Alt personnas

I thought Id read up on alt personnas. Mine doesnt get used much and hes destined for drastic cyber surgery anyway.

However (and seriously) I think the rules need a little clarifaction as it seems to me some people have far more than the one alt I thought we were allowed. It also seems these people are getting away with this (if it is indeed against the rules)

So how many alts can you legally have ? How much per alt do you have to pay? (I have been told by inworld help you can have one free alt this seems to contradict the info on alts in the knowledge base - at least last time I looked) And is it legal to bring you alt into sl at the same time as your primary 'personna ?

Id love to set up personna for my tiny, another for a furry and umpteen other ideas I have, however I stick to what I think are the rules...

Currently, no limits on numbers of alts, though it used to be 5 per email account. Also currently no fee for additional alts, though THAT used to be $10.00 to set up a new one. Rules may change at any time of course, so this could all be different in a month, who knows?

Not sure on some of the terms you use, but I think you talking about having more than one account, I can't see what there is to stop you opening more than one free account.

I would have thought you need to open a new account with new name and design a new avatar etc.

Love
June

Where did you read that you can only have one alt?

So I can have as many alts as I want ? Even one for my triceratops ?


I can crew my skystation without having to pay anyone ?


So the question is how do I get my little clone army here all at once ?

(Aside from digging a lake in my region and burying em all at the bottom)

My apologies I meant to say one FREE alt....

Reading the knowledge base implies you cant even have that... Yes you can have lots of alts but the implication is you should be paying 9.95 for each only - at least thats how I intepret the knwoedge base as copied here.

Alt account policies: Be everyone you can be
Alternate accounts... multiple identities... We all have them in some way or another. Perhaps in real life you're an entrepreneur in the morning, soccer mom in the afternoon, and vegetarian chef in the evening. In Second Life, you get to externalize these roles in customized, uniquely identifiable personas -- otherwise known as alt accounts. How cool is that?

There are great reasons for having more than one account in Second Life, and we like to facilitate these uses. One of the ways we protect these legitimate accounts is by limiting the creation and use of illegitimate alt accounts -- primarily fraudsters and people bent on disruptive behaviors. Below you'll find answers to commonly asked questions.

What does it cost to create additional Basic accounts?
Your first Basic account is free. We charge a small fee, US$9.95, for the creation of each additional Basic account as a way to recoup some of the cost of maintaining the account for you. This is explained further in section 1 of the billing policies, which can be accessed through the link on the right side of your account page. (Note that in the billing policies, "Access Account" means Basic account and a "Subscription Account" means a Premium account.)

What if I have a Premium account already?
Your first account, paid or not, counts as your free Basic account. The free Basic account is meant as an incentive to new Residents to try Second Life with no associated charges. If you have an account already, additional accounts do have an associated cost for maintenance.

How many alts may I have?
Currently, you can create as many additional Basic or Premium accounts as you want to pay for, with the following limitations:

You can create up to five accounts per email address.
You can create no more than two accounts in a single 24-hour period.
Previously, we limited accounts to five per household and two per payment method, but this is no longer the case.

We do require that alt accounts adhere to all of our policies. For example, by agreeing to our Terms of Service (TOS)you agree to provide truthful and accurate information about yourself when you register for accounts -- that includes not only your contact information and real name but also whether this is your first free Basic account or a new alt (see TOS section 2.1). People who do not provide truthful information risk losing their accounts.

OK so what reason do you have to believe that people are not paying for those extra accounts?

That information wasn't updated properly. It's unlimited, and it's free. Hence all the alts sitting in camping chairs, sucking up system resources and annoying neighbors.

If that's the case, then it's no wonder there is confusion.

/me is now confused.

One's enough for me

There is currently no way to pay for the new alt accounts (unless you make them premium). I have tried. I don't feel bad at all about this. I spend a great deal of RL funds on my accounts. I am not cheating anyone out a mere $9.95, believe me!

The "Alt Charge/Limit" rule is a hold-over from the days when every account, even Basic accounts, received a stipend and/or starting L$.

At that time it was necessary to stop people creating huge numbers of Basic alts until they had all the L$ they could ever need.

Not only that, you're hardly using any more resources by alternating between accounts. That is unless you sign in many at the same time and create a pool of avatar spawn at the bottom of a pond

For all LL say an alt costs 9.95$ they don't actually implement the system of paying them so currently alts are free. When I created my second account in March I think, I did pay this sum. However on my subsequent alt creation in around June the system of paying no longer worked. There are many of us with many alts who are still quite happy to pay LL their 9.95$ if they ever repair it. In the meantime, they are free but I gather some which are made with throwaway email accounts get sifted through and deleted?
The underlying rule for making alts is to use a real email. All four of mine (two premiums) use a single email address.
Oh, and the way for running multiple avatars is add a " -multiple" in the shortcut with TWO leading spaces as pointed out in another thread today.

I believe that, near the start of this year, the Lindens were attempting to enforce the 5 alts per email account rule. But I have heard nothing of that since then. But it does cost nothing at all to create an alt account and, since gmail, hotmail and yahoo email addresses are easily set up for nothing, you can keep creating alts to your heart's content at no additional cost to you.

As to getting them all in world at the same time, for Windows, edit your desktop icon for SL and add -multiple to the end of the command line. Then see how many SL sessions you can open before your system implodes or melts down. Don't know how it's done for macs or linux.

okay apologies - there must be a lot of people with more money than me because I certainly couldnt afford an army of alts. Nor would I really want to. I wanted a second to try out cybernetic limb attachments on rather than defile my own 'basic' body.

However it would be nice to know the actual rules - I dont like breaking rules.

Well not much.

The official Guide to SL has some excellent biopics of SL denizens and their alts, if you wanna do some background reading on personas...

what official guide would that be pray tell ?

No apologies needed; you've done nothing wrong! If it's not possible to pay for a basic account, as suggested by other posters in this thread, I think you can sign up with confidence that you are not doing wrong.



Boo!



Yay!

The one published by Wiley... "Second Life - the official guide"

LOL

to be honest though, you would get a lot more out of exploring the zillions of blogs on SL, if you wanna read up on personas that is.

I have many ideas of what I would like to be...its the legality of owning extra alts that I want to ensure I understand before I go populating sl with 'other me's'

the reason we have alts, welll....i really can't awnser that

but if you do plan on making alts, DO NOT USE THE SAME E-MAIL AS YOUR MAIN ONE, make like a seprate free account

Aaaah, okay - I was going by the forum title, etc. Seems like others have given you the best advice on this, although I cannot see that there are any restriction at the moment - especially if you pay for one, and given that LL do not seem to police the camping alts, land bots, etc. So just go for it !

Easy peasy for Mac OS X - create a new user account for each SL account, and launch SL in as many accounts as your computer graphics card, RAM, and / or broadband connection will stand. To make it easier to switch between them, make each Mac User Account non-admin, no password, and enable Fast User Switching.

Hmmmm Im only a space station commander in sl and this seems WAY to technical for someone who never even got an o level in mathematics where do I find the command line ?