ralph Alderton
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Blog Comments posted by ralph Alderton
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Shockwave you say .. ' Buying a sim is a serious step and people need to think of it as such '
And that is The Lab's biggest problem, it's a serious step only because it currently costs so much.
The prices have been the same for so long now, it's like they are written in stone.
Expensive setup fees, not letting people buy Homesteads without a full sim - these are all silly blockers on purchase and on converting and retaining customers
$1000 USD to set up a sim.
30,000 sims on the gridSo the Lab has earned let's say, approx. 300K USD from set up fees. That's chicken feed compared to the revenue gathered from tier. That 300K they earn is the biggest blocker to customers who want the product
To block your customers from buying your product for such a tiny amount of money, compared to the possible revenue that could be collected from long term tier paying customers is madness
They're really making it hard for people to buy their product
And it really is completely insane, from a business perspective, to block customers from getting the product they want - their own Homestead - by forcing them to buy a full sim
Sure - the logic is, protect the land market, blah, blah, blah - you have to have a full sim, blah, blah, blah
One reason why the churnover is so great and the Lab fail to retain customers who love SL and have experienced owning land, is the lack of the sense of true ownership and control when they rent from third party land barons
The land market and pricing is so badly in need of rebalancing and rethinking it's unbelievable that it's been the same for so long
It's like the share holders and decision makers are frozen in time and they're too scared to change or unable to think of a better way of doing it
There is a better way. Shame The Lab are collectively unable to see it or unable to persuade the share holders to see that the current land pricing model is totally F****** borked
EDIT
ooops 30 mil does sound more healthy but still a massive blocker on usage. And the 30 mil was collected over 8 years ( 3,750,000 per year average) to block your customers and stop them buying your product. And the grid hasn't seen any real growth since Oct 2008 when the price hike happened
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Hello Shockwave, the reality is that the land market is frozen because of the Atlas program. The Atlas program supports and protects a few big land owners at the expense of everybody else.
In fact the land market is under a terrible spell and we are frozen and stagnant partly because of the Atlas program, nobody new can enter the market and compete and that's a very bad thing.
There's no incentive for those in the Atlas program to improve the quality of their land products and everybody else is locked out.
To FREE THE LAND MARKET land needs to be more accessible.
A landstore where users can upload sims and put them for sale as repeat sale products delivered to the grid by Linden lab. Instantly accessible. So a new user could shop the land store and choose from hundreds of different types of sims developed by the creator community.
Homesteads 49.95 USD per month. Delivered on demand. No set up fee from the Lab but a $49.95 USD price for the ready made sim which is shared revenue (LL and the creator), let's say 30/70 in the creators favour
The no set up fee would mean that people could change their sim every month if they felt like it and try a different theme. One month a beach sim with a beautiful beach house, the next month a forest with a gothic castle. The possibilities are endless and what a fun thing to promote.
A whole new creative and competitive land industry could be created this way. Instead of the same old, same old tired offerings we see from most of the existing land barons.
The new social users just want to deploy a sim and socialise. They don't have time to create or landscape or hire creators. They want READY TO GO SIMS. Fast Easy, Fun !
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FREE THE LAND MARKET ! AND MAKE A BILLION USD A YEAR
1. No set up fee for sims - Anyone can buy a Homestead
2. Half tier costs - 49 USD pm for Homesteads - 150 USD pm for Full sims
3. Let anyone buy and sell sims from the Land Store
We have the SL marketplace for products, let's have a Land store with user designed sims for sale.
This would create a healthy industry based on land and sim development that doesn't exist right now.
No setup fees and low entry cost would mean that almost anybody could create/design/landscape and put them for sale at the NEW USER GENERATED LANDSTORE
FREE THE LAND MARKET !
Linden Lab are supposed to be a super creative company with super creative people, so come on - create something new ! Let us put ready designed sims for sale at the land store
The land market hasn't changed for years, it's stale , it's tired. it's boring
FREE THE LAND MARKET !
Give us a landstore with a pretty web front end so new and existing users could shop for, and buy all kinds of ready made sims
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The lack of interest and lack of posted comments should deeply concern 'The Lab'.
If it's core residents and creators can not be bothered to comment on these scary, flat, stagnant, economic stats, something is seriously wrong.
'Web Merchandise Sales Volume' is the only chart with any growth and that's a 'crock' because that just represents the loss and shift of inworld sales to the SLmarketplace. Very sad as this means there are less things to do, less places to go inworld.
Driving everyone to the Marketplace is clearly having a negative effect on the overall ecconomy and the SL experience.
But The Lab don't believe the Marketplace is having a negative effect as they are too busy congratulating themselves on the technical achievement
We all know that there are 3 things wrong with SL :
1. High Tier Costs
2. High Tier Costs
3. High Tier Costs
Tier is without doubt the reason why Secondlife is not booming and why LL don't turnover a several hundred million USD per year. So short sighted of them to make such a small amount of money compared to what they could be making, if they got Tier costs right
I was going to say more about the terrible glut of of Freebies and 10L$ junk taking up important first pages at the SLM.
I was going to say more about why I'm going to drop 4 full sims and why the marketplace is causing me to do this
I was going to say more about the failure to convert 16k signups a day into active and eventually, paying users
I was going to say more about a lot of things, but like many other creators and concerned residents, I'm worn out banging my head against a brick wall
I love Secondlife, it's an amazing and special thing. But Linden Lab please know that we are all getting very weary with these crucifyingly high tier costs
And still after years, you're really still NOT going to let ANYBODY buy a Homestead without owning a full sim ?????
Marvellous idea. Don't let people buy your premium product. Why should they have what they want and at a price they can afford !
Nothing you guys do is going to have any effect what-so-ever unless you reduce tier dramatically. Mesh won't help, quests for newbies won't help, SL in a browser on facebook won't help, SL on mobiles won't help, SL on Ipads.
Tier is slowly suffocating SL. Very great shame.
First rule of Secondlfie ..... Don't mention Tier costs being to high !
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Your view is limited, hypocritical and naive
We all judge all the time. If one cave man didn't say to another cave dude - 'my arrow shoots straighter and works better than that rubbishy wonky arrow you made' no forward movement would be possible.
Human kind is constantly assessing what is good and what isn't good, what works and what doesn't work.
Without this activity, judging and assessing the difference between dross and quality we would still be living in caves.
You're quite right the market does choose and 20 million people have registered for Secondlife™ and 19 and a half million people have walked away because it's doesn't LOOK good enough to keep them interested and make the effort.
If Secondlife™ looked better people would be more ready and willing to spend time learning how to get the best out of it. There are dozens of computer games that are far more complex than Secondlife™ and there are millions of people ready to spend their time learning those systems BECAUSE THEY LOOK GOOD and it's fun to be in those environments and places while you are learning how to play.
In truth, this is the unobserved problem of Secondlife™.
Prok it's NOT A FREE MARKET. It's a corrupted market. That's the point I'm making. Corrupted by people with poor quality products who are cheating and gaming the system. And THEY make us all look bad. THEY make Secondlife™ look bad
Of course everyone should be allowed to build, make what they like, learn and develop their skills. But we need a system that is a MERITOCRISY not a system that tolerates and allows gaming, cheating and mediocrity to dominate.
There are so many brilliant and talented creators in Secondlife™ suffering from poor visibility because of the SUPERABUNDANCE of cheating and gaming that some people like to call promotion and SEO.
It's not repugnant to suggest that we need a system that is BASED ON MERIT and EXCELLENCE.
The bad is driving out the good and it's not a pleasant task to say 'hey some of this stuff aint so good and the people making it are cheating and gaming their way to the top of search PLACES and search ALL.
Collectively we are all in this together. It's a symbiotic relationship - us and The Lab. And we are like a huge choir collectively trying to sing a song and trying to harmonise best we can.
The difficulty I am addressing is if we let some of the worst singers PUSH THEIR WAY TO THE FRONT OF THE CHOIR, and grab the microphone and sing at the top of their voices - the choir as a whole will make a horrible noise. The beautiful voices will not be heard and the onlookers and listeners will think we are a rubbish choir and they will walk away and will not want to listen to our song
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@The Lab - if you guys refuse to advertise and want Secondlife™ to grow in an organic and viral way you must must STOP the cheaters and fakers and gamers dominating the system.
There's an abundance of super talented creators in Secondlife™ ALL OF THEM obscured and fighting for visibility. They are outnumbered 100 to 1. They are Secondlife's heros but you don't recognise and cultivate your talent.
I am deeply concerned that linden Lab do not know which side of the bread the butter is on
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Desmond Shang says
The quality merchants generally struggle against highly questionable operations who have one skill: keeping up with gaming search.Desmond has it -
It is the questionable merchants who are destroying Secondlife™ and hindering it's growthGood and talented, honest merchant creators are suffering due to fakers and gamers dominating and bullying the system
The combination of traffic botters gaming search PLACES and key word stuffers and land cutters gaming search ALL has had a profoundly negative effect on the LOOK of Secondlife™ over the last two and a half years.
If The Lab continue to allow those who have some of the WORST CONTENT, the dross, to dominate search Places and search All, the LOOK of the grid will continue to suffer.
The sum effect of allowing those with poor quality content to dominate search All and Search Places means that Secondlife is not attractive and does not look cool.
The SUPERABUNDANCE of dross is choking the grid and hidng the talented developers, destroying any hope of a good looking Secondlife™
This is the MOST IMPORTANT,unobserved and neglected situation effecting the growth of Secondlife™
All the good things The Lab are doing are wiped out and undermined by the SUPERABUNDANCE of dross. Unless the fakers, gamers and cheater are discouraged, nothing The Lab does will have any positive effect.
Success doesn't always come from inclusion . Often exclusion is the root to success - cutting away the dross, seperating the wheat from the chaff.
If Secondlife™ doesn't LOOK attractive, how will it attract and retain new and existing users ?
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Changes to Display Names Based on Your Feedback
A group blog by Secondlife in General
There is no good reason why TEMPORARY display names should show as creator names and there are several good reasons why this should NOT be done.
Ok Display names, fine and dandy.
BUT TEMPORARY display names shown as creator names - that is shear utter madness.
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Changes to Display Names Based on Your Feedback
A group blog by Secondlife in General
Hello Jopsy, I do agree with you it's a minor thing, but if there were hundreds of prolific creators who had 10's of 1000's of objects on the grid and they all changed their display names once a week it may have a profound negative effect on the grid.
In fact nobody knows the real effect this might have on the grid.
' Look at the size of a grain of pepper and look at the size of a sneeze '
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Hoorah for mesh !
This is the most important step forward for Secondlife as a virtual world.
Mesh is de-lovley, de-lightful, de-licious
MESH is the real beginning.
Prims were a false start, sculpties were a hack, MESH is the real thing, it's better than coca cola and sliced bread.
There is no elitism with mesh. Mesh tools are available for everyone - Blender, Sketchup etc.
MESH is 1000 times easier than sculpties or prim building.
Do not fear the mesh, LOVE IT, it will set you free as a creator
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Changes to Display Names Based on Your Feedback
A group blog by Secondlife in General
@ Jack and the Display Name team,
GRIEFING THE DATABASE USING DISPLAY NAMES:
If TEMPORARY display names are used as creator names the database could be griefed.
Example:
A database griefer could make a fun freebie, give it away at the SL Marketplace, wait until there are 1000's of the said freebie on the grid and then change their display name which also shows as creator name every week and the database would have to update the creator name of every single version of that freebie object on the grid.
If you had 10 people doing this with 10 different freebies it would surely contribute to lagging the system
If you had 100 people or more changing their name weekly on 1000's of objects, the database could be thrashed and strained.
The database will NOT enjoy such a thrashing - it will be Fast Easy and Fun to strain/attack the database and deteriorate the user experience.
And there will be other ways to strain and grief the database if TEMPORARY Display Names appear as creator names on objects/prims
PLEASE, PLEASE, do not show temprary display names as creator names on objects/prims
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Changes to Display Names Based on Your Feedback
A group blog by Secondlife in General
@ Jack and the Display Name Team,
Please DO NOT allow TEMPORARY Display Names to be used as creator names in the Edit tab of objects. There is no good reason to do this and it will only lead to serious griefing of creators and the database itself.
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A very warm welcome to you Kim.
I must tell you that you are going to have a very difficult time trying to find the Xfactor in SL as Secondlife™ is drowning in a sea of dross because of rubbish, deluded creators gaming the system.
Unless you can persuade Linden Lab to stop the gaming, the cheating, your task will be impossible.
Kim, Here is a post I made approx. a year ago comparing Secondlife™ to the Xfactor maybe it will make interesting reading for you.
https://blogs.secondlife.com/message/383643#383643
Kim, if Secondlife doesn't look attractive, how will you attract and retain new users ?
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September Update
in Featured News
A group blog by Secondlife in General
Posted
It's true, the Lab have done some marvelous things.
Mesh, sizable big prims, dynamic lighting and shadows, ambient occlusion, benefits for new premiere users, bug fixes, better border crossings,etc, etc
But unfortunately all the good things the Lab are doing are FALLING ON STONEY GROUND. No growth is possible.
Tier costs are killing SL's potential.
Concurrency has been falling all year. Grid size is stagnant or shrinking.
The biggest problem we have is High Tier cost and it is sucking the life out of SL and turning SL into a glorified 3D chat room instead of a thriving virtual world
Unless the Lab reduce tier costs substantially SL will continue to stagnate and shrivel
It's a real shame to see such an exciting medium choked and smothered.
High tier costs create an elitist class system in SL.
If it had cost 300USD for a website in the 90's there would be NO INTERNET and because it costs 300USD for a full sim, SL is a tiny niche product compared to the world changing massive success that it could be.
High Tier costs are killing SL's potential