Trail User Changes

I'm slightly confused by the following quote from Robin's announcment: Can trial users own land? I mean they can't now, will they be able to tomorrow?

I'm sort of dreading the new Credit Card requirement. I have friends who wouldn't dare input their Credit Card into an internet website until they fully know what they're getting into. This is sort of a disappointment, but I know a lot of people have been itching about the new people who have been (at the very least "acting" under age and have been disturbing events. However, I have a feeling there will be far, far fewer trial users in the next few weeks. It'll be sad not meeting new people.

Here are my thoughts and feelings on the matter, as Linden Labs does everything I say, 100%

1: It has been stated that there was a huge increase in the number of people who signed up for a trial period after the CC requirement was taken down. However, we never got any statements on how much higher the transition rate from trial to resident was. If it stayed the same as before, then I would understand the change back to CC.

2: The friends of mine who were lucky enough to trial during the non-CC period mostly came in just to take a look at the game, see how it ran on their system, and watch the world turn for a few short days. What if people had the option to sign up for a non-CC trial where you were simply a moving camera which viewed the world on a rail. They can't be seen or heard on this invisible rail showcasing the world, but users can use a menu option to see the rail and build in a manner so that the users on the rail could see the splendor our world offers. Think of it as a very long, very thin moving monorail on which the trial user sat and controlled the movement of. I dunno, a lil complicated, but keeps extreme newbies off of our shoulders.

3: Instead of having CC verification, SL should have e-mail authentication. First, you would NOT accept free e-mail addresses. It's hard to find a list of all of them, but the obvious ones like hotmail and yahoo could be denied, and if you start to see [email]asdf1@blah.com[/email] [email]asdf2@blah.com[/email] [email]asdf3@blah.com[/email] signing up, then you know to add blah.com to the list I know that this would work a lot better than before because it makes a person work to get a free trial, and quite frankly, signing up for multiple e-mails can get extremely tedius and boring.

2 is like, extreme, but 3 is somthing I've seen everywhere and would like. A reply to 1 would be nice

I like the change.
-It's still a free trial
-Credit card is a good way for verifying a user

I would like to express my thanks to Linden Labs for listening to us and understanding the torture some of us have been subject to. For trying to find a way to have a, "see it before you buy it" trial and at the least cut the influx of "Kids", and I use the term loosly.
I would like to know how long do items stay in world, when some one cancels after being a member for a brief time, or if the person leaving hasn't come IW to remove them their self. Or how long after the last sign in do you keep their items IW. DO youhave to remove them manually or are they done automaticlly. I ask because their are several house, 4 I think in Brown that the user hasn't been on line most of the summer, thats what 10wks? Browns at 92% land useage, I think. There are alot of lot still left. How can New active memebers settel in Brown if the land it at this high usage and 4 houses are never used? One of the house was built by a trial user. I haven't see her since.

A short answer to Ama's question - Yes, new trial users can now buy land.

I know a lot of trial users hated not being able to jump in and buy land, so this new change ought to please everyone but griefers and minors.

Eh.. I guess this is a subject where you really can't please all of the people all of the time. *shrug*

I'm not a minor, but I /am/ a 19 year old poor college student with poor college student friends who would like to play but wouldn't want to hand out their credit card for a free trial account. It almost sounds suspicious to require a credit card to recieve a free trial account. I wasn't whining and crying about this, I simply said that it was disappointing because I have friends that will probably not get the free trial now. And, I also said I understood why it happened and I didn't declare LindenLab irrational. So I wouldn't say I'm a griefer, either.

I think this is a good thing. In marketing you pre-qualify your sales. If it takes a credit card to pay for the game, then it's best to know up front if the prospect has a credit card. While the number of trial users may be reduced, the conversions may conversely go up. Certainly the experience of the new user coming in under these conditions will be much improved. They will be able to buy objects, build freely and buy land.

But this is a VERY good thing for existing players. We have trial users that we can interact with more freely. Who can buy things, try things, build and own land. Instead of fleeing them, existing users will be willing to interact with them more naturally. And who, if they decide to grief, will be much easier to ban.

Thanks Linden Labs!

If a paying resident cancels, the account continues through any pre-paid time that remains, then the account is turned off and in-world content and land is kept for 30 days. After that time, an automatic process goes through and cleans up. It has nothing to do with with logging in - the privilege of paying for an account is that we keep your stuff whether or not you actually use it.

Under the new system trial users' in-world stuff is kept for a week after the trial expires, so there will be some polution of the world by trial user content, but it's shouldn't become a large percentage.

How about a system for disabling cc requirements if the user was invited to SL by a paying resident?

I was responding to Haney's post - which I just happened to see first - and considering some of my own somewhat considerable experience with trial members, so don't go out of your way looking for insults when they weren't intended...

What about lifetime subscribers that don't play anymore? Will their land/inworld objects be kept around for the duration of their life?

This brings up another interesting question: Do you have a way of noticing when a persons "lifetime" subscription ends, because they die in the real world?

Oh, and because I apparently had too much coffee, another question: Do you store our credit card information after a lifetime subscription has been processed?

It would be nice if, after a certain length of time, if the lifetime didn't log on at all, maybe six months or so, their buildings got placed in in their inventory and their land was released again.

Right now I don't think we have a formal process for dealing with abandonned lifetime accounts. I think eventually we'll end up trying to get in touch with people who haven't logged in in a long time to ask them if it's ok to clear out their stuff. I suppose we'd probably find out if they were dead at that point.

Currently we're retaining credit card numbers for lifetime accounts. This may come in handy if we ever offer additional products (T-shirts? Linden Hot Sauce? Private sims? A whole new game? Who knows?) but I realize that for security reasons we should minimize the number of cards we store. We'll review this policy during our next security audit.

yaaay!! Linden Hot Sauce! It just might be as successful as Paul Newmans Products. You could put Haney's picture on it.

I'll take a case of the hot sauce... It may keep me awake some of these late night LSL jam sessions.

Or maybe just some SLBuck coffee...

How about a choice? If you want to enter a credit card then you can build anywhere and buy land and basicly will revert to how it used to be with CC, and the free trial users can only have certain privilages, and maybe only see certain sims like they used to. I would still encourage Perry and Clara and the rest in that area to be available, but maybe not the whole world. I like choices, that's just a choice for ya.

So does this mean that trial users can buy from shops and vendors in SL? If so, what wonderful news! Trial users who don't even pay can buy good from us. I'll have to open a factory to keep up with demand.

As far as trial users having a choice... I sort of think that it's up to Linden Labs to decide how billing works. Think they'll know what's best when it comes down to population increase/decrease etc. Who knows; maybe the population won't increase much in the next few weeks and things will change again; or, perhaps the opposite will occur and we'll find the credit card requirement is a complete blessing.