Lucretia Brandenburg

" To be honest there are hundreds if not thousands of blind people in Second Life who don't even keep an eye out, or don't even care unless a griefer spams their location with objects, so yeah often griefers, and bots go by without notice and such it doesn't make anyone who doesn't notice bad or anything. If I had to counter the number of times I have experienced Griefers, even from Reputable people unknowingly helping griefers it would be hundreds if not more, and the list of griefers I actually have is quite big. You know the drama behind the whole JLU braniac thing right? Well I have my own dictionary on griefers, thousands of snapshots, logs, videos, and audio logs on griefer encounters so yeah I would say I have quite a lot." WOW, you put alot of energy into this obsession over griefers. Maybe others notice them but don't consider it serious enough to get upset over, maybe what you consider griefing is not what they consider griefing? You also mention going to land owners and informing them that stolen goods are being given away on their land. You think that won't kick up drama? You've been in SL since 08 ... the generally accepted procedure is to contact the original creator and either send the items to the creator or provide the name of the copybotter and let the creator take care of it. That is a courtesy to the creator of the stolen items and oh, I'd say good citizenship. Anything other than that smacks of a crusade and is asking for trouble.

1. I don’t think it’s that LL doesn’t care anymore, I think they’re understaffed. When an organization is understaffed, things are prioritized in order of importance for dealing with them. How they’re prioritized I couldn’t say, and yes, the amount of time it takes LL employees to help residents isn’t as fast as it used to be. I rarely need to contact concierge services but in the last two years when I’ve needed them, they have always gotten to an issue within an hour or less. Now, that is because I’m an estate manager, so I have access to concierge services. When I was a premium member, I’d file tickets and issues would be resolved quickly. When a billing issue could not be resolved to my satisfaction, I dropped my premium membership. Given that LL was billing me 40 USD a month for land I did not own, and continued to do so for months, and would not refund me the money, I didn’t see any benefit to being a premium member, and by my reckoning, they got a few years’ worth of premium membership out of me during that time. I do think that ARs and tickets filed by non-premium members are at the bottom of the “to do” list for LL, but thus far, since dropping my premium membership, I haven’t had to file any tickets, so I don’t know what the turnaround is. Some months back, the estate owner for whom I work sold a HS sim. Whoever took care of the sale inadvertently transferred the entire estate to the new owner of the HS sim, and the estate ceased to exist. No sense contacting concierge services as an estate manager when we all were booted from that role with the mixed up change of ownership. So another estate manager waited for one of the Lindens at the land office to log in, someone who has always been very helpful to us in the past, and reminded him of who he was and who he works for and explained the situation. The estate was restored in a few minutes, and when the estate owner came online, he added the managers back to the list. That is typical of my experiences with LL. 　 2. Linden Labs does not have issues with griefers, some residents have issues with griefers. Yes, they used to be dealt with far more swiftly back before LL let a third of its staff go. However, In over 5 years in SL, I’ve encountered griefers only a half dozen times and five out of six times the situation was handled without a need for Linden intervention. One time while out shopping, I was caught in the backlash of an old style caging and orbiting attack, directed at another person. I snapped photos, told the person being attacked to TP home, copied and pasted open chat, and filed an AR. Three times, about four years ago, I encountered a replicating gadget that dropped prim swastikas all over the place. Locate object, ID the owner of the object, photos, AR, return the object, ban the owner. If it happened again, I would have set security orbs in the air. Over two years ago, terraforming was left on by accident on one of the sims I help manage and a griefer mucked up the terraforming. LL did a roll back within hours. About a year ago, a renter left object entry wide open on his parcel and someone rezzed a replicator object that kept crashing the sim. One of the other managers teleported to the sim between crashes, searched for scripted objects, disabled it and then returned it before the sim could crash again. Twice I found spawning scripted prims at very high altitudes above one of the sims on the estate. They were never active, I returned them without issue. I worked security for an estate of over 40 sims, I have worked security at other estates, and manage an estate now. I am VERY security conscious and constantly looking for possible griefer activity, checking region and about land settings, and keeping an eye out for strangers. If I see a stranger who doesn't answer in IM or in local chat, particularly one that is older with a blank profile or no groups or payment history, I tend to ban first and ask questions later. The impression from reading these forums is that severe griefing happens all the time all over the grid and that untold thousands suffer griefer attacks. I know dozens and dozens of people who have never been griefed. THEY know dozens who have never been griefed. There are certain types of activities in SL that seem to attract griefers. Griefing is more an extension of pettiness and drama and less to do with age verification. In general ... and I do mean “general”... from what I’ve seen, BL clans and those heavily into RP are some of the worst griefers and the worst griefed. Does griefing exist? of course. Do those who come here to vent about it and ask for help suffer from the attacks? Definitely. Is it a severe issue that is crippling SL in general? In my opinion, it is not. Most griefing can be prevented by proper region and about land settings. Of course, it depends on your definition of griefing. Mine may be narrower than yours. Does it make you crash? Does it make it impossible for you to move? Does it crash a sim? Does it make it impossible for you to see anything or communicate with others? If not, it's more annoyance than griefing. 3. Yes, it is expensive to own an entire region. Having alot of prims at one’s disposal is great, as is having room for a big house, and plenty of prims if you’re a builder, for your own private sandbox. Do you need to own an entire region to have a nice place with enough prims to decorate? No. If an entire sim or more is desired by a community, there are ways to finance it among the members so that it is not too much of a burden, assuming there are enough members willing to pay. It seems that those who come to SL from online gaming communities are the most dissatisfied with SL. However, are the majority of SL residents gamers? If you expect SL to be a gaming environment and function the same as one, you are going to be dissatisfied. 4. Account hacking. Yes, it happens. I do agree with Drake, and his very apt analogy. If your house is robbed, your landlord is not obligated to replace stolen items. Insurance in the form of copies that are boxed or stored in inventory storage devices rezzed in world is one way to prevent massive loss of inventory. If you don’t want inventory lost, avoiding no copy items as much as possible is a good place to start. As for an inventory dating back to 08 ... a lot of the older stuff is no mod, or poorly made and textured (though for standards of when it was made, it was likely great), very primmy, and/or poorly scripted. In regard to clothes and hair for instance, there are very few designers whose work stands the test of time and looks good enough to wear by today’s standards. With the exception of dresses by one designer, anything I purchased before 09 has been deleted, and not missed at all. Most builders and designers in SL will give someone a new, no copy item in emergencies if there’s proof of purchase. Since the transaction history only goes back so far, if you want proof of purchase, you can copy and paste the transaction history into a document and save on your hard drive. It also depends on one’s expectations and how great an air of entitlement someone has. For instance, I once foolishly rezzed a no copy item on a Tuesday before checking the grid status report. It poofed, never to return. It did not occur to me to contact the creator and ask for another because it was my own fault. I am not going to bother someone who is busy working to replace something that I lost through no fault of the person who sold it to me. I have had thousands of inventory items disappear now and again over the years. OH WELL. It’s like losing something in a house fire in RL. If you buy all your furniture from a big department store, don’t insure it, and it’s all lost in a disaster, do you go to the department store and ask for them to replace the items? No, because what you owned was lost, and you can’t expect merchants to just replace things like that in any life. As for the idea of being able to obtain copies to transfer to a new account after destroying the originals in inventory in the original account, that’s asking a great deal of merchants and of LL and would require some sort of inventory checking and monitoring. Yes, you may pay someone what seems like a lot of Lindens for an item, but realize how long it takes someone to make that “pricey” item, and based on the rate of exchange, the creator gets very little for it. Asking someone who works for, essentially, below minimum wage based on RL money to go to an awful lot of trouble for your convenience really does seem to be asking a great deal. Recently, someone I know had his account hacked. All his Lindens were transferred from his account, as were all his transfer perm clothes. Within a day, friends were giving him Lindens to make up for those stolen, they were transferring what clothing they could, and contacting friends who are clothing merchants to arrange credit for him so he could replace his wardrobe, and really coming together for him. Does that happen with everyone whose account is hacked? No. It happens with a great many, friends and acquaintances coming together and offering to help. THAT is a genuine sense of community, and a case of getting back what someone puts out. Do people who are friends and acquaintances in SL support each other or are they fair weather friends? So no, the landlord will not replace items stolen but the neighbors will often take up a collection to help someone out. 　 　 5. “most people gaming today want Role-Play” ... how do you arrive by that conclusion? As we see on these forums, many do not consider SL a game, they are not “gamers.” Lack of innovation? Scripts are more efficient today, people who keep up with new building techniques and viewer capabilities create amazing things ... love it or hate it, well done mesh is a prime example of this. WHERE in SL do you go that everything you see is poorly designed? I see some poorly built things, yes, but the majority of what I see in SL is gorgeous. Well designed and built, textured superbly ... the SL I see is usually stunning and beautiful. The same goes for lag ... most lag is perceived lag because a computer doesn’t have the chops or a decent enough graphics card to render SL well at the graphics settings used. Now, some people say “I have a gaming computer, excellent graphics for this or that, but that isn’t good for SL?" Different viewers run better or worse on different graphics cards. For instance, the viewer I use works better with Radeon graphics cards as opposed to NVidia. This means that I can use a lower end entertainment oriented computer and have a relatively lag free and quite lovely SL, whereas someone with a higher end computer may have more perceived lag and things don’t look so pretty. For a friend of mine, the reverse is true. I “lag" like crazy when trying to use the viewer he uses, but get along beautifully with the one I use. He’s tried to use the same viewer as I do, he crashes repeatedly. A well managed sim should have very little lag. If the lag is definitely NOT due to your computer, your graphics card, or your Internet connection, then it sounds like a poorly managed sim. I‘ve only been to a few that way, and oddly enough, the owners took pride in having the laggiest places in SL, which I never quite understood. “Okay I respect what other people create, but I am looking for an actual combat in Second Life that deals with CyberPunk, or Sci-FI, with actual Combat, Meters, and I don't mean another repeat like Gorean Meter, DCS, or Insilico, I mean something very unique similar to a RPG like StarCraft, and GOR isntead of having just RP items and servers Actual Mines with actual RP slaves who have to go mine and such.” That is what YOU are looking for in SL. That is not to say that everyone (or even the bulk of role players) are looking for that. If something doesn’t exist in SL, there are four alternatives. 1. Make it yourself. 2. Pay someone else to make it for you. 3. Complain about it and say because SL isn’t what YOU want it to be, it is dying. 4. Stop complaining and leave to find what you want in an online game elsewhere and stop looking for a genuine gaming environment in what is still largely an elaborate 3D chat room. 6. I have encountered a few rude people in SL. More often than not it is a matter of poor manners brought about by language barriers and cultural differences. None have been group administrators or estate managers. What is it about you and the community that you have chosen to associate with that has griefers following you from sim to sim? What sort of drama rife RP groups have you belonged to that this happens? I know plenty of people in RP communities who are not griefed, who have no issues. It is absurdly easy to become embroiled in drama in SL. It is also absurdly easy to avoid it. In my opinion it is drama that motivates a lot of griefing at RP sims. Now, if you complain about something and the group administrators or estate managers do nothing, it is your choice to go back, or your choice to try to compel them to see things your way. Regardless of how politely you phrase something, if you bring something up and a sim owner chooses to not see it as an issue, making mention of it again can be seen as nagging and strident. So mention it once, and let it go .. it sounds as if you go beyond that. Are they rude in their response? It sounds like they are. Are you rude when you try to tell them what they should and should not tolerate on their own land and in their own groups? Yes. Reporting them to LL, or threatening to report them is not likely to endear you to anyone. Yes, ARs are anonymous, but if someone stridently objects and doesn’t let something go and then an AR is filed, it does not take a genius to figure out the likely originator of the AR. As someone else said, if a sim owner wants to ban someone for having a particular color of hair, as the owner of the sim s/he can do that. No, I am not saying that you bring on all the griefing yourself, I’m saying look to the company you keep, the places you visit, the communities you interact with, and how you interact with them. It seems to me from your posts that you want things in SL just so, and if you don’t get your way, you don’t step back graciously, but keep at it. If it is not a sim or group owned by you, it is not up to you how it is run. All in all though, your experience of SL is NOT the norm by any means. I have no opinions about bots, since I rarely see them and the ones I do see are greeter bots in stores and I once had a nice chat with the person behind the begging bot. Years ago, I used to try to go to sims and sim owners would have so many traffic bots that real customers couldn’t get into the sim, which I thought quite absurd. That was before LL changed the rules regarding them. People complain about bots, but I don’t quite have a clear idea precisely what they’re complaining bots do to ruin SL. A rational, objective explanation of this would be appreciated. I don’t see SL dying. I don’t see it growing, but that doesn’t mean it is dying. Yes, there are ignorant people in SL. There are also egocentric people who think because SL is not what they want it to be, it is all but over.

I was not referring to fund raising efforts, I was referring to giving a 50% discount on tier to RL nonprofit organizations. However, in regard to fundraising efforts, not all non-profit organizations raise money to relieve suffering of humans and animals that can’t help themselves, nor do they all fulfill real life “needs” if “needs” is defined as lacking in basic necessities and the suffering that comes from such a lack. There are non profits that support education and cultural activities in RL, and while those are fulfilling and worthwhile, are not (in my opinion) as vital as say, potable water, cancer research, and animal rescue efforts. As for fundraising in SL that fulfill’s a RL need “that would go unmet were it not for their efforts” ... with the exception of a very few nonprofits’ fundraising efforts, what is raised in SL is a proverbial drop in the bucket as it relates to their budgets, and those “needs” can be met by RL fundraising efforts. That is not to say that efforts in SL are not worthwhile and do not do some good, merely that your statement is a bit of an exaggeration. I am not talking about a free shop or gallery to support artistic and cultural endeavors in SL versus donating to a RFL kiosk. The non profits I had in mind are those that support similar RL endeavors. I am talking about the idea that RL nonprofit organizations need entire sims for their efforts and many feel they should be given a 50% discount on tier because their reason for being in SL is better than other reasons. A successful fundraising effort for what I deem to be a worthy cause (supporting the AIDS Committee of Toronto) does very well without owning a sim, and without special consideration from LL. It is one of the few RL nonprofit organizations I support whole heartedly in SL because the money raised in SL does provide vital services for people who would not have them otherwise. Relay For Life is another effort I strongly support. I am not anti charity in SL, I came to SL specifically because I had heard of the good works that were being done here and the potential. In RL I have worked for non profit organizations most of my adult life, I am in no way down on non profits. The non profit for which I worked in SL for over two years was raising funds in SL to send to another non profit, the goal of which we felt to be a noble one (to decrease ethnic violence and hatred in a troubled region of the world). It turned out that rather than sending all the funds raised in SL to where we thought they were sending them, they were borrowing a good deal of the funds to support their own RL regional cultural events that, while assuredly edifying, constitutes in my mind a “want" and not a “need." When approached with the notion of SL fundraising going to them directly, the charity everyone thought we were supporting with 100% of our efforts and donations wanted nothing to do with SL and would not allow their name mentioned. It took a lot of effort to find a legitimate RL organization with goals akin to what we were committed to supporting that had an above board presence in SL. As for LL being a business that chooses what charities to support or not, that was precisely my point, that it is a for profit business, and a choice to support some charities or none at all is for them to decide. I remember the hue and cry that went up when LL announced that non profits would no longer be getting the 50% discount on tier. I remember thinking back then that if all the effort and energy that was going into complaining about it went into brainstorming regarding how to cover the costs, it would not have been such a blow. However, the biggest question I had at the time was why do so many non profits need full sims at all? If a sim can’t attract enough patrons to keep it afloat financially, regardless of the purpose of the sim, how vital is it deemed to be by the SL community as a whole? If a non profit’s budget is so tight that between 97.50 and 147.50 extra a month will break it, why have the expense of a sim? Why not utilize the NPC? Why not interest sim owners in hosting events (whether fundraising for a cause or to promulgate cultural awareness) or donating land for virtual classrooms? 　

I have several thoughts regarding nonprofits in SL. The first being, why would they offer ones that did not leave a discount? My impression was that the nonprofits that gave up their sims did so because they could not afford full price tier. Those who stayed seem to believe they can manage, and have been doing so for some time, so why offer them a discount that is designed to bring back those who left? My next thought regarding nonprofits in SL ... in order to qualify for that discount, organizations had to be "legitimate" ... by which I mean a non taxable charity or education institution in RL. Now, there are a lot of good works and fundraisers in SL that do not fit that criteria. There are landowners who let shops and residential parcels for nothing other than to be neighborly ... and as landowners know, for a sim to break even let alone make a profit is rather rare, so much of SL is "non-profit." Third thought ... why entire sims, unless part of that is to rent out retail or residential space to defray the tier cost? Lastly on the subject ... I worked for a nonprofit for over two years in SL. When it was announced that LL was ceasing to offer a 50 percent discount, the powers that be there decided to close the sims they owned. There was no discussion about remaining open and exploring alternative financing to have them remain viable. If any sim is valued by enough people in SL, it is not beyond reason to expect those who appreciate it to contribute donations, or for a small fee to be charged for those who visit. We're talking about 97.50 USD per month.. 100 visitors making a monthly contribution of less than 1 USD per month would cover that ... it is not a lot if a place has patrons who are passionate about keeping a sim open. People decry the loss of nonprofit sims as places of value to the SL community that were lost. If they had genuine value to a significant number of SL residents, efforts to remain and pay the same tier as everyone else could have been made and been successful. Hmmm .. should I purchase that evening dress for 600L or plunk half of that into a donation kiosk at my favorite nonprofit sim and go bargain shopping for a less expensive dress? That really should not be a hard choice if the priorty is keeping a nonprofit sim viable. No one said anything along the lines of "well, it was a nice discount while it lasted, let's see if we're as vital to SL as we like to believe and buck up." So ... why are "legitimate" non profits worthy of discounts while others who do a lot of good ... fundraising, creating digital art, showing kindness to others and helping out, not?

Thank you for taking the time to look at the pictures. Arm length and shoulder width I know I need to tweak, the bust and hips, I'm fine with. When I play around with my avatar's shape, I tend to consider my RL shape and work from there. I have very wide square sort of shoulders in RL, and I have a bit of trouble narrowing them on my avatar without getting a slope to them, since I sort of pattern them after RL a bit too much. Quick aside here ... Funny but true, my RL sister also has very wide shoulders but also a very wide, deep ribcage. She's also 9 inches taller than me. When we were teenagers, she used to borrow my jackets and literally split them down the back, like the Hulk busting out of Bruce Banner's clothing until I wised up and started loaning her oversized stretchy sweaters. I'm very short waisted with short legs in RL, and absordly busty, so I tend to try to lengthen my SL legs and torso, and keep the bust smaller on my avatar, and also the hips, not wanting to be top or bottom heavy. I have gotten some correctly proportioned and sized shapes and am going to play around with modding them, after I fiddle with the arms and shoulders a bit more on this one. Thanks for your input!

I should have qualified that and said for me, it is difficult to get my short shape into proportions I find attractive because I do what Penny stated, start off with a taller shape, the proportions of which I like, and begin the process of tweaking it down. A scaler would be great, but without that, it is a process that takes me quite some time. Below is me, 7 feet 1 inch, while wearing 3 inch heels down to 5 feet 5 inches in the same outfit. Several years ago, I went to a prominant shape maker and asked her to mod a shape I liked, I wanted something shorter and more realistic. Her idea of short was 6 feet 6 inches, and the proportions were way off. When I asked for shorter, I wound up with a short, squat, overly busty and very wide hipped 5 feet 8 inches. So for one person it is easy, for another more difficult ... however, when well known shape makers whose shapes are very much a standard in SL (for good shapes go to this shop .. it is one newbies are often sent to for "the best" shapes) have difficulty scaling down, indicates to me that what comes easily for you does not come so easily for all. Personally, I'd rather have what to my eye looks attractive and in proportion regardless of height, than what to my eye looks unattractive. However, if you are going to compare avatars by height, some attempt to present better proportioned examples of taller avatars (the one in the red dress looks more like a joke and I've never seen anyone that out of proportion) rather than extremes would be more apt an illustration. Or else comparing badly proportioned tall avatars to badly proportioned short avatars would seem more fair.

There used to be places that rented rezidence units and holodecks very cheaply, 25 to 50L a week, very nice units. Now, when I search for rezidence units, I only find where they are sold, not rented. There are places that rent skyboxes for 40 to 50 L per week, pay so many weeks in advance and receive a 25% discount. 85L a week seems to be the cheapest you can get with enough prims to do it up nicely using traditional methods of decorating. However, even the most basic skyboxes now have nice panorama windows and basic furnishing. There are furniture designers that make one prim entire suites of furniture ... I can decorate a box using 5 or 10 prims and make it look very nice. Of course, the furniture costs, but there are promos and deals and ways to earn L in SL. If you find a cheap enough place, and have me added to the land group so I can rez, I'll come over and decorate for you, gratis. Regarding what Amethyst said, about such cheap places being no place to raise a child, that would depend on the RP scenario.

I didn't say they were legit solely because their TOS said they were legit, I said "They do pay royalties for each time a movie is streamed, which is why video stores in SL have in their TOS that the movies aren't for public viewing." They have that in their TOS because they pay to stream them legitimately, and because it costs them each time a movie is streamed, they do not want dozens of people watching a movie sold for 450L dozens of times because each time it is watched, it eats into their profits for one, and for another, goes against some of the licensing agreements they have with the distributers they use. "I never claimed that they were not legit, just that what they are charging goes contrary to the top streamers have officially stated." No, your exact words are "Simply the price you are charging for each video streamed is telling that you are not paying the royalties."

Of course it doesn't, but to base an assumption of pirating on the cost of a movie makes very little sense, particularly given that the cost is comparable to "RL" streaming of "legit" movies.

So you did! My apologies, that will teach me to not wear my glasses!. If we had a free sim where I work, I'd help out, but still asking around for you.

They do pay royalties for each time a movie is streamed, which is why video stores in SL have in their TOS that the movies aren't for public viewing, the assumption made is that no one is going to watch a movie dozens upon dozens of times here. How much do you think it costs"legit" companies to stream a two hour movie, real cost to them, not what they charge the consumer? "Simply the price you are charging for each video streamed is telling that you are not paying the royalties." Blockbuster On Demand costs 1.99 USD per movie rental. That's legit and give or take a few pennies, about the same as the average movie to "purchase" in SL. So really, the cost to purchase movies in SL doesn't tell much about whether royalties are paid.

Maybe post this in the WANTED: FULL SIMS section? This area is for those advertising full regions for sale. Sme more information would be useful as well, such as how long do you need the sim, the dates you need it, and a link to any RL autism awareness organization you might be afflilated with. Is this a fundraiser or informational? If it IS a fundraiser, where do the funds raised go? Etc. Etc.

You'd be surprised what 30L a week can get, a sparcely furnished skybox with a tiny prim limit, not lavish but a place to call home. Search for cheap skybox rentals.

"When I read the disclaimer disclaimers, my impression is that the main intent, rather than a threat, is more to show just how absurd the original disclaimers are" she exclaimed about the disclaimers.

Here's a pic of my 5'5" self at the movies. Of course, it gets really fun when I'm hosting a skinny dip and standing next to a naked 8 foot tall DJ ... WATCH OUT, THAT IS GOING TO PUT MY EYE OUT!

I get a kick out of those disclaimers. I thought about putting a bumper sticker on my car in RL ... DISCLAIMER: If you're a cop and I'm speeding, this bumper sticker is here to inform you that I do not want to be ticketed and by reading this bumper sticker, you have now just agreed to let me go as fast as I want. I do like the disclaimer disclaimers posted, I've been meaning to put one in my picks forever :matte-motes-wink-tongue:

Depending on where one lives, if someone doesn't own a car, grows his own food, maybe knits his own sweaters from wool shorn from a neighbor's sheep on the down low, and doesn't ever need to go to the dentist or get a pair of glasses, I bet 50k can stretch real far :matte-motes-wink-tongue:

That's a good point Penny Unfortunately, I don't think anyone is going to jump on that bandwagon until they toss away their old too big content and I don't think many want to. I remember my first house in SL, the kitchen sink was big enough for me to bathe in, and I looked like a toddler on the staircase, and back then my avatar was 5'7". I think part of that is because people want to live "bigger" in SL than in RL, bigger houses, more land, etc. My current shape is usually 5'5". I say usually because I change my appearance several times a week. and I have to say, it is very difficult to get realistic, attractive proportions on a "short" avatar. I mod my shape all the time and I'm pretty good at it, but to go that short, it took me nearly two hours of tweaking sliders. Heads are too large, hips are too wide, legs too chubby. The experience did make me wonder though, whether the plethora of distorted short female avatars with too big heads, too narrow necks, skinny thighs that don't meet, giant butts and hips so wide they look like they've been run over with a steam roller is an aesthetic born of impatience modding an in proportion, RL height shape :matte-motes-wink: RL sized avatars, even when not grossly distorted that way tend to have heads that are too big and shoulders that are too narrow. And really, unless everyone were to get with that program, most "normal" height people would be taken for child avatars and that opens a whole other can of worms. Your world, Your imagination ... just make sure your imagination includes being a 7 foot tall in bare feet woman or an 8 foot tall man or risk looking out of place and silly in a crowd.

Hey Drake, Incentive ... maybe it could be so that I can get some sociological theory (from someone with a degree) about virtual worlds with my Happy Meal?

Looking at the pictures of your world you created, which really is lovely btw, 15 USD a week seems like an awful lot to maintain that. is it the space it takes up? Do you need a huge parcel of land for it? Is it the prims? With nice low prim sculpted trees, regular prims set to convex hull, and the newer low lag temp rezzers, it seems like it wouldn't be that many prims. if its the square meters that are required, have you considered a dome or panorama that gives the illusion of greater space? Panoramica makes great domes, and Panorama RealView makes great skybox surrounds that do give the illusion of a lot more space when landscaped well to hide the edges and lighting artfully placed. I know that might not be ideal but it can actually be a fun sort of challege to say ok, this is the space, these are the prims, my budget is 3 to 5 USD a week, how do I turn all that into what I want?

Well put, Drake. The middle class in the US is shrinking, half of the households in the US live on les than 50,000 USD a year income. For someone to blithely state that 200 to 300 USD a month is next to nothing to spend on entertainment indicates a lack of awareness of just how much the "average" American household has to spend.

RL entertainment: 79 USD a year for Amazon Prime where I can get free videos and discounts on ebooks for my kindle fire. Library card to borrow books - free of charge. I have a BA degree, I LOVE my job working for a nonprofit, but where I live, the pay scale for any job, let alone a nonprofit is not exactly high, and jobs are not plentiful, so even if I did want to get another job in my area, it would not be a walk in the park. Even at twice what I'm making now, spending enough to buy a nice amount of land with a decent amount of prims without sharing the cost as I do now (I share a half sim with 3 other people) would wreck my monthly budget. I'm a single person without children, but no, 195 to 295 a month for a full ML or island region is NOT chump change. There are alot of disabled and retired people who are in SL, they are on fixed incomes, they can't afford that either.

Exactly, Dillon! The OP's mind is made up, despite people who have been here years saying no, really, there IS no hierarchy, no elite, the OP came to SL looking for one, looking for SL to mirror RL and is going to insist it's here, which makes me wonder, why bother asking for input on it in the first place? As for an estate owner (big fish or little fish) being "the government" on her or his own estates, that is true. Owners and managers of estates make the rules there. There are a few estates owned and run by democratic cooperatives and consensus, which I find interesting, but few and far between I think. I'm an estate manager (ooooh 3 whole regions), which makes me part of the government of that estate (I have the POWER to ban griefers, ugly naked people who make rude gestures and play with themselves in public, and when it comes down to it, anyone I feel like banning!!! WOOO HOOO! If you come to our little estate, FEAR ME, I am a goddess there) I wear expensive skins and eyes and hair, I know a few Lindens, I rent an amazingly landscaped half sim (at cost, split with 3 other people), I spend a damn fortune in SL (and was a premium member for 4 years until LL wouldn't stop billing me for land I no longer owned). Does that make me one of the elite? LOL. Nope. Yet having "power" over others, fancy clothes, skin, hair, etc. makes someone elite? A friend said it best in his profile, "a big fish in SL is a paramecium in a puddle in RL" and anyone who's been around long enough in SL knows it. Server SNAFUs, internet connection issues, lost inventory, griefers, hackers ... ALL great equalizers.

There are people who are well known in some circles in SL. There are some people who believe themselves to be well known to all. Unless someone is a fairly large landowner or follows the SL economy in the news for years, I doubt Anshe Chung would ring any bells. In most large SL communities there are self styled "celebrities" who think they are well known across the grid and tend to have an elitist attitude. Having an elitist attitude doesn't make someone elite. From what I've observed, they are fashion models, photographers, bloggers, and DJs. If someone in that community or outside of that community doesn't read the SL fashion magazines and blogs and doesn't go clubbing frequently, it is unlikely that they would have heard of these people. A photographer friend of mine was doing a poster for someone's rezday party, and a friend of the rezday girl said he would have considered posing for the photo but his face is so well known, people would just assume the party was about him. My photographer friend had never heard of the guy. Back when there weren't a plethora of DJs in SL, DJs were treated like demigods. Now, it's difficult for even very good DJs to garner followings. I have known people who, in RL, literally live in hovels and subsist on ramen noodles but own several sims in SL and tend to have an elitist atitude about their SLs. Anshe Chung is an astute businessperson. SL has made her wealthy. If half her sims are offline for hours after a rolling restart, her being top dog in the SL real estate business probably doesn't get them back online any faster than those of the owner of a small estate. The names of content creators may be well known in some circles, but it takes quite alot of time and effort to turn a profit in SL. I knew one person who made her RL living in SL who put in between 14 and 16 hours a day, 7 days a week and when she wasn't creating items to sell, she was overseeing her business and constantly defending against intellectual property infringement. Figuring her hours worked and sales, she was bringing in slightly over $10 USD an hour gross profit after expenses. I know of two large landholders who left SL because they weren't given preferential treatment by LL, which they thought they should have been given because they paid well over 10,000 USD in tier each month. I've known people who brag about being friends with Lindens. I never quite get that, They're employees of the company, civil servants ; if someone is an estate owner or manager, or runs a profitable business in SL, it helps to be on good terms with them, and the ones I've met have been nice and down to virtual earth, but the bulk of civil servants in any reality are not top of any hierarchy. All that (and a bit disjointed, sorry) to say that I don't think there is a genuine hierarchy in SL. A premium member with a 512m parcel doesn't pay his premium membership fee and his account is put on hold. A premium member who pays LL several thousand dollars a month doesn't pay his his premium membership fee and guess what? His account is put on hold too. I've seen it happen. If there were a genuine hierarchy, the latter person would be given some sort of preferential treatment, and that rarely happens.

Well put, Amethyst.