I apologize if this suggestion has been raised before, but in light of Philip's posting about the source of the sluggishness, I thought I'd put out an idea I started kicking around back when Prokofy raised some ideas about metering script usage.
Suppose an account holder was given an allotment of different event types to spend every thirty days? These particular numbers are totally meaningless, but let's say the bottom-tier Premium package was:
40,000 Listen events
30,000 Sensor events
3,000 email events
12,000 XML-RPC events
etc.
First thoughts:
1. The event allotment would replenish every 30 days with no rollover. (In other words, use 'em or lose 'em)
2. Scripts would always draw from their current owner's allotment.
3. Allotments should probably be tiered based upon the total amount of property owned...? (This raises the question of what should happen if, say, I own half of Europa, but have a 16m plot in Grindlewald with 400 scripts on it...not sure.)
4. Allotment upgrades should be available for those who want to script without owning property. Or: speaking of business opportunities, folks who don't script should maybe be able to sell portions of their allotments for each event type. Now couldn't that be cool? Think of a Website (or an in-game trading floor) with buyers and sellers constantly moving the purchase point for event packages around!
5. Folks would need some kind of near-real-time meter for current usage. Maybe an update to a ledger overnight, similar to the way proceeds from group land get distributed?
Edit: Oh, sandboxes. Hmmm...say a separate package of sandbox events to spend, which replenished every 24 hours?
-- jj