Grumpity Linden

That's exactly what we're doing. Premium prices do not go up until June 24th. Additionally, anyone who wishes to do so, can add up to 1yr at current rates to their existing membership.

Correct!

Heathernorton, it won't be announced before the June 24th deadline, but you will be able to upgrade to the new superduper premium level from a regular premium level at the time it comes out. There will be a way to credit your existing membership towards the new.

Plurabelle, you don't have to pay to keep those groups. You won't lose them until you decide to change groups. And you could even go premium, use your 60 group slots, and downgrade - and still get to keep them.

There are few things I feel as strongly about as the outcome of that attempt - you may know them as web profiles and the profile feed. A facebook clone is hardly possible without the facebook budget - otherwise you end up with what we have. Your larger point about needing better solutions than the current overloaded group system is absolutely fair, and we're very much aware of it.

Hi Jo! You can do that today by creating Roles which cannot receive messages or participate in group chat. From the KB: https://community.secondlife.com/knowledgebase/english/creating-managing-moderating-and-disbanding-groups-r48/#Section__5 To create a new group role: Open the group profile. Click Roles to display the Roles section. Click the ROLES tab Click New Role. Enter: • Role Name for the new role. • Role Title for the role. If you have this role in your active group, the title appears inworld above your avatar name. • Description of the role. Select abilities for the new role under Allowed Abilities. And then you can disable the ability to receive notices and/or participate in group chat.

You will be able to upgrade at will of course.

I'm sorry, I don't know where this rumor came from, but it's blatantly false. https://secondlife.com/corporate/pricing.php clearly states the fee to sell L$ is 3.5%. We didn't announce raising it. It's not raised.

The fee to buy L$ remains $1.49 regardless of amount. The $3 fee you saw in the blog is the minimum fee charged to process credit (formerly known as cash out).

We are working on the Events feature (https://events.secondlife.com/), not actually making changes to resident-run shopping or other events inworld - Although hopefully the improvements to the feature will improve the running and publicizing of said events.

NOPE. No. Uhuh.

Tempting! Unfortunately, not this go-round. But, as you may have noticed, we're committed to this land affordability direction.

There are many great and reasonable a la carte suggestions out here (and quite a few we considered internally). The truth is, we would be neck deep in bugs for the next 5 years, and while we're still open to implementing _some small number_ of the premium features a la carte, we have to pass on the "build your own membership" as a full blown offering.

I don't know if Lindens were the ones you were asking for ideas Factual corrections: The cost of converting L$ to USD is unchanged. If you want to use that USD balance in SL, you won't be charged any more. However, if you are processing credit to, say, your PayPal account, the fee will be 5% instead of the previous 2.5% Also note, Buydown regions will also see a price reduction - something we hadn't done before.

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

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.

Private Estate Land rentals are a market economy. We don't control the prices set by landlords. But we did just drop land prices a year ago, and we saw a reduction in rents, so we're going by precedent - it's what we saw happen in the market last year. Landlords can, of course, argue what they want, but someone will drop prices and others will need to compete. And yes, if you prefer to own mainland and not have to rent, those prices have dropped pretty dramatically in recent memory too - not only did we cut mainland cost, we doubled what's included with your membership. And we think it's still a great deal!

Sannita, you would not get charged VAT on your annual membership at all.

In service of transparency, I'm declaring that sleep is in order. I am hoping to find a civil and friendly conversation here in the morning! Also, a pony.

If I told you those rumors were not based in reality, would it help put out the rumors or only pour more oil into the fire? In any case, the truth is that those rumors are not based in reality.

Oh hey, I posted a thing which clarifies a number of questions raised in this thread. Nota Bene regarding the pitchforks ...

Yes. We are, in the background sekritly planning for the end of SL in general and ... um ... basic accounts in particular ...until only the Premiums remain? Does that sound right? I may have mixed things up, it's late, but you get the gist. Seriously, we've tried very hard to be as transparent as possible about our plans. I don't know if there's anything specific you have in mind that we've left unspoken

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.

UPDATE: We have heard your feedback. There will be no change to group limits for basic accounts: https://community.secondlife.com/blogs/entry/2559-group-limits-update-no-changes-for-basic-members/ OP: _____ 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 ~$20/mo reduction in price. For the first time we are also reducing GF/BD region pricing. This is not a frivolous gift to the 1%. This has real and proven effects on the rents many more pay. Premium prices are going up on June 24. Starting June 3 and until June 24, Premium accounts have 3 weeks to pre-pay an additional cycle of premium at the old rates. Best deal is, of course, prepaying for annual regardless of your current level. We hope you can take advantage of it. If you’re paying quarterly today, you can continue as quarterly. We will no longer offer it to new premium signups. With the new prices, VAT will be charged on monthly and quarterly but not annual (of course only in the countries where VAT applies). We looked. We hadn’t raised premium prices in the history of premium prices in SL. Crazy! A lot of value has been added to premium over the last few years (new Linden Homes, double tier, reduced mainland prices, premium access, more offline IMs, more transaction history, more groups, more animesh, experiences, and yet more to come) and we are raising prices to reflect that. We’re not lowering limits out of spite, groups really are quite a strain on our back end for a variety of painful historical reasons, including overloading group functionality instead of having other tools. This subject alone is worth a novel liberally sprinkled with tears. So anyway, we don’t hate basic users, and in fact we work hard to retain our free-to-play offering as one of the most generous across many industries. But yes, no big surprise, we do want to nudge active residents to become subscribers, because we think it’s a great value, and - as many have noted - we’re also running a business. But no, we're not shutting our doors to non-premium residents. Rumors of our insanity and villainy have been slightly exaggerated. Fees to process credit are going up, effective June 24. L$ 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. 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. 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. P.S. we haven't given up on Last Names either.

sorry about that. the hamster is just getting a snack, he'll brb in the wheel momentarily.