do you consider basic accounts to be inferiors?

First off because SL is still uniqe so there is nothing to directly compete with it yet. Secondly to make SL a game would be to throw away the comunity that have built up and a loyal community is worth far more than a decent game. Brand loyalty and a good community are some of the most presious things you can have as a company. LL has already said that they will eventaly hand over the reins and if they have built up a good enough community with enough trust in them they can still be making money off us for a long time as other companies try and cut in on the market.

Not unless the basic user desires land. Depending on the playstyle basic accounts can be superior.

That's up to LL, but SL continues to struggle with the problem of "critical mass"

to acheive what?

no opinion


I had a premium account for more than a year. Unless I find a compelling reason to go back I doubt that I will.

Less lag and/or increased involvement in a group where having a premium account would be an advantage.

we all participate in costs, even inactive accounts still require storage.


Again, that's a business decision for LL. If that had been the case I would have cancelled my account completely instead of dropping back to a basic.

You are happy to strip "premium" members of their benifits however. As I wrote, it is the "privlage" to rent from Linden Labs directly paying 2x (for the first 512) the going amount of renting land from a land barron.

Removing the stipend makes a "premium" account into a basic account with a fancy name.

This is true, and in no way should Basic accounts be restricted from visiting wherever they want. I also don't particularly like the wording of the thread title, that Basic accounts are "inferior", because it implies that there's something wrong with Basic account holders as individuals and that's not the case.

But there is something wrong with the situation when "successful" Basic account holders can get everything that a Premium account holder can and more. Now of course in the highly developed markets most folks tend to be Premiums because the restriction of rental start to bite at that stage, but among a lot of newer and smaller businesses and business hopefuls, Premium accounts look like a crutch for the unskilled and who really wants to pay for that?

Web hosting services usually restrict resale unless you have a reseller account. (I'd love to know what the Million Dollar Homepage guy's hosting service charged him.)



That I also agree with - the answer should be to give Premiums more features, and more importantly, features which other users can't create, as otherwise someone will undercut LL.

lol sl suxx we shud all quit today rofl

I've been to Lewis' disco. It's generic. 1000's of other discos like it already exist. Too bad, because a 70's disco that spoofed Studio 54 would have been cool.

Thank you for noticing that I hadn't noticed I'd forgotten to turn the store back on in "Find".

Classified ads don't work. Who can really afford L$50,000 or more week after week to be at the top of the list... and there are so many L$50 adverts its pointless.

The low traffic at my club is purely down to the fact I don't offer camping chairs, free money or sex. It's also only 480 sq m, as it's just a part of my larger build. Unfortunately I have to keep them all separate because of the way that "Find" works - or, more to the point, doesn't work.

If you visited you'd see that within the larger building is the club, store, and the laserquest arena taking up the majority of the space. I've been busy for the last 4 weeks with building and dealing with a family bereavement so I've not been able to run much in the way of events there.

Not that the events calendar is much help either, because of all the spam on it.

Lewis

Actually, apart from the dance machine, the laserquest controller system and the duck that swims in the moat, pretty much everything else is made entirely by me - it may "look like other places" but it's all my own hard work.

Lewis

Moopf's first post in this thread pretty much summed up my opinions on it.

Leave basic accounts as they are.
Focus on what you contribute instead of wringing your hands about what other people may not be contributing.
If you don't like having to pay LL for your land, then sell the land and tier down to basic.
Being Premium means you have the ability to own land, and you get $450L more a week than a Basic account. Stop trying to pretend you're donating that money to LL the charity and receiving nothing in return. If what you receive isn't good enough, tier down to basic.

Because they affect each other. If someone just wants to "dress up in an omg Banana Avatar riding around in a shopping cart for fun", then they're going to have to pay for that avatar, and that cart. And that money only lets them do that one thing, so once they've done that, they're going to have to pay for the next thing they want to do, and so on.

Now, we can take one of two attitudes to this: the "more platform-supporting" attitude ("people who make things deserve to get paid for their work, so if people can't afford it, can't earn the money, or don't want to pay, they're making no contribution and we can ignore them", or the "more game-supporting attitude" ("let's try and work out how people can get paid for their work while making sure it's easier for folks to enjoy themselves, maybe they'll get paid a little less per item, but we could try and work out a system where they'll get paid more overall because users getting better value are more likely to stay and pay more"



"Just ignoring it" isn't a viable option as long as you're paying US$ tier for your "fun" land while the person next door has just as much fun but doesn't have to pay for it because they fitted their fun into a business model. There's nothing wrong with that, but it does mean that users have to consider both factors most of the time, and don't really have the option of just ignoring one.

I am a premium account holder with a sizable monthly tier and land spread across several sims.

Basic account holders are the life blood of SL.

well im a premium now .. had an opurtunity to enlarge my store and didnt want to increase my business partner's teir.

- my opinion hasnt changed hower as i contribute far more economically to second life through rents. etc than i do the 9.95 a month which i get by selling lindens.

The only problem I see with basic accounts is the increase of grid attacks we have seen lately. It's much easier for a griefer asshat to sign up for a free account and attack the grid.

I wasn't suggesting ignoring it, but more so that people should accept both aspects of SL. I guess what I don't understand is the constant complaints in general on the everything should be free or really cheap and people don't deserve to make money from the stuff they make etc. The last time I checked, if I wanted to go to a nightclub I had to pay for it, the last time I went to a bar we paid for our own drinks, the last time I needed new shoes for work I had to pay for them. Why should it be different in Second Life? It is kind of the same as the internet -- it doesn't cost money if you want to look at websites, but if you want to buy something from a website, or host your own then it costs money. So, again why should it be different in Second Life?

Wherin that's your problem. It's all your own work but it doesn't have a distinctive style. Someone going afk for a few minutes would have a hard time remembering where they were when they got back.

So you are saying it is alright for some people to pay for the privilege of playing Second Life while others get a free ride?



Well I am tired of paying too much for land rental and being called lazy for my support of Linden Labs. I paid a year in advance and am stuck with being a "premium" member. If Linden Labs can take away the stipend they could also take away the 512 sq meters. Then all I would have is the right to "buy" land from Linden labs which is really land rental. They could also that the later away and then what do you have, basic account.

Yumi may not be saying that, but i am.

Since many of those on a "free ride" are customers and tennants of those who arent ..

Or they sell content people on premium and basic accounts both want ..

this really isnt THAT complicated.

For some reason your posts feel like the twilight zone. Who's calling you lazy for your support of Linden Labs? I don't get it.

PS> And what's this obsession about stipends being removed for premium accounts?

Because the social standards in Second Life are different.

If you go to a nightclub in real life, you have to pay for it but you know that everybody else does too. If you see another girl in the club who's wearing a gorgeous dress, it's more likely than not that she didn't design and make it herself. It's possible, but still unlikely, that she'll have earned money for it. And it's so unlikely as to be practically impossible, that she'll say she can go to clubs and buy anything she wants just from the repeated sales of her dresses.

In Second Life, that kind of thing is much more common, as is the idea that people who do work usually do it because they enjoy it. "Why does she get all that stuff just for doing what's fun to her, when I don't get anything for doing what's fun to me?" And although there are plenty of "deal with it" type societal arguments for not being upset about this, those don't work in a world that's optional to be in and (for consumers) meant to entertain. Who wants to play Deal With It Online? So you get the angry rants of the type you see - which aren't as far as I can see really meant to be attacks on the content creators income or anything like that, but asking at a whole-world level, "If this world doesn't let live my dream too, then what does it do for me?" Platform folks are happy to answer "Nothing, see ya." Game folks would like to answer "Nothing, but we're working on it."

I've been called lazy and unskilled for having a Premium account before.

"You're Premium? Why? Can't you just earn the money?"

haha, you're joking, surely? God, some people on both sides of the basic/premium issue are such blithering idiots it beggars belief.

He's right.

You get used to it, though. Like tuning out a high-pitched whine from an electronic device.

Yumi, we covered this: The people who called you lazy and unskilled were mentally retarded.

Come on, now.


fake edit: They're already on the teen grid, I'm sure. They won't call you lazy any more!

seriosly dude.. get a grip.. your either taking this stuff to seriosly (worrying about the finances of a company that you have NOTHING TO DO WITH) or your treating it like a game..

I have payed for a year of SL and on the 27th of next month (my rezday) I become a freeloader.. let Lewis pay my way for a while

I paid good American money for the stipend! All I am asking for is the service paid and nothing more! So I got a good deal with Linden Labs? It was their mistake to make the offer. I still don’t want to lose money to make business people in SL more money. I don’t owe them a thing!!! The stipend given me is a contract between Linden Labs and me. We don't need your permission to make and execute contracts with each other. It is none of your business so stop getting involved in our affairs!



About being called lazy, well read all of the messages if it is not said outright it is implied by the content.