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PC Games (Games) Role Playing (Games) Entertainment Games

Second Life MMO Update Creates Virtual Eviction Notices 25

Posted by simoniker from the giveth-and-taketh-away dept.
Thanks to Yahoo for reprinting the Linden Labs press release officially announcing major pricing/allocation changes to PC 'virtual world' Second Life, as reported earlier this month. The detailed effects of the announcement include charging for property owned in-game, but allowing players "a new pricing option with no monthly fees" if they own no land, and the official 'Notes' section on the site points out that the update "...meant drastic changes for some the most creative, dedicated residents." A forum posting mentions that new limits tying "building primitives" to land allocation may mean painstakingly constructed virtual property will need to be demolished: "I have been flying around the world and seeing lots of cool builds on small plots... that are way over their prim limit and will be going away." Linden Lab employees say they are "working on a plan to address" this issue before the January 11th deadline. Elsewhere, an intriguing thread details problems with letting novice players build permanent in-game architecture, particle systems, and textures for this innovative 'virtual world'.
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Second Life MMO Update Creates Virtual Eviction Notices More

Second Life MMO Update Creates Virtual Eviction Notices

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  • With the developer taking over the job of "Government" to fuck you in the ass all the time...

    • This is why I'll never subscribe to the MMO model of games - their primary goal is to milk it for all it's worth (the shareholders will see to that, if it's a public company). Even worse when the publisher is also the host, since they can fuck the game over to make it more suitable to making money.

      Sorry, the server software must either be free or come with the game client to avoid the natural tendencies of business: monopoly rules. Freely available server software doesn't stop anyone operating a subscrip
      • err.. edit: Not that Second Life is necessarily in the same boat as other MMOs - it's rather experimental, and not a retail game, as far as I can tell. Still sucks if you happened to fork over real cash and spend real time building your 'estate' though.
        • Not sure what you meant by "retail game". It is not boxed and sold in stores if that is what you meant. You have to download it. You don't pay for the software, but for using the service.

          The changes they made had negative effects on very few people (although they are quite vocal about it). Basically the changes allow them to scale up their server hardware in a more sensible fashion by allowing people to optionally spend real dollars to buy more in-game real estate.

          The old system was inflationary an

  • Just like real life (Score:3, Insightful)

    by El ( 94934 ) on Saturday December 27, 2003 @09:04PM (#7819531)
    Why can't they do what they do in the real world, that is, grandfather in any existing structures?
    • Because in the real world, it doesn't cost any money to have a building just standing there (assuming it doesn't begin to degrade through lack of maintenance). Everything in the virtual world consumes server resources, and they're trying to more closely match that consumption with their subscription structure.

  • How enlightened. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by mazarin5 ( 309432 )
    Wasn't there a story recently about how these guys were acting like the progressive bunch and telling their users that they own, as property, the objects they create in the game?

    So all the creative types show up and invest a month or two where they know their efforts won't be wasted by their forward-thinking hosts, then BAM! all those objects, that they really own? Start coughing up rent for it!

    Clever, clever bastards.

    • If you don't pay the property taxes on your home the people with guns make you give them your home.

      Just like real life!

    • Re:How enlightened. (Score:4, Informative)

      by cmacb ( 547347 ) on Sunday December 28, 2003 @02:37AM (#7820613) Homepage Journal
      "Wasn't there a story recently about how these guys were acting like the progressive bunch and telling their users that they own, as property, the objects they create in the game?"

      Yes, that's true. Similar to you owning your content when you build a web page and host it at an ISP. At issue here primarily was server resources though. In SL each 512x512 meter (I think thats right) chunk of land is managed by a separate PC (I'm not sure if they use blade servers or what). Which means that a single user could in theory tie up a whole lot of server resources with their content. These changes don't affect ownership of objects, but they do limit how many of those objects can be "rezed" (online) and how much server space they can take up. It is still possible to have objects in your inventory that are not taking up server space however. You just have to budget how much you have on display at any given time.

      I think they said that the changes would represent a decrease in space for something like 5 percent of the users. For some of those I think they are even making exceptions. The need was to have a system that could grow without allowing people who "gamed" the system to accumulate an unlimited amount of server resource, which would negatively impact the other 95 percent of us. If someone is really talented and can turn their skills into sales of online content, there is no reason they can't then buy extra server space. The changes really only affect what you get "by default".

      In my case I actually had to go around and buy additional land with virtual dollars to come up to the amount I am allowed, I'm way under on objects. I don't think the typical user would be impacted by this.

      The other good news about this change is that for people that are not into building at all they can get an ID for a one-time $10 fee. For some people who just want an online chat situation this is an extremely good deal.

    • Re:How enlightened. (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You retain the IP rights to what you create. That doesnt mean you can sue someone for using your sword or whatever. There's a clause in the ToS where you agree to assign a runtime licence to all other SL players.

      As someone says, it's analagous to retaining your rights to web pages you create.

      SecondLife is a very interesting concept. Worth checking out.

  • Overreacting, FUD and misconceptions. (Score:5, Informative)

    by amaprotu ( 527512 ) on Sunday December 28, 2003 @04:02AM (#7820849) Homepage
    To understand the changes you need to know something about the game. The game is made up of a series of 256m*256m connected squares of virtual land. Each one of these squares is a 'sim' and is an individual rack mounted computer (currently around 40 of these in the game).

    Each 'sim' is limited in total 'prims' (the basic building blocks for creating anything). Before the latest change that was 10,000 prims per 'sim', after the change it is now 15,000.

    What could, and did, happen is someone with very little land could make it impossible for anyone else in that 'sim' to build anything at all.

    The first attempt to handle this was through an economy - prims cost money to rez, and money to maintain as did land. This worked well except for a key factor - money was global, the problem was local. The larger the game got (the more sims they added) the worse the situation got. You could still amass enough money to own a small piece of land and most of the prims in the sim.

    Another problem with that system is it was way, way, way too complicated. You ended up with Tax on land, primitives (based on size and height) and lights. And you got bonuses and stipends and 'caps' so the money doesn't accumulate in unused accounts and weeee isn't that fun. Stipends were based on ratings compared to other users and could fluctate greatly.

    Another side effect of that was there was really no way to plan for a big project. Taxes could fluctuate and grow as the project got larger and there was no way to tell what your stipend/bonus (weekly money paid to you) would be in 3 weeks.

    So to solve many problems they tied the amount of prims you could use directly to the percent of the land on that 'sim' that you own. You own 10% of the land? Then you can use 10% of the prims. Now there is no more really confusing taxes. You can plan for builds because the number of prims you can have is known at the start and doesn't change. And no one can come next to you and build their giant leggo toilet of 9,000 prims just so you can't build.

    The other half of the story is that these virtual land plots and objects are all being hosted on servers, maintained and run by the makers of the game. Previously everyone was charged the same monthly rate whether they used very little resources or a whole lot. The new pricing allows people to pay anything from no monthly fee ($10 one time) to hundreds of dollars a month depending on how much resources they use. The simplest method is to charge based on land ownership, especially now that prim usage is also tied to land ownership.

    The end result? Now you can play for no monthly cost (how many people don't play MMOs just because they don't want to pay every month?), or you can get a substantial amount of land for the same price they were currently paying (1536sqm for existing members), or they can get more land for more money up to an entire sim for $200 a month.

    • Re:Overreacting, FUD and misconceptions. (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The problem, as I understand it, is that there is no mechanism for trading prim allocations... so two people cannot club together to build something more complex. If they had just implemented that, I think half the bitching would never have happened.
      • Yes, that is true. They have stated intentions to offer such a feature in the future but it is not yet available. The problem with trading prims, is what if player A buys land enough for 500 prims, and gives all his 500 prims to player B. Now player A decides he no longer wants his land in that sim. Either a) that land is now worthless because you can't build anything on it (all the prims are now owned by player B or b) player B will suddenly (and beyond his control) lose 500 prims they thought they had
  • The article says, "Additionally, a new pricing option with no monthly fees allows you to join SecondLife for only $9.95.". Over at their website I see nothing indicating this at all. Anyone have any clue what this means and why it was in the article?

    • Re:Over at the website. (Score:2, Interesting)

      by siliC ( 314943 )
      Yep, i just went from a quarterly account to this new option. It means you get to play the game but only have to pay once, no monthly fee. However, you get no land. (recall that the second part of this update in economics is that the capability to build is tied directly to your ownership of the land) There are public build areas (sandboxes) where you could still build, but there may not be much point as you'll have no where to put the stuff. I suppose this is a good option for those who prefer the Events or

    • Re:Over at the website. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by simoniker ( 40 ) *
      I believe that this one-time fee option is viewable on a specific page [secondlife.com] on the Second Life site, but for whatever reason (probably due to the proximity of the announcement to Christmas?), this page is tricky (impossible?) to find through the main Secondlife.com site.

      Anyhow, it's there, just badly linked to, so it works right now - I'm kinda tempted, actually.
  • it's a similar problem all massmogs face - which is hording and maintenance.

    the hardcore players of massmogs love to 'collect', and really hate the idea of 'their stuff' being 'taken away'. they don't like paying tax, they don't like decay, they don't like other players to be able to destroy or steal 'their stuff'.

    if virtual money flows in, and doesn't flow out - it always accumulates in the form of 'stuff'.

    in this situation, it's much worse than in adventuring massmogs. building is, i dare say, 'the po
  • Second Life is going to ensure its swift demise with this new pricing scheme. They have gone to a lot of trouble to create an architecture which allows them to essentially outsource the creation of artistic content in the world to the players, instead of having a team responsible for building it. By charging for this, they are basically saying that their most dedicated, valuable and creative talents in the user community will now be the most heavily charged (and therefore penalized) players in the game.

    S
    • I expect this to be a much smaller problem than you portray it as. There are many things you can do without incurring a large monthly bill:

      1) For $15 a month, you can get a reasonable chunk of land and a reasonable number of prims. This is plenty for small builds, and it's amazing what you can do with clever texturing.

      2) For large builds (such as the Darkwood or Nexus Prime themed areas), you can get a group together to spread out the costs.

      3) People who had paid for lifetime memberships before the la

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