Limit free users...

Can I get free 200 prim flexi hair from one?

"Just because I can." is always a good reason for doing something.

Um... no, how about a steampunk keyboard?

That works, too.

Good for you -- I must have forgotten to take my anti-pissy pills.

Here's how I see it. There's a big difference between what SL does and what most business systems need.

Most business systems have a well-defined expected load. When the business sets the system up, they do it based on their projections for the size of the business. If they're wrong, they either spent too much (overcapacity), or they have *serious* problems managing their business or handling their customers (undercapacity).

With SL, it's a bit different. First, the distributed application is significantly more complex than business systems. One of the main reasons for this is user-created content. There are a number of others, but most of those are similar with other MMRPGs like WoW. As sophisiticated as Amazon is, their application is very simple compared to SL. (And, it *ain't* simple!)

From a business case perspective, the big difference is that for most businesses, the IT system is sink-or-swim. If it's not up to the load, the result is pretty catastrophic. Another difference is, most business systems aren't terribly novel. Always something a bit new, but 99% of it is same old stuff we've been doing for decades now (database access and management, with customer visibility into that database *very* limited).

MMRPGs are quite a bit different, both technically and business-model-wise. There isn't the same "make or break" issue about the application. It scales as well as it does, and if marketing and other factors are successful (i.e., if customers dig it), it rather quckly reaches the scalability limits of the application. (Other businesses would love it if their customer base quickly grew as fast as the scalability of their IT systems!!! Then they'd allocate more of their budget on that. But of course, product design wouldn't then keep up with the competition, and their business wouldn't grow as fast as their IT systems.)

MMRPGs do have make-or-break aspect to their financial plan, on the other hand. They have to balance their spending between scalling the application (which massively increases revenu, in principle anyway) and maintaining the existing application (improving stability) and adding new features.

Above, someone said that LL works by bumping into scalability limits and then figuring out how to deal with them. Well, of course. They design to avoid the limits they know about in advance, and bump into the ones they didn't foresee, or that they didn't have good solutions for at the time. SL is a case of "complex systems", where there are a lot of things you can't predict even if you know how all the parts work. (The main reason for this, in SL, is due to the players. We're predictable in many ways, but we're guaranteed to do a lot of unpredictable stuff!)

And that leads to the final thing. What makes SL slow down? It's you and me, bub. The makers of content and the users of the content. It's due to a thing called "the tragedy of the commons". Here's what happens. Makers make new scripts or objects. Consumers buy them and set them out. How many and how complicated? Well, as many as we can get away with until things totally suck, and then we back off a bit. (OK, some of us back off. Others make massive camping farms and then try to blame LL for poor performance.) The "tragedy of the commons" part is, when something is shared, it's in the best interest of each player to hog as much for himself as possible, and it all gets consumed rather quickly, whenever the amount isn't way more than needed.

I'm sure you'd shudder at some of the things I've seen scripters do, for example. A friend of mine made a sign to show whether an av was online or not. Ended up selling gazillions of the things, making a tidy sum in the process. Forutunately for all of us, I successfully implored her to NOT query the server once a second as she was doing, but once every 5 minutes, reducing the resource usage of this baby by a factor of 300. We all benefit, but the sign users might complain that it takes 5 miutes to update. (An "online" query doesn't just ask the local sim, btw: it's a global resource being used -- albeit a distributed one, at least I hope!)

BTW, I'm not an expert in the kinds of systems used by Amazon and MMRPGs, and I'm doing some educated guessing here. If anyone has experience in these areas and can shed light or disabuse me of any errors, I'm all ears.

Bottom line: LL aren't a bunch of dolts. On the other hand, they're probably not a Google, either. But they're doing something very novel and it's silly not to expect frequent performance and scalability issues.

I aim to please...and misbehave

Seriously though, drop this whole limit free users kick - it will only cause you heartache in the long run, you know it, we know it, 'nough said.

I'm not the one who said only one account per IP/MAC/whatever. I was thinking 2 or 3, in case of stuff like shop owners with 'mannequins' or greeters or whatever else it is people use alts for. I'm sure we can figure out a number that fits between normal alt use and what's clearly the work of a botter.

Stabbity-Stabbity-Stab-Stab



The problem isn't free users, the problem is bots. If LL were to require that all bots be run on Premium accounts--and enforce that--the economic incentive to run traffic bots would be severely diminished. Right now traffic bots are a classic free rider problem.

Personally, I pay for the feeling of entitlement.

as long as it's just a 'feeling'

I got an even better idea.

Restrict logins to accounts that are concierge level

After listening to most concierge chat I would say move the whole lot of them to the Acting Like a Teen Grid

That's the one where all the sims are rated "Immature", as someone recently noted?

LMAO, spot on

I should just copy and paste my response to every plonker that thinks their $9.95 a month is worth more than what I spend in SL.

I pay rent around $8k a month, I buy clothing, houses, AO's, tools etc etc.

I do not have an alt.

I don't own mainland, I never will, I don't like it........so what do I need an account for?

You don't deserve access anymore than I do.

All the cool kids are doing it.

That's why they need to restrict logins! So you need the account! Haven't you been paying attention?!?!?!

Just kidding. They really do need to do something to make premium accounts more attractive though, and they will, right after they revamp the forums....

A.D.D


It is attractive, you can buy mainland and chat to the concierge thingie, crickey how much more do you want lol

I thought SL was full of geeks, there are no cool kids lol

The New Forum will be accessable only to Premium Members.......

Relatively speaking, I mean.

The cool kids are the ones that live in their own basements.

I'm totally not cool then

Perhaps the free accounts could be limited to using only vowels in chat. This will eliminate the resources which would have been used to transmit consonants.