An open message to anyone and everyone, flame pls :3

Originally a posted reply on the blog, to Zee Linden's post relating to the front page statistics:

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SL was and still is a great game. Howver, LL lost sight of the fact that it’s backbone customer base is the premium user. I don’t know the exact amount, but I would say a safe bet is that about 100,000 accounts are premium users (based upon the number of residents that spent Lindens last month, according to the economics page…I know alot are unverifieds, but there are many premiums who didn’t buy and sell, for whatever reasons). In any event, the median premium payment is what, about $7.50 U.S.? That’s $700,000 U.S. in premium accounts for U.S. How many of those premium accounts have SL tier beyond basic? Enough of them to keep virtually all of the mainland occupied. How many of them have Private Islands? God, I can’t even begin to count the private islands. OK, along comes the corporations. How many companies are going to buy land in SL? 100? 200? MAYBE 500? (that’s stretching it, in my opinion). The primary source of income for SL has been, and always be the premium user. Now any company in the REAL WORLD **KNOWS** that you don’t increase your profits by raising prices so high you piss off your customer base and they leave you. You make your company MORE attractive to MORE customers…in the broadest sense imagined. Not just ONE sector, but all sectors. But also, in the REAL WORL, no company seeks to increase it’s customer base by handing out tons of goods as freebies, then expect the handful of paying customers to shoulder the burden. No, a GOOD company will attract more paying customers. And attracting thousands of PREMIUM account users will draw in the corporations. Let’s face it, if the multitude of unverifieds CAN’T afford to pay $9.95/month, god, how in the world can they afford to pay the corporations the money for the goods and services the corporations wish to offer? LL (God and Goddess love them, because I DO, I really do!!!!!), needs to step back and think about this very simple maxim. When I worked as Electronics Department Supervisor for Office Max several years ago, our manager told us this, at an employee meeting…”Look, ANY company can offer they goods we offer at the price we offer. IF we want to beat the competion, and gain customers, we have to do it through CUSTOMER SATISFACTION!!!!!”
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Not that I want to tell LL what to do, but this makes a lot of sense to me. I've been on the grid under a few account names since 2004, and Second Life has been going downhill since about 1.8. The updates we get every time the grid goes down for a serverside and clientside new version are nice. I like them. The issue here is not with the software engineers, or the overall direction of the company. It's with account management, and funding.

Since the advent of the free, permanent, unrestricted account creation (and even before, as SL grew in popularity) LL has taken a number of executive descisions regarding funding, and in-world economy. Some have been good, although I couldn't name any right now (I'm sure there have been some... o.o). Some have been bad - removal of dwell, weekly funds based on rates and the increase in rate costs (Which has made the entire rating system deprecated in the opinion of a vast majority of the grid. When was the last time YOU got or gave a rate?) have all caused a general slump in the overall experience. All I personally can attribute this to is the massive increase in the number of accounts created on the grid... and with the advent of the big 1000000, and even for a time before that, the cracks in the system have been showing.

Honestly, LL. I remember when you were a company with good business sense. I remember when the grid was a fun place to be.

Bring back 1-week trials and 4-account limits, lose the freebie accounts that, lets face it, are mostly used for moneychair zombies and grid-attacks, and you're so likely to see an increase in usability, corporate interest (which, face it, isn't going to be attracted by a system that's dying under its own body mass) that hey, maybe you'll be able to concentrate on improving the service to a state at which it might even replace the traditional internet... Just like half the linden radio interviewees want.

Again, as stated in the shamelessly copypasted blog reply...
Don't put the strain on premium residents that pay for your service, and then shove us out in the cold while you get down on your knees to the freebies. WE are the ones supporting you, and even if you do get corporate entities to buy sims... if we all leave, how are they going to keep your whole grid alive with the million freebies running amok? They'll just pull out and leave you to die.

</rant>

p.s.
Apologies if this is in the wrong forum, but hey... I'm used to the old layout :>

What he said.

I most definately feel obligated to just say one thing........

Jeremy, Well said. Bravo.

Well said.

However, they aren't listening.. That much has been obvious for quite some time now.

I'm not a rocket scientist either, but even I can guess at the math numbers about paid accounts/tiers/islands and SL has to be pulling in some good bucks...Now I also have to admit I have no clue what their operating costs are, but one can imagine they aren't loosing money.True the never ending freebie accounts (in hopes of turning them over to paid accounts) has drawn a crowd of people into SL that have caused a lot of problems...Would be nice to be able to see out of the 1,000,000 how many are paid and how many are free.But I do have to admit,the free accounts don't pay the bills,the free accounts take up hard-drive space and bandwidth, and yes-s-s-s, lets not forget the script kiddies on free accounts causing grid problems.

I actually cancelled my premium account because of the issues outlined above. I just don't see the point of paying a monthly fee for a service that is so frequently virtually unusable.

I wonder where those of us who don't have a premium account but have still paid in order to get L$ wind up in all of this.

Well Ziibly, you're supporting the SL economy at least in part - you spend money to buy lindens, which have to come from somewhere... usually the premium members' weekly stipend (or the lindens L$ on LindeX), so buying lindens on lindex is a Good Thing. Better yet would be to buy a premium subscription and become part of the directly supportive user base O.O

Stephanie I agree with you, for the most part. The service is unacceptable right now, and the Lindens don't seem to care about the root cause - only glossing it over by "fixing" the database servers (just about every day now) until someone can help out.

I still blame the freebies. Perhaps a vote would get the message across

Forget it, Jeremy, the Lindens dont care. SL is their plaything, they are gods here, and they know that since SL is better than most of the other online games out there, they know that people will have no choice but to either (a) deal with it, and stay in SL, or (b) leave SL altogether. Many people that I have known who were excellent builders or scriptors chose (B), because SL has lost all its fun with all the new adjustments that the Lindens have added to make us pay more and suffer more. However, I must agree with you on the free account thing, that has only made things worse since its creation.

Xairete!

Maybe so, but they're still forgetting that if the premium members DO decide to stop paying for their freeloading, grid-crashing, alt-spamming freebies, then their whole toy will fall apart before their very eyes =(.

Linden Lab Research Inc. makes me cry at night D:

Perhaps so, but the premium members must, as a group, leave, something that they will be very unlikely to want to do. There has to be a guaranteed chance of getting the Lindens to give in by convincing all or most of them to leave, cutting off LL's money source. However, many premium account members probably would not do this, as many of them have businesses in SL that support their RL lives, and others simply dont care. It's sad that the Lindens have such power, but that is the price to pay for living in SL.

Xairete!

Very sad.

So why aren't they listening? Do they have a good reason NOT to listen perhaps?

LL do indeed have a plan that will come into fruition very soon, but whether it will save the grid from their previous mistakes... well, we'll see -_-. To be honest, SL is going to die. It's been fun and I'm glad to have been here longer than most. That's all I can really say >_<


EDIT
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Wow. What a f-ing sterling example of the degeneration of Second Life.

I'm a member of the group "Alliance Navy", and we take a lot of attacks on our land. Now, across the river is a linden-owned road. Griefers very often sit there and fire off their weapons into our land, killing us.

Zomgawd. ToS violation: Firing from safe into damage.
Zomgawd. ToS violation: Organised and repeated sim-crashing.
Zomgawd. ToS violation: Spawn-killing (as a lot of AN personnel have their points set on base).

So today, there's this one guy called "Josh Kraft", and a few of his buddies. They fly, they shoot at us, they occasionally die and come back. The sim can bear it... just.

Eventually, a Linden was called in to deal with it. She manages to stand there doing nothing (and at one point being the target of the grifer's fire herself) for a full fifteen minutes before up and leaving without doing anything but apparently "nicely asking the lovely person to please stop it thank you but if you want to carry on, thats fine!".

I'll quote myself:

[9:30] You: LOL. Josh is shooting the ******* LINDEN and she's just standing there taking it. She's not a linden, she's a payed excuse generator =/



I see this crap going on not often, but on a DAILY and sometimes HOURLY basis.

WHAT

THE

FARK

is going on here? Does Linden Labs just not care any more? I remember when Liason Lindens (Jack and Nigel, to name a pair of the better ones) were able to kick people from the grid, or hell, even suspend them on sight for breaking ToS beyond the point of stupid. And they were ACTIVE about it too. Modern Liasons are about as useful as live helpers -.-

I'd trade flying fish and lindens that do what they're supposed to do for every single client update since 1.4, because this is just rediculous.

And not quite sure if Robin Linden is the one who allows or authors it. But perhaps a resignation of the the one who does might be the best way to start making things better?

Unfortunately, a close friend of mine IM'd Robin to suggest she resign or retire from LL, not only because she's caused him so many problems, but has turned a deaf ear to complaints about liason and LL rep bad behavior. I've seen the copy/paste of his request, and agree with him. He was polite. But honest.

Of course, simply reading the forums, one can see many other complaints about LL customer service in general. ONE being that the proseltyzing of their customers to 'volunteer'/work for free as their customer service department has been a regular practice turned institution.

Perhaps a new person might do things better or differently by changing the culture of the company in this respect and others. Modeling behavior after a company 'higher-up' is very often done. For good or ill. Hopefully, a new person will entertain the thought of a customer service staff, *all* of whom are on payroll, *all* of whom are accountable, and *all* of whom work when online.

The profiles of many of the employees are really a tell-all when it comes down to how LL deals with its current bunch of customer service guys/gals. Jean Linden? Do we REALLY want to know that she's into BDSM? Not me. I just want her to clean up my island...there are 200 plus prims still not returning, and I have to do a class in a hour. Tapping my foot. Hmmm. I'm on my RL lunch break...and where do we think JEAN might be with that 'workplace' profile? Perhaps a flyby over a BDSM sim might find her working very, very hard.

Many of the LL employees play SL when off work as well, and have many advantages YOU and I may not have when it comes to business contracts, contacts, land deals. So, it's very much in the best interest of this group, inclusive of customer service, to stay where they are. AND usually a change in a top officer of a company means changes at the bottom. SO. Where does that leave us? With Robin Linden and the gang that can't or wont shoot straight. Perhaps.

Jeremy-

Unverifieds are here to stay. If LL is going to be appealing to corporate investment then part of that attraction is easy access to a sea of "eyeballs". Putting up an entry fee will not just chase off not just the penny-less newbies from some foreign country that might think that griefing is a fun past-time... but it will also shut down a lot of the bigger subscriber's interests in SecondLife.

Whether or not SL will be predominantly supported by corp or resident premium payments in the future? Who knows. LL to do what they think best to meet both our needs, as well as their own, and they have a lot of work ahead of them.


Refereeing the edge of skirmish areas doesn't seem like a good use of Linden time and effort. With regards to turning a deaf ear... who knows how often Linden's get hit with reports which contain insufficient substantial AND compelling evidence for action. And actually saying so is, in most cases, likely to generate unverifyable dramatically empassioned begging for someone to be smited.

This isn't a court of law, even what we may think are cut and dried cases where action is merited may be seen otherwise by someone with more objectivity.

I'm not sure how they do it now, but LL could certainly do better with some sort of Three Strikes system that was utilized more uniformly by all in-world lindens, liasons and livehelpers. Sometimes I get the impression that abuse reports are often mistaken for "first offenses" when in actuality they aren't.

A sea of eyeballs is all well and good, but when 90% of that sea are really the same eyes looking out of a handful of a small group of others and 75% of that sea are -ONLY- there to look, well... if the corporations have any sense, they'll pull out. As stated, and in simple business practice, you don't sell to people that can't or won't buy.
Premium accounts however, and even old-style basic accounts offer prospects to real-service sellers. They can be sure tat the people behind the pixel masks will actually consider paying them to do something, because they pay to use the advertising medium and have systems which can use the service pretty well (which usually precedes paying for the game ).


Second Life will NEVER be supported by corporations unless LL decides to sell out and allow the big boys to host their own servers. It's too expensive and a very bad move to pay someone to do nothing for you.
The simple fact is, if SL becomes primarily hosted and payed for by corporate entities, the mainland will either cease to exist or be entirely owned by the few remaining premiums (or bought up by corporations), and will shrink massively. The current continents in place will likely shrink as premium members leave, meaning there's less reason for people to sign up. SL will go into a state of hyperinflation as the last few content providers push up their prices to compensate for increasing L$/USD ratios and fewer sales due to the lack of members with money, and eventually the entire payment system will collapse or devolve to an unusable point. Finally, all that will be left are corporate islands, and a few small resident-owned locations such as rented Anshe land.
Then, SL will die, or the program will be sold off in an attempt to cut losses before starting a new project at LL.


"Refereeing" a combat zone was simply an example. The key messages, which you obviously didn't read despite my setting them out in an easy to understand format, was that liasons as a whole no longer carry out the jobs they are payed to do (I know a lot of liasons don't actually meet this accusation and some work very hard for SL, such as Torley) or if they do, it's in a very reserved role, in the same manner as a live helper... only with the ability to not take damage from guns or be orbited.
As of some time ago, the only way for linden liasons to take direct action against an individual is if they are told to deal with the situation by the abuse report team... a very unsatisfactory state of affairs, since the AR team can take up to an hour to filter through to your report (which could relate to something very damaging, say, repeated and organised sim crashing. This is also a true story, by the way.) and even then, it may take up to a further 15 minutes for a liason to actually do something. By which time the actual offenders are long gone, and the situation will require checking of sim logs - something that takes quite a lot of effort and time.


A "three strikes" system was what was originally used in the early days of SL, but with the advent of the freebies, it's almost impossible to keep up with individuals. Perhaps a criminal database of some sort is in order?

e.g.:

Resident X commits crime Y that is worth Z penalty points.
Add Z penalty points to Resident X's records, along with the crime details.
If total points is over limit, suspend user for # days/hours or send report to linden employee A, B or C for sentencing.
Each day, remove 1 point from each user's total.

I agree what has been said here. And to add to the issue ... looks like LL is ok with a new program called CopyBot that will copy your prims and chnage the CREATORS name to the one STEALING the original creation. CopyBot is even on the SLExchange now ... there is some confusion if the slexchange one has a virus or not.

Also the new change to help griefers ... the minimum time limit for autoreturn on your land will go from 1 min to 10 min in the next update ( I believe).

I will be advising all my vendors at my sales area to pick up their stuff soon .. as it seems that nothing is safe from griefers and thiefs.... and LL refuses to help or do ANYTHING.

i agree, i think SL is on its knees, but no longer for the simple-tons. Us.

It wants to attract big corporate companies. i have talked about this before. Am not a fan of big companies taking our RL money and our SL money. as for unverified accounts, if you see, you can get the same amount of money on your 9.95 account, if you bought it yourself, under a free account. sure less the 512 land, but who can live off a 512 anymore?
Honestly, who wants big companies in game? Who wants huge advertising companies? How the heck are people going to make stuff that are not infringing on any companys rights? i downgraded from premium to free account and will stay that way. once i see some big name companies in game i am out. plain and simple. cause mainly, my sl was suppose to be fun and creative. my items for sale are great, but no one will ever see them lol. especially if big america comes to town. i will just fall to way side.
i am just a person, sitting at her computer, creating objects and clothes and hair and shoes to sell, for little profit. trying to live my Secondlife, in a way i cant in RL! And here, multimillion dollar companies want a Secondlife too??? to be even more rich in virtual land as well????
i say, give me a thirdlife!!!
Set up a grid, for people not wanting to be overpowered by big companies. The classifieds PAID high list is a joke, the popular places CAMP CHAIR paid high list is a joke. i have to admit, most the shopping places in game are not worthy the traffic numbers, their items arent great at all or even newb stuff, but because they have camp chairs, they are considered popular. bleh.
i am not in game as much, because this whole restriction stuff they keep giving us is a little too much....finding other worlds online at the moment.

Linden Lab doesn't actually think CopyBot itself is okay (since it violates the ToS) however they're not going to do anything about its use, since it's a part of the libsecondlife project (which is supported by LL). This is indeed a disgusting violation of the rights of every single resident of the grid that has had objects and clothing, and even avatars copied.

Linden Lab expects residents who have suffered this to actively fight their own case, as opposed to actually doing something about it themselves.

Yet another GG LL. I wonder where they hid Philip's body...

Sorry for having a free account and using up your bandwidth. I really am. But I find I enjoy my time on SL, probably a bit more than I should at my age . So please forgive me for being in your world and taking up a bit of the space that is really only deserved by paying SL members. Please.

I suppose that the time I spend helping newbies (paying and non-paying) learn the ropes, and creating content to give back to this virtual society isn't enough. Can I send you a check directly every month instead of becoming a premium member? Because I really have a hard time bringing myself to pay a monthly fee for a video game. Sh*t, if I wanted to do that, I'd play the SIMS and at least own the program outright....right? I suppose you're one of those people RL who believe they deserve the better parking spots at the mall, not that "poor" (insert favorite minority race here) family crammed into a small Toyota Corolla, simply because you have more money to throw around.

NEWSFLASH- not ALL of us free account users can pay money every month for an online video game, for different reasons. Some of us truly can't afford it, while others of us can't justify spending the money on something that's not "real". Whatever the reason, we all deserve a place in SL- paying a monthly fee or not. We're not all here to be "money chair zombies", or to attack the grid (and the people who ARE, truly DON'T deserve to be in SL, but I don't think we need to debate that). The large corporations moving in are surely MORE than making up for the free accounts, in term of monthly payments. You want to blame someone for your poor performance? Blame Linden Labs. They could take their newfound Big Corporation profit to invest in more/larger/faster hardware, but they don't appear to be doing that. This is not the fault of the free account holder, this is Linden Labs' decision.

If all accounts were paid for, and there were no free accounts, this scenario would STILL be playing out, just maybe not so soon. Better hardware on the LL side would help. So would limiting the amount of prims per avatar. So would many, many other things that COULD be done, right now, but that aren't being done for whatever reasons. But blaming the free account? You can do better than that. Really. You ought to come see me in-world sometime- we can chat, and you can tell me how I ought to leave SL because I'm not paying money to play. It'll be swell. Really.

RickiLake, I'm glad you're in SL--truly. From your post, I'd say you're a valuable contributor to the community.

And I'd bet the majority of free accounts are also owned by decent SL-citizens. Some of my best friends in SL are on free accounts.

And it distresses me, too, to see the issue of free accounts oversimplified.
But, I also know that when I click on someone's profile and they are both FREE and Less than a week old, I'm very very very cautious. I've learned that the hard way.

My biggest issue in world with free accounts is that they are disposable...and that means trouble makers can use them and toss 'em when they get caught--there are NO penalties for misbehaving.

PAID accounts are not better because you're giving money to LL. They are better because behind them is some user information...that has been somewhat verified through a payment arrangement. THAT information is NOT disposable. Establishing a new financial identity to go with a disposable Avitar is just not feasible for the average griefer.

The problem we (the SL community in general) has, is that we have short-cut past the 'accountability with consequences' and gone straight to 'Free Accounts are bad.' Its simpler to understand. Its catchy. and it fits neatly on protest signs. But it oversimplifies the real issue==>there must be consequences for bad acts.

Then there's the issue of financial support to the LIndens to help them keep SL up and running. SL appears to be headed down a path where it will no longer be supported by monthly subscriptions, but rather, something more akin to a corporate advertising model. I have strong feelings about this, but its the Linden's decision on how best to ensure SL continues into the future.
We are now in a transition period where the old paying accounts see 'unfairness'. Many continue to pay--both monthly fees, and for land tier, etc. From their point of view, they are holding up the boats in the water while hundreds of thousands of 'free' accounts piled in...and now the boat is wallowing low in the water--overloaded from too many users in too small a boat. Everyone is suffering.
And AGAIN, 'free users' is a convenient, and simple focal point for the frustration of transitioning from one business model (subscriber based) to another model. (corporate ad based.)

Absolutely.

The problem is not the accounts who are not paying a monthly fee. Hell, that was me for the first six months I was here because I hadn't found a reason to bother buying land on the mainland.

The problem is not that there are "free accounts", the problem is that there is no attempt made to verify that free accounts are not being created by people who have been banned from the game, or that they're not being created by people who want to do things they expect will get them banned from the game.

People are sloppy about the distinction, but it's an important one. As far as I'm concerned you're welcome to play all you want without paying a penny... but the guy who goes and gets "hater666 Snotnose" and runs around ripping of people's avatars and orbiting them with C4 until he's banned... and who pops over to the next computer in the computer lab and does it again as "Untouchable Asshat"... I want him gone.

I personal liked the old system (CC required), and with international pre-payed visa cards (they qualify as CC) I don't understand why LL doesn't require a CC still.

Unfortunately it's not important what I think on this issue as it doesn't belong in this forum. The SL forums lack a forum where this thread would be appropriate. I have lock it :-/