Really nothing justifies this 37.5 % increase of my membership costs.
Not even the fact that they hadn't raised the premium fee in over 10 years? IIRC it was $72 when I joined SL in 2006! Though IMHO they should have been slowly increasing the fee over the past decade instead of just hitting us with a big increase in one year. Grid knows why they hadn't done that.
I ain't gonna shell out more money so they can decrease the costs for the heavy users
You mean the region owners? Then what do you say to the "The Tier is Too Damn High crowd" who've been clamoring for LL to increase the fees on the mostly non-landed shoppers/consumers to diversify their income stream so they can drop the tier prices for YEARS.
I've had a premium account since I joined SL. I was seriously thinking about going premium on 3 alts so I could have a 4096 parcel. That would have been $288 per year. Now it would be $396. No thanks. No way. With the price increase it is cheaper for me to buy L$ and rent a plot of land.
The advantage of having an alt go premium diminishes as you land needs increase. For me to go up to 4096 on a single avatar it would be $72/99 for the premium and an additional $264. I'd get the land and $103 worth of L$ and I couldn't take advantage of the group bonus.
But if I was to do it with alts:
Primary Oldbie elite me with the 500L$ stipend: $72/99 for 1024 and $103 worth of L$
3 alts for $72/99 with 1024 apiece and $62 of L$ for each. And I could take advantage of the group bonus.
If "I" wanted 4096 it would probably save me a little (but not a lot of) money to have those 3 alts, and transfer the L$ to my primary. It would reduce, though not eliminate, my need to press the Buy L$ button...many many times. As it is, I do have a premium alt, and yes, I am currently planning on keeping her premium even with the increase. I consider it a "somewhat fair" deal under the new fees, though it is not as favorable to me as it was under the old fee schedule. Would I rather they keep the $72 premium fee? Yeah, but that's not sustainable.
But if you're not a virtual shopping addict, tiering up on a single avatar is probably more cost effective.
IMHO the included premium tier allocation should be 2048, that'd take some of that abandoned mainland off the market.
Are you factoring in the cost of the land? Last I knew it was around 300 L per USD so even at 500 LL is making more by raising it to 99.
It's not 300L$ to 1US$, it's around 250 to the buck. if it was 300, every land baron and creator-who-cashes out would be panicking and pulling out the torches and pitchforks...which they did when it hit 265 per buck a few years back! 500L$ a week is about $103 worth of L$ a year, so yeah even with the higher fee I'd be a loss for LL if I didn't buy L$...which of course I do. for 300L$ a week it's $62.
I feel sorry for free basic accounts who will now see their group limits reduced down.
Why can't the lab just leave it as it was.
I think lowering the group limit for basics was a bad idea. Admittedly LL's talked about putting more limits on basic accounts for years, but never actually did anything....until now. I understand the technical reason "why" they're doing it, but don't think they should, or should have implemented it slowly over time.
Memberships don't lose LL a single (real) penny just because they pay you a stipend. You have to SELL your Lindens to another player for real US$ and then you use those dollars to pay for your membership and/or tier.
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You're forgetting one thing...SL is an almost pure trickle up economy. I don't have to sell my stipend for me to cost LL money, all I have to do is pay it to someone who DOES cash out. Maybe a land baron with a thing for catgirls, maybe a store owner selling me pretty dresses. Of course, I'm The CC, I shop, it's what I do, so giving my L$ to people who cash out is kinda my jam. Say I put my 103 US$ of L$ a year into one of the Great and Glorious Leader Shang's little meters (which I pretty much do)...guess what, LL has just given the Great and Glorious Leader Shang a subsidy of $103 dollars.
Or say I didn't plop it into a parcel meter and spent it on SL fashion. Guess what, LL has just subsidized various SL fashion creators, because their costs are minimal (and maybe VERY minimal if they're marketplace only) and they make bank selling cute template dresses to me and then cash out that L$ into piles of money and hats made out of MONEY.
LL could raise the stipend so that more of the new higher membership fee was covered, and god only knows why they aren't doing this.
Because their money people told them to REDUCE stipend back in 2006.
A stipend raise would not cost them anything (except some programming time) since Lindens have no real value and LL can make as many of them as they want.
Again, you're forgetting SL is a trickle up economy, if they increase stipend, they increase the amount they're subsidizing the people who DO cash out.
I have three Premium accounts, but I'm not willing to keep all of them under the new pricing structure. I'm not even sure I'm willing to keep any of them, to be honest. Once I'm down to a single Premium account with 1024m of land, I'd be better off with all Basic accounts and just renting a nice house somewhere scenic.
As I said above, that depends on how many times you hit the buy L$ button and if you take advantage of the group land bonus by having your alts and yourself share a residence AND how much in general you're willing to put into SL. In general I am currently NOT interested in creating another alt and taking that premium for more land...I have reached a land-owning level I am comfortable with. Sure I wouldn't mind having one of those new Linden Homes...but I might not be able to make one of them work for my needs. Maybe one of the open plan houseboats "could" work but prims would be tight.
Same here, I do not log in much but if they are going to hike the fees this much I may as well just cancel and use a freebie account. I have no idea where they got the idea that SL accounts were worth that much.
They got the idea they were worth that much from Everquest, WoW, etc.
Where I DO have a problem is with them lowering group count plus offline IMs for us basic users from what it's been. If they'd just gone ahead & bumped up what premium accounts get & not changed what basic accounts get that'd be fine & dandy with me. It pisses me off that they're trying to punish me & other basic users.
Groups are a serious resource hog. Every time you cross a parcel boundary, the client has to connect to the groups server to see if you have parcel rights, because groups are connected to land in ways they probably shouldn't have been. What LL should have done was have different kinds of groups for different purposes. Some groups don't need to be tied to land at all, some do. Heck I always thought that LL should have bought Ning and integrated Ning into SL!
As Grumpity Linden said, it is a bitter pill. I was going to post my gripe over in the official forums, but since so many folks in that thread seem to think these changes are acceptable and reasonable,
I consider them....acceptable....reasonable...welllllllll. I'd much prefer they had done this over time, gradually.
LAND PRICE REDUCTIONS
That's nice for sim owners. Too bad the cost has to be passed on to the rest of us in the form of a higher Premium membership.
It's tough to sell trickle-down economics in this day and age. And for those of us who are happy owning a Linden home or a mainland 512 or 1024 parcel, this is an added cost we have to accept with zero benefits.
Yes, I would agree. But here's how I see Land Barons like the Great and Glorious Leader Shang: They're middlemen, and they're middlemen that LL wants to have so that THEY don't have to deal directly with as many land issues.
Okay, lets say regions were cheaper, and some girly-girl shopper like me named "Hotty Courtesan" gets herself a region. Suppose her girlfriend, "Sawcy Tart" also has a region. Suppose they want their regions next to each other. And then suppose Hotty sees Sawcy cheating on her with "Brazen Strumpet".
"O hai LL? I know that last week I wanted my region moved next to my girlfriend's but she cheated on me so I want to move my sim away to my new girlfriend I met yesterday kthxbai"
Or something like the following: "O hai LL? My RL cat has some car/vet bills so could you like put my region on hold for a few months until I can afford it again? Kthxbai"
LL doesn't want to deal with the masses owning regions that they might or mightnot be able to afford on a month to month basis. They want upper class tech knowledgable guys like Desmond Shang for whom setup fees and whatnot are "affordable" to deal with as much of the hoi polloi as they can.
(because, for example, I don't need more land or a larger parcel, but I might pay more for added prims).
I agree, I think having more "granular" addon benefits would be a good idea.
It seems like LL wants to push people into Premium by reducing the value of Basic rather than increasing the value of Premium itself.
Yes, I would agree with that.
