11% Surveyed Interested in Buying Second Life's New Discounted Islands

Here's the results of last week's survey, asking whether Linden Lab's new island set-up discounts have inspired SLers to want to buy a new island:

Of the 140 who took the survey, only 11% said they were "Much more" or "somewhat more" likely to buy an island under the new pricing structure. This 11% might not seem like a lot, but that's roughly the percentage by which Second Life's landmass is going away every year. So if that sliver of potential customers does indeed pony up for a sim, and are willing to pay the monthly tier year after year, this setup discount will have been worth it.

That said, we should look to Grid Survey to see if this expression of interest actually leads to actual virtual island purchases.

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Comments

[Carlos Loff]

Let's face it - We love SL - With the way LL treat us and still many folks are there it is a great sign SL is a great thing, otherwise even the ones that only complain woul not bother to check this blog - Personaly my only problem are land tiers because what I most appreciatevis land size for my projects - Im spending 70$ per month on OpenSim but I have one hugeeeee land with 256 SIMs and another with 16 SIMs - But the moment SL can match Opensim prices I woul jump in head on to SL oceans again, no doubts and no care for rocks or sharks

[Dartagan Shepherd]

And Grid Survey says we're down 12 regions since the price reduction, as I posted in the other article. You'll have to wait until the next refresh to see how much more was lost this week.

[Wolkenreiter]

@Dartagan Shepherd
You get what you pay for... It's easy to offer your "product" for pennies when 75% of the work (viewer development) gets paid by someone else (LL) and you avoid any work that's not "hacking for fun and profit", but serious, boring systematic testing and research (guess why OpenSim never bothered to implement any sort of Land Impact? Because it's not fun to code...).
I almost wish eventually the day would come when OpenSim has to prove it can carry the same amount of users per sim and overall concurrency as SL. That day all the OpenSim flag weavers would finally realize the difference between coding for fun and actual product development and maintenance...

[Dartagan Shepherd]

@Wolkenreiter Not sure how OpenSim enters the picture, was only commenting that so far the price reduction hasn't done anything at all to stop decline or stimulate growth by the numbers.

Don't know much about OpenSim other than some dabblings a ways back. As far as SL goes, I just view it like any other commercial product. We the customers pay for the product and have certain expectations about that product.

When tier for multiple regions can exceed my car and mortgage payments, my expectations are pretty high.

I am holding out some hope for Sansar, though that the pricing will be more fair. If when all gross sinks, costs, commissions and monetization is done, it comes out to be that Sansar is no cheaper than SL is currently, I personally wouldn't be going to OpenSim or Sansar.

I'd continue building from-scratch experiences by putting together a team and using Unreal Engine for free up-front costs and and a 5% commission and pay for my own hosting and related costs and get any modern feature that I want, along with the ability to work directly with the source and port to most major platforms.

I just don't see OpenSim as an "experience" tool given other options, unless you're going for fast prototyping with the intent of changing platforms later or doing some rather heavy lifting with OpenSim source and building out your own companion services.

[Carlos Loff]

Dartagan Shepherd - I could be hours writing about Opensim abscence of Lag and great avi capability on many professional grids but I will only answer you with this - Try owning an Opensim Region=Full Sim for 10$ or 15$ a month on either Digiworldz or Aviworlds AND ONLY THAN you try to argue about it

[Carlos Loff]

If 2 companies are selling the same product and their price range has a difference of hundreds of dollars, if you discuss how expensive is one of them doesnt it make sense to check how the cheapest one works ???

[Carlos Loff]

Dartagan Shepherd - I offer you - 100% free - 2 or 3 months - 4 Opensim Full Sims, I am for real here - You try and load them as you wish - 60k prims and wild parties - and in the end you tell me how those 4 regions work and how great it woul be keeping them for 5$/month - I would charge you only that after your free non compromise test

[zz bottom]

Linden lab should realize that virtual worlds are a niche market.
So they should be fueling their users with gratitude and make all to stay and keep spending,not the other way around.
And if we must believe that Second Life is a good investment for the near future, Ebbe can not state what He said, not even out of context, that is just poor judgment and poor Ceo decision.

[Dartagan Shepherd]

@Carlos Loff: Wow, thank you very much for the offer, although I can't take you up on it.

Not trying to belittle OpenSim as an alternative to SL, as it does appear to do that pretty well out of the box and certainly there's no comparison to the pricing.

I was comparing it more as an alternative to Sansar, which I don't think it will be. Of course I'm only guessing about Sansar as it is.

Sorry, got a bit off topic there.

[Pussycat Catnap]

Interested yes. Able to no.

I'm only a mid 6-figure income household. I cannot justify that tier bill for a non-business use.

[Pussycat Catnap]

I think the change HAS caused some shifting if not growth. I have recently been communicating with the people who run the Eden estate. And while I cannot go there myself (its a human only place and my avatar is a Neko), part of what sparked this was noticing that they had added a half dozen or more sims very recently.

I think they used this change to buy several other people's estates and add them to theirs.

They can justify this, unlike me, because for the time being they have a business use as a very large themed in an area where they have zero competitors residential estate in SL.

More sims I don't know... but those half dozen or so sims might have simply vanished from the count had somebody not been able to take them off of their prior owner's hands. So stabilization might begin to occur, barring whatever later happens as a result of people moving to or even possibly from Sansar.

[A.J.]

Let's see, LL announces a supposed "discount" (which is really a back-handed increase in transfer fees) and only 11% of responses are favorable.

I think the real story is the numbers on the bottom.

Who doesn't love a sim "discount"? About 89% of respondents.

Only LL can do a promotion, like a spraying skunk, that manages to repel customers.

Big high five to the Sales Team.

[Guntram Graef]

Unfortunately, also 8% stated that the discounts will make it less likely for them to get a sim. I assume that is a result of less perceived value / perceived price stability.

The net result would then only be a 3% gain, at best. If you consider that Linden Lab also gets less money per setup now whatever gain there may be for them financially is probably very minimal.

[zz bottom]

That would imply there was someone at Linden Lab that does understand any of economics and is aware of real world, which i start really to doubt.

[Carlos Loff]

Virtual Worlds are still a small user base, compared to many web resources, i dependently of what specs or prices companies use there will be only one big winner who can quickly grabb masdive global users - The first one to launch a browser system that allows people to get inworld from a simple click and dive link from Facebook

[Mason]

The pricing is and has been in the ridiculous zone for years now. My web host upgrades my VPS space, memory and more every year, for free! Hardware is faster & cheaper now than it was in 2005. The cost of hosting a SIM for LL has gone down, but they haven't passed any savings on to the users. LL is greedy, plain and simple. They became fat cats early and were afraid to take a cut so they continued their crazy pricing, despite the decrease in users. All the users suffer for this greed. LL should look to Minecraft for inspiration. People need to be free to build & build at reasonable prices. I would have considered a full sim years ago at about 25% of the price. Now I won't even do that, because my SL related business isn't doing as well as it has in the past, due to membership levels.

[irihapeti]

@Carlos

the simple click from a browser to get inworld is the design of Sansar. Launch the inworld view from a webpage that the owner of the sim/experience has created for this purpose

the implementation plan is:

Alpha stage: get the design working on a PC. Proof the design by using alpha testers, who have considerable experience working with alpha stages

Beta stage: include a wider range of users/testers to start using the product, and who will provide feedback (data) that will help discover/rectify technical issues

Release stage: PC version is out and is functional

+

after PC version, dev and release a mobile/phone app

then after that a tablet version

+

the design of Sansar (both architecture and business model) is what you have said is the best way to do it

and LL are doing it this way

business-wise LL agree with you also. That the tiers are too high, and that they will not be repeating this mistake with Sansar

which Ebbe Linden has said on more than one occasion already

[zz bottom]

The only real issue is:
Main base of Sl users dont give a damn about Sansar!
All we care is to have a smooth experience in Sl (funny how yesterday was one of the best days ever to sail and cross multiple sims, for more then a hour a huge group of sailing boats made a cruise with no crashes for most part of them! Guess the less Linden lab staff messes with server deployments the better) and that we can afford it.
With Rl changes for worse on many of the biggest communities that support Sl, LL needs to reduce tears.
If not, those communities will move to open sim, to grids like Metropolis, aviwords, japan grid, franco grid and so on.

[Martina Huptokova]

Do you really think people will abandon all their stuff, their builds, their connections because poppa Linden coded up a bugged beta game and predicts it is the future?

LOL

People are not mindless sheep. The moment a Second Life user does not get what he wants he packs up and leaves. People come for their entertainment because they like Second Life and not to get poppa Linden dictate them.

How many people have their clothes and friends in Second Life but have their sims on opensim? Loads of them, cheap cheap cheap is all they understand.

Do not forget that the high taxed stuff in Sansar will cost more. A hair seller that wants a Dollar for his mesh hair will also want a Dollar in Sansar for the hair, poppa Linden will add 30% tax so in Sansar the mesh hair will be 1.3 Dollars.

There is no way around this because the money will need to come from somewhere. How long do you take before people figure out there is not much to do in Sansar and stuff costs more duh!

Land is cheap is no argument because they run free opensim on their home computer so people do not care much about land.

Poppa Linden has no clue about the mess he is digging himself in.

Not to mention the adoption rate of VR and VR headsets if people will be even willing to wear those. Parker Luckey already figured out people do not care much about his nerdboxes, Parker Luckey himself is already speaking about the future how everybody EVENTUALLY IF EVER will use designer glasses that look like ordinary sunglasses to spend some time in VR. This can be 10 to 15 years from now. By that time poppa Linden his platform will be ancient again.

[Wolkenreiter]

There's no way LL could do any better on killing SL than the users...
Since the market for female avatar accessoires has been completely monopolized over the last year or so, there's hundreds of creators who are completely locked out from the flourishing market because they're not deemed worthy by the monopolists.
Make a guess on how many of those will gladly take the opportunity and run off from day 1 to fill Sansar with content, because they won't have to beg on their knees for the development kit of some mesh body...
Think about it!

[Lavender Larry]

Carlos Loff .

myself I'll wait on what Facebook brings out that's "billions" of customers that might need content and with Facebook having hundreds of billions of dollars you know they hired the brightest minds to make it life changing.

I hate Facebook but with enough money & opportunity they will be my sweetest friend.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFEMiyGMa58

[joe]

Chortle.

[Tim]

My friend ended in a "Safe Hub" over the weekend at Arapaima were a self-proclaimed Green Lantern/Police Officer by the name of 007bJAMESb Resident who held the whole hub hostage with AR threats while driving off new residents with Anti-Gay/Anti-black verbal hate speech..if it was my 1st Day it would be my last..unfortunately it was my friends last day.

Buy land and pay $199 a month for my friend on his first day being super trolled & called a faggot & an AIDS Patient at a "Safe Hub" not only will i pass! but now i just put my estate up for sale. so add another GF Region to the market.

$199 a month with no support is a joke!

[Resident]

I did just visit the mainland for about 2 hours. Mainland has perhaps 20% occupied space but that is nothing new. I did not see a single person for well over an hour so I went to look for one. I saw a couple of green dots in a mall. I went to look for them and found a club in the center of the mall with 7 people. I went closer but woops. They were 7 campers dancing on dance pads (against the TOS and banned years ago) for 1 Linden per 30 minutes. Camping bots are back.

Then I went looking for some more people. I found a woman at a hub unpacking a freebie box of course, with a foreign profile and of course No Payment Info On File. Then I bumped into another free account completely dressed up with his avatar.

Second Life free game, no pay everything cheap or free.

I checked some sims as well with land for sale. Linden Lab their special friends are now offering homesteads for 84 US$ a month while Linden Lab charges 300 US$ only to transfer a grandfathered Homestead so you would have the privilege of paying 95 US$ a month.

Looks like somebody is doing plenty of napping time at Linden Lab.

[Pussycat Catnap]

There's really only 3 or 4 mesh bodies in the active competition.

Maitreya - I'm not a fan of how this one looks or takes avatar physics (I have never been able to get the bosom to animate naturally).

Belleza - was the lead until it took a year to make an update, now trails far behind Maitreya but post update is really good.

Slink - a very distant near unused third despite having the most available developer kit. The body just doesn't look curvy enough - even though most people in SL are so skinny they have no curves, the lack of curving on the body makes this popular skinny look end up blocky. The new Hourglass version might impact this, but also be too late.

TMP - now this is where the complants about monopolies really fit in... Hardest dev kit to get a hold of, and as such its userbase has rapidly dwindled to near no one now. I only see this body on nudist sims... and of the four it has the third least attractive nude form...

- There are not 20 bodies and 60 hands...

IF these all had open dev kits it would be reasonable for merchants to support them. Of course they don't.

One reason Maitreya gained so much ground over Belleza might be the dev kit. I'm guessing its easier to get.

Anyone who thinks they've been locked out can likely easily get a kit for Maitreya and/or slink.

Belleza... is really hurting itself with no longer giving out dev kits. I use Belleza, and a part of why my avatar has returned to being a mostly SL nudist is I've bought from all the merchants out there thus far and they're style is starting to look derivative of itself...

Will Sansar improve this? I doubt it.

I suspect it will make it much worse and more fractured. I gathr Sansar will have no mainland or shared world... of course that is just the rumors of the paranoid comments here on this blog. If its true - it will be a nightmare for content makers to support anything...

If its not true, and I hope its not, then maybe Sansar will improve things. But only if the default avatars are actually good enough to be used... which means they need the mesh quality of things like our current mesh bodies - but with better optimization... and frankly... they need the ability to handle a fully nude form: mesh detail where it counts, perhaps using body part swapping like the Solarian Mesh Furry body - locked by region maturity level.

- If the default body doesn't support the way users want to use it... the market will just fracture all over again.

[Pussycat Catnap]

In people with no PIOF: Plenty of us with alts don't put PIOF on all of them... Kep that in mind if you set up a venue for only people who have PIOF...

Especially on Zindra and places like it, I see a lot of people without this info, because they keep one account 'somewhere less intense' that pays the bills, and have a more anonymouse looking 'main' that is on all the poseballs...

On bigoted hate speech in a safe hub... that's been an issue for years. But its an issue in almost all online multi-user platforms.

Sadly, I have grown to realize that there are a notable number of whites out there that hate everyone else, and claim its racist when they get called out on it... They can go through much of their lives acting in bigoted ways that no one calls them on and so they don't see as biased... and when they get onto these platforms - they open up full bore and rant... like an Adolf Trump speech... And at this point in time, hateful incitement has become a mainstream political party in the USA... so this problem is way beyond LL's ability to control.

Anyone going on the internet should expect it. Fleeing from it is pointless. Bigots may not like 'Social Justice Warriors', but that's only because we insist on not fleeing nor cowering in silence - but on shining a light on them.