RobertDeCraon

The thing here is, LR never gave anybody that much money to really farm for US$. The amounts were just enough for example to do some uploads, develop a little stuff and rent a small shop. So at some point, after a starting phase, one have to change anyway the strategy. But of course, if this strategy leads to good products, other people with more RL money just buy more L$ to buy it. And of course, if such a business grows in SL, it needs more space ... that is how an economy grows. Of course, while this is all a mechanism that can be proven with mathematical certainty, there are always a lot of people doubting it. So ... we have Friday, at the best time in Europe and still, we didn't come over 50k online anymore. Let's see where this goes?

@Callum ... because nobody does ONLY farm those crystals. The L$ Linden spends here go back into the economy, thus sustain for example development of others, or finance the development of new things directly (z.B. as uploads). And when the economy grows, people need more places, rent spaces on sims for example, make the next layer of the economy more profitable. It ends up with LL basically selling more sims, bringing more players to a point, where they have to go premium and so on. What the old LR did was to give new players a chance to build up very modest businesses. If the product or service is good, the rent bigger and bigger spaces, which adds up to sims, or if it is not good, all Linden lost were a few L$ which are already back in the system and thus show elsewhere up in the investment chain. However, this is all at the moment moot, the quests in LR are totally bugged and can not be finished anyway. So right now, people are miffed. A mathematical indicator was already 46k people online over the last three hours. The European evening under the week normally is over 50 usually. Roughly 8% less than usual, lets see where this goes?

Ethan, seem not to realize, that, if you don'T buy Dell and Windows, you can get a quite decent box for limited money? And you seem also not to realize, that, if you live in an urban area, you get often quite decent internet- connections also for not too much money. ADSL is cheap and often sufficient. So, if in your limitless arrogance, people are only poor to you if they are already starving ... alright. Otherwise, there are poor people and it is not always a question of "want" but of "can" spend more ... or not! So, God may keep you naivité ... means, never hits you with hard times and never makes it necessary for you to use mathematics ... because if you fail already on understanding why cutting off the working low end of the user base is a bad idea ... chances are you will fail with more complex problems equally!

THe problem here seems not to be the fact, that Linden has the right to make a new game. Without doubt, they have. However, some poor people worked a lot to make a few L$ in the old LR and thus, were able to participate in the economy. The economy in SL has anyway some problems, the uncertainties caused by Sansar did not help either. So the real question is, has Linden performed with their cut-off perfomed another step in the log painful death of SL. Because if so, Linden has of course to see to find another cash cow after they dug themselves already the Sansar hole. Linden is in the need to reinforce the user base again to survive. We players lose only a few L$, they lost step by step their only income source.