Why Free Accounts Must Go-Part II

You probably wouldn't pay a weekly $16 fee for EverQuest 1 right? but people do it! Why? because they love it. Nothing wrong with loving a game. It may have really old graphics, but it has something that attracts those people to it. When i first came to SL i HAD to pay a subscription cost. I saw no problem in doing so. Yea it's free now, but still... I would go back to that old way in a heartbeat if i had better service/bonuses in exchange for it.


I'm not a beta user but i had to pay a $10 sign up fee when i started. the free accounts came into existence i think in summer of 2005... Then eventually they became unverified. Then all hell broke lose, gates of oblivion, yata yata.


I think it would be a good idea to enable property zoning (commercial and residential). However, Who do you expect to enforce this? Like explained in another topic, Linden Lab can't even stop joe griefer from caging people in the welcome area... How do you expect them to tell us what we can and can't build on the land we bought? Prims aren't flagged to be residential or commercial so it isn't like "ok i wana build a house.. I should use Residential cubes for my walls so it won't get returned".

You raise a good point about allowing us to access our own land regardless to how many people are in the same sim. I still see no way to make this work, but it is a good idea. Perhaps if you come home and your sim is crowded it will teleport all the free users home? Of course there will be a lot of complaining about that. LOL

I admit I'm against the whole free account deal, but i don't hate the people behind them. Just the griefers and idiotic newbs. Cuz as we all know... Griefers and idiot newbs are evil and should be sent through a cheese grader laced with anthrax! The users who plan on leading a life here and not being jerks, can stay AFAIK.

You are second-class people for some unfortunately.

I have nothing against paying non-premium members. But whole lot against unverifieds. They must go.

hehe i read the bottom but just trying to make a point here

so uh would you agree then that all us "free guys" *raises hand as having not paid for about 30 ish days as initially a free account just pack our bags and leave then this would be good no?

I mean freebie accounts are the cause therefore they are ebil and must die

LL has provided the tools for individual landowners to take this into their own hands however nobody (at least in commercial or rental areas) are willing to do it for fear of A) cutting off potential customers and B) potentially getting a bad rap as someone who is shallow and elitist (as many have been accused of being in this very thread) yet if say the owners of the popular (and I mean really popular not just camp chair popular) stores, clubs and such started doing this yes they're numbers would drop sharply however others would probably follow suit.

heh its not possible since sims are owned (well as much as they can be) by individuals not by the company the company basically is hosting them and we pay them money to host the sim (like a website really)

sims once they fill will not let anymore people in the issues is that sometimes a casino or high traffic club opens its doors on a small parcel of land so they attract hundreds but they do it on a small piece of land. The resources are thus being hogged making it impossible for the rest of the users who may in fact own more land and be entitled to more resources then them as a result of it to get to their land

So the issue is proportion. A casino that insists on building itself onto a small say 4k plot of land really should not be handling more then say 10 or possibly 15 visitors max at any given time but they make these boxes of camping chairs and pack like 50 chairs into the box in an effort to have "traffic" this hogs resources

if people used them like with knowledge and some common sense and maybe the guy with the 4k plot put in like 3 or 4 chairs then all would be rosey with the world. Linden lab isn't limiting their resources and charging them a rate proportional to the amount they can use they charge a flat rate so people will insist on using the crowbar method and forcing more into a tiny space. Plus you have the slots etc and all kinds of wierd scripts running this also drains resources put that all together and there is a problem

creating instances would mean that people would have to pay for each new instance created as a new server is added to the cluster so that would require linden lab to put in some kind of sliding scale per package per day/hour also I doubt they are built that way hehe

when you buy an entire sim you are basically paying the hosting for that sim they set up a server for you and it has so much power blah blah blah its like when you invest in a dedicated server for your website

mainland or private sims that are divided up and rented out is like the "shared" virtual hosting package

the only problem is that Linden lab is not charing bandwidth hogs for their usage if they did that I would assure you most of these casinos and bandwidth hogs would not exist hehe

Hmmmmm......I had a mini-rant about this a couple of weeks back and it looks like it's not going to be resolved unless Linden either put a block on "new free accounts" or upgrade their servers to take the strain. I've only been playing since the beginning of December when the average amount of ppl playing online was around 18k. Over a few weeks there was much publicity, worldwide, about this game and now I see an average of 29k ppl all online at the same time - in a matter of WEEKS! /gasp. It's the only online game I have ever known to allow permanent free accounts and now I am beginning to wonder exactly why I bother to pay? I was only on the free account for one night before I up-graded to a premium account, stupidly thinking that there would be a benefit! The only benefit I can see is the fact that I can "buy" land rather than simply "rent". I'm seriously contemplating selling my land (for a vast profit no doubt) and moving my toon back to a freebie. It simply HAS to be the recently publicity that has caused the massive influx of people here. I think it only fair to limit the time a "free account" has to run, at the end of the day, it's the FEE-PAYING-RESIDENTS who keep Lindens afloat and why the hell should be pay for something that is rapidly becoming sub-standard? /rant off.

Just a few points of reference. In January, almost 5 million USD were used to buy Linden. That is an insane amount of money. Also, over 6 billion L$ changed hands. That means that the entire supply of linden changed hands more than 3 times in a single month. How much do you want to bet that many of these transactions came from unverifieds?

Also, remember that you don't have to be verified to buy L$. There are a number of 3rd party sites that will sell to the unverified.

Zoning doesnt work for a few reasons many sims currently are split up. You also massively limit the amount of living and shop space and a sim dedicated to a completely commercial area can be a worse thing then a mix. Talk to the club owners and try to reason with them to cut out some of their camping chairs. Many people just complain about things but never turn around and do a thing about what they are complaining about. Yes when the entire area is taken up its a pain but at the same time forcing people to live in a zoned area is a ridiculous request.

Yes many unverified accounts do camp as do some basic accounts and some (very few premium accounts). I've been in SL awhile myself and as a Club owner Ill speak..... Yes most club in SL are a waste of resources and many people just go to clubs to get money. Not all clubs are like this though so to say all clubs are bad is another silly thing. As i stated above try to talk to the club owners we're not all bad and maybe if you gave people more of a chance talking wise things may go smoother. They may be total jerks they may not but you never know if you dont talk to them.

Regardless of Free accounts unverified or basic are not a real problem LL seem to be scaling much nicer lately but yesterday and sunday there were problems with hardware. These things happen and it cant be helped. All im saying is give people a chance and talk to them...

how much land do you run your club on and how many concurrent visitors do you have lol

since there is a max # that a sim will hold before it says no more I would hope you take into consideration that if you hold an event and fill the sim that you are stopping others from shopping and getting to their houses

if you are doing it with a measure of common sense you dont fill sims and lag out the entire sim then its not an issue

I think you know this already the point being everyone likes to be free and do what the heck the want in reality it doesn't work you will always have the guy that wants to run a club or casino on a tiny plot of land and put in 50 camping chairs

if they were a reasonable sort and had researched it they would nto be doing that. typically I have found for the most part that neighbours who are doing whatever they want aren't that reasonable

and the nicest commercial sims i have ever been in a zoned ones by the way and they do quite well and have a nice feel to them

for instance i love midnight city i just go there because of the feel even if i dont shop

anyhow i can see someone who hasn't looked around at zoned sims they are of benefit to most people who live and/or have their shop thingy in them or casino or theatre because they are zoned and people are kept in check a bit

by the way there are a lot of zoned sims out there with clubs and casinos on them they simply aren't allowed to squeeze 50 campng chairs into one spot they get asked to remove the chairs so the clubs/casinos are nicer as well

such a rule was just implemented in a zoned commercial set of sims in dreamland due to an issue with a casino now people are only allowed to have a certain amount of camping chairs per sq meter it works everyone is happy

I bet moer people actualy go into the casinos to actulay gamble as well hehe

All of this rage against free accounts is misplaced, and really it is just so much bullshit. Really, I am just tired of hearing this crap.

I have a free account, and I put a great deal of money into the SL economy, at least 30,000 L$ a month. I pay rent on several properties on private islands, run a very successful business, help to support my community with cash prizes and tournament fees, buy newbs essential gear from time to time, and buy lots of stuff.

I could not possibly have less interest in owning mainland. Been there, done that, can't imagine anything more useless to spend money on. Seriously, the single benefit of having a premium account is not worth 1 $L, so why have a premium account?

If there were concrete benefits to being premium I would have no problem whatsoever moving my accounts back to premium like they were before. Higher logon priority would be nice, but is still not enough to get my $USD. Better customer support would certainly do it. Some sort of service and reliability contract would cinch the deal for certain. None of which I can imagine that LL will put in place any time in the forseeable future.

Until LL offers more than the ability to own mainland, premium account fees are a tax on people that are bad at math, in my opinion.

I don't doubt that some club/casino/mall owners are ignorant of the problems they are causing and may respond well to reason. However, some people in SL are just plain nuts and will go off on you for looking at them sideways.

Your point is a good one - so many people complain about problems they've had, but how many of them have actually bothered to try to talk to the person they believe is causing the problem? It's so easy for us to hide behind our keyboards and point fingers.

It occurs to me that these people who set out 30-40 camping chairs in their facility really are either ignorant or just plain stupid. I've seen some of these places - the club/casino/mall is full of campers, but the slot machines and shops sit empty. They draw the traffic in, but for what? People who actually want to spend money can't get in and go somewhere else.

I agree. When I made remarks about the camping chairs in a mall in a neighbor sim, I was next day banned... Not that I mind, I don't buy stuff at shops with camping chairs...

Morwen.

Not really sure why that's a point? Unverifieds can't buy L$ and most of that money is going to other residents, not LL.

Take a look at the economy page (http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy_stats.php) and the monthly spending distribution:

Assume that the first two rows are all unverifieds spending the maximum amount listed and you get: L$500 * 86,710 + L$2000 * 28,700 = about L$ 100 million

Those 115k residents account for just over L$ 100 million, not quite the "many" you were implying.

As it stands now the only reason i can see to have a premium account is if you like to buy and sell land a lot or want to have a sim of your own otherwise they are pretty much useless. They did have some merit when stipends were higher but over time they have chiped away at the benefits to being a premium user so that the only real reason to be one if if you want to buy A LOT of land or have a sim of your own

so yeah its just a bad use of money i can take that 10 bucks a month and buy money off the lindex if i want to buy ready made items and get nicer land from some private guy and more of it to and for less tier..

After 7 days give then the option to pay a one time fee of 9.95..If after they don`t want to pay the account is still able to play but only for (x number of hours per 24 hours like 5 hour etc.) This will reduce loads and keep the dwelling number real, along with during prime time reduce those money chair and casino overloads.

Re: how to enforce zoning

Set up the Search listings (Places, Events, Classifieds, etc.) so that a parcel can only be listed in the correct category? So that, for instance, if a shop or club wants to post an ad in a commercial category, they have to be standing on a commercially zoned parcel? There'd still be people who'd gladly post in the wrong categories, but there's a fair number of us who automatically boycott businesses that misuse ads anyway. It wouldn't be a perfect solution, but might go some way towards enforcement.

The only real problem I see with zoning is First Landers who either don't know yet what they want to do with their land or want it to double it as a shop and a home until they can afford something more. But that just means we'd need "Mixed Use" zoning as well as residential, commercial, and "public service" zoning.

Fact:
Since open free accounts the numbers of users has risen from 800k to 3 million plus yet the economy has actually gone down.

For everyone of you free account holders who partake in this discussion there are 50,000 who just don't give a shit. They see the stories about pople getting rich and come in droves looking for money. They chase out the good people and people who actually are in SL to be creative and have fun and even spend money.

Don't get me wrong, free account users who try and make something of SL are fantastic and are to be commended but you are seeing it from your point of view and that's not how the world work. The phrase "lowest common denominator" is very much in play here.

I feel Linden Lab did it with the best intent but also to get the numbers up to bring in phat commerical venuse to create virtual shopping malls working with online sales as an alternative to flat 2D web pages. I have some very good ideas on how to do this but I'm about to start writing to some of these publications that being in SL has been increasingly unsavory experiance with naked noobs wearing attached penises to griefers (most just nuicence griefing) and all kinds of scams, begging and harrassment. No one will want to go shopping in SL where they can have thier little girl on their lap to run into that while shopping at the Sears Virtual catalog.

What can LL do? Not sure, limit time per day someone with a free account can be online? Limit their use of scripts? Attachments? PG skins? Probably a few things I suspect but I know what I can do. Make a clear argument to the media why Second Life went bad and it has gone bad. I'm having a hard time wanting to build, make clothes, AVs or Jewely. I used to make a nice bit of change in sales a month but with 3 million users now you'd think those sales would go up, they arn't. The spenders are finding other places to go and no longer spending in Second Life.

Emily Darrow Master Builder of Athena, Argentum, Sigil,
Silver and Spice: Clothes, Furniture, Photography, Jewelry and weapons.

Well are i remebered one linden says. " I am very excited about this opening of the accounts creations. BLA BLA BLA" YEA right! Not only did they kill off alot of good users, but the ****** alts taht were created caused alot of problems for people! Tell the lindens about griefters all they says is file a abuse report. Then they changed it bla bla!!!!!!!!! All LLabs did was maked more under age people inthe game, they just moved fromt he teen game to the adult game. Someone wakeup the sleeping lindens and tell them WE ARE NOT WOW!.................I just hope they enjoy mostly full of under 18 now.............

This is exactly how i feel about it too, yet the free account people still butcher everything i say like I'm trying to say their ALL bad when I'm not. Seriously those people need to chill out and eat something. The only free account people i dislike are "Griefers, Idiots, Campers, advertisements of RL crap, and newbs who don't bother to read instructions (more idiots)". Those who come here to actually USE SL for other or it's intended purposes are ok, untill someone does something stupid that i haven't listed yet.

Fear not Emily. I'm spending heartily.

The fact remains, even if you build a categorized system (like residential/commercial), and leave it up to other people to fill it with content, their not all gona put things in the right places. I am for this categorization, however it would require the lindens to actually log in and fly around looking at all the builds.

It's like the website, wincustomize. You have to heavily moderate that site, or people will upload their skins/wallpapers in the wrong areas. Same thing with SLExchange. If you place your product in the wrong category, the mods have to go around fixing them.

I'm right there with y'all. Seems like waaaay too many people here have nothing better to do than get defensive and start hurling personal insults when they don't like something you say. May I add to the list of stupid things people do, making great efforts to misunderstand what one says in order to pick fights and call names?

I like the forums much better now that I've discovered how to ignore the posts of unpleasant people.

Edit: This was pointed out to me in another forum thread and I'll pass it along for the benefit of others who haven't yet discovered it: Just click the name of the person whose words you find to be a waste of space and go to their profile page. In the upper right corner click on Add <name> to Your Ignore List.

where does this fact come from?

land prices are way up and the value of the linden agaisnt the USD is way up also.

I would be interested to know the source of that part of your arguement.

About the residential/commercial zoning idea. Even if you build a categorized system (like residential/commercial), and leave it up to other people to fill it with content, their not all gona put things in the right places. I am for this categorization, however it would require the lindens to actually log in and fly around looking at all the builds. The website known as SLExchange has to be heavily moderated, or people will place their products in the wrong categories. I know this since i use it. Does anyone believe that the lindens are gona want to do this on a daily basis? it's hard enough trying to separate PG from Mature, since you still see naked people in the welcome area from time to time.

eliminating traffic numbers would eliminate most of these issues stated by the OP

It would also largely eliminate the need for more av's per sim - since the number of Paying customers in a club would hardly be enough to fill one.
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Free verified accounts are completely legitimate - I made several hundred thousand lindens before I ever went premium. Simply my spending those lindens and selling the ones i didnt need contributed far more to the economy then a typical 9.95 month person. (for those who have heard of the macro economic principle of creation of wealth)
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Unverifed accounts are trickier - one arguement is they give LL a perfect out becuase they put the blame of your content on YOU, the content provider. You are supposed ot require them to be over 18 by not allowing unverfieds on your land if you provide naughty content.

Linden labs thus becomes only the web hosting service so to speak. Of course they are an issue becuase no one actually blocks unverfieds in their place of business.

Unverifeds can buy lindens - through third party sources - but they contribute to the economy ANYWAY even if they dont.

Simply becuase they have jobs and spend lindens in game. Each linden dollar respent improves the economy.

Even the money they get camping helps the economy - subsidized by the camping chair hosts - however i dont think it is worth the downsides.