Performance / Access: Radical thought?

If too many users is the reason behind the lag and login problems, should LL begin to think realistic and capitalistic (supply and demand) and get rid of the $9.95 lifetime accounts?

Obviously there are alternatives, such as allowing $9.95 lifetime Alts if you have a month-to-month account, three month $9.95 trials, etc.

I know San Francisco / Socialistic / Utopian ideals are at play here, but lets face it....

no satisfaction = no subscribers
no subscribers = no income
no income = no business
no business = no Second Life

Just being a devil's advocate and want to know your thoughts....

It's certainly worth debating.

Or perhaps, some sort of pay-as-you-go for inventory. Some way of creating a negative feedback system on the database.

I vote for a Shirley Jackson-type lottery, with repeated draws until the server load is down to acceptable levels.

I'm not sure but maybe 9.95 should go up to something like 19.95. And also I thin it's wrong to have any new account's right now!

Well .. without the basic membership you will remove a big chunk of the consumers / dwell ..
and thus destabilize the whole economics.

In other words the people who pay monthly will be able to get in to an emptier world.

Those who spend a lot of money per month and want large dwell , for whatever reason, wont be able to get it.

Suppose it could work. But the SL business people would pay the most for it of those who remain.

Well on that choice thats "i have a better idea" well "another idea" anyhow

Maybe they could allow controlled RL advertizing in SL .. thus allowing them more income .. thus able to buy more equipment and pay for more staff.

If you limited it to Billboards of a certain size, or streeming sets , or whatever .. the "suspension of disbelief" penalty could be minimized

Perhaps they could keep those near-free accounts but stop giving them even $50/week stipend, or cap off the inventory in them.

I've always found it very odd that SL could provide a complex, rich, streaming game like this and not charge at least $9.95 per month. That's what TSO charges, for even half or less of what SL provides. That's what games like A Tale in the Desert charge.

So why are they different? Newbie kid on the block with inferiority complex? Surely not by now?



I tend to agree...

The fact is, the load is probably caused just as much by $9.95/month premium accounts with only 512 of land as it is by anything else. I'll be there are quite a few of those kind of accounts too.

If they want a larger game, they have to get better at serving the servers.

gosh Pro for once i agree with you lol

The problem isn't new accounts. The problem is LSL commands which are not throttled properly and poor database / application / transaction queueing design.

LL has a crack graphix team (mostly) but their transcation capabilities are clearly weak.

Actually the basic one time fee acount did not always exist. Prior to monthly land tiers, everyone paid a flat monthly fee. I think it was about 15 bucks but it was more than one year ago and my memory is fuzzy. There were additional charges in world then, such as taxes for land ownership and rezzing prims.

I think the purpose for introducing a one time basic fee account was to encourage membership growth, with the reasoning that eventually those who get absorbed will want to tier up in order to own land.

I am not talking about the $9.95 premium accounts here (that at least is ongoing income), I mean the $9.95 lifetime!

When have you ever heard of an unlimited access lifetime account anywhere else?

Such an account has opened the world to abuse and it is not even just the griefers...

Heck, every casino and club I go to is full of "dormers"; alts that are sitting there 24x7 running a script keeping them logged on for whatever reason (dwell?). Each one of those accounts might be preventing a legitimate user from logging on...

Yeah, I know you mean that. I put that I didn't think any other game had such a socialist deal lol.

And I also wrote that I think there aren't as many of these as you might think, but we don't know, do we? They don't tell us.

If inventories do get capped, I hope it's a generous cap, since the ability to own unique objects that you buy or create is a significant part of what makes SL what it is.

Putting a lower cap on $9.95 lifetime inventories seems reasonable considering that these individuals do not pay the ongoing expenses associated with their accounts.

Before LL implements any of these ideas I would like to see them solicit a great deal of input both in world and in forum on this issue.

As a content creator, over half of my inventory is business stock. My partner and I have an alt account we use to keep one complete copy of our stock on... to avoid losing our business to data corruption.

The second issue with database jello... email queries from in-world objects. I'd like to see some more information on the specifics of what these are, since I am not a scripting person. Are these e-commerce issues? streaming audio? URL uplinks?

Bad idea.... People get hooked on SL through those $9.95 accounts and upgrade to be able to do more (own land, get a higher stipend, etc.). Under their own server pricing, every 100 $9.95 lifetime accounts that sign up just bought a new server and every twenty new accounts pays it's ongoing cost. So as the population grows, so does SL.

As a basic member, I will throw in my opinion.

I don't know how many basic members there are, but I think that is less important than the number of basic members who play often, play seriously, or play regularly.

I think it's almost impossible to play often, play seriously or play regularly without wanting to go to a premium account the first month.

So I would say most basic members aren't using up much of anything.

coco

Basic members are the one who can rent land (with real USD!!! or L$ from USD) and they might more likely utilize GOM (to PUT USD into the game).

Not wise to get rid of them, I think...

And another thought: basic members HELP Lindens stress the system under 'many people'. If we only had 4000 people, the system would run fine. But when we'd get to 28000 premium paying people, if there's a similar crash, them leaving would have even more financial impact on SL.

Besides, it's not the money. LL has received 8 million USD last fall from investors, and while I'm sure they must be making a loss (for now), they have money for development and investment in the future.

I dunno, could be!

I am on a Basic Account because I don't have the $$$ for anything more than that. I would -love- to be able to own land, but until things improve for me, I will not be able to. I am -quite- addicted to SL, though, regardless. And my Inventory, sure enough, is reasonably big!

It -is- quite a hassle not to be able to own land, though, so if one does play any more than semi-regularly, one is probably going to want to upgrade. So I do agree with you about that, personal anecdotes aside.

I wouldn't worry too much about Basic Account-holders, you guys.