Linden Lab have blogged Happy 15th Birthday, Second Life! Fifteen Reasons To Celebrate. Two of those reasons are long term issues. Linden Lab are addressing the issue of the tier being too damn high and they are also planning to bring back last names.
Linden Lab recently announced reductions to mainland tier pricing as well as allowing premium members 1,024m of free tier, a doubling of the old 512m limit. The latest blog post points out that this isn’t the end of addressing tier pricing though :
Currently, Land costs can be quite high, and make up a lopsided portion of our Second Life revenues. To improve this imbalance, we plan to increase revenues in other ways so that we can lower land costs further. In order to avoid shocks to the in-world economy and to take care that we keep the business healthy, we plan to make these changes in a measured way, taking time to assess the impacts of each change as we go.
I’ve long said that Linden Lab need more revenue sources and that tier was far too large a part of their business model, so I’m definitely encouraged by this.
Regarding the return of last names to Second Life, there’s not much information in the post as to when it will happen, but LL state :
You’ve asked for it (a lot!), so we will provide a way to customize your last name in Second Life! More details will be available later this year.
That’s encouraging, it is something people have been asking for.
The other reasons to be cheerful are detailed in the Linden Lab blog post, which I encourage you to read, they include improvements, progress, moving to the cloud, games, experiences, premium membership benefits and much more.
Another interesting point in the blog posts suggests forthcoming changes to premium membership options :
In the coming months some other fees may increase, including Marketplace commissions, Linden Dollar exchange fees, and cashout fees. In addition, we will soon announce new tiered Premium membership offerings that allow Residents to choose the membership level that provides the benefits most important to them.
People have different uses for Second Life, so having different Premium Membership options seems like a plan but we will have to see what Linden Lab propose in this area.
As the post points out, some fees may increase and I’m sure this will cause some people to be unhappy, this is an inevitable consequence of increased fees. In terms of the long term health of Second Life though, the whole picture will be extremely important.
Linden Lab also state :
We are committed to keeping Second Life a vibrant and growing community with a healthy economy well into the future. Stay tuned – this 15th year will see some of the biggest improvements to Second Life in many years so that you can continue to enjoy it for the next 15 years.
Second Life heading for its 15th birthday is an extremely impressive feat for a platform that many outside Second Life still seem surprised to find out that it’s still around. Not only is Second Life still around, it also looks like it will still be around for quite a few years to come yet.
Can you imagine how satisfying it is?
I’ve been giving away those Protest Gnomes for over 5 years… to have had both “demands” satisfied in the same week… and then cap it off by seeing them headlining your blog post – I am bigly smiles.
And thanks for all your good work Ciaran 😀
Those Gnomes have served me very well, thank you for making them 🙂