Ciaran Laval

I think they just implemented something called an "incentive." It's about time. I see the marketing director may well be worth her weight in salt. For new folks maybe, for existing users it's a disincentive.

.It is just so frustrating to go from such excellent customer service to such awful customer care and get "promises" of more of the same! Bingo, and it comes down to them undervaluing their own support team, I agree with you that they were once excellent, whomever decided that support of that superb level should be cut, should hang their head in shame.

"Improving Support for Premium and Concierge Residents" Ok, let me address this as a Concierge customer, at one stage, Concierge support was the best support i'd received from a company, ever, it was ridiculously superb and then you went and ruined it. Linden Lab, wake up, self help does not work, this is a pipe dream, whereas some customers will race through self help, many many others will not. I don't know why you understimated the awesomeness of your support package, but telling me that cutting 24/7 brilliant support and replacing it with self help, will not cut the mustard. Linden Lab, please wake up.

I've worked in support for many years and you guys are doing it all wrong lately, with a niche product like you have, you need inhouse support, I don't care how appealing the finance manager sells third party support, it is not suitable for a platform like this. You've cut support for concierge residents, I don't think you appreciate how much that has hurt, or how much it has ruined the reputation of your once stellar support services.

They didn't need to buy it to begin with. What was the point? Rhetorical answer: To tear it up like they did XStreet and Apez. OnRez!!! Apez is still going just fine.

@ Ayla erm being that english is my second language (no pun intended lol) can you explain that one please? I can translate it into Brummie for you

You just told me to spare generalities after claiming people who approve of teens on the MG are pervs. Smooth, real smooth. Benefits? Any are small, and probably won't impact anyone. So from a selfish point of view, yes, the addition of a couple thousand 16-17 yr olds does not necessarily "MAKE THE GRID BETTER FOR YOU". More teen sellers, younger points of view, slightly more buyers, more creators, etc probably doesn't enthrall you as much it does me or my peers. Also, this happens to develop SL in an important direction, a "future of the internet" direction. Ishy your contributions are welcome, but the main grid is nowhere near suitable for people under the age of 18, this merger simply shouldn't be happening whilst the grid is as it is. The solution in this blog post, is a good one for teen educators, it should be extended so that teens have their own continent and then a longer term solution can be worked out from there, they could even have verified adults who meet a certain criteria allowed on that continent, such as parents of said teens, this would help the 13-15 year olds too. However officially welcoming 16-17 year olds on the main grid, is simply irresponsible, this should not be happening.

Perhaps the discounts were always too deep. Is this true? I honestly don't know, but they seemed incredibly generous, to an outsider. Do all suppliers of non-profits typically provide such attractive discounts? Still, though, if the discounts were just too big, why didn't LL merely scale them back to an industry-standard level (whatever that may be)? 50% is a whopping discount unless you're comparing it to some of the educational discounts the likes of Adobe give with regards to their learning editions of software, which is basically the same as the full version but you're not allowed by the terms of the license to use the products for commercial services. Microsoft every now and then run the ultimate steal, which produces whopping discounts on Microsoft Office and such like for students, again it requires you to read the license carefully. Apple do discounts for students and faculty staff, but not in the 50% bracket. There are always educational discounts available for hardware, always, but again not at 50% and often based on bulk purchasing. So yes, the discounts are generous.

hi Maria, We're all for conversation about the decision outlined in this blog post, but your comment is merely advertising for a competing service, and as such it contravenes our discussion guidelines, so I'm going to delete it, sorry! Wallace Oh Wallace, promote why your product is better, don't paint yourselves as being afraid of competition.

I have read through about half of these ridiculous and extraneous comments. All of the points you make are moot. For you don't realize that teens have already been coming to the main grid and doing just what you're saying they're doing. Although, I doubt that they're coming just to "spy" on you so that you or LL can go to jail. For real, get a life and shut your mouth. You make no sense. Teens are going to come to the main grid one way or another, and Linden Lab is just making it easier. You walk by 16 and 17 year olds every day, and you don't get arrested. You act like their presence will just make you fall apart. When I was a lad there were always a couple of bars around that would serve underage drinkers, these bars were well known. Strangely, and this must confuse teenagers, the government didn't decide to lower the drinking age because some teens could find bars that would serve them, imagine that hey.

OMG the mute Prokofy speaks! I think I've rented about 10 homes from you Mr. Neva, and this is the most I've seen you type lol. Behave!

The increase is massive for those non-profit organisations, this isn't the ideal way to do business, LL were told this when they wanted to increase full sim retail sims from USD$195 to USD$295, the end result was grandfathering. They were told this when they wanted to increase Openspaces from USD$75 to USD$125, they grandfathered some at USD$95 and have stuck with that. Large increases hurt plans, you are however right that LL need to cover their costs but this large increase strategy will always attract criticism.

Oh dear, this is very bad news. Budgets for educators are often set well in advance and in some cases very fixed even looking across a grant period of some years. In our case I have just negotiated funds to renew some of our regions from 12 months from now, so changes on a short time scale that double prices are quite a shock. In one case I have funding fixed for 2years out too. We would like to retain our regions but this can only mean that we pack things up tighter on less regions to keep the costs the same as budgeted.That itself causes work and remodelling which is most unfortunate. But I guess this is a done deal... Our nice archipelago and fancy coastlines will have to go leaving things much more utilitarian. A two year fixed price, have you rang the Lab to see if they will do you a deal now on that? I'm not sure how pricing works for educators and when I first read this I thought it was off as budgets are negotiated for the shcool year, but the mention of renewals suggests longer term contracts are available than the usual month to month for retail customers.

Whereas i appreciate the long term commitment for retail customers I'm a tad concerned about the short notice for education customers, couldn't you have at least given them until the summer as schools plan for the school year and their budget would be based largely on current costs. Ah sorry, renewals will be at the new rates, hopefully then they will all be renewing in the summer, it's still a blow but not as big a blow as I first thought.

To take your arguments to a logical conclusion, children should be banned from the internet, not allowed near a chat room, not allowed on any site that is not owned and policed by Disney. It seems that you are not actually worried so much about the children as much as the chance that they may falsely accuse someone else. If you read the guidelines of the new policy, you will see that children under 16 will be allowed ONLY on supervised sims, and older children, 16+ are adults in almost every country but the US, and are considered adult enough to make their own decisions. Nobody is saying this at all. Firstly, people who are opposed to kids coming onto the grid as it currently stands, have been saying the solution provided in this blog post is largely a good one. Secondly, childern 16+ are not considered adults in almost every country, they are still children in the UK for sure, they can't vote, they can't drink alcohol in the pub, they can't watch 18+ movies. Safeguarding children policies are to do with people under the age of 18. This platform, as it stands, is a long way from being suitable for people under the age of 18, Linden Lab have a hell of a lot of work to do before it is. It is quite easy to get someone banned from SL by making false accusations of many types, the new rules do not make this any more likely in my view. Children are merely people who have not learned as much as an adult yet, they are not a dangerous breed of animal that we have to be protected from. Just a thought, you have the ability to save all chat and IMs, also, LL has a record of all chat and IMs, that can be used in an harrassment proceedings, if you are worried about the chat being in voice, then dont use it Children need to be in an environment that is suitable for children. Adults sometimes like to go to places where there aren't children, and in such places they will act in a different manner than they would if children were present, that's what has happened with Second Life. 16 and 17 year olds should not be being welcomed here until Linden Lab can make those areas they roam, suitable for teens and if that means putting in measures similar to the one in this blog post, then that's fine.

I have several friends who are WOW, Eve Online and Harry Potter enthusiasts and I asked them today for their feelings on AU being closed. None really cared to much and not one felt Linden Labs owed it to them to keep it operational. I didn't detect any hard feelings toward Linden Labs either. The opposite in fact. Most felt AU must have turned out to be a financial glut which would make sense to close the books on. How many of your friends used AU? Eve-Online users were the big users of the site prior to the LL purchase, but not everyone from Eve-Online used it.

There are many G businesses on the mainland. It would be a huge disruption IMO. Parcels would have to be redrawn, they would have to ensure that people who want and paid for a beachfront or whatever has it, respect the rights of the resident to not be placed next to another parcel business they feel is either competition or in some other way disrupts them, etc. People bought their locations with many of these things in mind, and to simply toss it up in the air and wait for the dust to settle ... well that seems to be LL MO, but it's not right and it will have severe repercussions. This is exactly what happened when LL decided we needed an adult continent and at the time several people told LL they should be creating a G rated continent, some people felt it should be instead of the adult continent and some felt that it should be as an addition to the adult continent, to allow people a more predictable experience. LL really should have listened back then, clear boundaries between continents is the only sensible solution, we now have the silly situation whereby PG rated business on mature land cannot be found in PG search, this didn't used to be the case, there's a checkbox to flag your parcel as mature, someone at LL decided to change this with no announcement. The vast majority of sims are mature, by a whopping number, but many on mature land are not mature business, they are there because that's the larger option. So now PG rated business who aren't on PG land are punished, this is not the way to do things.

Of course management is more involved with the directions we're finding disagreeable, but it doesn't mean none of them care. For instance, some of the unpopular choices weren't ignorant of the community, LL just had to make a tough choice. Such as Homesteads being created; although, the pricing of the two lower performance islands is another issue altogether. The change was necessary because people were abusing the intended usage of them. I disagree entirely on this point, management were quite happy whilst they were selling like hot cakes to ignore those of us who pointed out they weren't being used for their intended purpose, what happened in the end was disgraceful. The whole process was ignorant of the community, from encouraging a different kind of usage (seriously, who was going to place an open waterway in the middle of nowhere) to how they dealt with the problem in the end.

I dont get why the supposed solution to problems like this these days are more restrictions, limitations on adults when it is the responsibility of the teen's mother or guardian to be the one to control what the kid sees. The solution being provided in this blog post is an excellent one, the concern is the solution being provided when 16 and 17 year olds come here and that solution will mean more restrictions and limitations on adults, that's exactly what people are complaining about.

That being said, i must strongly disagree with your statement that Lindens don't care. I know they care, through extensive personal experience in both SL and RL over the last 6+ years. Now, i'm not saying there isn't evidence that some people who make some decisions aren't very in touch with the Residents, but there's also times when people just disagree over the best way to go forward. It's these times when we hear from the opposition on the blogrums and it looks like everyone opposes a thing, but generally speaking, people tend to post less fervently when they're happy. I agree that Lindens do care, well some of them and you are correct that people post less fervently when they are happy, that's human nature right across the board, we remember bad experiences for a lot longer than we remember good ones apparently.

Whereas there were WoW users on Avatars United before LL purchased it, Eve-Online seems to be the big loser as their users were the ones who seemed to be most attracted, a couple of years ago 40% of signups were rumoured to be from Eve-Online.

Well said, it is a bit of a PR disaster for Linden Lab how they've handled this, I'm disappointed to see how this has panned out, whereas I understand the business perspective, there is a market for this sort of site, that's why it was there in the first place.

The ed but then the only regions that have free sex bed use... are adult regions..and thus a teenager can't access those regions. Therefore the linden ideas are the right way to go.... Nope, mature sims can have sex beds, they can even sell sex beds and mature sims neighbour pg sims all over the place. The main grid is not a suitable environment for teens, the solution provided here in this blog post is a good one for teen educators but it needs to be extended, teens should be on a continent they can't search the rest of the grid from and only verified adults can go into their continent.

There does seem to have been a missed opportunity here, especially when you consider that Facebook doesn't allow avatars and the big furore when Blizzard talk of putting real names on their forums, never mind that plenty of people in Second Life are aghast at the idea of any sort of real name capabilities. However a business decision has been made, some folks will be disappointed and those not associated with Second Life won't have the best impression of Linden Lab.

Again, there's an absolutely massive difference between a door that says 18 only and a door that says 13 + or 16+, this really shouldn't be hard to figure out.