Let The Paying Customers In!

When you buy L$ your money goes to other residents who are cashing out their L$, LL gets 30 cents from the purchase so you can't really compare "I pay money for SL because I buy L$" to "I pay money for SL because I pay tier".

On the other hand, I would place people who buy L$ above people who own a sim, but pay for it solely with (sold) L$ for instance and don't have any actual expenses.

Ugh, great, payism.

I myself am not a verified user...but you guys do deserve a boost. Your RL $$ keep Sl running, and you guys are the base of the economy of SL. I, however, do spend Lindens, but only those I earn in game. Not to say that other unverified users do not contribute to SL's existence or economy, they do, just more indirectly. You guys pay the money into the Linden's pockets to actually keep the game running. Whilst unverifieds get a job or make Lindens selling something, it isn't directly keeping the game running. ~~Carina

Carina, I applaud and appreciate your post. I'm very happy to see that someone who isn't a premie is here and holding an opinion that doesn't advance thier own agendas.

What a sweet post, thanks, Carina!

Really, they need to have something making it worthwhile to pay for a premium account, and there is less and less of that, rather than more.

I've concluded they don't really care about getting more premium accounts.

coco

Thank you Seola and Coco! )

I just found the premium (or 'premie-accounts') do contribute much to SL and deserved to be recognised etc...

As for the bad rap-sheet that unverified accounts get, I believe the best way to diminish that is to not cause any trouble in SL, be an unverified account, and change that stigma. Ah, but a whole different matter entirely. I digress.

~~Carina

When i made my post i never had any intention of saying free accounts are evil or anything. Basicly theres not much of a difference between the account types. This is where i think something needs done. I think premiums need more then just the ability to OWN land and get a stipend. I saw no need to stay premium anymore and went to basic back in october. It's just a waste of money the way i see it. It needs more value then it has.

So giving premiums a better chance at beating the login overflow would be 1 way. Like a paid pass or something. The more you b*tch about free accounts should be equal the more premiums are gona b*tch about how they need more abilities. About the only other solution left to do is just allow anyone to own land and make everyone the same account type. :/

A different matter, yes. But I just want to say that I have nothing against unverifieds at all. And neither do most people. I give everyone access to everything on my lot, and don't check to see if a new friend is verified, or a premium, or whatever.

I don't think it is really quite as awful a stigma as it probably appears. I think most people just wish LL would do SOMETHING to verify people - something as simple as verifying e-mail addresses, like every other place does, would be good.

coco

I'm still a Basic account, but i Monthly Purchase between Twenty, and Thirty RL dollars worth of Lindens From LL, please explain to me again how that makes me a Lesser Citizen than Someone who pays $9.95 Tier a Month?
The way i Look at it the Only difference is, I'm not encumbering myself with Land.

It Amazes me that we have this Marvelous environment where all RL differences (Excepting language) are stripped from us, and we have the chance to interacts Free of all that prejudicial Garbage, But that idea scares some people SO badly they Turn Summersaults Trying to generate an "Us Vs. Them" condition and keep Inventing the Lamest excuses why we Need to Build walls between everyone.

You want more privilage for the Tier Payment you make each Month? ~Waves my Magic Wand~ Ok, Now you have it, You can Own Land, and I can't. Happy now?

Angel.

I'm all in favor of unverifieds... but "Fair" and "Equal" aren't always the same.... It may be equal, but it doesn't seem fair to make a multi-sim owner to wait 20-30 minutes to log in, just because they're in the queue behind 5,000 unverified residents.

Hopefully, login stampedes after patch day won't go this badly in the future and waiting to log in won't exceed a minute at the most, which would render the entire issue pointless... but if this is an indication of things to come, it probably deserves some consideration.

Apropos of nothing:

23 purchases of L$'s from the lindex (each with a 30cent fee) contributes about the same amount of USD to LL as the monthly cost of the cheapest Premium plan.

Unless you are purchasing dollar by dollar, each transaction is only 30 cents.

Even if you did 3 10 dollar purchases, you are only giving 90 cents.

Quite a bit different from 10 bucks a month.

And you aren't purchasing that from LL, you are from other resi's most of the time.

That's actually a good point, Seola. But if $0.30 per transaction is what LL is getting from Lindex $ purchases, where are the other US Dollars (aside from the transaction fee) going? Back into the Lindex?

I pay island tier of $15 USD a month but I too think that there should be no preference given to "premiums" or "verifieds" or anyone else. What's a 20 minute wait or whatever? I guess I just don't charge back into SL after an update - knowing full well that there is going to be carnage with all the bugs Then again, I do not run any type of business so my reasons for being there are not the same and I understand the urgency in that regard

LL does sometimes mint new L$ to sell on the Lindex,
but *MOST* are being sold by other residents, the USD go into their accounts. (minus their 3.5% fee to LL for selling on the LindeX)

If it's just 20 minutes, sure no problem.. but what if it's an hour or more? It could be particularly infuriating to be getting tons of IM's forwarded to email from angry customers and not be able to log in to try to fix the problem. I suppose I should clarify... I'm not saying that autmatically justifies it... but it does justify giving the matter of 'fair' vs. 'equal' some consideration.

My point was there is nothing wrong with unverified accounts, much less basic accounts that are verified.

There really is no reason why they couldn't institute something, though, that makes a person accountable. Such as testing to see if the e-mail address they sign up with is actually a valid one.

And there really isn't anything wrong with beefing up a premium account so more will want them, for that matter, though I disagree with some of the suggestions offered. Instead, they are cutting the things you get with them.

coco

If said multi-sim owner is paying tier entirely from L$ gained from rentals I don't see why they should even get preferential treatment over another basic who actually does spend US$.

I'm sure quite a few who own a sim/several sims, yet don't have any monthly US$ expenses related to SL which is arguably as free as an unverified is.

But they work for it. It's not like it's poof and you own a sim you rent out. They've paid to build or taken the time themselves, are constant customer service, etc. They maintain islands so that people who don't want to get verified have a place to live, without them, you'd probably have to go premium anyways then.

I never said they weren't putting in an equivalent amount of work/effort, my point was that paying customer is a very relative thing when it comes to SL .

Just because someone is a paying customer of LL doesn't mean they actually pay any real money and on the opposite side you have non-paying customers who do spend real money and keep SL running financially.

If noone bought any L$ then the sim owner couldn't cash out and be a paying customer, so why should that sim owner get preferential treatment?

Things like 'work' or 'effort' or 'profitability' can't be checked at log in.... so a merit based priority queue would be flawed, gamed, screamed about... etc.

I'm no land baron... I've nothing really at stake in this issue, but to me it would seem to make sense that if someone has invested heavily into SecondLife to provide services that many of the rest of us feel is valuable then they should get preferential queuing to get in world if there are long delays.

Shouldn't matter if they're paying out of pocket, or re-directing funds paid to them by other residents.

Think of a shopping mall... The owner of a massive 3 story department store and someone that wants to browse the newspaper stand are standing in line at the doors waiting for the mall to open the day after thanksgiving. Neither 'work' for the mall itself.

Obviously, the situation would never happen in RL, because the mall owner would have a key to let himself in through a service door not used by customers.

Anyway... I just hope that we never again see days like we did a year ago where there were 3 to 5 minute waits to log in during prime time... or worse.

Yes, but that owner has invested quite a large sum of money to own.

As i remember, LL only created the Unverified accounts so they can boost their user base to the 1million user mark. Right now its way past that so why is this still going on? I think it's about time to close the gates to oblivion now thx. The ones who came through already can stay though.

LMAO - I am sure they appreciate that, Yiffy

*moves to feedback*

Hehe I call it "Gates to oblivion" cuz I've had to deal with my fair share of Scamps lately.