Account Creation Petition ****PLEASE READ****

Would require a serious revamp to implament into SL at this point, but other mmo's use a single account login for multiple avatar names.

Personally, there's nothing I like better than toying with a griefer's tiny mind. Not that I see many of them, but when I do it's always a pleasure to run them round in mental circles, point and laugh and watch them go *poof*

Yes, but under a system like that you can only log in one avatar at a time. Some players in MMOs like WoW end up having multiple accounts so they can run raids or "power-level" themselves. Alts in SL don't serve the same kinds of purposes for users that they do in those other MMOs. A lot of the uses for alts in SL rely on the ability to log them in concurrently.

Turn on movelock, trigger one of the dances from my inventory, and go make a sandwich.

Well of course some will not aprrove this because themselve help create this mess we are in now.

Sorry, not signing.

1- Griefers grief because they enjoy griefing. It is _their_ entertainment, and $10 wont stop the hard core asshats.

2- Much of SL has become one big mall. Why should anyone be made to pay for the 'opportunity' to browse and buy merchandise?

If someone wants to use SL to _make_ money, then maybe they should be made to pay, (notice I said maybe). For those only here to spend, asking them to pay for that privilege is a little much.

How about asking for $10 that will be credited to you in special (free-credit) $L. Like a gift-card. You would be unable to convert this into real $ or transfer it to another, but it would be accepted in stores. Maybe too complicated?

Well, a decent motherboard would be what about $75, dual core CPU about $100, few gigs of RAM about another $100, decent graphics card $100, reasonably fast disk $100, box to put them in and PSU about $75, LCD panel monitor $100, copy of Windows $100.

I'm guessing a little on the US$ prices but in the UK a decent bargain basement PC with monitor would be in the 300-500 UK pound range i.e. $600-$1000. A bespoke system with high end graphics, fast dual core/quad core etc. (i.e. what might be a mainstream gamers machine) 500 uk pounds - 2000 uk pounds ($1000 - $4000)!

So I would peg a machine which would run SL reasonably well (i.e. 20fps+) with most of the windlight shaders enabled and a decent draw distance, at around the $800-$1000 mark (again based on UK prices and converting).

However, my point is that, whilst I can understand someone not being *willing* to pay $10 to play SL, anyone who genuinely could not *afford* to pay $10, is highly unlikely to be able to afford the equipment, electricity and network costs to play SL.

As regards places where they are *unable* to pay (due to not having credit cards, access to paypal etc.), I'm not entirely sure where these places are, and how do other companies do business with such countries? (I would suspect they allow payment via alternatve mechanisms available in such counries rather than making all their products free...)

Matthew

This is strictly my opinion:


Ok I cant agree with this either.

Way too many great people have no info in their profile. And what stops them griefes from paying 10 bucks anyways?

This whole thing is just not right.

And the 14 day trial wouldnt work well for people like me cause it took me longer to get my bearings and figure out what was what.


Bec

Laughs........................



ok the world is flat......... gesh waht people wil not do to instill their own beliefs on others.....

Nope.. I would not support such a thing ...
It works fine as it is. There will always be idiots who grief no matter how you do it ...

Sorry, no go. It is a valiant effort, however there are some problems with this method. Firstly, and most importantly, there is no real way to track how many accounts a person has. The reason I say this is because any person can create as many e-mail accounts and fake names as they like. There is already in place a policy of a maximum of two accounts per person, however unless they can register an IP for each user there is no way to keep people from having as many accounts as they want. Another problem is the assumption that these extra users (this assumes that they are being concurrently used, as in traffic bots), the only stress these accounts put in on the sim they are in. So, the best way to deal with them is abuse reporting. Which, I might add does work. The trick is to make sure that the same abuse is reported by multiple people, and that each abuse is sent with good pictures of said abuse. The assumption that griefers are using more than one account at a time is not really going to be accurate. They may have created 100 accounts, but they are not all online at any given moment. If you really want to do a service for load times, sim lag and client lag, turn off your bling, your facelights, and keep your texture upload sizes down. If you want to prevent griefing, eject/mute/ban has always worked. Also, with the advent of the H4 sims, the old school push guns don't work anymore. None of this is to say that griefers aren't the lowest life form in SL in my opinion (aside from trolls), but I just don't think that this method will work in the least.

In my time in SL, I have learned that restricted access tends to be a big turn-off to new residents. There was actually a time when new residents were restricted to the four sim area around the Ahern Welcome Area. SL was still a small world, but being limited to four sims was a lot like spending your vacation in a five star hotel's linen closet. Of course that didn't go well, and was dropped after a few weeks.

I can sort of understand the OP's point of view, but I cannot support this petition. SL is no longer the small virtual Mayberry it once was. Its now much bigger, more impersonal and its residents are from all around the world. Having said that, we are going to get more new griefers along with the veteran griefers that will not go away. Eliminating free accounts will not stop griefers, but it will hamper honest potential new residents.

I have to agree with you on that point, but you also say;

which is a direct contradiction to you other statement, let me explain why.

I run several RL businesses and am in the process of building an in-world business. I am spending money in-world for land tier, building, fixtures, texture uploads, decor for my store, exclusive designs from several designers, etc. Why should I be made to pay more just because I want to start a business in SL?

Again, as I stated in my earlier comment on this thread, I can spend my money myself my way and don't need the OPs, or for that matter your help, in doing so.

Smart words from a smart person............

I personally don't think you should pay, either. I only made that comment to point out how arguments can be made on any side. Writing 'notice I said maybe' was my (inarticulate) way of saying this. I wasn't trying to give you advice or 'help', you seem quite capable of taking care of yourself

In reading back through i had to add...

quote: "Yes, I fully realise that to many people $10 *is* a lot of money, I don't question that.

But to logon to SL you need

a) a computer with a pretty decent graphics card, lots of memory and a powerful CPU (i.e. something which would be worth at least the $900 mark).
b) electricty to run that computer (logging onto SL every day could easily add $10 to the monthly electricity bill compared to having the computer switched off instead).
c) a decent broadband network connection (again probably costing >$10 a month in subscription)"

The US is rather shamefully behind when it comes to internet access and many other technologies. Countries we understand to be "third world" do what is called "leapfrogging"where they may not have phones, but they are wired with the newest, and fastest internet we can imagine. Computers are not all that expensive either. I was running SL on my $500USD Acer lappy, and my main box was put together by my husband for about the same amount, and it was very close to being a scaled down super computer. The point is, most people have access to a decent computer these days, and while I can't afford to drop $10USD on a subscription to something I use as a hobby, (that is a whole package of diapers to me) I can continue to use the computer we spent time and money on because I also use it for word processing, e-mail checking, movie watching, web browsing...you get the picture And, to stand on my open source use soapbox for a moment, the computer I am on now is a Linux/unix machine, runs SL fantastically, AND with using that and open office, I have not paid out the nose for my fundamental computer needs. (steps off soapbox). Also, so far, the new viewer has been less resource intensive instead of more so. Try checking the avatar imposter box, believe me, it works wonders

But I still maintain if you switch the computer off after you've used it for work purposes rather than playing SL, recreational web browsing, watching movies etc. you'll cut you monthly electricity bill (particularly with today's escalating fuel bills) by more than $10 - possible even enough to buy two packages of diapers!

Matthew

I always knew you hated me!

SEE! NOTHIN BUT TROUBLE!

I'm afraid I can't get onboard with this petition for a few reasons.

I was a paid account customer and I changed back to free account status because I refuse to pay for something that's less than usable a good percentage of the time. Until Linden Labs get's it together and cleans up the system I am not going to pay for this service. As it stands I already convert US dollars to lindens when needed and they should be lucky I even do that on occasion.

In the proposal what happens to my account, which I was paying for and have verified my payment information with? do I have to pay another $10 to 'reactivate' myself?

I think it's acceptable to require some form of verification to keep people from creating alt characters. And I think there should be some sort of cap on how many avatars you can have. On another blog I made the suggestion that we verify with credit or debit cards and then limit each person to 5 alts or so, similar to the way World of Warcraft manages their users.

Of course World of Warcraft is a WAY more stable platform and has very little downtime in comparison to Second Life.

While I concede that greifers are a pain in the, in the 7 months I have been in Second Life, I have only had a greifer encounter on 4 occasions. I hardly consider that to be highly disruptive. Just like in Real Life there are going to be people that cause shit, I don't think forcing them to pay for it will make that go away. It's already been proven that the abuse reports system is fundamentally flawed and that LL doesn't care much about this sort of thing, forcing us to police ourselves.

QFT.

you can not compare wow to sl they are completely different types of games and are run completely different

in wow you do not have thousands of people all making and downloading their own unique items ...in wow you do not have all people on 1 world they are broke into servers and then the different continents are broke up onto different servers also
also on wow you have a limit how many people can be in each "world"

also since there are not unique items its all static and such there is less of everything there so it will be less laggy and will be more stable but they also have 4 to 8 hours of downtime every week for maintenance and more often then not that night everything is a mess anyways

its like comparing apples to grapes it dont work

This sounds familiar... I earn it and she spends it.

Well we need to rid ourselves with newbie people posting trolling comments as well no

Nope, I know too many decent folks w/ out payment info on file. "Griefers" are in the games w/ $10 monthly fees in force too half the time. LL wants more users, & I think they might be able ta come up with a better system than they got now ta handle ARs, but I doubt this would do it.




Then what are City of Heroes, World of Warcraft and a lot of other MMOs doing?