Stealth change to account types?

Just spotted something.

Looking through the profiles of "the great and the good", almost all of them are now listed as "Account type: Resident". Even when I haven't been here long, I remember looking at the same profiles and seeing the same people listed as "Account type: Charter Member".

The same happened with a person who I know, from speaking to others, to be a Lifetime Member: they're now listed just as "Resident".

Presumably this has been done to prevent people finding out the possibly-kinda-useful information that the business they're competing against is run by someone who, as a result of joining early, pays no subscription or tier.

Getting free tier on 4096 m2 isn't going to give anyone any real advantage. You need compelling content or a compelling service to do that.

It's all good, trust me.

No, I'm sure it's no advantage at all that if Joe Resident and a Lifetime Member both have 4096 square shops, and offer content and service just as good each other, taking the same amount of sales, that the older member makes $34.99 (or over L$10000) a month more than Joe would.

Ok, so what do you propose?

LL should renege on its agreement and take the land away from them?

Or LL should offer a similar deal now which would rapidly put them out of business?

To be honest, having the "charter member" status beside their name was probably a heckuva lot more competitive advantage than the free tier.

Also, you DO realise that they paid like several 100$ to a company with completely unknown prospects for the right to be a charter member?

I don't know where you got that figure from. It's a $25 tier fee for 4096 meters per month.

You have to pay 9.99 as well. I don't think Charter Members do, correct me if I am wrong.

Sadly I have to agree wholeheartedly here. They were changing the whole economic model then and I thought it sucked and worried about the future so didn't get a lifetime membership. That was a dumb mistake.

I don't know. I get an extra 512 just for being around but am pretty sure I have to pay for the premium. I'm not sure about that either though.

Actually, make that 6$ if you get the 72$ version, then that would come to 31$ / month for 4096 tier.

If you think 31$ / month is some type of significant advantage, you're doing something terribly wrong.

Charter member means beta tester. It does not mean you're a 4096 account holder, to the best of my knowledge anyway. Other games have done similiar things with beta accounts - TSO has "Founder" titles for their beta players.

The 4096 accounts were first offered at 159$ then later raised to 225$. I bought a 225$ account the very last day they were offered, which was shortly after Christmas of 2003.

It was not an easy decision. 225$ for a game that we weren't sure would still be afloat in six months was a gamble. I struggled for months with whether or not to dump 225$ US into this game. So did several of my friends, and most of us waited til the last moment. As you can see above, Essence didn't even buy one, because of the same type of worries. The gamble did pay off, about a year after purchase for most of us.

LL was in financial trouble at the time. This is why the 1.2 changes to land came in. I was told point blank at that time, by Lee Linden, that SL would not survive without the changes made in 1.2. They were acting on the advice of RL economists. We (some of us players) thought 1.2 might ruin SL more than it already was. We even held a giant protest at the Governor's Mansion. We were wrong and indeed it saved SL. Land became a commodity rather than just a frill. No longer were there huge swathes of unclaimed public land priced at 1$L per m2 lying all over the grid.

There were only a few hundred active players at that time. I think SL needed a shot in the arm (capital) at the time, and the revenue generated by those 159/225$ accounts probably helped.

At any rate, many of the most successful, respected, highest profile content makers in SL do not have the 4096 lifetime accounts. MANY.

P.S. I am looking into the Charter Member thing, someone contacted me and said I was mistaken. I will post my findings here.

Well, upon researching it in the forums, I just found more confusion about the terminology and what a Charter member is ( I suppose I will have to ask a Linden, or post in Hotline):

/120/9c/48936/1.html

/120/af/63401/1.html

/120/af/63401/1.html#post664258

I can't speak from experience since I don't have much yet, but from these forums, many of the newer or smaller businesspeople speak of struggling to pay their tier. In that case, $31/month is a significant advantage because, well, it pays their tier.

Anyway, the issue wasn't about the difference between those members and others - it was about Linden having apparantly hidden it. When a new player can come along, walk into just about any established business on the grid and see that the owner's a "Charter Member" it sends a pretty strong message, especially in light of what Brace Coral wrote on her blog (yea, it's kinda shocking when someone who organised the group who helps you get started writes something like that). I imagine that the born date will be removed soon too..

Well, my profile and several of my friend's (several of whom are major content sellers) profiles still say Charter.

I do know that there is confusion as to what qualifies people for Charter status and that there are people who should have it on their profile and don't. Apparently, the whole thing has been buggy for some time now. (and if you do a forum search and/or read the threads I linked in my last reply, you will find this too).

That said, I HIGHLY doubt it's due to intentional "hiding" of the status by LL. I did a find menu search just now (in-world) on Chip Midnight - one of the first and most successful (even now) content "barons" in SL, and his profile still says charter. *shrug*

I think what we see here is a glitch, if anything at all. The whole thing has been glitchy forever, and this glitchiness has been discussed in many threads. I have to say that this is the first time I have seen it attributed to a conspiracy though.

Also, most content sellers rent space to sell their products in anyway, so I am not sure how that 4096 would give them a leg up to that end.

Shame.

Getting rid of the "Charter Member" stuff would have been a smart move on LL's part. It's the source of a lot of antagonism, and I honestly see nothing to be gained by it.

To the best of my recollection most beta members got titled "charter" at the time SL went to general availability. For about 6 months after "lifetime" accounts were available as Nolan describes. Some non-beta "lifers" were annointed as "charter" manually. Some non-beta "lifers" (e.g. me) were not so retitled nor did anyone much seem to care.

Yes, I get 4096m allocation for "nothing" because I took a gamble on SL in September 2003 (to be precise, I thought SL was damn cool and wanted to throw US$ at LL in hopes of perpetuating their continuance). True, to get the same privileges (well 4608m instead of 4096m allocation) I'd have to pay $372/year in today's rates.

However, if being a lifer was intrinsically advantageous, I might be known as something other than "that jerk Malachi" or "that guy who paid for a 6 month membership and five days after bought a lifetime account also". Personally, I like to consider myself an "LL Liability" as I consume some amount of resources without generating any revenue.

Finally, if memory serves, the "1.01 acres and no mule" status for lifers was generously granted by LL to lifers when the one-time-pay "basic" account was introduced.

Oh I almost forgot, some Linden put a piece of candy corn by my SL front door on Halloween 2003 but I think they did that on all parcels regardless of subscription status. When I clicked that candy corn it spun up in the air, gave me L$1, and derezzed. If I had but saved that L$1 I would have an extra [calculates...] L$1 today.

$31 is most definitely not much of an advantage, much less a "significant" one. If a small SL business is struggle to meet the tier payment, then there's something wrong with the business.

Crappy products, bad location, store too big or whatever.

Fix the business model first.



Realistically, how many SL residents even bother to look at a seller's profile before buying. I can tell you that I've bought a lot of stuff and never once looked at the seller's profile.

IMO, this is a non-issue.

Only by folks who allow it to "antagonize" them. That is a self-created "issue" with those who have the "issue". As a matter of fact, I think you are mislabling the "issue" - "antagonism" should be replaced by "animosity" - and that animosity is directed at those who have the title, not the other way around.

The players who tried to say they were bigger "Stakeholders" in SL don't even have the charter title - they just think because they "pay LL's salary", they should have more pull. So one hardly needs to have that title to be antagonistic towards "casual players" or "tourists".

I have never seen anyone who has the title say "Well I am a Charter member, you better do what I say!", or "I have more pull with LL because I am Charter", or even project such a mindset non-verbally.

Should TSO retroactively remove the "Founder" title from their player's profiles too?

Jesus... If $34.95 is a significant amount of money for you, you must be doing something very wrong with your lives... first and second oO
Don't you spend a lot more than that on dinner and a movie? I spend a lot more than that just to get internet access. OMG, somebody save us, the FIC can buy a few more beers than us poor people!

Again, I can't speak from experience, but I think it's a bit bold to say there's "something wrong" with a business that doesn't turn over at least (tap.. tap.. tap..) 10333 Lindens per month. That's the entire allowance for 206 new players, and common sense says most players who are off the allowance loop already have all they want by now and would rather sell their spare L$ for US$.

What does FIC stand for?

You must be new here, Yumi; they put poisonous snakes in your sock drawer for asking such questions

The FIC was a conspiritorial cabal so named by a formerly prolific poster here. I think the collected "wisdom" on the matter is that there is a Catch-22 built into the definition of FIC, because if you deny that there is a cabal of privilieged players then you must be part of the FIC. After about a zillion posts on the matter I think most would agree that the category refers to players who by virtue of long time in the game, hard work, and general niceness are well known and well connected within the player community; in other words, just as in real life, people with good reputations have often done what is needed to earn them, and have the advantages of knowing other well connected people with good reputations. This is a natural happening in human societies (business, neighborhood, church, politics, student councils, etc.)

To my knowledge no one has ever demonstrated that Linden Lab really treats anyone with special status. Now, if LL chooses player X to be on some promotional video, for example, you can say "favoritism" but "needing to pick one person out of thousands" is probably more accurate.

And if anyone wants to argue with my summation, just be careful around your sock drawer.

It's not bold at all.

If a business consistently can't meet it's operating costs, something is broken in it's business model.

In this hypothetical situation, the business needs to make at least $31USD each month just to cover tier. If it can't, then the business owner needs to find out why and fix it.

There are dozens of reasons for this. Some simple things include:

- crappy products for sale
- poor advertising
- too far from telehub
- too much land being used (store too big).
- etc, etc.

There are several content creators I know that don't spend a DIME on tier fees, or even premium accounts. And they never have.

And they're obscenely successful.

Land != successful business.

I've had a 4096 allotment since december 2003, with most of the time being in a double-prim, ultra-rare sim. The best moneymaker I found for it was managing a 15-story double-tower apartment building. Net revenue? Around $US 30.00 a month.

Whoopee.

I've since turned it into a spot for a museum. Net revenue? About $L250 a month.

LF

But none of these address the point I made above: the exact same store could be operating, with exactly the same "broken" business model, and yet turning a profit because the owner started SL sooner.

If it was the business model that was broken, it'd be broken for everyone, right?

And "too far from telehub" isn't exactly something they've got a choice about..

And, all other things being equal, people of your parent's generation will have amassed more friends, associations, knowledge, and assets than you have; that's just part of the nature of what it means to have been around longer.

Does that speak more to your point? Would you have your elders in RL forgo their wisdom because it puts you at a disadvantage? I don't even think the most radical communist would try to sell that line.

1. "FIC" means "Feted Inner Core," a coin termed by one of the most brilliant and learned players on the game, and a personal friend of mine.

To each his own definition, but to meit means that pool of known-quantity players (usually long-term players) the Lindens personally know about and dip into whenever they have any opportunities or perks to pass out.

The solution: Make everything open to everyone, which gives equal opportunity to all, on the basis of merit, for those opportunities and perks.

This solution is currently being implemented in various areas. When it becomes the standard modus operandi for everything, then the term "FIC" will become less useful.

We are winning this one, Yumi.

2. Yes, those players who got to pay to be in the lifetime program and took that risk do enjoy a benefit and advantage the rest of us don't, and can't, in terms of profit, prim count, etc.

On the other hand, they were HERE then, and we weren't. It's not their fault! If I had been here then, I would have made the same mental calculations they did: Is this game going to be around for long enough to get my money's worth out of this deal? Am I going to be around long enough to get my money's worth out of it? Do I have the money to spend on this? Is it important enough to me? Do I want to help the Lindens keep the game going by injecting some money into it now?

It was a risk, and it turns out those who took it and paid the fee were smarter than those who didn't, assuming they enjoyed continuing to play this long, and they have long since recouped their investment, I believe.

(By the same token, I really think it is extremely poor sportsmanship for some of these same individuals - who may have bought several such accounts, and now have whole free Sims strung together for themselves - to get on the bandwagon to browbeat a newer player for making a second account and paying full price for it, and then purchasing their 512 First Land with that second account. I mean, really, people!)

3. Blaze, you can't have it both ways. You say:

" LL should renege on its agreement and take the land away from them?

"Or LL should offer a similar deal now which would rapidly put them out of business?"

Well, if it ISN'T an advantage to be one who signed on with the original lifetime agreement, and if that doesn't have much to do with a person's success anyway, then how can it also be true that if the same deal were now offered to others, it would "rapidly put out of business" the ones who got the deal a couple of years ago?

coco