Why Free Accounts Must Go-Part II

I was jsut saying that I don't argue the way I argue, because I don't want to spend money on SL. You're simply misunderstanding my point.

Free accounts should have a max inventory level. If you aren't paying to use the service why should the premium users pay so they can bog down the asset server(s).
They should be dressed as tourists and only allowed to carry so much in a backpack.
You pay you get a closet...

do you have a wow account?

So how do you pay for your role playing on sl? If you either don`t have money or put any in?

I never said I do not spend any money.

I don't have a WoW account because I am FORCED to spend a vertain amount of money every month, whether I want or not.

I DO have an SL account AND I spend money on it. The difference is: with SL I can ALWAYS choose how much money to spend, when and on what. And I spent a lot of money designing my avatar for the roleplay.

I also disagree on the equipment issue. Maybe limiting unverified accounts or those without payment information would be okay, but if every basic account is limited in that way we'll be becoming second class citizens. I strongly oppose that development.

Never mind...........You say you spend money and then you say you don`t ............ endless loop

Yep this is why I love meeting those new people who bring such light and love to SL ...

There is enough segregation, class warfare and general categorization in real life, it's not needed here. I started as a freebie, went to Premium quickly even though I don't plan on owning land in the near future. (Even though I've probably spent enough on shopping to buy a small island.) I've met some really great people with free and unverified verified accounts. but soething has to be done service wise. Server overloads and outages are a fact of life, but it does get frustrating at times.
Last night it was difficult doing much Tp an acticty wise for me, so I decided to just go to my apartment, and empty my rather large shopping bag. But first it took several tries to even get to my apartmnet, and once there any inventory activity was not an issue. I just gave up and tuned to computer off and read a book.
I don't know what the answer is. Maybe a temporary hold on any new or free accounts, letting Linden get caught up. Maybe making new free accounts a limitd trial. I don't know. But even without land, I am happily spending good portion of my discretionary income in world, thoroughly enjoying the experience.
(End of dissertation. I'm a little bitchy this morning, in addition to the usual cause, ice and snow are coming)

Well I guess if I'd be FORCED to pay for an account, I would do so.
Maybe I will sometime in the future. At the moment it would have me "losing" money though, because I spend more money than I get.

As I said it would be a bit sad becausethe community would become less open with a step like trial accounts.

However I agree, LL needs to do something about the recent problems. Under the circumstances now, I would not pay for SL. There needs to be an agreement on what parts of the service must be available to which degree. You get such a kind of agreement with every webserver space you purchase (at least here in germany) - guaranteeing an availability of 99% or even more. If I pay for something, I expect something in return. Availability and stability would be one of those things I might expect.
I guess if the current performance issues that occur again and again are resolved and improved, quite some of this discussion would be obsolete, because all the problems in not being able to enter sims are in the end performance issues.
(Ofcourse I realize that unlimited performance is not available anyway, but lately the problems have been huge)

Hello Everyone.

I am one of the free account holders; though I do have payment info on file and do spend RL $ on the "game". I am anticipating going premium within the next month or so once I finally make the decision on if this place (SL) is for me. I've no problem paying for my on-line entertainment as I've done it for years playing EQ and EQ2. It's how I spend my entertainment dollars.

Anyway, I'm not sure what the solution to the situation here might be. Because of the way SL is designed, with everything streaming to your computer and nothing stored on it, it would be hard to implement some of the solutions other online providers have come up with. I'm not sure if it would work here, but instancing the sims might help. If a sim reaches it's max of 100 avatars, another sim - identical - is created and instanced allowing anothe 100 avatars. Again, I actually don't think that's possible with this setup, but just throwing it out there for converstation.

As far as limiting the free accounts, well, even though I am one, I tend to agree with this. However since SL is so much more complicated in ways than online games like EQ, WOW, DAOC et al.. I think the free accounts should have at least 30 days to try things out. It takes a while to get a handle on even basic building, scripting, finding your way around etc. I've been here about a week and am getting the hang of it, but I'm pretty familiar with online game conventions, so picking it up hasn't been that hard. After 30 days, if you wanted to remain free, you'd be limited in some way. As others suggested, perhaps limited to certain sims, reduced inventory, whatever. There really needs to be an incentive to go premium or..why would you?

Anyway, thats enough blabbing for my first post on the boards. I'm having fun so far (nice break from killing things in EQ2) and look forward to meeting some of you in SL.

Hehe.... still I love EQ2 too, maybe because it so different as SL.

Anyway, back to subject.... I pay 72US$ per year for my account. I pay 40US$ per month for my land. That is enough. I think my RL partner is entitled on a free (verified) account.

Morwen.

This is reason number 287 why I don't own mainland. We have a wonderful parcel on a private island with a reputable owner. There were problems with people dragging in too many camper bots and the land management company put a cap on them within a day. Bang. Solved.

I know there are some fly by night landbarons around, but there are plenty of reputable ones and life is far better. It also seems to work out a little bit cheaper too.

Maybe some local storage...inventory, etc may help. I just want to be able to play all day when I am snowed in tomorrow.

Sorry, Stacy, but it IS a totally fair comparison. Yes, Dusty "bought" his land, and I leased/rented. The reason I put "bought" in quotes is because, as hopefully most figure out, "buying" land on the mainland is really more like leasing or renting it from Linden Labs. You have to make a monthly payment to LL for the "privilege" of owning land, and additional monthly payments based on how much you "own." When I have ongoing monthly payments for as long as I wish to occupy and use the property, then I rightly consider it "renting" no matter what terminology LL chooses to use. The monthly "rent" payment I make to the landlord where I'm at is LESS than the total of the monthly premium and land tier payments I'd be making to LL for the same size property. That is the kind of comparison you (and Dusty) should be making. Whether you and LL choose to call it "rent" or "own" is irrelevant, its what rights you get and what you can do with the land - I did a "buy" transaction on my parcel just as is done with a mainland plot and have full ownership rights to the parcel, but the island owners choose to be a little more honest in calling it "rent" based on the monthly payments.

You mention that in the real world there are zoning laws and contracts. The land covenant is as close to a contract as is available within SL, and certainly gives more protection than one has on the mainland. So I still maintain that given that the monthly payments are competitive then one needs to look at where he/she can get better protections against "nuisances" appearing on neighboring land. Its clear to me that a covenant forbidding them is better protection than the complete lack of any rules on the mainland - and that should be clear to anyone who does a bit of checking first. Again, this is a capitalistic system, sounds like you and Dusty should go look for a communistic one where the government will "protect" you from yourself. Caveat emptor!

Why do people own land in RL? Because they have a piece of paper saying they do? Or is it because there's a governing body that actually validates that piece of paper and recognizes and backs up your claim over a piece of land you own?

If you buy mainland, LL will deal with you as the owner, if you buy a private sim, LL will deal with you as the owner, if you buy private sim land, LL will not deal with you at all concerning your land, you have no rights to it as far as they are concerned. And that's the ultimate difference between "owning" and "renting".

You can try and justify the fact that you fell for the scheme of paying for land that you ultimately do not own all you like, but it will never change the fact that what you bought is an unenforcable promise from another resident to not turn back on their agreement.

Buying land on private sims was added so that sim owners can quickly recover their initial investment on the sim to buy another, it's there for their benefit and to substantiate the illusion that it's fine for them to ask anyone to pay for the land on their sim because "see, now it says your name, right there!".

You have ownership for as long as the sim owner grants it, if they decide they suddenly don't like you, there is not a single thing that stops them from clicking that little "Reclaim Land" button and all your "rights" suddenly vanish. You may see a convenant as a contract, but it's only one-way, the sim owner can enforce it on you, you can't enforce it on the sim owner because there is no venue that would allow you to do so.

I know this club! Dusty was one of my first neighbors in SL (and a wonderful one at that).
He was the one who convinvced me not to put a ban on a property after my first griefer encounter (as he enjoys a random fly-by) and I've visited with him many times as he's greeted wandering newbs! Since the club has opened, all of the "old timers" in the hood have gone and I'm even considering selling my 4650m parcel as our once beatiful little SIM is quickly becoming an eyesore and LAG fest! I was so sad to see him go.

My point is that Dusty is by no means an elitist, he loves SL and is very welcoming to new people (that's why we're here right?). The club he's talking about is really a camp ground more than anything else. I walked over two days ago and in my visit (little over 5 minutes), there wasn't even one chat post from more than 20 AVs. The just sat there like zombies sucking up the SIM.

Sorry to see ya go Dusty! If you're still having trouble, I took a place in the Azure Islands group when Sokri started going nuts and really like it. Very calm! lol And there are a few beachfront plots still available. IM me and I'll shop with ya. Love to have you as neighbor!

Peace Dusty!!

Well, it's the terminology LL and almost everyone else on SL chooses to use.

The basic reason is that leasing from LL is as near as you can get to "owning" anything on Second Life. Renting from a private landlord has extra risks. For example, a private landlord can go out of business, in which case your land disappears and your build is returned, possibly without warning. On the other hand LL are not likely to go out of business and if they did it would be the end of Second Life as a whole, which would make losing your land irrelevant.

A covenant isn't the same as zoning rules because it's still down to the individual landowner. There's nothing stopping a club owner wanting to move into the sim and offering to pay double the rent in exchange for a change to the covenant. With RL zoning rules that would be grounds for a charge of corruption against the local authority.



No, this is a dangerous argument. By your argument, everyone should buy on islands, never on the mainland. Which sounds great - they'll get extra protection, zoning rules, and so on. Until LL have to raise the island tier even further because, remember, they're a business too, and if your resident landlord business doesn't make money that's harsh and sad but if LL don't make money then their investors pull the plug on the entire grid. It's quite right that we should be working out more ways in which all residents can be protected, not encouraging people to play against the house.

Back to the original discussion on why free accounts must go - you can click profiles on campers and see that the majority of them are unverified. But getting rid of them? As previously mentioned, people in some countries would have difficulty setting up billing to become verified, let alone premium. Plus the whole purpose seems to be to provide a free virtual society, and excluding people because they don't have the means set up to pay seems a little elitist. And if many of these people are from other countries (I'd like to see the numbers on this), it becomes discrimination.

That being said - I agree it is unfair that those of us 'taxpayers' who are premium have to subsidize everyone else. Oh gee, it's just like government. Taxpayers support freeloaders (and before you argue with me, YES I know that not all unverified are freeloaders; some make important contributions to SL). But it feels a bit like a welfare state when I go somewhere and trip over vacant AFK camping AVs. Makes me feel like I'm walking through a pile of strung out heroin junkies.

I think the solution is simple for the original problem - eliminate camping and/or dwell numbers that encourage people to install camp pads at their sites. While I like the idea also of limiting camp pads to a certain number per sq.m. I don't think it would work because who would enforce it? The Lindens already have their hands full with other abuse reports. Most of which are caused by unverified griefers.

As it turns out, the official numbers indicate that premium subscribers are a minority of the players in SL, by a significant margin. These threads also indicate that premiums are dropping like flies because they see no benefits to being premium. Therefore, any solution would have to include extra incentives for people to pay for a premium subscription.

A small stipend and the ability to own land that can become unusable at any moment are simply not enough if Linden Labs wants to increase their premium membership. I would recommend letting premium members do things for free that others have to pay for doing - such as allowing a certain number of free file uploads per month, and not making premium members pay a fee for buying/selling Linden dollars. Allowing premium members priority access to the grid during busy times would be nice too, as well as ensuring that landowners can always access their parcels, no matter how full the sim is.

I think if premium membership starts to drop as a percentage of the population, we'll see Linden Labs putting things in place to attract more people. I hope so, anyway!

Added note: I like being a mainland landowner! I've heard too many horror stories of people losing their stuff because their island owner messed up and set something wrong. Plus, to repeat what another poster said - if there's a problem on a rental property, Linden Labs will NOT deal with you because you are NOT the owner. You are completely dependent on the good graces of your landlord.

I agree, no more free accounts after the 7 day trial period. If more people paid even a basic fee to the Lindens perhaps they could afford to hire more people to make Second Life a quality place, and perhaps they could then start providing decent customer service to those of us who are are giving them money every month to support this place.

Free accounts are free loaders, enjoying the fruits that we pay for.

They could at least validate the email address.

Forgetting that we also pay for it. You never get quite as much money when trading L$ tu US$ than the other way around. And I have doubts that every L$ that goes into the system is traded back away from the system again. This and the loss in trading all goes to LL already.

Ofcourse the people who never trade US$ to L$ are not a big help, but I have some doubts that are so many - especially those that stick around.

Besides I have some doubts as to mroe people working on a problem automatically leading to those problems resolved better. Especially in software development you reach a point where more people rather hurt, than help (ofcourse depending on the project size and organization).

But in the end the discussion is a bit misplaced. The problem is too many people eating too little resources and not the massive amount fo free accounts. Getting rid of thefree accounts would be a way around the system, but not the ultimate solution.

Zee Linden released more statistics last week, one of which is residents by country (http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/02/09/state-of-the-virtual-world-%e2%80%93-key-metrics-january-2007/) and which clearly shows there is no such thing as a large resident base living somewhere where they wouldn't have easy access to forms of payment.

You can check the same statistics for a percentage of active users vs premium. In May (happened to look since that's when I started) 1 in 10 was premium, today it's 1 in 30.
The percentage of people buying L$ has gone down by a similar margin; for every spending customer, LL is attracting 11 people who don't or won't.

The numbers may be going up and up, but the total burden is being spread out over an ever decreasing percentage of people.

ArchTx, that argument isn't even worthy of a response.

Annabelle, you're absolutely right. The problem has absolutely nothing to do with premium vs. verified vs unverifieds. The problem is camping. Plain and simple. It would be easy enough to stop. The safeguards against people just sitting inactive for days are inadequate, but I'm sute LL could do something better if they tried (by the way, what does afk stand for?). The real issue though is dwell numbers. They don't say anything about the real popularity of a place, so they make searching pointless (except for seeking places that aren't too "popular" and they force club owners into "playing the camper game" in order to compete.

Would anyone here seriously complain if they dropped the dwell calculation overnight? So why does it exist? Simple. LL wants it there, they want lots of inactive campers because they want that magical 30,000, 40,000 online figure. That's all they want, lots of concurrent, inactive users.

So they won't do anything about it. They don't care about you or me, all they care about is numbers online.

/me curls back up in her cupboard under the stairs and goes to sleep until the spring.

I say: Keep the free accounts,
but charge to post on the forums.

Good call on camping. As any newbie I tried it and realized what a waste of time it was. I'd rather buy a few Lindens.

Away from Keyboard