Crim Mip

There's a balance that should be maintained between expressing oneself and what is already in existence in the area. If it's already a complete free for all, then by all means have at. If there's an obvious theme going on then at least try to do something that will fit in. That should be a consideration BEFORE you buy the land. "It's my land and I can do what I want with it!" is the cry of the rude, immature, and entitled.

Yeah, it makes me think it will need a seriously high end computer to run it and the lack of inworld object creation pretty much kills any enthusiasm I have for it. At that point, you might as well be creating Unity games. Phillip Rosedale recently all but pulled the plug on High Fidelity which was essentially his version of Sansar. As with Sansar, he was banking on VR tech advancing at a much faster rate than it has and becoming far more mainstream. He admitted he'd miscalculated and maybe in 7-10 years it might be time to try again. Until then, go watch Ready Player One and dream.

They did indicate they were going to look into improvements in the coding for groups. It's one of the oldest sections of server code left and it's aparently going to be a bear to fix because it's got hooks into a lot of stuff. Every tume it's been brought up, it's always been "We have other projects in the queue and groups work to at least some degree. My take is finish up current projects that are reasonably far along and then devote however many devs and hours as it takes to fix it once and for all. If it delays some new features that's not the end of the world. It would give TPV's a chance to catch up and for people to learn and use some of the features that have been added (and find any serious bugs in those).

I have a premium account, but I suspect some RP communities that use multiple groups will end up moving to services like Discord with only one main group inworld. A lot of creators are going to see people leaving their product groups, especially ones that get very low traffic. IM bots are better in this scenario in any case. People are going to expect more 'value' in the groups they do keep. A possible alternative is setting up an alt to just hold groups that you don't need to keep track of on a daily basis such as the aforementioned product groups. I suspect a lot will do this which will completely defeat the stated reason for lowering the limit.

Wow, you really don't know much about SL history do you. There was a fair amount of time when there was a teen grid for those under 18 and the main grid for those who were older than 18. Pretty much what you suggested. It didn't work. The teen grid had nowhere near the content. There was constant piracy of main grid items and, since adults weren't allowed on the teen grid, no real way to check if your items were being stolen. Finally, the age verification company LL was using was so crappy that there were more teens on the main grid than on the teen grid while many actual adults had issues trying to verify. LL finally more or less gave up and consolodated them. That's when they made a cursory effort to move adult stuff to Zindra, but I think that was mostly for press releases. The fact is there is just as much adult activity on the rest of the grid as there ever was. I'm sorry if you've been hiding under a rock and didn't notice that.

How about to transfer ownership of an existing sim? Specifically a grandfathered/paid down one? Is that likewise $100+first month? I mean if it is, the group of friends I'm in that has mainland currently will be jumping on board. I don't suppose there's any plans to allow homesteads without already owning an estate. That would be even better.

Barring two factor authentication, a great deal of added security could be had if your account log in was separate from your user name and couldn't be looked up by anyone other than LL. It would prevent account spoofing and a lot of phishing attacks since there'd be no way to spoof the actual account log-in name. Keep the unchangable user name and the changable display name, just don't use those to log in with and make it so there was no reverse lookup possible other than by LL. That way, even if somebody found out your inworld user name and password, it still wouldn't do them any good.

As far as raising the premium prices, I'm not upset or surprised. I'm actually more surprised it's taking so long. I think the timing stinks though. They should have gone up prior to or at the same time as the new Linden Homes were released out into the wild. As it is, there are going to be people feeling like they are getting bait and switched and not entirely without cause. You've been doing so well making premium worth getting for a lot of people who hadn't had premium accounts before and in one badly timed move, you're wrecking a lot of that good will. I know groups have been a problem, but you don't encourage basic members to go premium by cutting a basic mainstay in SL that drastically. You will encourage people to leave doing that though. I guess that would also lower the strain on the servers. Better yet, fix the stupid code! We've heard repeatedly that it's hard and would be lot of hours of dev time. At least it would be for something people use instead of something like cough...cough..pathfinding...cough. Group function is pretty much the one legacy thing in SL that is pretty much just as crappy now as it was 10 years ago. Also, why add more groups to premium if it's an issue? 60 was more than many of us use as it was. If you'd really wanted to make it more attractive, another raise of the land allowance would have been nice. People who get a usable size parcel often find they want more and hey another 1024 is only another $7 a month with half of that coverd by the stipend. As for the sim prices going down, wonderful! Want to get a bunch of people and groups buying them? Cut the setup fees. There's no good reason it should cost what it does to transfer ownership and change the name of an existing sim. Does anyone other than LL themselves even create totally new sims anymore? Charge the equivalent of a month tier to do a transfer, rename, and move of location (combined, not for each) and I promise you'd have a LOT more people buying and keeping sims long term. As it is, the initial hit for doing that is just prohibitive for a lot of people. I know the group I'm part of that holds land on the mainland for our homes and some nice build areas would jump at a reduced price estate if the setup were reasonable. We already pay within $40 of that now for tier.

First of all, you don't encourage people to go from free to premium accounts by taking away what they already had. You make premium accounts more attractive. I think they are really going to have some serious backlash over reducing the group count for basic. I remember when they raised that and a lot of people were very happy. Groups are a very relied on function in SL. I don't know if LL realizes the impact that will have. On the other side of that. Getting 10 more groups and a higher message cap means absolutely nothing to me as a premium member. If they'd increased the land allowance again, that would have mattered a lot more. I'm not really upset or surprised at the raising of premium prices. I'm more surprised they've stayed the same for as long as they have. I think their timing stinks though. They should have raised them at the same time they released the new Linden Homes. I'm sure some people are going to feel they were scammed to a certain degree. It's like "We just finally saw enough to want to be premium members. "Surprise, you got your taste and spent time and money decorating your shiney new Linden Home. Now we're jacking the prices up." Getting rid of quarterly accounts is probably to make the bookkeeping easier. I could have seen offering 6 month time periods, but they didn't do that. The reduction in tier costs for full sims is great for those whom it affects, but unlike what they are doing with basic accounts, it's not going to be a make or break change. If they want more people to buy sims, they need to drop or significantly lower the initial cost. I could see paying the equivalent of an additional month tier to transfer ownership and change the name. That's literally a 30 second change on the back end. There's no reason it should cost $600+. That fee can't be a significant income stream either. They want more long term land owners, that would do it. I'm pretty sure the group that I'm in that owns a collective area for our homes and such would jump at a grandfathered estate sim if it were just $179 to set up. we're paying pretty close to that as it is in mainland tier, but the setup fee is prohibitive. As for balancing the books? Charge a percentage on every L$ transfer of any kind. Make it say 2L or 2% whichever is higher. Also, stop funneling money make in SL to Sansar development. They need to separate that project and pay for it with it's own revenue stream. It's been a lamprey sucking the blood of SL long enough for very little to show for it.

The new pricing really won't affect me very much. My renewal date for my annual membership doesn't come due until next March so I could just sell a few more L$ each month than I do now and be fine. I'm probably going to re-up for another year at the current price though since I have the L$ to do it. I know it's going to be a problem for some though. It's especially crappy that they did it AFTER people got all those new Linden Homes. I really don't need more groups or IM's before capping than I have now. I think dropping what basic gets like this is really mean spirited and a really bad decision. You don't encourage people to pay for premium by taking away from what they already had, you make premium more attractive which is what they have been doing. I think they are going to lose a lot of residents over this, and a number of those will be item creators that were indirectly earning LL far more than the price of a premium membership.

For any long term premium members who feel entitled about that they should have had priority, sorry no, you shouldn't. You had the same chance as anyone with a priority account regardless of how old and really, the new ones are more important. LL doesn't make much off the premium membership dues. What they do get is somebody more likely to be a long time resident which is far more valuable. Those who've been here a long time had plenty of advance notice about these new homes. You will eventually get one if you actually try rather than whining, but nobody is going to hand one to you on a silver platter nor should they.

I always forget that one as I have plenty of places I have build rights in, but it is nice to have if you need a sandbox where you aren't likely to be griefed.

It was your banline being turned off per LL policy on those in Belliseria. Your security options will be either the ban list or the soon to be distrubuted LL security orb which will likely have some limits on what you can set. The idea is that those passing by or at reasonable altitude over your parcel should be allowed to do so as long as they keep moving. or are on road or waterways.

I've gotten several parcels of very nicely placed abandoned land. In general, it's reasonable size, LL will just sell it to you direct. One of the piecies of land my GF and I have had a bunch of weird shaped small abandoned parcels around it and we put in a ticket to get those to consolodate them into the larger parcel. LL loves that as it gets rid of parcels that nobody would ever buy. If you're going to buy from a private seller, it's worth checking to see if there's abandoned land abutting the parcel you want in case you'd ever want to gain more space.

I think this could be useful if you really want to sell a parcel but aren't sure what fair market price is. You could set it for the lowest price you wouldn't feel bad about accepting and let it run. This obviously isn't going to be for those who set stupidly high prices hoping for the one person who might come along and pay that much. The nice thing is the auction listing will be searchable. 15% is not out of line given that just listing the parcel for sale is still an option as well. I suspect there are going to be people who will find out that others don't consider their land to be worth as much as the seller. It is a nice alternative to just abandoning it if it's a decent parcel.

I think it's very definitely going to affect land rentals, especially for those parcels on open protected water. Anyone doing the math will realize paying for a year of premium means the effective rent for their Linden home will be around 350L/month which is FAR less than what they could rent for. This also goes for marinas since the houseboats have room for another boat next to them. I expect prices for boat slips and beach houses to drop and also for there to be a lot more abandoned land as owners realize they won't be able to cover tier with that sort of rental anymore.

I check to see if they are in any open join groups, if the've been logged in in the last week or two, I'll send a polite note asking them to please resolve the issue. If I don't get a reply or they haven't been on in the recent past, I just return the items and let it be on them. The root prim doesn't have to be on your parcel to do this. If any part of an object or linkset goes over the parcel border onto your parcel, you can return the whole thing. If you're using Firestorm, you can see the parcel borders from seafloor to max build height so it's easy to check.

I'll start by saying I really don't like Gatchas very much. My main objection is they are most often no-copy/no-mod. Even if they are mod, having them no-copy pretty well precludes modding them. There are a handful of gatcha sellers that have provisions for trading in the transfer version for a copy/mod/no-trans one and that makes it a lot more likely that I'll buy. We've had a fair number of really nicely done Gatcha AV's come out from various makers that have a voucher that's no-copy/trans, but once opened gives you a copy/mod/no-trans AV. I wish all gatchas were like that. This is especially true for build sets where one might need multiples of a part to do a build as well as wanting the security of being able to replace something should it get messed up. A few makers also make it possible to buy the full set at a premium over what it would likely cost to play the gatcha game (once again you get copy/mod/no-trans items). I also appreciate that as I'd rather just buy what I want with no dice roll involved. For gatcha sellers that don't do any of this, unless it's something I really want, don't care which color I get, and it's under 50L, I just won't buy. I have at times send polite notes asking if there were any way to do any of the above. A couple makers thought about it and did it, a few more sent back very rude replies about 'how dare I tell them what to do'. Most of the time I've simply not gotten a reply at all. In the latter two cases I simply forget about the items involved.

If you do the math, a yearly premium membership costs $72 which would buy you 19.8k L$. Over the course of the year you get back 15.6k in L$ through the weekly 300 L$ stipend. That means your yearly membership actually costs you around 4200L$ which amounts to around $15 US. For that you get more groups, a higher IM cap, priority entry to otherwise full regions, one of those wonderful new Linden Homes or a land allowance of 1024m with no tier payment, access to premium only areas, and occasional gift items and live phone support if needed. I'd say that's a great deal. Any one of those would be worth the price.

I'm waiting to see what the official LL orbs are like. If they are coded for at least 30 seconds (60 would be better) and limited to not hit the roads and waterways (even if those were part of the parcels since diagonal parcel borders aren't possible), that would be great. I don't want to hang out on your parcel if you don't want me there, but I also should be able to fly through at reasonable altitude or use the roads or waterways without dealing with them. That's what LL seems to intend and rightly so. This new continent is also a bridge between two existing continents. People are going to use it as such.

I suspect the supplied orbs will actually do a better job since they will presumably act to a higher altitude than 60m above the terrain. I actually understand your issue from RL. We occasionally get Chinooks from a nearby Air National Guard base flying fairly low overhead and it shakes the entire house. I generally fly 100-200m above the ground since it's less to render that way and I learned to fly around the Blake where there is a suggested altitude minimum. THere are jerks who fly just as there are in any activity in SL.

I'm not a fan. First off most of them are high in LI and script hogs. Secondly, they are effectively a pyramid scheme since, ultimately, the creator of a given breedable system gets money for food and sometimes other necessary items as well for each active breedable out there. This is great if you're the creator of the system I guess. For everyone else, it's a needless drain on their L$.

I haven't paid for a premium account because of the risk of getting it locked if you mess up with land tier or fail to keep premium while still owning land. They pretty much hold your accound hostage at that point. If they ever come up with a sane policy for that, I'll look at getting a premium account. Otherwise, I contribrute content and earn and spend my share of L$ of which some goes back to LL in the form of rent.

Currently living on the mainland, but if LL ever makes it possible to own a Homestead sim without having to own a full estate, my girfriend and I would move to a private sim in a hot second. I hate the terraforming and terrain texturing limitations on mainland.

Supposedly resolved. Still can't log in.