Introducing T Linden. What would you do to improve Premium subscriptions?

The one time I used Live Chat since the opening of the grid to everyone I was told to submit a ticket..............and never got a resolution.

Way back when I was less than a year resident I loved "Live Help"........but those days are long gone.

LL's CS sucks............until THEY prove me wrong.

hehe! Touche... Seriously tho, eliminating premiums seems unlikely to bring about Resident delight.

Allow premium users to do a bulk save to hard drive for textures in their inventory instead of having to do it one by one.

Teleport Advertisment.

When we teleport, we wasted about 10 secs doing nothing, watching a blank screen with a loading bar moving to 100%.

Why not let premium member advertise there for free and non-premium member get to watch the advertisement during teleport for free too

Im probably repeating what others said...

1) a reduction in tier charges

2) an accompanying increase in land allowances

3) The right to pay in our own currency through Lindens and without the need for a middle man - thus removing cocerns about the changing value of the dollar againt the pound, euro or whatever...

4) An end to the nonsensical idea that megaprims cause lag and making prims up to 100 m FREELY available - polygonal shapes would be a bonus

5) More prims per region.

For all of the above check out certain members of your competition who will , once theyre up and running, be giving you a good spanking because they already operate these ideas...

If you want 'innovative' and 'corrective' suggestions...

1) How about perfecting methods of cutting and dissecting prims at whatever point....

2) Long OVERDUE - the ability to put text on prims in world

3) An end to the nonsensical restrictions on genuine explorers of sl because of the tedious use of ban lines and security systems.

4) Again long overdue - the ability to move over a regional boundary without spinning out of control, ending up at the bottom of the 'sea', or frozen

5) A system which enables vehicles to 'fly' freely through 'full parcels' I'd suggest the addition of 'flying lanes to linden world which allow the free passage of 'aircraft'

6) A massive block of land kept free purely for the use of vehicles of ANY size and any variety purely for the use of premium subscribers with a further 'battlefield' area for those who want to engage in various forms of dogfights, sea battles whatever....it might actually be fun owning giant battle cruisers, tanks, jet fighters or whatever then.


7) Open the Linden world moon for colonists...

Yeah, that.

... or regularly scheduled popup ads that must be clicked or you are logged out.

is it then the Linden goal to have a class society? The supported and the peons? If so what is the reason behind basic? Just numbers or to create that classed society? Im really curious.

The only two things I've ever wanted from LL to make premium really worth it for me are:

1. Get rid of the tier brackets! They already know how much land is held in a month... why not use that multiplied by X amount per squareM to figure tier fees? "X amount" can easily be figured out depending on whether the land is island, grandfathered, mainland, homestead, OS, etc.. or combinations thereof added together... It's a huge stumbling block that prevents people from owning more land the way it is setup now.

2. Recognize that most paying landowners value privacy, control, and creative freedom. Stop favoring the high-dollar customers when it comes to true land ownership. Subdivide an open part of the grid and release 8192sqm (1/8th region) and 16384sqm (1/4th region) private islands available to ALL premiums. Full land controls with preset hard limits on AV's, scripts, temp rez, anything that could cause lag across shared server space. User ability to restart region and the same NON-concierge level of support you would normally get for owning that amount of mainland.
The recent OS fumble clearly shows that people want smaller/lower cost controllable areas to conduct their business. We know it may not be part of the corporate marketing strategy, but the OVERALL focus of ANY company wanting to make a profit should be to NOT turn away customers willing to part with their money. The returns on offering a product like this would suprise even the most informed LL number crunchers.. guaranteed.

At this point the only true selling point personally for me with Premium is the
stipend and option to have mainland because it allows me to have land but downside
is how mainland is managed and often looks.
I have no clue where you hide live help nor need it.
All they would say is file a ticket and if it's very important issue I can call LL
for them to resolve situation or tell me to file a ticket.
I don't mind occasionally renting a place but even that has it is issues too, there is very
little consumer protection when one is renting from another Resident.
Please LL don't remove things from Premium, if you do their will be less people Premium
and more people angry, who will leave and most likely not come back.
We pay for the stipend, if you remove it just make you look like you're being
greedy since LL makes the L$ in first place.
If you're concerned about L$ from stipends being cashed out them pay us
in another type of money system that we can use for uploads and money that isn't
meant to be cashed out.
If you want to add value to Premium add something special, certain tools
or features only Premium has that improves the experience of being resident,
-Private offline sl grid that only premium members have access too with endless of creative tools and prims with instant messaging feature that can be turned on or off for communication.
Make the offline portal connected to their mainland lot, only accessible via
mainland so it makes more demand for mainland and being premium.
It resolves some of neighborhood BS and server load issues too because they don't have to stay in world just to login into their own world which is how to access the viewer on desktop or to be stuck in building in small lots that been fenced around by neighbors with mega prims,etc.
-Privacy or unique land management tools that make mainland more appealing.
-More prims, more tier options.
-Something that improves abilities of Premium members to promote their
products if they are in business.
-Something that any Resident can afford and improves their experience.

I think the two best ideas are:
1. A graduated increase in bonus lot, 512m for the first year, 1024m for the second, 1526m for the third etc. That would keep people staying premium.
2. Let premium members buy Homestead sims without having to own a full sim.

Just like increasing the cost of OpenSims, but that didn't stop them then.

at the end of quotes, T!![/QUOTE]

Doi... sloppy cut and paste! Darn this typewriter!

LL would make a lot more money if they would sell Homstead sims to people without a full sim.

A lot of people have suggested this.

I'm premium because I actually like living on the mainland. Having the ability to buy a homestead does nothing for me, especially not when I can get twice the CPU power/memory and twice the prims for the same monthly price. It's only 1/2 the land but you can always build up..

I suspect that LL will offer some new plan to let people into homesteads. With the grid having shrunk by +1100 regions this month, well before the price changes even hit, I think they're going to have to.

I would like to see more tier options--particularly between the $40.00 a month mark and the $75.00 a month mark.

I love the idea of being able to buy an OS or Homestead sim without first owning a regular one. Even though I still might not be able to afford it, it would be very tempting.

More groups would be nice, but not nearly as important to me as changes for the better in the landholding structure.

I've been reading your comments about class society throughout this thread and I'm confused. Are you just saying that you don't believe people should get more bang for their buck, if they are willing to spend the buck?

Do you also hang around airports complaining about the existance of first-class / business-class seats? Those seats aren't reserved for folks of noble birth, anyone can buy one. Likewise a premium account at SL is not restricted to those of a certain anything - everyone can get a premium account if they want one.

For what its worth, I fly economy because I can't afford to fly 1st class, but I don't blame the airlines for that. And in SL, if they make Premium worthwhile then I will renew, but if they don't, I will cancel. I won't begrudge LL either way, though. (Of course, if they pull another 'switcheroo' then I will be upset, but that's a different topic.)

At the end of the day, SL is a platform, not a country, and we're customers, not citizens, and if LL wants to find ways to get more of our money, then they need to offer us incentives, features, perks, etc. in order to earn that money. Nothing about that is 'classist' or 'elitist'. It's just commerce.

-Atashi

These are my suggestions as well, especially #2. I am in the process of selling off two parcels of my land. I truly don't want to, but the RL economic situation plus other factors necessitate this situation.

HOWEVER, if the tier increases were smaller, I might be able to keep my land and perhaps even purchase more in the future.

Beautifully said! I totally agree!

I'll put in a vote for giving premium members the ability to
buy OpenSpace and Homestead sims without having to own
a full sim first. Also, anyone owning a full sim should be made
a premium member with full benefits at no additional charge.

More groups, graduated tier for renewing, free uploads and a pony.

Strange statement as this whole thing is about making premiums worth something because people are already not "delighted" with them.

16+ million accounts and less then 90,000 premium accounts. Unlikely scrapping premium and allowing everyone to own mainland will cause more harm than good. If you open up mainland to everyone many more people will buy mainland. Isn't that in LL best interest to get as much tier from mainland as possible?

You could do as I said above and still have premium accounts also. Premiums could get free ads, priority in search, priority in support, a stipend and anything else that sound "premium".

I would just like to see owning mainland disassociated with premium accounts.

When people question the wisdom of having premium and when premium accounts have seeminglingly been summarily dismissed in the past (Paticularly strong 3Q) it would seem that you need to actually make the premium account, premium something people will want to have for the benefit.

How about the following additions to those already in place?

1. an additional tier free allowance of 512sq.m after 6months of holding the premium account.

and allowing 5 uploads per month (textures, sound files etc)

2. Increasing stipend to 500l per week after 12months of holding a premium account.

3. After 18months continued premium membership allowing 10 uploads per month.

4 after 24months increasing tier free mainland allowance by an additional 512sq.m

5. additional groups for premium users (most people after 6month of play are constantly juggling their groups and complaining they never have enough).

I have been a premium account for over two years now. There are a couple of things I would like to see. One is real 'live' support in-world like we used to have instead of making up a 'ticket'. I realize that this would take up a lot of time, but my thinking is, at a certain tier level (say you own a quarter sim) you qualify for real on line (in-world) support.

The other thing that would be nice is allowing us land owners to change the texture of our lands. An example would be, I would like to have my land snow covered for the holiday season, then change back for Spring or Summer.

I like many of the suggestions I have read here, the escalating tier and tier free land as a bonus for those who have been long term is a good idea. How about giving is a prim bonus! Hey, there is a good idea!

*just a thought...

Aww, I'm probably too late to this party. But, I would really like to hear a followup from T on what LL's goals for premium membership are (this may be easier to nail down now that all these sincere ideas have been voiced). The great suggestions in this thread would accomplish a variety of purposes, and in some cases work against each other. From LL's point of view, do they have premium memberships to:

> Get revenue from premium fees
> Promote mainland uptake
> Get residents who are enthused enough to want something called "Premium" into SL quicker

or

> Promote customer retention over time

Saying "all of the above" would very possibly lead to a program that is a little puzzling. Before putting together a grab-bag of attractive ideas, I think LL may want to prioritize what they want/need to accomplish.
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