From the official Second Life Blogs: U M Says: January 24th, 2008 at 11:07 PM PST A lot has changed since my almost 3 1/2 years on sl. And its not all good Wayfinder Wishbringer Says: January 25th, 2008 at 7:43 AM PST I agree U M. Sounds like we've both been on SL about the same amount of time (I joined when SL had about 5,000 paid subscribers, 25,000 total residency). During that time, I've seen a lot of nice toys appear, some of them interesting and nice (local lighting) some of them really great (HUDs), some of them nice-but-laggers (flexis and sculptys). But overall, I've seen a general serious degradation of performance and some major, major glitches that are not at all good (the failure of group chat for several months now without resolution being at the top of my snit list, closely followed by Group Notice failure). LL will likely continue charging through the nose because that's what the market will bear, and the bugs and flaws will pretty much continue (mainly because LL has proven they can't seem to debug). That doesn't make friends, it doesn't create loyal customers, and in the end… will cost them thousands and thousands of users no matter what they do (when some people get fed up, there's no courting them back). Nevertheless, when competition does show up (and it will / is) LL will either hang on to its current market strategy, relying on the people either too heavily vested in their system (or too stupid) to jump ship. Another possibility is that they will gradually lower price as the market requires for competitive advantage. It's a lousy, user-unfriendly way of doing business. It's making profit their God and putting bottom line ahead of customer loyalty and satisfaction, but that seems to be the self-serving philosophy of corporations these days. The day of "The customer is always right" is long gone, and has been replaced by "get mine now, however I can get it, and hang satisfaction and reputation". "May you live in interesting times." I think in the VR world (and to tell the truth, RL as well), the next year or two are going to be very "interesting times".
							JIRA filing MISC-894: LAND EXTORTION AND GRIEFING Problem: extortionists purchasing tiny plots of land, erecting ugly and anoying "advertising" signs, and setting the land sale price to extortion levels (often L$4,000 for 16m) in order to force nearby landowners to pay the price to remove the eyesore.
	Response from Wayfinder Wishbringer, 2-9-2008 Many of us have been aware of this serious problem for a long time. There are all kinds of theories on how to stop it, but if I may be blunt it all comes down to this: Linden Lab needs to show some plain simple GUTS and put an end to it. Because in the end game, it is Linden Lab that is responsible for this problem, not the people who take advantage of Linden Lab's lack of policy enforcement. Prokofy: "The point is not only to remove the profit motive; the point is to remove the business type completely, as it is unscrupulous. No different than a fraudulent bank." This is the most accurate statement I've read here with one exception: these people aren't a "business type"... they're extortionists. They're criminals who harass and extort residents into coughing up ludicrous amounts of money to regain their view, as the above photo shows. SOLUTIONS: I see two solutions. ONE: Contrary to a couple of statements above, yes, LAND PRICE CAPPING is a very valid and excellent solution. I would move that Linden Lab set ALL land prices at a maximum cap of (whatever, say... L$12/m). This would immediately stop some clown from buying a 16m plot (as very aptly demonstrated in the picture above) and trying to resell it for L4000. Take away the ability, you take away the motive. Yes, yes, yes... I know all about "restriction of freedom" etc etc etc blah blah blah. Fact: FREEDOM does NOT mean the ability to do whatever you dang well please, regardless of its effect on others. TRUE FREEDOM is the ability to go about one's life without unethical harassment from others. So yes, putting a cap on land might put a slight limit on the real estate industry. That cap can be adjusted slightly as the market requires. In RL, one puts a fence up around a property not to restrict "freedom", but to protect those who reside there. A land price cap would do just that: grant us greater TRUE freedom by eliminating the kind of abuses shown above. TWO: Land gouging and extortion is AGAINST SECOND LIFE TOS. The bottom-line rule of all TOS concepts is YOU CANNOT INTENTIONALLY HARASS OTHER USERS. So bottom line LINDEN LAB... show some guts and enforce your own TOS. Make land extortion an ABUSE REPORT offense, and ENFORCE it. It's just that simple. Again, there is blame to be placed here and it is not soley on those who perform such extortions. The blame lies squarely with Linden Lab's total failure to enforce their own TOS principles. When they start actually protecting their customers, these problems will become fewer. Unless Linden Lab steps up and actually sets serious consequences for such abuse... such abuse will continue. It's all in Linden Lab's lap... and it is their fault these things go on. They've gone on for YEARS without the company doing anything about it. Such is inexcusable. Forgive the bluntness folks. My friends know me: I tell it like it is, I don't mince words or pull punches, and I tend to point the finger in the right direction. The above problem isn't cute or funny or witty; it is an intentional abuse of the Second Life environment. So many, many problems on SL could be immediately eliminated if Linden Lab would just simply exercise common sense, enforce simple ethics, and do what is right and necessary for the good of its customers. Rules and the TOS are not about technicalities.... it's about protecting the best interests of Linden Lab and its clients. Allowing abuses such as this to continue benefit no one but the extortionist and in the end, it doesn't even benefit him. L$ are temporary and vanish over time. His reputation is down the tube, people hate him, he's a lousy and miserable person. LL is doing no one any favors by allows such things to go on and on, unregulated and unanswered. So LL... protect your company, protect your customers, be stand up and stop this type of extortion.
		Commentary: The Current Status of Second Life 1-24-2008 Recently in the Second Life Official Blogs, many comments have been made about Linden Lab excessive price gouging of customers (sims costing as much as US$350 a month), poor performance, free vs paid accounts, as well as general sim performance. Last heard, LL has over 10,000 sims, ranging from $195 to $350 a month in charges. Some people are upset that some sims are using "non profit status" to reach a tier status of $150 a month… when the group is definitely not non-profit. Cries of "bogus politics" can be heard, especially from those paying $350 a month (involving a legally questionable European VAT charge-- why is a US company responsible for paying European taxes... especially regarding a non-tangible product such as an internet VR world?). In addition to the above 10,000 sims, LL has the income from paid accounts, for which they charge between $72 a year and $9.95 a month. Add to that the rental of smaller plots of land (which are far more expensive en total than full sims) and we have a sizeable inflow of cash. LL is raking it in, no doubt about that. The ultra-conservative estimate has been made of $4 million a month. Likely, the actual figure is at least half again that much or more. (Disclaimer here: I am a "freebie" customer. I love it. So no bias here. I'm telling it like it is). Regarding free accounts: Many people enjoy free accounts. Most do not complain about these. There was a time when VERIFIED free accounts existed and were not a major problem. However, it is a fact that the major problems on SL started when they opened up SL to "email only" registration and stopped requiring credit card (or debit card or bank account) verification. System resources were taxed, immature minors became prevalent, the quality of society in general degraded. That was a major snafu done just so Linden Lab could artificially inflate their user numbers and attract big businesses to the grid. It hurt SL in general. Many feel it was an unconscionable decision designed for the benefit of LL, while throwing their paying customers to the wolves. As someone mentioned in the blogs, there is no such thing as a "free account". SOMEONE is paying for it… in this case, the paid members and private island folks. Monetary issues aside, the entire system is paying for it. Those free accounts do take up considerable system resources. There is nothing wrong with a free account; it is good that LL is willing to make their system open to those who are less financially capable. But is opening up the system to anyone who can fake an email address a good idea? Doing so unquestionably opens up to minors what is advertised as "18+ only". No one is fooled by claims otherwise. The influx of non-paying customers puts a definite strain on limited system resources and is often called into question. Is it fair for paying users to have a sub-standard game experience because the vast majority are not paying, yet taking up just as much in system resources? Their complaint is valid. Why should paying customers suffer so that others can get a free lunch? However a system is designed, the trick is to make sure all the servers communicate with one another properly, to make sure the databases are constructed correctly and accessed correctly, and that the asset servers are put together logically and actually work. It's making sure the code isn't spaghetti and works efficiently… apparently all of which are not the case with SL. If Second Life were plumbing, we'd be chest deep in water. Now we have a situation that has not existed prior: several new companies are poised to give Linden Lab some direct competition. China's HiPiHi (an SL clone) and the OpenSim project (professional users who are getting together to design their own SL clone system) are the most notable. Others are in alpha and beta test stages. For 8 years SL has been the only store on the street. That is about to change. There's no doubt at this point that we are going to see some major changes happening over the next year. These will either be good or bad. SL will either survive, or it won't. It may grow (does Linden Lab have the common sense and skill to pull SL's fat out of the fire?) or it may grind down to a ghost town (quite possible, considering past performance and management). The immediate observation is that a company that can't get simple GROUP CHAT right, that can't figure out how to get a Group Notice delivered to all members in the group, doesn't have much of a chance when the competition hits. For three years we at Elf Clan have been predicting the future of SL. For three years we have been consistently correct. We shall see what transpires over the next year or two.