that make you feel better, but complaints are unlikely to cause a change in policy for a feature like this.

[cheesecurd]

4 minutes ago, Beth Macbain said:

But what about those of us who are SL Boomers, but RL Gen-Xers? 

Not everything is about generations or age. 

It’s just a title. I reference those who have that 10+ year join date and follow SL culture of that time.

Your real life age isn’t affiliated.

[Wulfie Reanimator]

2 hours ago, CaerolleClaudel said:

If only choosing a last name was the biggest obstacle to integrating with SL. Everything is so complicated and opaque, especially if you are going mesh, and though they have a few tutorials when you first land in-world, you have to put in a huge amount of work to figure things out. You really have to want to be in SL and work at it to really get much out of it.

You're absolutely right, but that isn't mutually exclusive with the fact that having additional formal steps to account creation has an impact on the amount of people who end up staying on SL.

[Alyona Su]

10 minutes ago, cheesecurd said:

To anyone who has used any other social platform in the last decade it looks like this:

LL: “Hey guys, we’re bringing back last names! And you will be able to change your name.”

Giant crowd of people: “yay!”

LL: “Except we’re still going to use premade last names.”

Slightly less people: “Ok, yay!?”

LL: “You will need premium to change your name.”

Even less people: “yay”

LL: “On top of a flat 40$ fee, to pick a non custom name from a list.”

Literally just the SL boomers: “yay”

 

It appears some people have a major issue with the way Linden Lab is doing this. It seems that it may be a good idea for them to step back, take a deep breath, and reevaluate life priorities.

[cheesecurd]

3 minutes ago, Alyona Su said:

It appears some people have a major issue with the way Linden Lab is doing this. It seems that it may be a good idea for them to step back, take a deep breath, and reevaluate life priorities.

It appears that I am watching the game I love and enjoy exploit their userbase.

And it would not be right for me to just ignore it. And i will speak out against it.