do you consider basic accounts to be inferiors?

No, I'm not joking at all. When I was a new user chatting in a sandbox to someone else (who was later a student and then a business partner for a bit, and who had made a really pretty good plane using the kit from Cubey's, which they were selling), I commented I'd buy something when my stipend came in. The resulting conversation was something like:

Name Deleted: you premium?
Yumi Murakami: yes?
Name Deleted: why when u r new?
Yumi Murakami: liked SL, know these things cost money.. wanted to support ll
Name Deleted: yea but like me.. u can get money and land anyway if u r good enough
Name Deleted: i got 4096 with 1000 prims from [other name deleted] to build a club, y pay for just 512?
Name Deleted: ill build u a workshop in my skybox, ditch premium and just earn the money

(And to be fair that skybox workshop was really handy for me at that time. )

Oh, and Enabran, the person's not on the teen grid, and was for a while selling quite a bit of stuff, although I don't think they ever cashed out. As you can see above they weren't even trying to be offensive, they were offering to help! But I think they got pulled away by RL..

Ooo! Interesting topic. I will answer these questions before reading any of the other answers:

- do you consider a basic user is inferior to a premium user?

No, I think they are smarter, haha. (I really do!)

- do you think LL should push the basic accounts to move to premium?

Yes, I would think this would be in their best interest. Which is why that $500 stipend is worth keeping. They need more things to make a premium attractive, not fewer. There is a lot to be said for a steady monthly income coming in from the premium accounts.

- do you think the basic accounts should get more restriction as an incentive to move to premium?

No, that $50 is necessary in order to prime the pump, as it were. Other restrictions - I'm not sure what those would be; maybe I would think some of them a good idea. (Not the one about restriction to technical help, though.) Anyway, carrots work better than sticks.

- do you think it would be a bad way to have a script function allowing to detect if someone is basic or premium by it's key? (it used to be written in the profile)

I don't think it would be bad to have it on the profile. Doesn't seem much different from having your avatar birthday on your profile. I usually just ask people, if I want to know. Not sure what you mean about script function - but I think that if some people can find this out, it should be available to everyone, such as on the profile.

-what do you think of the charter accounts?

Do you mean the liftime accounts offered after beta? I think the people who got in on those were lucky. They took a risk, by paying a pretty penny for them, and their risk paid off.

if you are a premium:
- do you feel you are paying for the basic accounts?

Not in the absolute slightest! I can't stress this enough. If I am "paying for them" in any way, it is simply an investment in my own customer base, and in the future of growing that base.

- what is keeping you from going back to basic? (exepted the land)

The land, and the stipend. Take away the stipend, and I will rethink the need for land. I figure I would sell less without my shop, and it wouldn't be as much fun, but it would become more of a trade-off. Sell less, but pay less to LL.

Right now, I'm happy with my stipend, and with my shop, and not ticked off enough about anything LL has done to drop back to basic in order to make a statement, or to stop feeling like a fool. If I did get ticked off enough, or felt taken advantage of, though, I'd drop back to basic in order to not support something I didn't agree enough with.

i have been in planetside recently where there is free and paying accounts , you can go from free to paying but not the opposite. Do you think it should be the same in sl? once an account go premium it can't go back to basic?

No. We are limited on accounts, for one thing. Plus not being held hostage to premium is actually one of the attractions for going premium.

coco

You know, I thought this thread was about what a great deal, bunch of freeloaders basic account holders are. Somehow, you think it's about people saying the premium account is too good a deal? And when did I say you needed my permission to make and execute contracts? I'm really confused now.

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On this thread? Where? I've been reading this thread on and off all day and I must have missed that.

Seriously, you seem to have turned this thread full circle to make it about how people look down on premium account holders, and I just can't see where that's come from.

My head hurts. I can only think you've brought issues and arguments from a different thread into this one?

Do I feel like I am carrying the basic accounts with my premium subscription?

No.

Why don't I feel that way?

Because basic account holders and premium account holders *both* buy my stuff. I earn more in sales than my subscription costs, so for all intents and purposes, they actually help me pay my $9.95/mo + tier.

I started with a basic account, playing for free. When I decided I wanted to own some land I upgraded. And since I mind my own business when it comes to people's choices in account type, and since I see the value for having both types of accounts, I am perfectly happy with the current situation.

By the way, am I wrong in thinking that Kyrah had found some scripted way of identifying a premium user from a basic? I recall her mentioning something about making a premium-only freebie dispenser and immediately starting searching badgeo with a fine-toothed comb to see if I could figure out how it was done

Well, gotta say, that's somebody's opinion, somebody who was actually offering to help you get along as well. And they didn't call you lazy or unskilled according to what you've posted here. I think you might be making a bit much out of that to be honest, whilst even admitting that they weren't offensive and were offering help.

Contradictions abound.

I agree with you wholeheartedly, coco. Good post.

They were offering to help me, and I was grateful for their help, but it's more the underlying attitude: "don't go Premium, because if you're successful you don't need it".

Most of the new folks I've met in SL who want to have a try and being successful in business have either believed the above statement and avoided it - or gone Premium and bought land instantly because they're treating it as a conventional business startup cost. But most of the people in that latter group are people whose RL jobs or talents would give them confidence in advance that they'd be able to succeed in SL, so of course they're more prepared to put money in right away. People who haven't tried doing the kind of thing people do in SL before, and want to give it a go, tend to embrace the former position and I think that leads to a negative perception of Premium users and often to unnecessary frustration for them.

(Of course, there's also the chap I invited into SL from another site, who was reluctant to come over because "it might cost a lot of money". He came in, and he said he wanted to make his own outfits, and mentioned "Well, I've been doing UV skinning since I was young and I worked on some mods (mentions some moderately popular FPS mods) with a friend". After picking up my jaw from the floor, I had to reply "You know how you said SL would cost money, welllllll..."

At the very least, having the firstland is a great way to ensure your vendor servers remain rezzed without worrying about paying a rento in time.

I think a lot of the platform types get angry when the SL is only a game people demand that because they think it is a game then it should be a game for everyone. Then you get the deal with its etc. in response. I'm sure that there are plenty "SL is only a platform" people out there. Personally, I like to think of it as a little of both. The two sides need to co-exist, not obliterate each other.

I think it's more like "if it's a game for them then it should be a game for me".

For people who haven't tried it, and who assume that content creators enjoy their work, creating content looks like a game with the bonus that you can get paid if you win.



As long as you have to pay before you can play the money side will always obliterate the fun.. but there's no way around that

I am on the Basic account and I am most definately inferior (though I'm not sure if the two are related.)

I'm so baffled by this whole line of reasoning. If someone feels bad that they have to pay to play SL, they really need to get some professional help. In my first few months when I was largely a consumer, buying up tons of kewl content that others had made, I was thrilled and excited, it was a blast finding all those neat things to buy and use. It never even crossed my mind to feel bad and jealous.

Compared to what? The only superiority premium accounts can boast is the fact that they pay $9.95 a month to purchase four-hundred-fifty weekly lindens and the right to own 512sm of land on the Linden Estate.

That's not much superiority to boast about really.

You're coming at it from the wrong angle. If SL was real life, and people were spending all their time in real life feeling bad and jealous that they had to buy stuff from other people, then yes, it would be a case of needing professional help.

But SL isn't real life. To these people, it's entertainment. And most immersive entertainment has at the heart of it that you - the player - are, or can be, the star or one of the stars. That's what they want. They want "their world, their imagination" - not "their money, someone else's imagination". And unfortunately, yes, even the ones whose imagination isn't that great don't know that yet and still want it.. and if it turns out that SL proves to them their imagination isn't that great, that can be a devastating blow to the person in SL and RL.

Now of course, that anyone really can have "their imagination" or that nobody will face that reality check is an unrealistic expectation for SL, but remember that new people haven't adjusted to SL yet and are still treating it as any other online world, and many will resist the idea of adjusting their expectations, because how can it be their dream if they have to adjust their expectations?

Its a matter of perspective, but no one really *needs* anything in Second Life. There is plety of free content out there and a lot of it is high quality too. Before I completely retire older designs I usually make a freebie pack. I have them availble in my store and on SL Boutique. I've always been amazed how many free items are purchased via SLB, which is the only way I can really track them since store purchased Freebies don't show up in my account history. Over 2000 copies of my freebie packs have been acquired through SLB.

However, we all *want* stuff. We want the nicest skins. Do we need the nicest skins? No, but yet we covet them. Do we need clothing? Yes, only so you don't get abuse reported for being naked in PG areas. It is through desire for unique creations that we spend the amount of money we do in order to look virtually good.

Because it would hurt the rental land barons maybe...

All I'm saying is that when I found your store, I was exhilerated. So many kewl clothes. Yes, I knew that I could never make clothes that nice, but it didn't make me feel bad or less of a person. It made me want to buy as many outfits as I could afford

If there are people out there who when faced with SL feel bad about their own lack of imagination and talent, they should probably stop playing.

Some of them do feel bad about this, but what's more common is people feeling disappointed when it becomes evident that SL isn't going to allow them to escape their limits. That doesn't mean it's no fun at all, but there's other online worlds where their limits wouldn't apply.

And if they do stop playing, then unfortunately, they take their US$ with them. That might be sustainable. It might not. If people with talent and imagination want to get money, they need people without talent and imagination around to give it to them.

*runs in, rips his pants down and moons everyone*
*trips while trying to run out and pull his pants back up at the same time*
*lies helplessly entangled in his pants, bearing his backside for an embarassingly extended period of time*
*finally gets untangled from his pants, pulls them up and saunters out, face so flushed that he begins to resemble an Oompa Loompa*

If I own a basic and a premium account, will that mean I'm inferior to myself?

While I personally feel that everyone has the talent and imagination to be a success in SL (perhaps just not with what they would prefer), I can certainly agree with the point you are making.

Not everyone in SL is a content creator, and not everyone in SL wants to own land. Not everyone in SL wants to pay $9.95 on subscription fees if they could use that $9.95 to buy L$ and spend it somewhere in world.

The bigger picture is where the basic accounts make sense.

Basic accounts make a lot of sense. What I'm saying, really, is that Premium needs to offer some benefits that'll be of benefit to more social users. I made some suggestions a while back, and though they're not all relevant now:

I agree with you 100% here. Don't get rid of the basics... make the premiums more interesting and full of flavor. Give people a reason why they should spend the USD to get premium, and they will.

I have a few good friends on the Basic. To be able to spend time with them is one of the reasons why I keep paying Premium, mainland tier and private island fee. And they keep me motivated to improve myself at building.

I think some people contribute to SL just being there.