The Price of Tiering Down

As I have mentioned on my previous post, I recently tiered down my mainland parcel from 9216m2 to 5120m2 after maintaining it for more than 6 years.

Now this is the price, when you sell your land and your new neighbors move in (the weird fugly tower and Taj Majal have already been there since years btw), click on images to enlarge:

 

Great flat one dimensional fugly builds, hello 2006! Hey we got mesh and materials now! Please for fucks sake.... update your stuff! And kindly stop hurting people's eyes!

Opposed to how it used to be (got a new store by the way):

My view when all was clean and pleasing to the eye:

 

My current view:

Thank the SL Gods for Firestorm's derender feature, now my place looks like this again:

Unfortunately, my customers and visitors won't have the pleasure of seeing it the way I do. I wish we were able to share our region settings including derendered objects. But that would be impossible I guess.

I know one needs to own a whole region to enjoy a better view. You see, it isn't actually that difficult to buy an island or a whole region. The problem is maintaining it, cuz tier is just ridiculously expensive.

When I was dividing my parcels, preparing to sell them, I happened to make a simple mistake regarding a single 512m2 plot, cuz I got group land and my own, which confused me a bit. You know it happens easily if you haven't done that since years. For that mistake of exceeding 512m2 for a few seconds, my tier for that month jumped from 47,60 USD to 89,25 USD (incl. eurovat), that's just fucking stupid!

You see, most of my old neighbors always maintained an aesthetic water view, and many built their homes up in the sky (well aside from that weird fugly tower beside me, which I derendered forever anyway). And it's been like that since 6 years.

Why some people don't have a sense for great looking stuff or what is pleasing to the eye, I will never understand. Maybe their computers, can't render higher graphic settings. Well if that's the case, then the server side baking feature hopefully eliminates those.

We need to move on and progress yo! So update your computers and enjoy better graphics. C'mon now, you can get a great gaming rig for a thousand bucks! Save a few months if you can't get it at once, then get one. Believe me, you will enjoy SL better! Or switch to Yahoo messenger chat, if graphic isn't important to you! You don't need SL if you just want to chat! So stop the BS!!

So when SSB goes live (dunno if it's live already), will people with old pc's and crappy graphic cards still be able to see anything in SL? Let's hope SSB eliminates those crappy builds in SL.


The above shots are unaltered and were taken using the windlight settings:
Sky ---> FS Original
Water---> Glassy

Let's Talk Numbers!

After owning 9216m2 of mainland parcel for 6 years, I finally decided to sell the half of it, to tier down. First reason is because I'm rarely inworld anyway and not performing live anymore, nor having parties/events like I used to.

So I closed down C-Music Lounge and my private residence. I believe more than six years were enough to provide other residents free entertainment and a cool and quiet hangout.

Don't get me wrong, I never expected donations to cover a part of my tier costs to begin with, cuz one can never rely on that, especially when a lot of residents can't relate to it, like if they don't own land or a venue.

Some think a donation of 20L$ is enough, which is kinda cute in a way, especially if those residents really don't have much lindens to spare. I therefore just kinda provided the place so people can hang-out and have a good time (mostly when I'm sleeping due to timezone).

Ever since LL provided a premium sandbox and the SL Marketplace became "box free", it became the deciding point for me to finally tier down. Lesser tier, more profit right?

I'm one of the lucky ones, who didn't need to pay from my own pocket anymore, a year after I started my business. I even had the chance to treat myself to some RL delights, out of my SL business profit.

I'm sure others make a lot more profit than me, which allows them to afford one or more islands. Still I'm just glad I never needed to buy Linden Dollars anymore, thus an entertainment form, that does not cost me a single cent. Oh but it does cost me something... time! One certainly needs a lot of time to be in SL.


So let's do the math:

• 47,60 USD monthly tier (incl. European VAT) x 12 months = 571,20 USD
• 571,20 USD x 6 years = 3427,20 USD
• 85,68 USD annual premium membership (incl. European VAT) x 2 (for 2 premium avatars) = 171,36 USD a year
• 171,36 USD x 6 years = 1028,16 USD
• 1028,16 USD + 3427,20 USD =  4455,36 USD

4455,36 USD (tier and premium membership only) spent within 6 years on Second Life! Now that's an expensive game/hobby/outlet/entertainment -- call it whatever you want! That's approximately 3400,- EUR, which isn't peanuts either!

I can't remember, nor find my land purchase transactions anymore, but I vaguely remember paying around 1500,- USD, cuz land, especially protected ocean parcels, were very expensive in 2007.

I won't be adding the land purchase cost to the above calculation, since I already got that investment back. I won't also add the L$ I spend every month, shopping for myself and many alts, also the cash I re-invest into my business monthly.

A few alts also love to play a bingo type of game, so that's another way to throw money away. Well one wouldn't seriously believe winning a game scripted by an SL resident, when money is involved right? The bank always wins, so just play to have fun.

I'm not quite sure, but I'm not very motivated anymore in creating stuff. I still need to update a lot of products and I still have a lot in the pipeline, which I'm too lazy to release.

Anyway, let's just wait and see. Keep posted and don't forget to subscribe to my blog!


What I'm wearing:

Dress: Tuty's - Qipao Mesh Dress
Shoes: Redgrave - Helena