Is it time to move on.

Okay...not trolling here, honest...but would the following be true to say?

"Not all free accounts are griefers...but all griefers are free accounts?"

Well for the past few hours all seems ok.
I've been able to file the abuse report last night and within a few hours the abuse as stopped.
Thanks to those who gave me good responses in this thread. Allthough some responses to me seemed off my topic.
I did not understand all as too technical for me but I do hope Linden get to the bottom of the problem(s).
Thanks
Love
June

Absolutely not. I've come across a few verified assholes here.

zomg, SAT/ACT flashback!!

Wow, that's mean. Did you have to put that thing in about looking foolish?

Months ago LL posted on the blog that they would be restricting logins when things got this bad. So really it's not should they do it, but when are they going to follow through. Personally I don't think it's going to do much good unless they figure out a way to kick off the resource hog camping and land bots.

Even better would be to actually fix this pile of crap instead of all the band-aid "fixes."

LOL wow I feel like white trash now!




I like this idea, but I think that if they're going to remove everything unused for 6 months, they should email the account holder and give them a heads up. My guess is that if someone hasn't logged in for 6 months, they're probably not gonna care, but we should at least give them a chance to enter the SL website and verify that they want to remain in game (re: deployed military, etc)

If you are not paying for your account then you are part of the problem, because you are not paying for the assets and system load that your avatar uses and its inventory/activities places on the system.

Paying tier only pays for the sim service and load it places on the servers.

After three months I finally became a premium member last week. I would like to see SL be restricted to premium members only. Not because I don't like pan handling (I don't), not because I don't believe those without premium memberships add to the economy (I do). I simply believe that it would greatly reduce the number of griefers. Having seen a huge increase in griefing recently, that is something I would greatly welcome.

sorry but i dont agree with that
when i was a non premium and paying rent to a sim owner i was helping them pay their tier so i was paying for assets and system load i just wasnt paying it to ll directly
and when i shoped in shops in sl i was helping them pay their rent and tier so i was helping pay their assets and system load so in alot of ways when i was a non premium i helped pay for more assests and systems loads then i do as a premium member now

sorry but ive seen my fair share of premiums and verifieds that grief

Griefing has nothing to do with payment information. Besides, all one has to do to get a "verified" account is buy some Linden on the Lindex - no need to be a premium member. I have an alt for estate management that doesn't have a premium account - but is verified. So griefers can still use some pre-paid CC to buy some Linden and be "payment info used" / verified. Also - as stated before - all free / non-verified / no payment accounts are not griefers.

I do think LL should have limits on free accounts to manage performance. Maybe limit the number of assets in inventory, as well as restrict log ins when the grid is under heavy stress. I also think new features that cost a lot to develop and maintain - like voice - should be voted on by paying members (those paying tier to LL to provide the service - don't care about those paying to other residents as they don't provide the servers and software - renters should get their voice heard through their landlords. Costs for new services should be passed along to all (want the latest features - pay for them).

I cringe when make my tier payment on my estates each month and think about the amount of my money being spent to roll out stuff I could care less about while the rest of the grid crumbles around me.

I have nothing against free accounts - but regardless of how people not paying tier to LL contribute to SL - people who do are paying LL's bills and should get priority and a service that works.

Not true, when you are paying rent to a sim owner you are helping them pay thier tier and a profit for them that does not benefit LL. It does not help LL pay for the cost of the assets servers and system load that your avatar uses and its inventory/activities places on the system.

Paying tier only pays for the sim service and load it places on the servers.

ArchTx, I'm not sure LL looks at tier that way, and I'm not at all sure premium fees are all that major a component of revenue. LL said on the blog that 70% of their revenue comes from land fees (tier etc.). The remaining 30% presumably comes from classifieds, premium subscriberships, upload fees etc. ... probably in that order, don't you think? So premium subscriptions probably make up about 20% of their revenue.

And their revenue almost certainly does not cover their operating expenses. Wildly speculative back of envelope calcs:

42,000 premium members now (extrapolated from Blog listing 36,000 last Dec, LL said at the time premium growth was 10-30%/month. Now probably less, no 'first land' program.)
= about 420K$/mo revenue.

so 420K = .2x where x = total revenue/month

Therefore, overall revenue is about 2M$/mo, 24M$/year

Now expenses.
Let's say they have 200 employees (frankly I have no idea, just making this part up), the bulk of which are engineers. So lets say 150K/year/employee burdened,
= 30M$ in payroll & benefits alone.

Then there's real estate for San Francisco and Boston offices, SG&A (expenses for sales and operations), the actual cost of creating and deploying the grid, and taxes. Whaddaya think, 5-10M$/year?

So, in this snapshot, while premium membership fees are significant at about 5M$/year, tier fees would be about 20M$, and expenses outstrip both by far. In this guess, by over 10M$. I'm sure the numbers are way off, but I would bet they are off in underestimating expenses, not the other direction!

What's the point? Restricting grid to premium members is probably not on LL's radar. They need to concentrate on increasing SL's overall perceived value, and that is more related to overall commerce numbers (like those LL reports in their economic stats). Which means that residents paying each other money is VERY important to LL, even if those residents are completely unverified.

Oh noes I made a bet!! *runs and hides*

Welcome to the Republic of Second Life.

how does helping them pay their tier which helps pay for the server not benefit sl? and how does paying for clothing and pictures and tattoos and hair not help pay the shop owners that in turn pay ll not elp pay for the asset servers? as opposed to now me being a premium just paying my premium membership and not shopping anymore cuz i cant afford to?

Not really true, a majority of serious griefing incidents would be by unverifieds.
After all if you are going to go suicidal griefing, orbiting people, dumping replicating obscene followers in sandboxes, crashing sims, handing out moneytaking objects, playing the Nazi cards etc expecting to be banned, why would you use a premium account each time?
I don't consider people who are just ar&$h*les as REAL griefers as you can just mute them or leave.

How do the many not contributing to SL economically or content wise benifit SL? Sounds like a free ride to me for many people.

Let me ask you something then? Whats your point? I was just adding on to your remark here. Is why I wrote what i did.

Well said Chas. I'm tired of hearing premium account holders (of which I am one), complain about non paying members of SL and putting the blame on them for the constant issues that plague SL. I have numerous friends that have the dreaded "No Payment Info On File" blastered on their profiles. They all have jobs in SL (of which their contribution helps the business thrive), and they turn around and spend the $L they earn on products/items from the business's of many of these premium account holders.

Don't know. In the time I played Ultima Online once the European crashed in aweful way during a backup. The result was a complete revert to the backup of 2 days ago and downtime to repair the server.

Lots of people cried, screamed and assure that they had enough of this <censored> and that they would leave.... Even those screamed the hardest didn't leave.

Morwen.

Agreed. I think about 40% of my friendlist are with "no payment info", but already a long time in SL. They earn and spend money. So they are good for SL.

And I surely disagree with the statement that all "none payment info" are greifers... as already was said, I have seen enough big time jerks with "payment info".

Morwen.

How many years ago was taht? But these days everyone seems to be playing Online games these days. Not as many hardcore users as inthe older days. So Who knows, they might lose more then we might think. trends change is consumer sending (World Wide)......

Thank you very good answer


Usagi

if they are buying things from other content creators or paying rent to sl landlords how are they not contributing economically?

@Usagi --- well you may have some valid observations, but I have no idea what your post has to do with mine, that you quote. Perhaps you didn't mean to quote it?

The point of my post simply was: Premium membership fees are not that huge a contributer to LL's revenue or success. LL's success as a company IS, however, directly tied to the perceived viability of SL as a platform for commerce.

So, people who buy things are SL's most valuable citizens, from LL's point of view. "Payment info on file" is thus probably the best indicator of someone who buys things, and is therefore a valuable citizen to retain. (Altho there are some avatars that buy a lot who don't even have that.) Content creators are obviously very important as well, providing things to buy. But Premium ... not directly relevant.

I suspect LL feels that getting a few Lindens into the hands of noobs is a good thing, whether it be via camping or other means, because that is how noobs will get hooked on shopping. So let's not completely trash the beggars and campers, lols!