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

lol Well, when ever you start talking about "features" that don't exist yet, or do, which someone wants to be magically "fixed" someone inevitably points out how daft some of the ideas are, and what is either "really needed", or why it doesn't make sense as a "Premium" only feature. Mind, one advantage that the old Usenet had that has "never" been matched by systems like this, is the ability to split the thread off, via replies, into side lines, while people can "still" follow the original thread, without having to read those.

I'm Basic. I am an active builder, texture artist and content creator who creates all the content in entire sims, as a business in SL. I also have about 12 alts, which I use for both business and roleplaying activities. I have never, ever, done anything questionable or inappropriate with any of my accounts. Perhaps you can't imagine anyone having legitimate reasons for more than a handful of accounts, but that does not give you the right to force your limited imagination on everyone else.

All my accounts are Basic. I have no desire to own mainland, and I get a better deal buying L$ on Lindex than I would by spending the same amount of money on Premium dues. In fact, I virtually never buy L$, since my content creation businesses are successful enough to cover 100% of my financial needs in SL, and allow me to cash out L$ every month as profits. If I did become Premium, 100% of my stipend would get cashed out. So why should I pay for that stipend in the first place?

Why only 5? If someone has 10 alts, or 12, or even 100, which they use for legitimate and allowable reasons, why restrict them from linking those alts solidly and verifiably to their main account in a traceable way? If I am a Premium member, then for all intents and purposes so are all my alts. I should not have to buy a new membership for every alt that I want to have be usable. I do like the idea that the linked alts for a Premium also show as Premium, as far as profiles go. But of course they don't get you any extra stipend or tier value.


These are SL killers. DO NOT rape the basic accounts to make Premium seem worthwhile. It will drive away far more people than it attracts. For every existing feature that you restrict to "Premium Only", you will lose content provides and builders in large numbers, or prevent new people from ever trying to be content creators.


Impossible, because the limits are a server-side effect that affects all users equally. And there is absolutely no reason to limit that kind of a change only to Premiums.


More "Let's rape the Basics, and make them go Premium if they don't like it". My group list is full for client and business-ralated groups, and I have several alts that primarily exist to allow me to remain on other groups. I have over 20,000 things in main account's inventory, and none of my alts have fewer than 5000 items, because they ALL spend money on nice clothes and other things that I want them to have while I use them. Chop me down to 10 groups and 1500 asset items per basic account, and you kill my business cold, as well as stealing from me hundreds of real dollars worth of merchandise that I have paid for over the years in SL. My weakest alt has more inventory than that. I would leave, period. Even though I am perfectly capable of paying for the Premium membership for Ceera. I don't take kindly to "Missionary conversions" effected by placing a shotgun in the mouth of the one you are forcing to convert. You are not proposing an "Enhancement" to Premium. You are proposing nothing short of blackmail, aimed at non-Premium accounts, and they will not take kindly to it.

So? I cash out every time my balance hits L$14K or so. All my big payments, the stuff that runs in thousands of US dollars, get sent to me as checks or PayPal transfers, and wouldn't be affected. The only thing this will do as far as I am concerned is hurt the SL economy. by restricting how much money any one of my account scan pay in a lump sum for anything.

Will easily be circumvented with third-party clients. Won't do a thing to change my mind. Will merely annoy most users.

Gee, FINALLY something that is actually an enhancement, and not stealing functionality from non-Premiums! However, it won't work. Who will bother to sell skins and clothes that use the new mesh, yet which only a small fraction of their customers can use? No content creator in their right mind would limit their merchandise to only be usable by Premium Accounts. So very few of them will develop anything for that new mesh.

Meh. This enhances things how? Land that evaporates in 60 days isn't worth setting up on.

One point that we actually agree on. Guess it proves that even a stopped clock is right twice a day... The current tier structure is a huge negative to anyone considering adding more land. Even when land was going for L$50 and up per M2, or even in Bay City and Nautilus City, where speculators drove the purchase prices to insane levels, it isn't the up-front cost that kills you as a land owner. It's the monthly tier, going on forever. Most parcels cost far more to hold for one year than they cost to obtain.

We used to have that. It used to be required to pay $9.95 as a one-time fee to have any account after your very first account. Many people happily paid that one-time fee. Then LL decided to make it impossible to pay that fee. They decided that having millions of free, unverified accounts was worth more to them than having every user pay them for the right to be here.

I would have been willing to pay a one-time registration fee of $9.95 each for all of my alts. I'd be willing to pay it today, if I didn't have to pay it all in one month for every account that I have. But I see no valid reason to pay a recurring membership fee for each name/avatar that I want to use. That's like having to pay a membership fee for each different dress that I want to wear! There is one ME, and if I am a member, then I am a member. I should not have to pay annually for every account, which is merely a different role that I play while here.

These were merely suggestions to start with, not written in stone, so take it easy..

We need SOMETHING to differentiate paid premiums from non-paying basics.. besides the ability to pay a membership price to be able to pay monthly fees to hold virtual lands we have to buy in the first place.. which sounds silly when you think about it. Content creation alone won't pay LL's bills.. (if anything, they eventually add to them)

I'd like to see the increasing bonus tier implemented... maybe 512 for less than 1 year, 1024 for people with up to 2 years here, 2048 for 3 years? etc? Cap it at 4096 after 4-5 years?

Also I liked the idea of free (or reduced cost) uploads too for Premiums!

It's really great you are here and listening, T. I hope you can make some of these wishes come true

So... what incentives besides land and stipend can you give to a premium member? Hum not much if you think about downing the economy. Where as I would like to see an increase tier bonuses for 'yearly' residents, which I think might be a good idea to kick start another boom of the land grab, other incentives might be Free uploads or even perhaps, less costly updoads maybe half price. Im sure you can check the logins in your databases to see who is active and who is not to give to the land increments, I'd have to agree that the user profile doesn't exactly give enough spice or enough options so to speak. User profiles can be improved via premium accounts with more options, glossier look, perhaps even html, whatever to make it look a better appearance. Another possible option for premiums: customizeable UIs, granted theres a lot of coding involved in this but I'd like to beable to adjust the UI to look how I want it to look, like in other places where that is possible.

Cheers.

Ceera while i agree you have no need to go premium if you are a full sim builder i doubt very much that making 1 account premium would eat in to your profits much.If you are building full sims and having to still buy L$ then maybe you should look at your pricing because i think a full sim build would ake a good while and make a good profit.fact of the matter is this discusion is about premium members getting a better deal not people moaning about how they do not want to go premium,however i bet if you couldnt sell or build on basic you soon would go premium.

This message is not just aimed at you but to all the people moaning or suggesting basic going premium...this isnt what the subject is about,it is about how premium accounts can be improved to make them more attractive.

Seems no matter what subject is here some people find a negative and in this case it does not even effect you in any way.

There is no need to inhibit basic accounts in order to make premium more attractive. As Ceera clearly demonstrates, basic accounts generate money and still put money into the system. And she helps make SL be a more beautiful place. Penalizing all basics does nothing to help SL grow, it will cause an exodus and will make it an incentive for people to leave, as the game will become even more difficult to play. There are things that LL can offer that will make going premium more attractive. They do not have to restrict the basic account in any way to do that.

Ceera
"I'm Basic. I am an active builder, texture artist and content creator who creates all the content in entire sims, as a business in SL. I also have about 12 alts, which I use for both business and roleplaying activities."

Talk about raping the system. All these alts when you are allowed five per premium account.
You should be paying for a premium account.

"So? I cash out every time my balance hits L$14K or so. All my big payments, the stuff that runs in thousands of US dollars,"
You can afford to pay.Stop raping the system and pay for the resources that you are using.

Stop complaining, you get what you paid for. Unless you are paying for the service you have no right to complain about anything and be gratful that you are allowed to log on to begin with since all the other people are paying for you to be on here.

welcome T...

What will come close is knowing that LL listen to us and have open communication.... the past month has blown that. You guys need to settle the issues in regards to Open Space Sims before trying to distract ppl with premium accounts. It makes it look like you are trying to shift the focus...

Talk to us about what really concerns us most ^_^

BTW i ment the welcome....

One Time Premium Account Bonus:

Allow the Premium Account Members to keep their OpenSpace Sims at the actual status ( like actual tier and allowance to use as a homestead ( 3750 prims for 75 Dollar ) ). With other words Grandfather them!

Raise the Stipend (to 500) , the groupslots ( to 40 ), free Uploads for Premium Accounts.

Guess much of that was said before, not going to reread nearly 50 pages, no time.

Well, it's now Tuesday sl time (I think, sometimes get muddled!), and no posts by T Linden since Friday evening. Those posts did look like the ideas were being read and considered, which was nice.

Since then the thread has doubled in size, with some good discussions and opinions, though I am not sure there have been many additions to the initial ideas, just discussion round them.

My first question is - do we residents have any new ideas to add?

My second question is - are you still reading the thread, T (sounds dreadfully impersonal, single letter names... sigh..), and if so, could you post something to let us know we are not talking to thin air please?

If there are no more new ideas, might it not be a good idea to do a winding up post, T?

Thanks.

Tepic

Too tired to read everything.

My perspective: I became premium very early, for the stipend and I wanted to buy land, and I kept having problems that needed support.

It turned out to be worthless.

Stipend: at L$300 per week, it is FAR CHEAPER to buy lindens on xstreetsl.

Land: I get a better deal for the most part on private islands, and have better neighbors. At the time I was looking, I could not find anything I actually wanted to live on on the mainland. It always surprises me to end up on the mainland anymore, I spend 95% of my time on private islands.

Support... Oh. Mah. Ghu. The perfect example... When I was a premium member, a chim went poof off of my head due to the whole no parent folder issue. I filed tickets. And no matter how many times I said, "I already cleared my cache and can't log into the beta grid because I'm too new" I was told, "Clear your cache, log into the beta grid, and if that doesn't help, you're SOL."

Five or six months later, my chim reappeared in my inventory.

Eventually I dropped my premium membership... and boom... I lost another chim.

I filed a ticket.. which got a terse, "You're not premium, we're not talking to you" autoresponder. Which was actually *LESS* annoying than being told, "Do what you already did, we're not listening to you, we can't help you anyway."

And 3 weeks later... my chim is back.

What would make me go premium... and not month to month but long term?

1. More groups

2. Extra build tools (megaprims/micros, abilty to adjust position to another decimal place or two, more flexis)

3. Better ability to control shape (I do shape design, this alone would have me converting in a hot second)

4. Better organization for everything. I would LOVE to have an archive inventory for infrequently used items. I would chuck 95% of my inventory into there and only access it once every couple weeks, if that. Talk about reduced server load...

5. Better control over and organization for groups and friends. I want to be able to mute chat for most of the groups I'm in except for the ones I don't want to mute. I want to have "tag active" for land purposes for multiple groups at a time so I don't have to switch between my group and the sim's group when I step over a border. I do NOT want to watch 90% of the people on my friend list go on and offline most of the time, but I DO want to see and maybe even get a sound cue for my close friends. If I could activate only a small part of my list at any given time for "watch" purposes... then wouldn't that reduce load on the server? Someone talk to me personally if you want me to unpack this idea a little more.

6. "granulated" Tier makes a world of sense to me, the way it's structured is a huge reason for me to stay with renting on private islands, although the only thing that would make the ability to own mainland appealing was if the mainland was less of a wasteland.

7. Ability to change names once for a fee would be lovely, but would it require linking the old and the new? Seems like it would be technologically complicated. I don't like the idea of multiple name changes, but I see a lot of people come in with strange names that dont' fit who they become, let alone the partnership issue.

8. Linking alts would be a godsend... although what I would really want is a way to link my alts INVENTORIES. Yahoo has a neat concept... you can have different names, but they're all in the same account. Sometimes I need separate bodies, sometimes I just need a different name. Having a choice would be great, and if that was tied to having a premium account, I'd do it.


My joy in SL has been tempered recently by the loss of the Privateer Space and the whole openspace mess. I'd have more delight if my landlord was able to choose to make the area of her sim bigger, without increasing the number of prims or avs allowed on it. We like to spread out... I have always lived on openspace sims in SL, until now, and the sim I'm on was an openspace until the fiasco.

Allowing premium members to buy a homestead without owning a full would be great. So many of my friends had OS that were leased from others at a markup. They could afford to pay $125 for their homestead if they were just paying that directly to LL. They can't pay $125 plus a $20 or $50 markup from the estate owner. $100 per month seems to be a threshhold for a lot of people for being able to invest in a full sim, but $125 is doable for many, where $145 or $150 is not.

Options.

Give options.

sure you can't give all (or even half) what mentioned here, sure you cant give value above whats payed for.

But, you can give options on things normally costing money.
Users choose if they want more weekly Linden dollars ( aprox value of subscription )
OR
Users choose no weekly income but more land instead
etc

You CAN add fancy bits costing nohting ie more profile picks, more IMs etc

Putting restrictions on Basic accounts doesn't improve premium accounts. Improving should be a win for premium holders, not a win-lose at the expense of basic holders who are contributing to the community in a different way.

If LL were up to something which would delight premium account holders - the ability to purchase Homesteads and Open Spaces without prior island ownership could top the list!

Many thanks for the attentive service so far!

which would destroy most private estates, which would result in the majority of land in SL looking like the mainland does - bland, chaotic, ugly. um, no.

LL I believe does require prior island ownership for homestead/openspace purchase for very good reason - because they recognize the significant value private estates provide SL. if every premium account owner became their own "estate", those advantages are lost.

I'd like to take this one step further and see some sort of 'premium' support notion within the category of concierge support. Other than, the outlandish $25,000 USD/year cost of "enterprise support".

I mean, I'm not asking for much -- simply more reasonable response times to concierge support tickets. 24-48 hours for ticket completion instead of 10-14 days as is the current situation. and, i would BE WILLING TO PAY for this, if the rates were realistic. i lose thousands of $USD already with the unbelievably lengthy concierge support delays, so i'd rather just pay additional support fees. then at least i could curtail some of the client frustration i have to deal with.

concierge support is a very, very bad situation Tom. please take some time to look into this soon as well. and welcome. we need all the help we can get here.

-RR

Legion:
Yes, I can afford to pay for Premium out of my profits. But I see no reason to pay for extremely poor customer support, mainland I don't want to live on, and a stipend that they pay back to me out of what I pay them. It's like being asked if I want to join the VIP club for a restaurant, for the "privilege" of being able to sit in the noisiest section of the restaurant (Mainland), between the smoker and the teenagers gabbing on their cell phones, rather than "having" to sit in the private dining rooms (private estates) where I can eat my meal in peace. Oh, and if I pay them 72 bucks now (membership fee), they will generously give me $6 per month in coupons for discounts on my meals at their restaurant! The meal costs the same, and the coupons are just giving me back the money they demanded from me up front, so why pay extra up front for something I don't want?

If they DO improve the value of a Premium account, so paying for one actually gets me things I want and can use, then sure, I'd pay for one. ONE. I shouldn't have to pay for each alt, beyond a one-time registration fee to link them to my main.

Jami:
When LL had and enforced a policy of no more than 5 alts per household, I limited myself to no more than that. When LL required a fee to register additional accounts, I paid that fee. But LL hasn't had that limit in effect since mid 2006. They only have it on the books so they can crack down on people who ABUSE alts, like griefers and scammers. Your information about that limit is out of date - obsolete over a year ago.

Yes, I have 12 accounts. In my closet right now I have more than 12 completely different outfits of clothes that I like to wear. I don't need a new driver's license to put on an Elizabethan gown and go to the renaissance faire, and call myself "Lady Ceera MacDougal", nor do I need a new license to put on a Star Fleet uniform and go to a star trek con, calling myself "Lieutenant Michelle Briggs". But in SL, if I want those two identities to have separate names, I have to create an account for each one. Alts are often used as a way for a roleplayer to get around the limitations of the SL system's naming conventions. If I could change my visible name in-world, I wouldn't need 3/4 of my alts. But my having those 12 accounts isn't hurting SL. If anything it helps the economy, because I need to purchase inventory for all of them. And most of the time, only one of them is on-line at a time.

I DO pay for the resources that I use in SL. Probably far more than YOU do. I pay tier on 1/4 sim of a private island, money that goes from me to my sim owner, and then right to LL. Without me in that sim, or someone like me, that sim owner wouldn't be paying LL for a sim at all, because he wouldn't be able to afford the tier on his own. I dare say that my 12 accounts pump at least 12 times more L$ into the economy of SL every month than your one account does. They all buy clothes, pose balls, furniture, and other products from other content creators, stimulating the SL economy. I pay upload fees to LL for hundreds of textures each month, as I create custom textures for my work in SL, and as I and all my alts take snapshots in-world. I pay Lindex fees to LL for all those L$ that I cash out. And I help CREATE the world that you all enjoy here. Ask yourself how much YOU, personally, add to the SL economy and to making SL a better place to live, and compare your contribution to our society to mine. Can you honestly say that paying LL a membership fee, that they pay back to you in stipends, contributes more to SL and to Linden Lab's bottom line than I do? I doubt it.

True but it would evidently make a lot of Premiums feel better about themselves.

As you said, the idea should be to IMPROVE Premium. Keeping it the same and devaluing non Premium is not an improvement. As a Premium, you won't be getting anything more, but if that's what you want...........

I was a Premuim for a year, without owning Mainland. I donated my tier to a Group, and spent a average of $100 a month buying Lindens, in addition to the $40 I spent on my space on a private estate. Earlier this year I downgraded, then totally quit SL, cancelling my account and abandoning my space. I came back about a month later, paying $9.95 to restore my account, as Basic. Why? The benefits of Premium hold no interest to me. I do not wish to rent space on the Mainland, nor have a "Home" of any sort. I rent a small space on a Private Sim to use as a login point and changing area. Wheras before I was in SL every day, for hours sometimes, now I log in for an hour or two, once or twice a week. LL offers a free service, it meets my needs, so I will use it. If our cable companies offered a totally free service, and the channels met our needs, we all would take it, I highly doubt anyone would "pay just to support"them. If they can't afford it, don't offer it.

That being said, I don't think they should offer unlimited time free accounts. Everyone should pay something. Give a free month or two,perhaps with limited fuctionality, then have either a one time setup fee, or maybe tiered memberships, where something like today's basic will be a couple of dollars a month, and would increase with added benefits. Definitely, unlimited free alts should be stopped. Have the number of alts tied to membership level, with charges for any beyond. Also I have no issues with , during high stress times, throttling log ins temporarily. I don't know if it is possible to the difference between account types at log in though. But it shouldn't be a case of Basics can only login at a certain time, or can't login at a certain time, and no one should be "kicked out" if they are already in.

LL is a business, SL is a service they offer. While for whatever reasons, they do offer it for free, we aren't entitled to it. But we all are their customers, and have a right to voice our opinions on the service.

Ceera's point on stipends never dawned on be before, I never cared about the $300L a month I got, but she is right. If you are paying yearly, which I didn't, LL IS pretty much giving that money right backe to you, save for a few pennies, so so in the end you really aren't giving LL much "in support" with your Premium fee.They eat that by assuming you will pay them for Mainland and Tier of course. I would allow any member to buy Mainland, but give Premiums a higher free allowance, 1024 maybe and a discount on further tier, perhaps even a better rate on future purchases as well.

I would usggest that for premium accounts you remove some of the restrictions placed upon non-premium users. For the most-part, these restrictions are in place to prevent or limit griefing activities, but much of the griefing seems to be handled by "free" accounts that can be thrown away without much worry on the part of the griefer.

1. Allow Premium accounts to create micro (smaller than 0.010, perhaps 0.001 or even smaller?) prims.

2. Allow Premium accounts to create macro/mega prims. I understand that there is some technological work being done to help prevent parcel encroachment.

3. Allow Premium Accounts to have a unique last name. Perhaps even changeable name? Would probably require a new user database that has a number as the constant identifier.

I think a really big enhancment for premium users would be the ability to purchase sims in quarters directly from Linden Labs.

For someone that is relitively new to SL, $1000US plus $295 a month is just too big of a gamble. A $250 buy in and $75 a month seems like a much more managable risk, to me anyway. It could be treated the same as mainland, except that they would be seperate Islands, only you would have to purchase in quarter sim incriments.

I am aware that you can rent quarter sims, but real ownership is what I am after.

I'm not sure how this would effect the sl economy, but trying to buy adjacent parcels in mainland can be a real chore. Perhaps when a premium user reaches the 1/4 sim land owning limit, we could trade in our mainland for that quarter sim, and pay a lower initial cost, like $100US or something along those lines.

Yes, you can get it all back. Hence, my befuddlement over those who argue against being premium. Since you have to pay some up front (which LL kindly returns), it could be a good tool to keep the griefer population away if everyone was required to be premium after a limited period of free trial time (with limited functionality).

If you don't need the free 512 tier, "donate" it to a group that pays per week for it. Someone else can use it for sure.

LL could offer some incentive (bonus or free account for 3 months) to basics converting to premium.

My basic answer to the big question is; free uploads (at least 10 a month) and better live support. I doubt that we can expect more stipend or free tier without a corresponding increase in the price for a premium account.

I strongly agree with Rusalka's second suggestion.