WickedWanda1956

Exactly Linden Lab is a business NOT a charity. See Johnboy, I told you the smug, arrogant, self-righteous people would emerge

yes, you are right, i forgot the village idiots

Hi johnboy, it was 2 weeks ago today that Ebbe Linden (CEO of Linden Lab) said that Linden Lab was working on the next version of "Second Life". Since then I have witnessed three camps of people on this subject. First are the Linden Lab cheerleaders who will tell you to shut up and bend over because the almighty Linden Lab are kind and benevolent people who would NEVER do anything bad to you. The second camp are those people who say they are going to leave SL now (which I did for a couple of days trying to find something that I enjoyed as much as Second Life but when I realized there is noothing out there that I am interested in, I cam back. The third group (which I now count myself in) are those people who have changed the way they view and play Second Life. I will NOT be renewing my premium membership at the end of the month. I am still renting (in fact I got a bigger rental lot today) but I am no longer buying anything over 200 linden. All I can say is hang in there, don't try to take it personally when the cheerleaders tell you that you are wrong. Just try to ignore them like me.

Thanks Medhue. I really see the new Second Life being more of a mobile app than anything else. As such, it has no interest from me. But to try and capture a share of that market does make smart business sense. I just had a thought. What is the average amount of time a person spends on present-day Second Life per visit versus what their business models (and I sure hope they have one) are projecting will be the average amount of time on "Second Life Lite" per visit? Is "Second Life Lite" going to be nothing more that a virtual Facebook/Twitter account? I REALLY worry about erosion from present-day Second Life.

Hi Gavin, I completely agree. It is the erosion of present-day Second Life that worries me the most. I don't think that Linden Labs is taking the current consumer base as being needed for future business. And maybe we are not what they want for "Lite". But until "Lite" is up and profitable, Linden Labs need present-day Second Life to be profitable. And with all that has happened in the past two weeks, I VERY seriously doubt it. Speaking for myself, I am making changes (still renting but no longer a premium member and budgeting my money spending basically a fourth of what I used to spend in a week). But if content begins to close on present-day Second Life, I will just have to hope to find something else to occupy my time. LINDEN LABS MUST ADDRESS RETENTION FOR BOTH CONSUMERS AND CONTENT CREATORS YESTERDAY

Before the LL "cheerleaders" get on today to tell us we are all wrong as usual, I thought I would add my two cents. I purposely waited to sleep on my thoughts and just watched the meeting again on YouTube. As a retired computer programmer, believe me when I say deadlines always come from managers who can't tell the difference from their butt from a hole in the ground. At best, I don't see a beta for "Second Life Lite" available for testers until two years from now in the summer of 2016. After a solid year of testing (and I am being generous with that estimate), they will open it up to the very creative people of present-day Second Life so they can build content. Now on this point, I can only guess as I am not a content creator so I am going to give that a year also. If a content creator sees a different time period, please let us know. Also during this time period, LL can continue fine tuning "Lite". That brings us to the summer of 2018 when LL can finally open the doors to "Lite". It all comes down to one question : "Do you believe that Linden Labs can catch lightning in the bottle again and recreate the magic of Second Life?". For myself, I can't tell you where I will be in four years, maybe even in "Lite".

Thanks, Perrie. Yes you did. While I will continue renting, I am going to stop being a premium member unless something changes between now and the end of the month to give me an incentive to continue as premium.

I agree the tier would help if mainland land was better so for me it is useless. As for live help, my two experiences with it were simply awful. I really hope other people's experience with it has been better.

At this time, I am a premium member with a quarterly billing cycle (yes, I know yearly would make more sense, can’t afford it), whose re-billing date is at the end of July. When I first started out, the only real incentive to be a premium member was the Linden house we got and the weekly stipend of 300L$. But I am renting a small piece of land now (1008 sq for 301L$ weekly getting 230 prims), and checking the buy lindens tab on the SL website a few minutes ago, I discovered that for $22.50 USD$ (the quarterly billing amount), I could buy 5,557L$ instead of receiving 3,900L$(300L$ times 13 weeks). What incentive is there for me to continue to be a premium member after this month?

With hindsight being 20-20, if the announcement had been that Linden Labs was creating a version of SL to work fantastically on tablets and smartphones, this forum topic would be at most 5 pages with 99% positive replies.The problem is that at least here in the US, we no longer trust anyone to do something that is for our mutual benefit. I have looked ALOT in the past couple of days for something that is at least half as good as what Second Life is now and there is nothing. I am interested in an environment that will run on my desktop (not a tablet or a smartphone) but if you want to try to capture a piece of that market, it makes smart business sense to me. But speaking for myself, I am not interested in those platforms. So when Linden Labs drops the meteor someday on Second Life, I will be one of those dinosaurs that is made extinct. But until then, I intend to stay

And that is what I am exactly worried about as a consumer. If enough creators/designers think like you (and I think you are right), Second Life will turn into a VIRTUAL WASTELAND. It is people like you and Cats and the others in this thread, that people like me come to Second Life (not because of Linden Labs). You provide the imagination, Linden provides the environment. And I am sorry but Ebbe's pronouncement is why Cats saw the decline in sales. On that point, I will not waver. The only point to ponder is whether it is temporay or permanent and you are right, that discussion needs to go in the other thread (although how the other thread descended into a discussion on kiddie porn, I have no idea).

Hi Phil, I really hope you are right about it all. I saw nothing in the past three days that was good in my opinion. I have started to back track myself and said spending a little money (but I don't see myself renting again but I was leaning that way before last week anyway). I have a couple of places (non-business) I like to go to now and if they suddenly close, I might have to rethink staying.

I see the current SL population breaking into three groups : 1. Those people who will continue on as if Friday's announcement had never occurred. Business-as-usual 2. Those people who will remain in SL but no longer spend (or at best very little) money. Skeptics 3. Those people who go on to other grids. Cutting their losses I have spent the vast majority of my time the past three days looking at alternatives to Second Life and frankly I have not found anything even half as good as we have it in Second Life now (even with all the warts(mesh)). That being said, for me (as a consumer), I will be in the second group.

And I am one of them. As a consumer, I will be riding out this storm (although I will no longer pay rent or purchase anything new). The land barons are just outright screwed. But the business owners like yourself have to come up with some hard decisions with very little concrete information. You can either bury your head in the sand (or if you prefer I keep thinking of the scene at the end of "Animal House" where Kevin Bacon is holding up his hands and yelling "Every one remain calm!) or shift to another sim (like Virtual Attire did on Tuesday). I do know that the Firestorm team will be holding a meeting this afternoon at 1 pm SLT to discuss this and try to quell the panic. Whatever you decide I wish you luck and for all you ostriches on this forum, don't waste your time replying, I won't take the bait. I think you are wrong, you think I am wrong, so be it, time will tell which one of us was right.

Thanks Dres, yes, that is my go-to closing arguement. I can get her face red and see the pout I have seen on her pace for over 28+ years.

THAT IS FANTASTIC. As a retired programmer, I wish you all the best and I am looking forward to the Brave New World

Thanks for your answer but if that is the case, I am gone now. I simply don't see the point in staying without that. I can spend the next two years looking for something better or simply wait until Version 2 is released and start over new like everyone else. Although I do agree that the currency rate needs to be established soon to allow people to get a better sense of what to do.

So (and this is a serious question), do you think it would be better to convert your Lindens now before the exchange rate goes potentially down the drain?

Just turned 58 earlier this month. I love Second Life and don't want to leave. I just need to have an answer to my linden transfer balance question sometime in the next month. As a consumer, I can rebuild but if Lindens don't transfer, I simply don't see the point in at least trying to look for something new now as I will be starting from scratch in two years anyway.

Thanks Perrie (I love Marvin too). I realize that creators and land barons might have diferent concerns than me but I am just a consumer. It all comes down to the question I asked upthread from here. Will lindens transfer on a one-to-one exchange rate from version 1 to version 2? As a consumer, my avatar and inventory can be replaced, but if lindens are not tranferable and I have not seen any thing about this anywhere, I just simply don't see the point in continuing.

The problem with that course of action is if there are more young people like my daughter and not like us. My daughter is CONSTANTLY on World of Warcraft and she tells me that people there are forever making fun and laughing at all of us, Second Lifers. I can't even repeat some of the jokes they have said in WoW about us. Her feeling is that people of her generation (25-35) are more into games like WoW then what the "old" people (like me) are into. Actually if someone can give me a counter arguement to her I would appreciate it.

Thanks Zena. I am honestly beginning to think that this is a generational arguement. With the old (like me) thinking that ownership means a damm versus the new (like my daughter) thinking that EVERYTHING is disposable.

If I was not retired I would agree with you but I am on a very fixed budget with literally all pennies accounted for. So it is not tiny amounts of real money to me. I came into SL after retirement to interact with people and not just veg out like my parents did. And I am sorry but distant future and two years are not the same.

We obviously fundamentaly disagree. But you are entitled to your opinion as I am entitled to mine. The difference in this situation is that the owner has said that the end is coming in two years (I am sorry there is NO way they keep two games up at the same time, they have enough problems now with just one). I want to thank you for your comments and wish you well but I am just going to wait and see if I get an answer about transfer of Lindens.

I won't comment on your first and third points as I am neither a creator or land owner; however, I will comment on your second point. I STRONLY disagree with your second point. Anything you buy now is wasted money. I simply don't understand why the concept to get something new each year is so important. Maybe I am an old goat but I honestly and sincerly don't understand this concept. New does not mean better and I simply have to point to Microsoft operating systems to give an example that most of us can actually agree on. Did anyone like Vista over XP?