Avatars Leaving the game

So I'm curious, what happens when people leave the game, and own land and have objects still present? Certainly some of these are too signifigant to just have them recycled into nothing, and the land going back to public ownership. It's hard to think about someone like Catherine Omega, Charlie Omega, or Lynnix Muse leaving the game, and all their contributions being scrapped. Has Linden Labs given any thought to historical preservation in this sense?

The way it normally works in Betas is, anything owned by whomever was playing the game will be destroyed or simply go to public decay. If a certain Linden decides they want to keep or hold onto said persons things they can do that but anyone in the game that isn't a paid member their stuff will go to public ownership. It's done to reward the people that chose to stay in the game and it's then up to the user that finds the decayed object to either keep the object for themselves by claiming it or just deleting it to get the cash reward. I like finding decays because I know I'm helping to keep the servers less laggy. Less objects on a server means a faster running server, or region.

I expect some people will simply give their possessions to a friend who's staying in the game. As for the land, they can release it and give the money to a friend who can buy the land up again.

Oh I have a related question....

Suppose you bought an object from someone who later quits.

Although the object would be yours, what happens to the status bits as far as the object being changeable. Would scripts on such objects be forever locked up? Since you wouldn't have the option of going back to the author if a bug was found (or the script language changed) it almost seems like such objects would become public domain, at least to those who had paid for copies.

Just wondering.

As soon as the object becomes yours, you should be able to change anything the original Creator of the object was able to, including the script.

Unless the "No Modify" option was checked when it was sold, but usually that is only for premium items that are sold with scripts that are considered valuable.

Mac,
As of right now the permissions bits stay the same if the person leaves the system. I agree that we might need to think about broken scripts at some point.

Cory

Since the permissions don't change, if you know you're going to leave and you want to give your stuff to someone, first give modify permissions to that person (right click on their calling card in your inventory to set that). Then give them your stuff. That'd solve this particular issue, right?

#!

Stoopid question #3003

How long does it take for an abandoned item to decay to public use?

++++++++++++++++

"Soy muy pituca"

4 days I think, 25% per day. This might change to every 2 days now sicne the game is now live all the time. Just a guess on the last part but I think it's 4 days.

I am pretty sure its three days. I am hoping that on June 24th, all the people that didn't pay are having their accounts closed, and their objects made public...is this correct, Lindens?