Why Free Accounts Must Go-Part II

For every Jopsy Pendragon there's 1,000 Imagriefer36 Altmans. Maybe 10,000. You're not one in a million yet, but it's just a matter of time.

I'd go for "unverifieds and by-invitation areas" if "by-invitation areas" included all the mainland and all islands that hadn't explicitly opted-in to unverifieds.

Possibly because any official announcement on financial dificulties is going to create a land sale panic and reluctance to buy any new land.

Aww, come on... I'm one in 4 million by now.

Question is... for each 10,000 Imagriefer Altmans... how many Shortimer T. Ourists and Imagonna Buyorrentland's do we get too?

More? Less? Enough?

All I know is we've got too many SpinnyCube MarketGeeks.

Ain't that the truth.

Makes me wish we could turn on artificial gravity and have those floating abominations all fall to the ground and break.

Free accounts are not causing the ad farm problem. This problem is caused by land owners who take a nice lot and split it up into 4 sq m parcels. They're making money at the expense of ruining the looks of the mainland. If you want to help eliminate ad farms and spinning cube wastelands, join the Arbor Project group. We are doing something about it.

Just for my own personal contribution to cleanin up the existing mess, I have decided to settle in a sim that has ad farms. I am trying to buy up the plots as they become available and as I can afford it. So far I have managed to carve out a small park beside my house from what was formerly a junkyard of ugly flying signs. The ad farm will probably never completely disappear, but it's much better than it used to be.

I am here in my alt account....which is free....cruising for scripts, actually. I have much the same problem as you do. I dont know about banning free accounts, as SL will lose a lot of diversity. My thought is to charge tier based on sim usage. If you continuously have 30 people in your casino, you should pay 75% more tier. I am lagged out regularly by a Goldrush casino, whose unapologetic owner believes that he or she has a right to all of the sims resources although they own less than an eigth of the sim. That's my two cents worth......back to hunting for scripts

Paying users are bailing out in regiments. Banning the free accounts would cut Sls population by about 80 to 90 percent.

Hey I had to go to a Free account for health purposes.
I was spending over 3,000.00 Real US dollars a year in SL. Had my Premium account. Owned my own Island. I was paying 10 times as much then its worth. Half the time SL was down and when it was up, it was laggy. I have called SL so many times trying to get things fixed..they no long answered their phone..They always claim its my computer and some how I AM INCOMPETENT..
Premium Members are getting NO extra Benifits for being a Loyal Paying Member and you can do anything a Premium Member can do on a Free Account.
So to reduce my Screaming anger, reduce High blood preasure, and to get out of paying for a theropest for Anger management clases, I throw up my hands and just do what Obvioulsy SL is driveing me to and just downgrade to a Free Account. Why should I pay for what others get for free? I have lost 10 friends over the last year that have just gotten totaly fed up. And lets face it, what is realy keeping me in SL is my friends. It sure is not SL's fantastic Programming.
As for your theroy that new members start out on free Accounts and upgrade to a Paid account.. you are totaly dreaming.. check the Math. Yes you will have some that will upgrade.. but as soon as they realize that they messed up they will downgrade.
4.5 million Members and SL can't handle 35,000 online at once. If they were paying Members SL would be in the Black. But that is not the situation. Those are mostly free accounts.
I would love to see SL put a stop to free accounts. that 4.5 Million Members would drop drasticly but alot of them would be forced to dig the money out of their pockets and start paying. Lag would be reduced and much more serious players would still be here. SL's servers would not be working near as Hard and Premium Members can get some respect and attention.

"Dwell", in SL's old usage, was gone before *I* started LAST JULY.

The way they register traffic, on the other hand, is the - as far as I know - single remaining reason for people to have camping chairs out at all. Big pain in the a$$, if you ask me. Though I've seen a few camping locations that specifically lock out unverifieds due to past griefer problems.

I've seen some island covenants specify "Camping chairs: No more than 1 per 1024sqm of property." Which allows some traffic boost, but still keeps the area usable. Something simaler for the mainland is not that bad an idea.

And as far as the low-end freebie market? It's not just the casinos - A lot of businesses just starting out seem to have something of a freebie collection, as well as the freebie centers themselves. It's another way of drawing traffic that doesn't involve money trees.

yeah to us old people its the same difference Dwell payments were based on traffic numbers too - "dwell" was how many avs hung out. SO the numbers were the same.

Anyhow there only seems 3 reasons to keep traffic none of which im terribly impressed with,

1- Linden likes the numbers online artificially inflated

2- People prefer traffic gaming to alphabetical gaming

3 - People consider camping a job for noobies

Theres a Huge reason to get rid of traffic numbers - It will improve the quality of second life for EVERYONE =)

Number 1 is the biggest I think. "Look (insert multi national corporation here). This many people online at once. and they all could be viewing your content."

I think you've hit on something here.

Traffic is one of the few arbitrary "Games" to play in SL that has public a score anymore.

The other games have no "visible progress" that others can see, or that one can compare themselves to others on:

"Friend Collecters" (socialites)
"Money Collecters" (entrepeneurs)
"Stuff Collecters" (shoppers)
home builders
explorers

How do they know when they've reached "Teh w1n!" ?
How do people know where they are in relation to their competitors? The money game is all private and personal.

Traffic is one of those bizarre things that give many parcel owners reason to log in... reason to improve things or put themselves out there.

Here's an insidious thought, LL is probably pro-traffic because:
People squander huge sums of L$'s on classifieds to get traffic up.
The more spent on classifieds, the less sold L$ on the lindex.
The less sold on the L$ by residents... the more LL can sell their own L$, for a more direct profit.


Traffic is the last "Game". I really do miss the ratings games, like popularity, appearance and building. Jockying for position on the building high scores board was a strong motivator in my first year. =)

I agree, they really need to bring the rest of the ratings back, and the ratings board, for the competitive folks to go after. Without charging people for ratings as if folks were getting payouts from them even after they killed the payouts.

I do not miss the old griefing ambushes at telehubs where they would give negative ratings to strangers for the hell of it.

Heck keep the charge, make ratings: The 3rd party Classifieds

About 2 years ago they began 'expiring' ratings over time, I'm not sure if it still occurs though, haven't been watching.

I think I had two neg ratings my whole time they existed... one from my first day.... (I orbited someone that was ceaselessly griefing me in a sandbox to earn that one. *blush*) The other one I talked myself out of.

I do not miss telehubs either, personally. I'm not asking for negative ratings OR telehubs back, just suggesting that without the ratings bonus there's no point in charging money for ratings, and there's advantages to having rating be, well, rated, you know.

I, agree that free UNVERIFIED accounts should be gone with. They need to either go back to the old system of forcing you to verify your age. Or go back to the real old system of paying a one time single fee of $10 for a basic account. I would gladly forked over the $10.

With the 7 days of "do anything for free" too.
Of course, I only used about 10 minutes of my 7 days before I got infuriated with the system, but....