Dear Linden Lab,
Quite recently an entry was posted on your Offical Blog about "How to Improve Customer Service". There was a huge influx of ideas and suggestions from the Residents. There was also an overall opinion that Customer Service was not adequate as is. This is highlighted by the fact that Linden Lab even posted such an entry to discuss it.
A part of that post, however, was if we, the Residents, would pay for Customer Service. I believe you found out that was not met with much of a positive attitude.
Following this is now the rise in the new Island fees. This has caused quite a bit of angst within the Community. Many (myself included) have felt that the prices of Islands was ridiculously high to begin with.
I do understand the need for maintenence and the increased cost of the new hardware is also a factor. Those thoughts are one of the bais for Linden Lab's apparent decision on this new pricing.
A long time issue between Linden Lab and the Residents has been the Open Registration and the removal of any type of Required Account Verification. Most complaints revolve around the use of the unverified accounts to grief, get banned, and make another alt in 2 minutes to come back and grief again. The other major aspect of this is the rise in underage reports.
To this end I have several questions.
1) If the Main Grid is not going to have any verification of age, why even have a Teen Grid? Do not answer me with the "It's to protect the kids so they ahve thier own Grid free of adults.". If Linden Lab wished to protect the children, then Linden Lab would do all they could to prevent children from accessing the Main Grid in the first place.
2) Why is Linden Lab raising prices that will only effect a small percentage of the community? Spreading a cost out along the greatest number usually results in a negligable cost to all. I say this because, as part of my monthly tier, I expect Lindne Lab to constantly increase both software and hardware performance. It is what we, the Residents, pay Linden Lab for.
3) With #2 above: Why does Linden Lab not simply re-instate the one-time $9.95 fee after a specific trial-period? Increase the timeframe of the trail if need be (2 weeks, 30 days, etc), but place some restrictions on the Trial Accounts. Mainly things that would prevent griefers from using Trial Accounts to greif with impunity (Such as script restriction). This would still allow for the influx of new Residents into Second Life while ustilizing the vast resources that now exist with over 1 Million Residents. A statistical study may show that a lower price than $9.95 may work as well. Charge less to gain more.
4) And last question; Does Linden Lab even sit down to think of these things? I mean, if I and my friends can come up with these ideas, I would have hoped a group of corperate executives could reason them out as well.
~Jessy