Rhiannon Wildmist

I have been in business in SL for over 3 years, I have a store for furniture, as well as a 4 floor art gallery, shopping mall and rent some skyboxes. The new ToS has stopped me uploading any more artwork and I am seriously considering my future in SL as a result. I am not happy to hand over rights to them to do with as they wish. Linden Lab have made a very bad judgement on this and sims are going dark and people are leaving. The words "sell, re-sell" are clearly in the ToS and they are out to make money from the hard work of their residents and merchants. Enough is enough. Chances are high that by the end of the month I will be clearing my store, art gallery and mall and cancelling my account. They are killing the SL economy and are strangling creativity. Also they are doing what an copy botter was doing (and been condemned for) tied up with ToS. Shame on you LL and probably goodbye from me.

@Lyrical Popstar "Plus, what about furniture designers? Now millions of people have a free living room. Why would they go shopping for a living room now? It's gonna hurt merchants, I'd think. People who make sofas are probably fuming right now that suddenly millions of users have a free sofa." As a merchant I so agree ! Also agree if you want to impress me: increase stipend to L$500 or L$1000 Halve tier fees or at the very least, reduce EU members tiers to an amount that does not put us at a business disadvantage. We pay 20% in tax ON TOP of everything, so for my L$125 a month tier I pay L$150 and I also pay VAT on all L$ transactions. Hardly an equal playing field is it? Our American friends have a financial advantage straight away. LL - come on, you depend on us for income with our tiers but what is the point if so many of us abandon our land because of your horrendous charges. Time and time again we say "reduce tiers". Do that and we will be impressed.

Well I have been in SL for nearly a year now, never had a problem. Logged into SL today. No sound on anything. PC sound works with or without headphones. Just not in SL. All the sliders are on etc etc etc. Does not even work for me in a different viewer. Reloaded viewers. Nothing. Wish I knew how to get sound back, I do not even hear ambient sounds.

Thank you all for your views and I would like to thank Hugsy esp for making the visit. You really do not have to look up much at all to see these monstrosities. It is only common courtesy, I would have thought to put something up beyond skyline view and anyway, the higher you are the more private it is and lag free surely? But I guess you will always have those who do this because "they can" and it is "their land" where as I like to be a considerate land owner and make my areas pretty with birdsong, water features etc. It isn't hard, after all, to make the area pretty for your fellow residents. Reducing my own draw distance will not stop it being seen by my customers or visitors and there should be some ruling of a minimum height for skyboxes. Yes I have sky boxes I rent out, but these start at 1000m well out of view. Thanks once again for your interesting views and replies Rhiannon Wildmist

Try living in Europe and paying 20% tax on top of all these fees now THAT is outch !

At my main store site in Koschuta, there are four skyboxes at platforms which are clearly in view if you just glance up above the roof areas...these must be as low as 300 or 400 metres and spoil the skyline and make it all ugly. I have put in ARs but nothing is done. Surely skyboxes should be at say, a minimum of 1000m, there is no need for them to be this low. Why have a lovely SL sky for it to be spoiled by this? Is there any ruling on it? Can anything be done?

I am glad someone is the enternal optimist. I had one instance where I complained for five months by AR and ticket about a spamming greeter from land on a neighbouring sim greeting all my customers. Land owner absent. Object owner did not respond to IMs or notecards. When I gave up and moved on and rented the land my friend. She was already aware of the greeter issue and managed to solve it by dragging the object owner back from Inworldz to remove it.- LL did nothing. Recently I have had objects encroaching on another plot. Anchors on neighbours land (his last log on time "unknown"). Object owner not interested. Been ARing since February, told twice on Live Chat this was an AR only issue. So no. I have very little confidence in LL "support". One object overhung my land putting over 6m out of use ! I did not derender because my visitors could still see the offending megaprim and that did not solve the problem. I do wonder what I am paying land maintenance for. Certainly get nothing in return for it.

Welcome to SL indeed but you do look too "un-noob" like for your first day. Many of us would like to be given land to play around with but at least you are having a go. If you need any help there are plenty of us around to give you advice but the great thing about SL is you can be almost anything you want to be and build and create the envirionment you want. Money is your only constraint. Even if you have to give yourself an alt so no one knows who you are, do mix in with the rest of us and get the feel of the metaverse from our point of view. That will open your eyes to the "product" for sure. My only request. Lower the land maintenance costs. They are crippling businesses. Other than that have made some great friends here. That is the most pleasure of it.

PS last time I tried the new viewer it set my avatar back to its original state, I was wearing two types of hair, two different shoes and even my saved and tweaked settings of my purchased shape had been set back to when I purchased it. I had to rebuild my avatar. So I am a tad nervous at trying it to say the least !

I think the new viewer is like Marmite, you love it or you hate it. No matter of tweaking and prettying up will change those whose view is the latter. Why not compromise and improve 1.23 in some ways. Unless LL force people to use viewer 2, they have to accept that some residents never will use it. Simple really !

Oh Pardoes how I agree. I tick the relevant box so my parcels can be found in Search and despite support tickets, none of them ever have. Only my one classified finds anything in Search. What am I paying the L$30 a week then for these parcels which are NOT found in Search. LL sort out Search first, which was trashed by the new viewer and has never recovered.

I may not be the smartest kid on the block but you know what this sounds like to me folks? This, Teen Grid going... easing educators out with price increases. How about trimming off the fat to make a more slimmer looking animal to sell off? huh?? Or am I just paranoid???

Well having watched this particular thread since it started and I repeat, speaking to fellow residents, the general concensus of adult residents is "NO, NO, NO, NO integration of any teens onto the...ah, that is the word, ADULT grid". I doubt LL will listen. They will move on as they usually do and expect residents to sheepily accept the teens who will eventually be allowed onto the real main grid (this is to "soften" us up no doubt). After all, the constraints offered can be no less expensive than a Teen Grid on its own so the barriers will come down and even those adults who go to PG areas will get fed up with them. As we already do with the odd one who comes in, rezzes vehicles in help areas and thinks it is funny to be verbally abusive over voice as it seems "grown up". I like teens. I really do I know alot of them. But mixing the grids what ever the constraints..big no. Remember in Jurassic Park "life will find a way" well sure as hell the teens will find away to break through the constraints. When that happens...see you all in some other virtual world no doubt.

Indeed Ronda, I am age verified and had great faith in it until one resident said to me "oh it is easy for them to fake that, they just use their parent's driving license" (which I had not thought of to be honest) so not even that is foolproof even now. Keep the adult grid adult and police it as best we can. Keep the teens entirely and wholey seperate on teen sims..essentially moving the whole teen grid onto the main servers but that is where the similarity ends. As a merchant I do not want teens annoying my customers and, abandoning vehicles and leaving their rubbish all over my areas. There will be a clash between adults and these youngsters. It is inevitable. How many adults vote with their feet is the big gamble LL are taking here just to keep the teens on line. The next few months may well decide LL's future. Personally, I think it is a bad decision just to save $ on running a seperate grid for the teens and not a good idea at all.

I have been speaking to other adult residents and many are dreading the prospect even of the 16 and 17 years old who have sneaked onto adult grid and seeing how they act (am sure many are already there). I have heard many say they will leave Second Life when this integration happens one who has said so been here since 2005 ! I fear an impending disaster for LL in doing this. It is a very bad decision and even restricting them to PG, I am not looking forward to entering a PG area and find it full of people annoying us with their music over their mic, and general immature annoyance which yes, you cannot deny it, you do get that with 16 -17 year olds and big big big dread, children who are even younger. I really, honestly, truly hope the views I hear are very wrong. But judging by a lot of younger adults I have seen who have sneaked onto the main grid, let along those younger, I fear they are right Also if you are restricting these coming soon to their own sims, make sure you keep unauthorised adult main grid customers out ! Fingers crossed here ! and toes.