Prokofy Neva

It won't be detrimental to the business. I notice that some of the biggest stores making the largest amount of cash move multiple times a year, likely seeking better rental deals or who knows why. Customers come from search mainly and via events, so if you physically move it's not that big a deal. You leave an LM giver for a time on the old sim and move. In my view, it's only fair to pass along a savings to your customers if you yourself got one. I don't charge anyone for the new extra prims in my rentals because LL isn't charging. So move if you've got a landlord that you view as greedy who is doing this. Surely the cost of continuing to pay the high rent is greater than the cost of absorbing the wrenches from the move. Make sure you put an ad in search/places and you will be fine.

Chic, I never go on the beta grid anymore. The last time I did I lost an expensive skin. It never returned. ALL of my gatcha listings have been dumped off the MP and put into one folder for reasons unfathomed. Well, I am appealing to them to put them back in one move the same way they took them down in one move, because otherwise it's HOURS AND HOURS of work. SO annoying.

I believe strongly in inworld stores, and listing in search/places for $30 a week. Try different terms and descriptions, I actually think real intelligible sentences work best. You can also buy ads to place higher in search for any amount. But $30 works pretty well, too, depending on the item. I'm always amazed that people have inworld stores and don't place their stores in search/places. Sometimes I hear about them then I can't find them because they didn't bother -- and then there is no way to find them unless you randomly come across a Flickr group or something. You can get a stall cheaply and do your own search add from there but it is worth even a 512 inworld in my view.

I will tell you what doesn't work, Alyxen -- announcing that you are "going out of business" and having fire sales. Tons of people come to your store to buy these items because you are supposedly "going out of business" (like those tacky stores on Fifth Avenue), and you get a high volume of sales from the unsuspecting public, then in fact you don't go out of business. I once fell for this, then a friend of mine tipped me off to the fact that you do this. So now I don't shop at your store anymore. The end.

I have heard this happen to other people but I'm in shock at logging on to find dozens -- a hundred -- items carefully listed on the Marketplace all delisted, all with the item missing from their folders. There is no disciplinary or violation message or anything like that, these are all random items, in different categories, that had been properly listed and some had been on the MP for weeks. I was afraid they were lost -- rares! -- but all of them were unceremoniously dumped into one random folder in my inventory -- bizarre. I'm completely mystified. If there was some "violation" then the items wouldn't be missing from their folders. So it has to be a technical snafu. Why? And can LL globally fix this?

Free Tibet is located on the mainland sim Wakeley and is a community with both Tibetan and other Asian styles. There is a Tibetan monastery, spa, game room, Japanese restaurant, and marketplace. It's low key and private. Here's a new sky home, just gorgeous! Shoji Fallingwater by Namuri is a version of Frank Lloyd Wright's beautiful Fallingwater house set into rocks and a waterfall. The landscaping is wonderful. It is partly furnished. Management prims don't count. This is one of the most beautiful houses I've found in SL! $350/400 prims Teleport to Free Tibet No. 18  Another beautiful home in the sky is Zaara's Jodphur House, completely furnished, inside a walled garden: $250/150 prims Teleport to Free Tibet No. 19  Another special treat is Phantom of the Operata cave by DRD -- fully furnished with the rare organ. Teleport to Free Tibet No. 11  There's also large old Asian waterfront homes by Foolish Frost -- spacious, lockable and closeable -- where you can park your boat and sail 7 Linden Seas! $300/300 prims. Teleport to Free Tibet 3  And there's more! Come see! Self-join group, refund any time for a small fee which is returned if you rent elsewhere in our system. Pets welcome. Place your own skyboxes if you like. Prokofy Neva Owner & Manager

New concept! Bid on a B&B and skybox to live in for a month. Bids start at $50 and you may get a real bargain! Bid $51 or more and if someone bids higher, your bid is returned and you can try again. Here's Pinklady goes to Tokyo...and Acapulco with decor by Toiz, SilveryK and more: Teleport to Pinklady goes to Tokyo Auction    Or try the Bong Room with Redd's Lounge made by Nebarius, along with animated bongs by Emma and Nexulan. Teleport to Bong Room Auction in Grote    Teleport to Bid on the Auctions at the Ravenglass Office in Alston

Mt. Refugio is a beautiful snowy mountain sim in the old world that looks out on a Linden sea with icebergs! This is a residential rentals sim with an elegant plaza on the mountain. Storefronts are $150/225 prims or $250/300 prims with the new 50% more system! Self-join group, move right in without waiting for the landlord. The IM Prokofy Neva to get resident status which will enable you to put in your own music and search ad included in the rent. Unlike so many malls, you can refund any time for a small fee which is returned if you rent elsewhere in our system. You also get 25 free prims vending at the flea market on this sim. Teleport to Mt. Refugio Store for $150/225 prims Teleport to Mt. Refugio Store for $250/300 prims Christmas stores are already open here (mine comes this week) and the sim will be decorated with sleighs and snow this week for shopping. Your store will be regularly advertised to thousands of tenants through our newsletters and events.    IM Prokofy Neva

The bids now are even behind what I reported, to $111. But 10 more came online today so it may be that the price is kept at least at this level, or goes lower. @Alwin Alcott I take an interest and blog about events in SL regardless of whether I myself am interested in participating in them. That's normal in a free society. Given the sourness with which you approach ever topic here, I wonder why *you* bother. But of course, the forums are the game-outside-the-game as as gamerz know. @November Velde now that's a good idea, asking Linden to make some of those existing Linden Homes "adult". This is literally the flick of a server category so shouldn't be an issue. I wonder why the Lindens couldn't have charged a flat fee for this new land. For example: super premium account, $25 to join, $9.95 after, the initial fee gives you the 1024, house and furniture, but then you go on paying premium which is upped to 1024 free tier, not 512 free tier. People don't like the vagaries and frustrations of auctions, and if they want this area, they'd pay for it. Maybe even more than $25. Naturally that's the Lindens competing with their own customers again, yet allowing the oligarch system to persist (not the same as a free economy), really, all they get on Linden-denominated auctions are sinks, i.e. a tightening of the loose money supply. Will we see the LindEx Linden value increase as a result? So the mystery of why there is all this buying and holding of adult land continues... People wonder idly how this can be afforded if "never" sold. But I would suggest it *does* sell, even if slowly. If you do the math, you realize that the real cost of SL is tier, not purchase price, and if you can hold tier for months on end, then you can charge a very high price that will cover those months of tier, and still make a profit. So the two go together -- holding for a long time and charging a lot. One sustains the other.

Live on beautiful Grote pond, a unique area on the Heterocetera Continent. Waterfront parcel with hive shack RARE and stairs down to the docks. If you like, ask to remove and place your own. $750/725 prims -- lots more prims now under the new system! Enjoy boating, swimming fishing in this area and exploring, Tai Chi, picknicking, fortunes and more in the Loss Garden of Slosser and Grote Campgrounds. Teleport to Grote Pond Pets, skyboxes, welcome. Self-join group, refund any time.

And that lets me know "not for us". If I have an extra US $50 or US $100, I'd spend that on a RL Christmas present for a real-life loved one or a bill in RL. Not on SL land. It's not justified because you can't make it back in rent for a very long time, and I'm not interested in being in the land sales business. This might be somewhat under what the Nautilus parcels went for on the auction (although not inworld, where they got even more expensive). Sadly, we no longer have the auction transparency we had 10 years ago when you could see the names of people who had bid and won auctions (a very important factor in a free market). Now you would have to hurry inworld to see and it may flip three times before you'll tell. But I suspect the same deep pockets are bidding here as they do in Zindra. It will be interesting to see if these prices come down after more are brought on line. There are nearly 1000 of them I believe. I counted 32 houses on one sim. Others count less houses because on some sims there are infohubs or islands or whatever I guess. In any event, it's a lot for SL to absorb, and that may help bring down prices. No one is wild about the house design. Perhaps some enterprising soul will help to sell resident-made housing and furniture for this continent and this market, i.e. the Jetsons' theme without the one-room limitation or ugly rug or odd angles. You don't need odd angles to spell "Space".

The plagues of unmanned vehicles are NOT AT ALL behind us, Qie, I don't know WHERE you get that idea! Do you actually observe the roads every day? I do, going around my rentals and helping my tenants. I probably visit several dozen sims a day doing this. And I CONSTANTLY see those unmanned pods, plus other stupid and ugly out-of-theme vehicles where NOBODY needs them. Nobody "needs a ride" on a road where they can get free vehicles everywhere (including from my offices) or get them as a premium member or simply buy the fancier ones and/or take a chance at a gatcha. NO NEED. They clutter up the highways, they look stupid, no one is EVER riding them and they exist purely for the vanity and pretend-science experiments of the arrogant few (and their Linden protectors who think such "science" experiments are useful to them, although they no longer care about or try to fix the sim seams issue) I love that object entry is turned off. Good!

I counted 32 houses on the sim I was looking at closely which is why I said 32. Perhaps some sims have less if they also have the infohub on them. There aren't covenants because it is Mainland which has no covenant. Lindens made the Linden Homes for residence only, with no commercial activity allowed and not any ability to put a parcel in search. But if you buy these parcels instead of just lease them, then I think it would be hard for the Lindens to stop people from making them stores and putting them in search -- even harder than forcing them to have only the Jetsons' homes. I also looked at the about land menu on multiple lots and it distinctly says 702. Not 234 x 2 or 468 -- double what 1024 has normally (what it had before the 50% increase) but TRIPLE -- 702, with the house not counting. Go and look.

$150/225 prims all your own, because management prims don't count! Just updated with new sculptures and homes and boxes are all reset with MORE PRIMS! You can use these houses or place your own in theme or have a skybox.  Teleport to Container Community I just added Scarlett's adorable wagon here.  And 1975's house is a winner - the colours can be changed.  Also this one from The Den  There's also a store parcel to be rented here roadside, you can use this tattoo parlour building or place your own. $200/255 prims Teleport to Roadside in Itame  IM Prokofy Neva Self-join group, refundable any time. Pets welcome. 4 weeks 10% discount.

So I visited the area today and see that my expectations and comments above were all pretty much on point. New Horizons was clearly made to both groom the population to Project Sansar, i.e. Experiences and communities loosely built around themes and even residences, and to try to drain away people from the Mainland -- and possibly dilute the over-heated Zindra land market. The New Horizons game is intricate and you can pick just explorer mode but you will still be sent home/killed by falling rocks etc. I saw some people happily playing but others frustrated in the usual way with LL games. It has prizes and payouts but I am fairly certainly I will not burn time on any of this. As for the housing, it's a little better in person than in the picture, but the rugs are god-awful too-realistic with that too-big weave, and you can only colour them. The Lindens really need to offer different floor textures, not just colours, i.e. stone terrace, wood, etc. I don't see why they couldn't. It's nice to have the modding ability -- you can change the houses and the wall colour. I found the demo near one of the infohubs on the corners. I thought it would also rez out furniture but I don't see that capacity. The houses don't count on your count so that may help people to keep them (I do that myself on some sims in my rentals). You get 702 prims on a 1024 which is a lot, so not 50% more but even more. It occurred to me that the Lindens started with this concept, then worked backward to giving Mainland at least 50% to prevent howling. The Adult classification is a minus for me because in practice in means you land at the infohub and find naked people, people doing and saying more stupid things than elsewhere, and various sex bots, etc. That's not really what I'm looking for in a virtual experience, although of course others would be. I imagine the Lindens gave it that label simply not to have to police it more. I am curious about how they plan to enforce the soft norm of telling people they should stay in theme if they swap out the house. I imagine they will be happy to see residents' associations such as sprang up in Nautilus and Bay to do that for them through browbeating, bans, boycotting, whatever. The residents' associations of the past had no power to force compliance other than those methods, and some of these were awfully oppressive, like a co-op board in RL. Plus some of them got in with the Lindens responsible for managing the areas and held sway -- the usual SL problem in an environment with no free press or justice system. At the end of the day, Nautilus in particular got horribly devalued because the Lindens did not enforce any building code. So idiots built huge towers or ugly black boxes although you could get free homes there. I don't want to spend even US $20 if I then have to watch as an idiot puts up a giant phallic symbol or squat black box or spinning junk next to my lovely new Jetsons' home. It's unlikely Linden will expend staff time on enforcing a code but sometimes if you just ask, you get compliance -- and asking means not only staying in theme but setting the standard of not building over 2 storys. I see some of the lots have auction numbers and some don't, which means they may not auction it all at once. But then that means they might be grabbed by a few oligarchs for $100 US or more and resold at even more. They have newly-designed Linden trees and mesh, but the anims to the public furniture have nothing in it like the best content out there today from the resident market. As with all SL things, some locations will be more desirable, or names of sims will be more popular or whatever so a range of prices will emerge. I haven't found yet whether you can re-rent these parcels if you buy them although you can re-sell them. It's not clear but presumably you can because the info card clearly states that you can re-sell them. So then the question is whether you can also have a store or club here and commercial activity. It's funny to look just under this New Horizons continent and see Zindra with a zillion yellow patches indicating land for sale, and land for sale at ridiculously high prices that obviously people aren't paying. What's interesting about Zindra these days is there are a lot of green dots, but stacked up at clubs and stores, and inert if you go and visit them -- they're bots. Perhaps the Lindens could make a rule to keep scripted agents out of New Horizons. And again, the Lindens may have wanted to bring down Zindra prices with this new Adult offering that will dilute the market. People who have become jaded at the bots in Zindra and high land prices might see New Horizons as an opportunity to get something more affordable IF the usual land barons don't monopolize the auctions. YES, this will be a blow to landlords and prefab makers at some level, although I can't imagine it will put us out of business because I can't see that people will flood there en masse and more will even be built. I think it's a niche within a niche -- premium account holders who want an adult sim and a Linden Home combined with better features but who don't want to pay the tier of a private island or better mainland rental. So expect lots of naked young males hitting on you. With the requirements of payment information and purchase of Lindens noted by others in this thread, the Lindens weed out the day-old alts and for that matter, the poorer Europeans and Latin Americans. These people will remain my customers. Oldbies will shrug at the idea of being herded into crowded adult sims with naked newbies flying around and ugly builds and will stay in the nicer areas of the mainland. With 30 houses per sim and 32 sims, it's 960 slots that might take away from older established Mainland rentals or even Linden Homes and Zindra -- the Lindens always find funny ways to compete not only with their residents but their own offerings. But they will see it as diversification that enables retention. Will it? Well, watch the green dots...

There's a blog post up now about the New Horizons community which is this secret build that Patch Linden mysteriously indicated when rumors began to go around about the new sims on the map. It's a combination of a game and housing, something the Lindens have never done, but some of their oldbie friends have done, like the old Numbakulla which closed 5 years ago. My thoughts: 1. The Lindens are not having a first-come, first-served system whereby anyone who wants a Linden Home and has a premium account could move in here. That might make it hard to fill up but maybe not. 2. By auctioning off 36 sims (at once? rapidly? over time?), the Lindens *might* make it seem more valuable and desired, like Nautilus or Bay City, and with that many sims prevent huge prices like $100 US or higher per lot. We'll see. If they auction them all at once, that might dilute the offering enough so that the prices won't be super high. 3. It looks like you can swap out the house style on the lot like a holodeck with the mailbox controller, and rez furniture and have security as well. So that will be attractive to some. 4. The Lindens are trying to solve the eternal problem of "what to do" and "how to make friends" by "curating" the experience.If there is a pre-made game, that will attract a certain number of people. If it has a legend, levels, takes time, that gives a reason to live near it. 5. Every Linden game ever made has been cruel. They are all hard to play, frustrating, and you constantly have monsters in the corn fields or whatever not just take one basket you collected, but all your inventory, constantly forcing you to restart. I don't know how many people actually keep playing these games but lots of people including myself and people I know quit them because they are just too annoying. Perhaps this one will be different? 6. Every time the Lindens make a planned community, the forums laugh and say no one will go there; I have a friend who called Linden Homes "Linden Assisted Living" (she actually lived there for some years). But look at the map, which doesn't lie, because you can't have stores (and bots) there. Green dots. Living people. A fair number of them, consistently, over time. Tyche Shepherd says in her grid survey that there are 36,000 plus Linden home lots. That's a lot! The number of premium accounts reached 100,000 some years ago and then dropped; I don't know how many there are now, but 36,000 is a lot, a good chunk of the daily log-on. 7. Why are Lindens doing this? Well, they need to update the Linden Homes experience which is tired. And they need to groom the population to herd into group Experiences in Project Sansar, like this game, then stay and socialize which is part of what gets them buying content. They meet and mate and buy skins and prefabs and so on. Note the sims are rated Adult but are set up with houses, not blank parcels where clubs might materialize. 8. Perhaps the Lindens want to "drain the swamp" of the Mainland, filled with abandoned land, smoking embers and 4chan griefers (so they think, so they see, so the forums tells them). Those of us who live and/or work on the Mainland see it very differently, but it doesn't matter. The Lindens have every reason to drain people off the Mainland as it is now AND groom people for going to their next product, which is more of a spectator sport than a do-it-yourself operation. 9. Bringing on 36 new sims with 32 or how ever many houses per sim they are going to have on them is a competition with Mainland (and private island, for that matter) rentals business, and a competition with their own customers using premium accounts outside of Linden Homes, but this is nothing new. The Lindens have always competed with their own customers and always done this. And businesses still continue because not everyone wants to play a game where they are repeatedly eaten or TPd home and have to live in a prefab that is still of the "little boxes on the hillside" variety more than not, and where even having a yardsale with their gatchas will not be allowed -- nor can they put the parcel in search. 10. I personally would not bid on these houses and use up 512 m on them if they are in the US $100 range and not the $20 range. On Nautilus, once you buy on the auction, you can resell at any price. But this is a combination of Linden Homes and auction (which I think isn't a very good idea) that will drive people to relinguish houses they paid $100 US for back to the Lab when they can't pay tier. So a black market in sales may spring up or something, it's hard to tell. 11. The area features giant stadium-like gathering centers and info hubs. I always have to smile when I see these kinds of things because people don't go in them but the Lindens never stop hoping they can influence the masses to join the Better World. The SL population is very atomized and very hard to glue together because of the anonymity factor and wildly different levels of culture and education not to mention RL geography. People tend to make friends and form fiercely loyal cliques and then viciously bounce away anyone else who comes near them with over-active security orbs. People stay with the same friends in clusters for years on end. To be sure, some people randomly go around from partner to partner or group to group or re-make alts, but the people who log on regularly and buy property tend to form very, very tight circles based on initial encounters or thematic interests and it is very hard them for them to join others or for others to break into their circle. This is why new people are mystified and leave. 12. With a game that is hard, a community that is new and needs settling, the Lindens will rely on fanboyz or fangirlz who appear who have the time and energy to do their activities and help others get oriented -- these tight networks of people inevitably influence decision-making and the emergence of norms. The also control the forums. Lindens who tried to organize Zindra in its early days fled screaming at all the resident faction fighting; it's hard. Nautilus, Bay City and Zindra all had free flowing culture and activities within their style constraints. It sounds like New Horizons, by having the game and socializing areas, is trying to corral people into certain channels of hopefully positive behavior -- though the name will make some think of Silicon Valley human potential cults like Lifespring or Esalen. Long experience in SL has taught me that anything the Lindens make makes people flock to it. Linden content is inevitably better than a lot of resident content. Anything with their staff attention cuts down the griefing and mayhem factors that make SL frustrating for people. So my prediction is that people will go to it, leaving older Linden Homes or Mainland where they can't get the Lindens to sell them the abandoned land, but then the game will be too hard so the Lindens will have to make an easier version of it.

The problem with those other worlds, which are all knock-offs of Open Sim, is they don't have people in them, and the last time I checked, they don't have the ability to group land (perhaps this changed). I could see no reason whatsoever why I'd move my business to one of these other worlds where I wouldn't be likely to find customers and would have no amenities. Second LIfe has people -- customers -- and content. That's all there is to it.

Now you can have more prims at the Grote River Camp! These parcels are for rent. Just $50 will get you 75 prims; $100 will get $150 prims. And management prims don't count! So you can use our cabins or tents and put out your own things, bring your pets, put up a sky box even. Or ask to remove and place your own. This is a beautiful area! Here's oyisami's cabin with seating in the woods. How about Endame Goes With Beer? Teleport to Grote Camp   Relax in the forest and watch the wind blowing through the trees. Very soothing!  The camp sites are by the Linden river and waterfall.  Come bake your own pizza and have a glass a wine and sit for awhile in nature.   I love this little wagon from Scarlett! - RENTED! Try no. 12 instead    You need an SL Vacation! Teleport to Grote Camping Prokofy Neva Owner & Manager

I couldn't agree more. This is why I don't allow child avatars in my rentals. WAY too man problems with nearly all of them. When you try to raise this issue, you get trolled, harassed and bullied on the forums and ignored by management. So just remain calm, abuse report as appropriate, and don't go looking for trouble because you will find it for yourself. It's a very powerful and vindictive lobby.

I haven't posted any incorrect information, dear. Bloggers should not be timid. In a closed society when no information is given out, they are forced to get such informatio as they can and then try to correct it. That is simply how the press HAS to work in a closed society, which we are in. Inara's information was true but she feared the Lindens' wrath and there was no reason for it. Wild rumors thrive when people put out things and then retract them. Prostrate fanboydom does not help the Lindens improve their product or help the consumer.

I want the Lindens to do a different thing, and I don't want to try to convince a computer company to take them. I want the Lindens to sell a computer with their software installed and working at top performance separately. If it costs $2000 and not $1000, which is what I usually pay for a desk top, that's fine, I'll pay it. I want the Lindens to identify the computer that they can PROVE plays their game optimally from the mass market, i.e. not building from New Egg parts, and sell it and do maintenance and repairs and troubleshooting on it. If they want to do the New Egg thing that's fine but they need to then streamline/mass market that process. Maybe they would only sell a few hundred at first, but it could be important content for them to sell, so to speak. I want them to have to sit down and make SL work on a computer like I do, not make it work on New Egg stuff. Then having perfected that task, with the absolute right graphics card, sound card, fan for the graphics card etc etc I want them to offer THAT as the bundle (the opposite of your idea).

Oh, definitely keep filing reports, file a support ticket, and write security@lindenlab.com if nothing is working. You can keep trying to return the money and also block that impersonator so they can't send you things again (not sure if money sends override this). I had this happen once and I was perplexed. Why would someone I don't know on a day-old account send me $100,000? I definitely don't want ill-gotten gains. But why send them to me? To set me up to look like I'm the thief? I don't get this method. The Lindens can look on their consoles and see where the money originated. It's not like the FBI waiting to pounce on Dred Robert Pirate in the public library.

I got it in the sandbox with a name like Pristina. However, I haven't tried it yet because I'm terrified I will never get my current skins/body/mesh clothes/whatnot back again. I've just had too many bad experiences lately losing skins, not having outfits load, blah blah that I just don't want to touch a thing. It's said because it would be nice sometimes to change outfits or even entire avatars and be a wolf or do that cat avatar thing they have now with KittyCats or this robot which looks very well made. But I don't want to then come back to Ruth and having to piece together a whole look again for an hour. Um, yes, I'm aware you can save your outfit in folders. But that doesn't work. Yes, I've had tickets on this in the past. At this point, I choose my battles. I'll get to it some day. Meanwhile, pick up this avatar because it is well made.

I haven't seen a Linden inworld since the first Obama Administration. I didn't know they still had them.

I think it's an important admission that you have not really been in business for years. You had a peak moment when you made some money some years ago, but then it was all downhill from there, yet you continued to act on the forums as if you knew better than anyone else and anyone who criticized your or had a different experience than you was a lesser form of being. What was particularly obnoxious was your YEARS of whining about search and how it was somehow harming you, when the Lindens changed it. You were so obviously gaming it, not only with your constant complaints and hopes the Lindens would "do something" but of course your "models" or "mannikens that you claimed were needed for illustrating poses or something -- when they were so clearly just traffic gimmicks. Years ago -- 10? -- I, too, could make "real money" in SL because it was there to be made when the population was so large. Today, I'm lucky if I have a bit left over to pay some RL bills and of course I have not one but two RL jobs as many do since the recession. I don't pretend to have any deep business insights of the sort that people who own 100 islands might have -- and who don't have time or inclination for the forums (what tales they could tell us!) You've pretended to have some knowledgeable and wise opinion based on experience when really, you didn't because you haven't really been in business. So I think this is an important acknowledgement coming from you, and I don't think your store closing means the end of the SL economy because now there are more prims, and you made primsavers. Other creators adapt to these harsh circumstances and learn mesh, or develop a niche, or close stores and go to the MP, or do what they have to do. No one is required to do this. Bult that's been the trend rather than trying to get action from the forums.