Dartagan Shepherd

Poenald Palen wrote: So, you could all: 1. Ask the pet maker to allow feeding while they are in inventory. Would love to, however this is impossible. Scripts don't run in inventory. Kinda-sorta possible if we kept track of food as well as the pet in an external database rather than in an SL object, however, it'd require .... you guessed it, even more HTTP calls and points of failure.

They don't even have to do that, with word/phrase lists. They could automatically highlight the offending bits, and then you'd know exactly what to change. I think their thoughts are that you'd also know how to get around it, not sure. They don't seem to have a way to track how many mis-fires their system generates due to honest mistakes as opposed to what the system is supposed to catch. Should have never let minors in, in the first place and then it'd be less of an issue to grab for any possible infringement. Work-safe is another issue, but right ... if they wanted to make it easier, they could.

Ugg, it's a problem, agreed. We produce a breedable and we talk to other breedable producers. Many of us share the same problems, but they do indeed come down to problems with SL and stability. Most breedables will last days or longer before they actually starve in inventory, but it's a big inconvenience to pick them up and place them again, because most breedables have things that you set up such as their home position, food position relative to the pet, etc. So it's not just as easy as picking them up and setting them down. When they fail, it's generally due to an SL problem. Many of us breedable producers spend large amounts of time and effort (daily, without fail), to determine whether it's a bug of ours or an SL issue. Most of us I think also refund as much as we possibly can, with no proof or way to verify causes. Some breedables need to keep a unique ID in their own database to keep track of pets, and so there's not a decent built-in alternative than to have to do lots of HTTP calls. It's rediculous that LL doesn't provide a way to keep unique objects unique (all merchants selling no copy items could benefit from this). For instance, some people try to cheat the breedables system by requesting a rollback. If we don't make tons of HTTP calls to verify each and every pet as unique, it results in a rollback doubling their amount of pets. Of course they can cheat and make copies of any no copy object by doing this, but it's particularly difficult with breedables. Breedables can push the scripting ability to the limits. Not in terms of doing crazy things scripting in LL wasn't meant for, but they depend on a stable system in order to work. Unfortunately LL is not that system. We're faced with constantly trying to find ways to work around this lack of stability with inventory, objects and rezzing. Mentioned a couple times already that it takes a full time support staff to keep up with problems that SL causes with breedables. This costs hundreds of dollars USD a week. It's not the other way around, that breedables are the evil here, many breedables are pretty efficient given the tools we have to work with, it's that SL falls apart the more you have to depend on the stability of the system. Believe me, if there were anything we could do to make them more efficient, more dependable, easier to use, we would do "that". We can only do as well as SL will allow to build a stable product. We can only make them as efficient as SL allows in the hardware and resources they give us to work with. It's as painful (and costly) for us as it is for you, believe me. We refund and replace like crazy to keep up with SL. Pets live and die and create new life, that's the general model for breedables. That we can't possibly verify or refund every possible SL problem isn't fraud. That SL should be able to be stable enough to handle the basic functionality it would take for breedables to work like they should is the larger issue, because it isn't only breedables that it affects.

Ry0ta Exonar wrote: Okay, I tested and found it's the combination of "its presence. some" but only when I begin a new line with "some", it turns into Adult. Go figure. lol The presence of some fish leads to Fish Gone Wild? Aquariums are a gateway perversion. It's all good until someone spikes the fishbowl and turns the music up.

Deej Kasshiki wrote: P.S. Dartagan what the heck happened to make you change your attitude toward LL? I remember when you were one of the Merchant forums' most vocal and aggressive defenders. Too much to put into a post. Regarding Merchant issues, the Marketplace got consistently worse until we reached the place we are now where deliveries are often delayed, breaks on a major holiday, transactions don't reconcile, basic features like sales graphs from the old XStreet intentionally left out, office hours were closed, communication dried up, dev team is unable to produce a fully working mostly bug free product after acquisition, 2 years and a from-scratch re-write. Always and still believe in the enormous potential of SL to improve lives and create jobs. However, we're stuck with predatory pricing, a system designed to siphon off the lions share of user money, policies and features designed to benefit LL and not the user. After some discussions with those running businesses, decided to not shout from the sidelines but start a business so that I could experience what they go through first-hand rather than spouting years of RL business experience. Did that successfully, LL made me jump through hoops to get money we earned. They still never approved it an open limit. No answers in a year for what my customers get support on. Coalesced objects is my biggest peeve here. Can't give support answers to my customers when I can't get simple answers from LL on these issues. Said earlier in another post that it costs me L$60,000/week to pay a support staff in-world to do nothing but answer questions that are LL related problems and not problems related to our product. It's more like L$80,000, the rest of the costs being our own product support issues. Got thousands of our own support tickets from customers to back this up. Support staff on a daily basis as well as customers can't get into chat groups frequently. How long does it take to get chat working again? 10 years? 15? After nearly 10 years, inventory and basic LL functionality is still not stable, at a level of polish that it should be. Amateur hour as far as product sophistication. Even things I'd like to be excited about like Mesh, when they finally introduce it, it's the most convoluted system I've ever seen in any 3D dev platform. The bottom line for me is that it's a cheat. Let's take sculpties for triangle count in a mesh for instance (we'll leave the evil torus alone, and not focus on the lowly cube). Bottom line is that if I take the equivalent of 5 sculpties for triangle count, it costs me more than 5 sculpties worth of "land impact". I'm now getting less triangles for my money on outdated hardware, not more over the years. Prices don't come down, hardware doesn't get upgraded. Instead I'm more limited triangle-wise than when I started. Yes I know there are benefits to mesh, that I can spend endless hours optimizing and get gains over prims and sculpties. But the fact remains, less triangles for my money than before. And I get to pay more in sinks for the priviledge. At the height of my advocacy I was being spoon fed the corporate vision and the wonders of Viewer 2. None of these were followed through with as promised. In a childish display, M gets fired and 1/3 of the company gets the boot as Phil comes in at SLBB and pulls the white knight act ushering in an era of bug fixes and Fast, Easy and Fun. Where did that go exactly, into Land Impact calculations? Already too long here and it's not very balanced or detailed, but now that I'm just a tier paying cash cow for more ventures like LittleTextPeople built on pimping virtual goods that earn people pennies on the dollar, while playing virtual currency games, there's not much point. Not a lick of consumer protection or real world accountability with this company to be found. Because of virtual currency you have no consumer protection. Business and financial laws do not apply with LL. I do however keep one foot in the real world, and the contrast between your average company and LL is astounding. Been waiting for a virtual world to come along and do it justice since the 70's and seeing the first 3D (a spinning wire-frame hand) in a film called Westworld. Followed virtual world-ish development ever since. I'm left with a world that if I bring a huge idea into, it'll get acquired. If I refuse, it'll get built around me (such as Gaming Open Market, XStreet, etc.). Got to love opportunity in "my world". Considered blogging to be able to give these issues more thoughtful treatment. But that'd require it resulting in some sort of change by LL, but does the farmer really listen to the cow? I'm just here to be milked. Still blown away by the possibility. Less enchanted with the company that can't seem to make it stable at a reasonable price with solid business ethics.

Sorry, making little in-jokes about the technology and the one posters comment about LL selling hotdogs. The LittleTextPeople stuff is a spin of old Infocom games and technology that started the ball rolling. Interactive Fiction has had limited success over the years, but it did lead to some online games as it progressed, including MUD engines, some of which were actually multi-player interactive fiction in the 1980's and 1990's. Of some of those MUD engines, they were virtual world-ish and some of them had currency and many of them had user generated content, so they were forerunners to Second Life. Revamping that old Interactive Fiction tech to include currency and virtual goods isn't new, but it does kind of come full circle which is nice. It might also be selling hotdogs too by dusting it off.

Pamela Galli wrote: And as usual they are only shooting themselves in the foot as well, because with the cashout fee they in effect earn a commission on ALL sales, not just Marketplace (marketplace gets double-taxed). It adds up to a lot at the end of a month. Why they would want to reduce that I could not imagine. In larger amounts, it's less new fake money they have to print out of their own pockets rather than recycling L$ users have paid for and chipping away at that churn with the sinks and costs. More long term income to play it straight and create those success stories, agreed. I think it's always been a case of SL being a niche because it nickle and dimes rather than going for the real deal in funds, support, pricing, sales, etc.

"I ran into this a couple of years ago. I am sure things are different now, but I tried this: Went ballistic. Dropped all pretense of civility. Used all caps. May have used bad words. They gave me a limit something like a million dollars. **Only uploaded images may be used in postings**://secondlife.i.lithium.com/html/assets/emoticons/mattemotes/big_grin.png" border="0" alt=":matte-motes-big-grin:" title="" /> " Glad you got it sorted, Pam ... we made it through round one after about 2 months of relentless "negotiations". It still happens and it's happening now for us on round two. I don't care if that puts them in the position of having to give out 1099's and such, it's their business, they can manage it like every other company has to. If it weren't virtual money it'd be illegal. Used to scoff at lawsuits in SL. Vowed I'd leave SL before I'd do something so silly as to bring a legal battle to the SL doorstep. Then again I earned it, they agree to do it and it's real money at that point. It's such an amateur handling of funds that it doesn't even resemble a mature company. It's also the straw that broke the advocates back. Basically if you come close to anything resembling a RL income level, it's a crap shoot whether you can cash it out by LL's own mechanisms forcing you to look elsewhere rather than play by their own rules. Some major cleanup needs doing with this fake money stuff. If they're really desperate they can take away the ability to cash out, of couse we know what'd happen to SL then.

Ziggy21 Slade wrote: Charolotte Caxton wrote: Live chat's purpose is to direct you to file a support ticket, read the knowledge base, or anything other than use live chat. Lol so true, I have always been intensely annoyed by the fact that LL tout this as some sort of advantage in having a premium account, every time I have contacted them I have been told to raise a ticket, it's unlikely I would even bother to use the service again, its a pointless waste of time. The only time you are likely to use Live Chat is to solve some frustrating problem, all Live Chat does is to slow down the resolution of that problem as you waste your time talking to them and further frustrate you. The support ticket system isn't much better, I recently contacted them to get my cash out limit raised, you would think I had asked for Rodviks credit card details they were so difficult about it, they said I hadnt earned enough L$s to qualify for a higher limit and to try again the following month, I wrote back and pointed out that I have easily exceeded their limit, and the rseponse was exactly the same email back, I write again pointing out again that they had made a mistake and that it was very rude to keep sending the same email and in response - yes - you guessed it - the same email back again. I wrote again and asked for the CSRs boss, he forwarded the email to her, she said he hadnt made a mistake he just 'couldnt see' my account transactions, and she again told me they would review it the following month. I gave up at that stage and I just use Virwox now, I will never ever cash out on the lindex again. So if any Lindens are reading this you should take heed, its all very well slapping banner ads all over the internet to gain new business, you already had my business and lost it because the people you employ to face customers are totally disprespectful and arrogant. Same here, if you need that cash-out limit raised, it's always a stalling, run-around game. The wife and I have been through that as well as a few friends. Months of dodging, tickets and phone calls. That particular unethical practice needs to go. If you earned the money in "your world", they have no business dodging until you give up or they finally give in. And it's incremental so each "income bracket" you hit, you have to go through it all over again. Not sure where else in the world this would possibly be legal from a business/account standpoint. I can understand it once and exactly once in order to get the request on file to prevent fraud, if that process were as quick and easy as dealing with any other bank or business on the planet. It's a 48 hour process not a stall and hope you go away task. That particular scenario doesn't work with any form of support.

Charolotte Caxton wrote: Bouttime Whybrow wrote: this acquisition does not bode well for sl. the best we hope is it does not effect sl but it will do nothing good for it. to me it shows LL is just a bean counter company now. the vision and passion for that vision is gone. they'd sell hot dogs now if that's how they could make money. I could not disagree more. A bean counting company would not waste their time with this platform. The vision and passion is evident in the fact that new features are being worked on and implemented. Acquiring a concept such as littletextpeople, which seems to be some sort of fantasy or fictional way of creating little personas and telling and acting out stories sounds very much like some other concept we have heard of. It's called Second Life. The other came far before Second Life. It's a variation of Z-machine style interactive fiction, circa late 1970's to early 1980's. Zork meets cell phone. We've always had suspicions that Linden Lab was really the Frobozz Magic Spell Co.

All the author was doing was re-wording what he got from LL's own press release and material. It may not be what everyone wants to do in SL, to earn money to cash out, although it is supported by LL and it's still a draw for some. The ability to start a virtual business is what put SL on the map in the first place, and created the boom. It should be cleaned up, have the tools vastly improved and promoted once again as one of the primary draws. Nothing draws people like the ability to earn money, as you can see by SL's current flatline state of growth as opposed to the gold rush years and hype. We don't need a gold rush, but we could desperately use another few million people hyped to come in and start creating and you get more people to do that by letting them know they can be compesated for their efforts monetarily, whether to support their virtual "fix" or to profit. Merchants are still supported as heavily as any other group in SL, with statements and projections to back it up in various interviews with Rod, the announcement that tools are coming for land barons and merchants in 2012, etc. To "users" it may be all about creativity, socializing and fun. To a large part of the outside world, LL is a business with a clear business model involving virtual goods (land is also a virtual good). When making a business announcement, you're in the context of business. In that sense, LL is all about virtual goods and the money involved. Without it, there would be no SL to socialize and create in.

It's a beautiful thing, Commerce Team. Not novel, as old as business and something I've heard and said on the phone probably tens of thousands of times, "Hey Bill, we're awfully sorry about that, how about if we do this to make it right ....". Also something the majority of Merchants do all the time. Sometimes on a daily basis. Things like this are the difference between being treated as a human customer, and not a socially inept, rural, ignorant, socially engineered stepford resident. If we could get to the "we value you as our professional content partners that create potential billions of dollars and user hours worth of product", we'll really be onto something. Also agree it takes a pro grade team and product to move those goods, not one Jira and mishap after another. Better things to do, it's your product to make work at that level. It's our job to produce the content for you.

Ziggy21 Slade wrote: I think we need much more clarity/publicity on the exchange rate in general. I have always believed that L$s are quite deceptive, many residents and even merchants will talk in L$s but they think in $USDs and mentally assign a much greater value to their L$s than the reality. In the past I even suggested getting rid of L$s all together and replacing them with USDs but the idea wasn't popular. Now I think we should replace L$s with €s since the € will soon have the same value as the L$ :smileywink: Huge believer in this myself. That method they're using is obsolete (of course so is economy and L$ in general) in light of say PayPal micropayments. Just posted something about that in the LL LittleTextPeople acquisition thread in general forums. It's the difference between this experience, which I've had repeatedly upon trying to bring people into SL, as have many others (a little silly-fied though). Me: hey, there's this thing called SL and you can earn money making virtual stuff. Them: Oh? How does it work? Me: Well ya see there's this thing called the Linden Dollar and exchange and I sell something for L$1,000 and then I can cash it out at a certain moving target rate and ... Them: Not much response, their eyes have glazed over and they lost interest and stopped taking it seriously. As opposed to ... Me: Hey, there's this thing called SL and I make kinda sort game items and 3D stuff and sell them for real money. Them: Oh, tell me more. Me: Well, I make one, sell it for 15 or more cents a pop and I sell a lot of them. Some things I sell for like 8 Dollars. I have 50 bucks in my account for the last couple days sales, and the more I make the more I can earn. Or you can go be a DJ and make 4 bucks in a single tip sometimes, or do X, Y or Z for X bucks. When you want to take out your money, you just take it out minus a fee. Them: Is that something I can do too? Me: sure can, Let me help you get started! Moral of the story, forget Zynga, get back to innovating and not convoluting the earning/money potential. More people respond to real money. And it's just plain easier and less costly to operate as a company. And more trustworthy.

Exactly. In that LL press release LL describes it the the exact same way themselves ... "The company pioneered the virtual currency and marketplace with Second Life, the massively multiplayer online platform, where hundreds of millions of user generated items are bought and sold for real money and which entertains millions around the globe." At one point earlier on there was some hype over Linden Dollars becoming a currency outside of LL. These notions are becoming somewhat obsolete now that Paypal and a handful of other companies are now able to process micro-payments directly, but they were a needed at the time to handle items of less value than the transaction fees. This is no longer the case. Newer ventures such as Diablo III will be using PayPal Micropayments with their auction house so that sellers can buy/sell/cash out with real money for game items. On LL books, these tokens don't even need to be accounted for. For SL users however, they're representative of real money the way poker chips are. Overall, LittleTextPeople is not a "bad" acquisition (although a relatatively unknown company with no real assets and cash). A bit late to jump into the mobile game, but mixing interactive storytelling with some game elements, virtual goods and currency isn't so bad. Their best bet is to go with real currency for that system, just as it would be for SL to move over to real currency. These days it's less costly for a company to go with real-world micropayments, which would also help clear up the confusion and create more trust.

Related addendum to my last post: http://jvwresearch.org/index.php/2011-07-30-02-51-41/for-authors/10-cfps/30

Deja Letov wrote: mmmhhh wonder if we can file a DMCA against SL for theft? There is no such thing as consumer protection with virtual sales here because of the virtual currency. There is no place to report it in the real world. There is only trust in LL in LL to make it right. If you could afford it, you could make a case that virtual currency should come under the same protection as real currency. Or you can try to tell your elected officials that there is a need for legislation in this regard. Or you can ask LL to move over to real currency rather than fake currency. Maybe bring it up at the next office hour. What you can do when the dust settles, is to ask merchants who have lost money, not filed a ticket and not posted in the forums, whether their money was finally delivered.

Well, that's what I meant earlier about LL numbers and stats never reconciling. Phil still recently blurted $75 million in "profit", not gross or net. Oddly enough you'd have to ask "define profit". Until they start giving some financials that actually make sense, the whole thing could be an embarassing conversation without knowing the real figures. I'm sure it's amusing to them, either way.

Linden Lab claims $75 Million in profit. I would start at first year by cutting profit in half (which if applied directly to tier reductions would immediately enable me to reduce tier by $37.5 million dollars) and take the gamble of more volume in land sales. This would bring me more up to date with modern prices, although still a very pricy form of entertainment. To offset the hit, I'd be prepared to make the big decisions necessary to get rid of or consolidate systems that really aren't necessary. Such as all the mechanisms that have to handle economy, land auctions, possibly classifieds, the "social" system, etc. Revamping some of these systems would enable me to offer package deals that I can scale and adjust as needed. For instance, rather than insulting me with a sailboat, my premium account could offer me 200 free texture uploads, or X amount of classifieds. I could expand upon this by offering more packages. A new merchant account with a monthly fee that gives me a tier discount, X amount of free advertising on the marketplace, X amount of mesh uploads, deeper discounts on dedicated commercial land, etc. Let users buy any type of sim without having to own a region. Bulk discounts. Buy something like an openspace, homestead and full region package for X amount. Consider nixing mainland. Most people would rather be surrounded by water than neighbors. Some people like neighbors. Let land barons make money off neighborhoods and community building. If you can pay $99 as an entry fee to being a landowner, you can give or rent to friends. Nix Linden Homes, they cost money for no good reason. If tier were cheaper, people would get land on their own. Other perks mentioned above or deeper discounts on tier for premium is enough. Out of some 30,000 sims, 7,000 are LL owned. More ownership needs to be shifted to vested landowners. Smaller parcels can be rented from independent landowners rather than mainland parcels. Focus on features that "really" matter to users. Backup or database storage for instance, exporting builds in a specific SL format, ability to store world-wide data on objects, buy my way into a list of random entry points where new users are dumped into, etc. in order to add to product offerings and revenue. It's a sloppy list, just some thoughts on how to revamp a clunky overpriced product offering into something more useful and appealing. The profit is there though to cut tier in half tomorrow with no additional revenue. And it doesn't half to be half. But half would blow people away and generate such an amount of goodwill that it'd bring in some users via word of mouth. Many new users wouldn't blink at buying into a region sized openspace for $99. With "reasonable" setup fees of course. Although if I do pay for a full region, and I want the region name changed in a database, it'd help if they wouldn't charge me $100 to do that. Same with moving that region to another location. Offer a reseller plan for the marketplace, so that anyone re-selling marketplace goods could earn a bit of cash, on their website, or in-world configurable vendors. So much "could" be done, depends on how focused management really is on a cool, sexy reasonably priced offering rather than west coast monetization strategies. Even Zuckerberg knows when you've got a keeper, you toss the startup mentality aside. But when you're in decline, you've got to start making the harder choices rather than silly patches and offerings on top of an aging concept.

Peggy Paperdoll wrote: Next December and nothing happens then it's time to ask why did Rod say anything at all if he had no plan in mind? That's 10 1/2 months away. Speculate away. And when that speculation turns to "facts" we can have another bash fest on the Lindens. All I'm offering is a counter question to your thread.........what's wrong with waiting? Only half of that rather short post was for 2012, but of those ... "In 2012, the primary engineering focus of Q1 will be server side performance and fixing bugs." We're halfway into Q1, so waiting till the end of Q1 to find out how many more bugs were fixed in Q1 as opposed to any other time is reasonable, sure. Will we see that 53% more bugs were fixed in Q1? Didn't see that when Phil as CEO or M as CEO promised a round of bug fixing. Agreed it would be nice and that I should be patient to see those results. "For landowners, existing land tier pricing will not go up in 2012." That's good to know. What I'd like to know personally though is when it'll go "down". Or when machines will get upgraded from Class 5's, which most of them are still on. From what I understand, more regions are on these servers than were when they were first upgraded to Class 5. Or both. Waiting till December might be pointless if that's the final answer though. "In addition, our service and quality focus in 2012 also means that we will be delivering features and policies that we believe will significantly assist merchants and landowners in running a business more profitably." That's great, if I knew what they were. Not specified whether these would be implemented in Q4, so I'm not sure if December is the month to wait for. Like the other statements, if I wait till December and don't see these, all I'll know is that they never happened. More detail would be nice for looking forward. This like other statements are more teaser than announcement. Knowing sooner rather than later might help me make more informed decisions on what platform(s) to focus my efforts on in 2012. "For creators our first new feature for 2012 will be pathfinding. Because worlds feel most vibrant when they are full of life, one of our next focuses for Second Life is the ability to make high-quality “life” within it. So in 2012, we will be rolling out more advanced features that will allow the creation of artificial life and artificial people to be much smoother. For starters, in Q1, we'll unveil a new, robust pathfinding system that will allow objects to intelligently navigate around the world while avoiding obstacles. Combined with the tools from Linden Realms this will make the polished creation of full MMORPG’s or people/animal simulators within Second Life easier and of high quality." Much clearer, although already known by Q3-Q4 last year. Some new LSL functions to help creating games easier. No need to really have to wait for anything but the implementation. "In addition to delivering new features and increasing our support for Second Life, we will be launching some completely different products next year not related to Second Life. Some of them will be very experimental, but all will fit within our company’s proud history of enabling creativity, which I hope may interest some of you." Aside from giving me an example to follow that LL as an innovator believes that mobile and other platforms might be the best path for success, and not to put all my eggs in one basket, this tells me that I'm not really invited to this party unless I happen to stumble on them or manage to get informed by LL about what my tier helps to fund. While I can survive without more information, I have decisions to make before next December, all I'd ask for is information with a little more meat on it, in the meantime.

Ciaran Laval wrote If we were dealing with a fixed sized economy then we could do something with these figures, because sinks take money out of other users hands and therefore it leaves a big gaping hole for Supply Linden to put his selling hat on and sell Linden dollars directly, which brings to Linden Lab, real, bankable income. However it's not a fixed sized exconomy, so sinks are not so straight forward to evaluate. The other shoe of people buying Linden dollars has to drop for sinks to work, they aren't just about selling Linden dollars, they are aimed at balancing the economy so we don't get steep changes in the exchange rate, they are there to ensure the economy isn't awash with money, too much money in the economy would be bad. They definitely servee a purpose but it's not one that's easy to quantify. Oh agreed. The "economy" itself is un-guessable, as are sinks. Primary reason is because on LL books, the economy doesn't exist. There's simply no place in general ledger accounts for it. It's a manufactured fiction that doesn't really have anything to do with real cash on the books. It's a real-money income that just gets fictional money printed wherever it needs "balancing" out of existing real income. There's not even a guarantee that fictional money in/out is restricted to only money that comes from purchasing Linden Dollars. To the company it doesn't matter if that money backing the economy comes from Linden Dollar sales or tier or premium accounts to "balance" anything. As a matter of fact, a large part of the global pool of L$ doesn't even have to backed by real cash. You could back the equivalent of a $5 million dollar "economy" with half that amount when you factor in money that just churns from one user to the other, people that never cash out, balances in users accounts that just leave, etc. The economy is a dinosaur, lots of mechanisms that must be maintained just for the illusion of economy. They'd save money and be more versatile in pricing packages if they flat-rated everything, treated sinks as straightforward fees and called it a day, adjusting those fees as needed as simple fees that can be put into pricing packages, etc. The only people who would suffer are those trading virtual currency. The upside is that pricing would be more flexible, understandable, create more trust in flat-fee L$ purchases. That'd require LL to be quicker on their feet to adapt, though. But yes, as-is the whole concept of economy vs. LL income is a moving target, and it seems that's the way they like it. Hides a large part of their business model and revenue. It'd never fly if these were treated as real funds though, and that's the reason for the fake currency and part of the ecnomic mechanisms. You can't be a bank but not a bank. You can't be a currency trader without restrictions, etc. The assumption is protection because it's "your" money and not LL's, which is not at all true.

It's only 1995 and ecommerce is a new thing. By the year 2000 purchasing items online will be smooth and mostly bug free. By 2005 you won't feel the need to check up on your transactions, they hardly ever go wrong in ecommerce. By 2012 your items will arrive faster than you can flip windows to check on it, and your transaction reports will contain the full path that delivery and transactions have taken in every step of the process. You'll be able to import a years worth of sales data into Quickbooks and have everything reconcile with no manual tweaking whatsoever. Patience, we'll get to 2012 yet!

Posted this elsewhere but it relates to your earlier comment about how much revenue Marketplace might earn and how sinks are real money in real accounting. Gut feeling says the actual number is twice this or better, no way to tell in a system that publishes fictional economy stats and no numbers suitable for accounting. Also reported earnings, profit and costs never really reconcile, so there's not much basis in fact on that kind of complete earnings picture from LL. Marketplace commission, like other sinks can be equated to real money, they’re just not thought of as revenue because they’re not a direct income. However, ask an accountant how this works and they’ll tell you that it is income and on what side of the balance sheet it falls in real world accounting. Money comes in from whatever source (tier, buying $L, premium accounts, etc.). LL puts some of this money into a global pool of L$ we call the economy. The more they take out of that global pool (which was purchased originally with real money), that’s the ammount they get to keep in real dollars. Take the last published quarterly report, where gross Marketplace sales were published. Quarterly gross Marketplace sales: L$1,183,000,000 5% quarterly commission in L$: L$59,150,000 Converted to real dollars at a rate of 260 (just because, even though there's no real correlation between what the exchange says a linden dollar is worth and what it's worth on LL books as real cash), it’s roughly $227,500 USD for the quarter. Roughly $76,000/month USD gross earnings from the Marketplace commission. This isn’t complete because it doesn’t include advertising sales or purchases in real dollars (PayPal purchases on thr marketplace, which are inflated substantially from items purchased with L$). Gross marketplace sales keep increasing as LL guides more and more of sales from in-world to the marketplace. In real life accounting terms, this is money that just never has to go back out of the system, which is the amount LL gets to keep out of their gross income. Only in terms of the virtual economy does this money bounce around from user to user and act as some sort of balancing equation or “sink”. So yes, marketplace commission and sinks are real money for LL, just not in the sense of revenue. The money has already been made before the commission and sinks kick in. Nevertheless sinks count as income that doesn’t have to go back out. So that $76,000/month USD (still an arbitrary although conservative number due to lack of more info) might get you in the ballpark. Nosebleed section. Or maybe into the parking lot of the ballpark. At this rate, it'd offset tier of 250 sims. No real way to tell though.

Not directed at you or anyone in particular, but this does show an example of an old problem. The biggest hindrance to community isn't that we're not willing to help in our own ways, but how we're forced to do that. Agree with both methods of getting all your ducks in a row and having the ammunition in a Jira to make a case for bugs/flaws/feature requests and campaign for a feature. Both together would make quite a vehicle for change. Problem is that if the job were done right from the beginning, the community wouldn't need to get involved at this level for one bug after another. Case in point, when magic boxes first exposed themselves as a bottleneck an intermediate in-house LL only LSL function could have been written to more directly deliver inventory in-world, or do it faster. It may or may not have been a complete solution but we would have had smoother deliveries 8 months ago. Instead we're at each other born of frustration from LL mis-steps. The forum consists mostly of talking about Marketplace problems rather than business, exchanging tips, etc. If you want real community to be bound by something other than problems, LL is going to have to eliminate the problems at a reasonable rate. But hey, we can now have guest bloggers blogging about things that are sufficiently happy and fluffy and under the control of community guidelines alongside the flickr pic of the day instead of regular progress report blog posts from LL. Imagining bloggers that don't blog happy thoughts outside of LL have much chance of a published blog post as a guest blogger. Way to control the message. Anything but fixing things in a timely manner. Way to get the community to tear each other apart.

Toysoldier Thor wrote: Anyway.... this thread has completely come off the OP and its more of a witch hunt of which LL doesnt seem to care. So you all can stay in the thread and maybe you all can attack another poster that enters and disagrees with you. This thread is so far off topic and poisonous. Enjoy ladies.... When you find one that can fill your behind with buckshot at that distance, in the dark, in bare feet, the best thing to do is propose marriage. Done that and haven't looked back. Problem here is that you found 3 and you can only ask once.

Rya Nitely wrote: What stress? Preserving semblances of sanity? OMG people get out into the real world. I spend most of my time here in SL, creating and talking to friends. No matter what issues the marketplace has had I continue to make a profit, and I have never noticed a negative impact on my sales, which is surprising but there you have it. Customers continue to buy from the MP as much as ever, and now they have learnt to wait for their order to arrive. It is an inconvenience but nevertheless they put up with it. Maybe these customers are aware that this inconvenience is nothing compared to the bullsh*t they have to put up with in the real world. SL is still for fun. Out of every 30 sales I would get one IM for redelivery, not because the delivery failed but because it is delayed and the customer doesn't know it. This is NOT stress. This is relaxation. It is an opportunity for some people to use skills and be rewarded for those skills. I know what stress is, I live through it everyday when I am forced to face my rl job. But no, I'm not stupid enough to give up that job no matter how much I dislike it, and make SL my only income. If you chose to do that then live quietly with that choice. It was your own. I state again, SL has given us an opportunity to use and develop our skills, and make some profit out of it. As well as get the pat on the back that we may lack in rl. It is both rewarding and therapeutic for many people. I'm grateful for what it is, and I put up with the faults. Because the benefits outweigh those faults by a mile. So yes, raise issues but talking about stress and losing sanity is just crap. So let me put this another way, that last was a bit knee-jerk. I also enjoy SL business as an escape from RL. I'm also in profit here. Not stress so much as this, in RL you professionally handle what needs doing right? A supplier screws up an order 3 times and you might be inclined to be on the phone asking what the hell the problem is over there and how can we resolve this so it doesn't happen again. Enter SL business. Love it, no stress in SL comes close to RL. However, it does cost me roughly L$60,000/week to pay a support staff to do nothing but handle problems that are SL related that have nothing to do with flaws in our own product, or at least anything that can be avoided. After over a year, I still don't have a clear answer from LL as to whether or not basic accounts get support for coalesced objects, which isn't uncommon with breedables to have batches of them picked up or returned as a large group too big to be taken out of inventory and rezzed. Conflicting answers on that one from LL. While these things are not stress per se, it does put me in the position of being thrown into RL mode, where these problems can and should be dealt with. Call it breaking immersion where it doesn't need to be broken via imcompetence that I'd rather not have to see as a customer here for entertainment and fun dabbling in virtual business.