Suggestion for new membership levels

Almost without exception, grid crashes are caused by greifers on free accounts.

Here is a possible solution.

"Basic" accounts as they currently are, are "Bronze" level accounts, which enable you to appreciate all that SL has to offer but you cannot create or rez anything outside of designated self-contained sandbox areas. There should also be more restrictions on what a 'free' account can do.

Once people have played 'basic' for, say, one month ... they have the chance to upgrade to a "Silver" level account for a $10 one-off fee, or their account is closed. This is the equivalent of today's "basic" account but for an alt.

Next, the "Gold" account, which is basically your current Premium account but owning only up to the 512 sq m that comes with it.

Finally, the "Platinum" account for those who own land over and above the free 512 sq m that "Gold" get. Basically today's premium plus Land.

What restrictions does that give? None of any consequence. If you're a brand new player, you just want to see what the game offers; so it shouldn't matter if you're limited, and a month is more than enough time to decide. If you like the game, then you pay a one-off fee to 'upgrade' your account so you can enjoy everything yourself.

We have extra income for SL by people wanting to upgrade once they know they like it, freeloaders who pay nothing but take money out of the game can go whistle dixie (because you should be prepared to pay for entertainment like anywhere else, and if you can afford a broadband connection and a good enough PC to play SL, by damn you can afford a one off $10 fee if nothing else), and it gives us a chance to see how dedicated a player is to SL. After all, if you're spending more than $15 a month on your game then it does at least give the impression of having a certain amount of trust about you that can easily be identified over and above someone who has no investment (and presumably doesn't care) in making this world work.

I'm sure I'll get flamed for daring to suggest that the freeloaders should be cut - but I see that as a far smaller problem than uncontrollable griefers getting free accounts and crashing the grid week after week.

As only a fraction of the 200,000 accounts are actually real residents who play regularly, I don't see that it will slow down the population increase. Indeed, closing any accounts and deleting all property of players who have not logged in for at least 6 months will also make the database (and asset server) more efficient.

Lewis

Not gonna flame you on that. I do disagree with cutting free accounts, but that's not what you're aiming for here so I'll leave it.

The problem, as you see it at least, seems to be that griefers get a free account and cause trouble... OK, that may or may not be true, I know a few people with lifer accounts who have done this kind of thing too. In any case, your solution won't work. If the "freebie" account goes away after a month if not paid, then how does this help? If I was going to make a griefer account, then I wouldn't be keeping it around for months just so it could get seen and noticed to behave somewhat like me...

Now maybe your average griefer is a bet mentally subnormal, or at least uneducated, underage or probably both, but even they will realise that a month is more than enough to cause trouble... and at the end, the account gets deleted cos it's just a freebie... and they go on to make another for the next round.


Nice idea Lewis, but it won't work. LL need to start banning by CC/RL Address if they're going to do this. And even that's only a start.

I quite like this set-up actually. I personally don't need the 512sq m that comes with my premium account, so I've contributed it to a group, as I'm paying rent for land now instead of owning it myself. But if I could drop the 512sq m to get a cheaper premium account, then I'd be all for it.

@Siobhan, I believe Lewis addressed that. The free accounts would be essentially nerfed, their objects can only be rezzed in sandbox areas, so the worst they could do is crash a sim with a sandbox, or fill the sandbox with junk.

You're right, sorry.

In any case, since I wrote, I gave it more thought while making a cup of tea. I think it's been said before, but all that's needed is some rewording of the TOS/EULA.

Everyone needs to give a CC number to sign up, and that's cool. All LL need is to say that any damage caused to the grid can be charged to you. So if you bring the grid down and LL need to get a team of gridmonkeys out of bed on a Sunday, then the cost of doing so (pay for say 4 or 5 techs for 5 or 6 hours at call-out rates) should be charged back to the griefer. Add on any compensation paid to players for downtime and you could be talking about 10-20k per incident.

I like Lewis' idea. I think up until recently it may not have been possible without the user growth we have seen. But now as SL grows, it is a more feasible option. I personally think that the free accounts were a good idea, but should be cut/nerfed in some way now that SL is bigger.

And I like Si's option too. I'm not sure how much they could get away with legally, but any sort of monetary penalty for grid-wide "griefing" would suffice for most, I'd think.

My 2 cents,
MM

I generally like this idea, but I think there needs to be a provision where new users can upgrade to "platinum" within say seven days. I think we have to balance the company's need to grow with the ability to mitigate self-replicator terrorism.

The problem with that is that SL also accepts PayPal payments for most things, but PayPal hides credit card details from them, so they can't just issue a fine for misuse of the system, unless PayPal offers such a system later. Currently they offer the facility for repeated payments (ie monthly or whatever), but there is no way to make them mandatory and they can be cancelled at any time to refuse payments.

Sure, but they can still sue for payment.

The basic problem is that most griefers just use fake details - so if everyone has to use a real credit card to 'unlock' their lifetime basic account, then we have traceability, unless it is a stolen credit card - which is then a different offense.

I would guess that 99% of the SL population have access to a credit or debit card of some kind that could be used to verify details.

Which only leaves 'bronze' level newbies with the ability to crash a sandbox, and only affect the people there. To risk having an account cancelled after spending real cash, and the traceability attached to it, would probably deter a lot of small-term griefers.

Unfortunately it's no real secret as to *how* these self replicating things work, I believe some moron even posted a script on a forum thread some time - so anyone who wants to cause chaos can. Let's just hope that LL doesn't take the EA method of dealing with problems - pretending it doesn't exist.

Lewis

Lewis,

There's nothing stopping someone from just launching the attack from the mainland sandboxes. Unless you are saying to limit free basic account rezzing to some set of island sandboxes... which would be very laggy and overloaded all the time, unless you had dozens of them.

I think I like the various grid partitioning ideas better. An option that the lindens could flip on that would turn off sim crossings grid wide in less than 1 second would be nice.

Sort of like those doors in a boat that stay closed to keep the water from spreading when it's starting to sink. Except in this case the doors can stay open almost all the time and just shut when necessary.

I have a better idea.

Replace the "Free" accounts with "Guest" accounts.

Guest accounts have no inventory other than the Linden Library, no edit tools other than Appearance, and have the last name "Guest". They can't "take" or "take copy" objects (but they can delete objects they rezzed from the default inventory). They can't have objects dropped on them. They have no money. They are in a "Second Life Visitors" group.

When they upgrade from "Guest" to "Basic" for a one-time ten dollar fee, or from "Guest" to "Premium", they pick a real name.

Other possibilities:

1. Parcel owners might be able to block access for members of the vistor group.
   
2. Estate owners might be able to do the same thing.
   
3. Parcel owners who have set up "pay" access controls might be able to allow visitos in without paying.
   
4. Guests might have a different colored dot on the map or the mini map, or a different colored label.