Scott Coleman

Tier fees are an expense that can be claimed on taxes, so paying more in world to reduce what a land owner can claim in expenses makes no sense, and paying more for it because it's in game money makes even less sense. Now they pay double fees from what they were to cash out so they can pay their tier is even more of an expense to claim. And since "Land barons" typically pay much less than 209 a month, unless they are a relatively new company, that's really an underdog paying full tier, the $20 a month (Thats not really an extra $20 a month due to the increase of cash out fees) the decrease in tier doesn't help them at all. Even if the Land Barons don't do a drastic price drop, unless it's a really huge company, a piddly 14 bucks a month or so reduction in tier (after the fee increase) isn't exactly going to do much other than possibly cover their living increases in rl.

The interesting thing that people are missing is the really big land barons pay much less than 209 a month, so this doesn't really do anything to help "evil land barons"

When you also have to pay extra to be premium to have the privilege to pay with L$, you are paying more L$ because of the increased fee as well as the increased monthly fee to be premium, there really isn't a difference

Doesn't matter if you pay tier with L$ or not, the fee is included in the value of the L$ so even paying islands you are still paying the new 5%, the only thing it does is makes it more convenient not having to wait for L$ to sell to pay tier, so less planning on trying to make sure you have the cash when tier fees come due. Not sure if this has already been said or not.

Part of what changed is the residents. The imagination of when SL started is long gone. Most of what you see is copies of the real world and not so much original stuff that you've never seen before. I believe throughout the years there has been tons of changes that has hurt sl other than just the imagination has died, but could be a part of why it died. A lot of the freedom has been taken away, it was the wild west in the beginning, you could do pretty much anything as long as it didn't violate the small amount of rules that existed at the time. They got rid of stipends for all accounts (Even free accounts got 50 a week), reducing the premium from 500 down to 100. The concern was that there wasn't enough sinks built in to remove Linden from the economy flooding the market with Linden and ruining the value. They mass produced land destroying the value. Some of this was making the adult continent, some of it I think was because of the guy that figured out how to cheat the auction system and was in bidding on sims that weren't up for sell yet, allowing him to buy them for the minimum bid. When they attempted to stop it and take the sims from him, he sued them and won. They got rid of camping. Like it or not, people would make money in game that they were turning around and buying things in SL. The reason they put a stop to it was because of all the complaints that places were cheating the traffic system to boost numbers. I believe there were other avenues that could have been taken that would have had the same effect, yet still allowed people to make money. The developers incentive award was gotten rid of. This was another influx of linden into the market, but it was how places funded money trees and camping that again, had people in world reinvesting into sl. Was it being gamed by some? Yes, but again, it's something that could have been fixed in other ways without making it more difficult on people that in rl might be living on a fixed income or just didn't make enough to justify spending in a game. It was fun watching the noobs running from place to place trying to get Lindens off of money trees. (The problem is when there is an issue everyone wants to just get rid of it because it's the easiest thing to do) The Lindens don't really come out into the world and explore anymore the way they used to. I had seen them shopping in malls to dress up their avs, now they only seem to show up if there is some sort of issue with sim performance or prepping them for auction. (I have heard they are more active in the new premium homes area, but there is a hell of a lot more of sl thats been neglected for a long time. There was the adult fiasco. They could have upset a lot less people if they had moved the general sims to their own continent and replaced the general with mature, but instead they upended almost everything by forcing the most popular things to a new adult continent. (Thanks to rl politicians sticking their noses into a 3d world looking for problems) At some point, it seems like the Lindens just didn't want to be as much a part of their world as they used to be. They don't seem to police griefers, the corn field last I saw seemed like a tourist trap, with increased prim limits people naturally started using every prim they could with no understanding of sim performance, scripts, textures, or graphics. So naturally it's the games fault, it's the sims fault, it's the parcels fault, it's the land owners fault....and don't try to tell them otherwise because they can log into WoW where they don't realize the optimization is different. Stores around the hubs all died since the noobs don't all have money to buy things and if they did, there is no incentive to explore the world to find things because they can just go on MP and buy it there, or it's just handed to them as freebies. (I have no issue with freebies, but giving everything at the starting point doesn't encourage exploration) As was stated in a post earlier, it's not as easy to build in world, what you can build just isn't the same thing as you can create in 3rd party software. Between that, and the mp, creators (Not all) aren't in world much, many don't have an inworld presence, they sell through mp, thus no stores or malls the way there used to be, and no reason for people to explore to find them, there is no real need for land, and so the world is much more empty and barren, as far as mainland. When a new avatar log in, and it looks like an abandoned wasteland, and the only people they see are attacking them, trying to have sex with them, or are spamming them with stuff to sell...yeah, why stay? In the last year the numbers logging in, at least according to what firestorm shows has dropped around 10k during US peak hours. (Last year during US peak times it was 55 to 60k avatars online and the US night time numbers have dropped as well. The latest drop seems to line up with the push to get LL's income away from the land market and more from the premium accounts, along with increased fees to cash out, and screwing with island prices, so that the people that had to pay serious money to get them now feel like they were screwed over. Eventually, it becomes the matter of "Death by 1000 cuts" PS Look at the wonderful great things that were made with prim builds, the imagination it had to have taken, the insane amount of work shaping and texturing....and SL was crazy and fun. Now it's just kind of....stale. Even the ibfl responses, the omg another sl is dead response....it's not original any more. Fix that, make sl fun again, even if it takes bringing some of the old back and it will get back to what it was, what it could be, what it should have been.