Sick of this....

It's getting to the point where it looks like free accounts are more important to Linden Lab than paying accounts because I've about had it with not being able to build because of lag, move because of lag and even connect to SL because there are so many free accounts using up bandwidth and server loads that it's just a joke to pay for it.

I've gone from spending 300 to 500 Dollars in SL to trying to get my tier down to less than $40 because it's just not worth it and I think there are a great many paying users who are starting to feel the same.

Some of you might try and justify it and say nothing is wrong with free accounts but it comes down to loads and when 90% of the server and bandwidth loads are from free accounts it's us 10% who pay for that and it's bullshit! Why should my money go to a bunch of free accounts that make it impossible to enjoy second life? Why!

Linden Lab please dump free accounts!

Yeah dude! routing because the routers are maxed and over loaded with free accounts connected all needing the resources of those routers! DUH!

Many of these "free" accounts are contributing just as much as your account by virtue of renting on a private island and making and selling stuff to other residents.

absolutely, ed44. They are buying clothes and skins, paying club staff.... get rid of them, watch a lot of business dry up.

oh yeah "many" as in what 5% of the load. I don't give a flying *&^%! get rid of them, if they can spend money on renting then they can afford to pay for an account! No Excuses!

I have no issue with free accounts, however lets not delude ourselves. Buying from another resident does absolutely nothing to directly contribute to the LL coffers.

here here *appluads* I agree Crist lets all rip our payment info tags off and go newbie alt no payment freebie!!! it'll be anarchy weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!! bwaaahahahahaha!!!

not everyone just because they can pay rent wants to do a premium account
i had a premium account but never found land i wanted i rented starting at a 4k plot up to a 16ksqm plot and now im back down to a 8ksqm plot...but renting that plus paying fees made no sense for me so i dropped premium...between my shops and me hosting games or dj'n i make everthing i need in game to pay for my land and my stream and all the shopping i do so to me my account is just as good as anyone elses i just work hard to never have to buy $L only sell it

what we buy and pay for does contribute to LL coffers...my rent goes to the island owner and she uses it to pay LL tier

items i buy in shops that money goes to the item owner then the landlord then LL again

so yes all of our money contributes to LL coffers

Personally I have nothing against free accounts (think its disgusting that you can tell who has a free account, but thats another issue), but the huge influx of free users do present problems and we all suffer as a result.

There should be more to being a prem member than just land ownership and a pokey stipend. Things like priority logins, access to _real_ support and abuse resolution that actually goes somewhere, but LL will never stick its neck out like that.

The house always wins

Okay lets all do that then, everyone drop their premium accounts...

So...
who is going to pay for the cost of running SL now?

if no one has a paying account they can't rent land because they can't own it....

what makes you think we will keep this up paying your share of the operating costs and upgrades to SL?

Or are you just a selfish greedy asshole trying to gleam as much money off SL as you can without paying your share?

4 millions users and only 10% paying = ???

P.S. in May of last year there was 600,000 users and 90% paying do the math.

*looks all sheepish* ok point taken Emily *puts payment info tag back on
*

how do you feel none of us are paying for operating costs...my rent goes to the fees for the island....therefore its paying for that operating system i just pay someone else instead of LL..it is no different then you except with me there is a middle man and normally people like me that rent our land pay more then those that buy so i contribute more then you not to mention how much shopping i do and other things i pay for in sl

heck lets go by when people started sl i should get in before you cuz i started first...thats just ridiculous ....same as not allowing all accounts on

I feel for ya, i can't even log in right now... And when i was logged in everything was slow. Even trying to delete something, took 10 seconds. Trying to place something in the contents of a object, took longer, or failed.

I was a free account holder for my first month, before I went premium. I was grateful for having that free time to find my way about and learn how to make things.


However, if there is a problem with too many free accounts clogging up the works, I can see it might be sensible to make limits. So perhaps they should be free and unlimited access for one month, after which residents are restricted to 2 hours of SL in each 24.

That might not solve the problem, though, as there seem (from my observations of profiles of people I meet) that many are very new newbies who havbe been in less than a month.

So, if everyone had paid accounts, and the colo had network issues, who would you have a tantrum about and blame then?

I doubt that the hardware knows who has paid and who hasn't.

From the blog, for those who may have missed it:

Contingency Measures to Ensure Service as Second Life Grows Friday, February 16th, 2007 at 3:04 PM PST by: Robin Linden
Since September concurrency rates have tripled, to a peak last week of over 34,000. While we love that so many people are enjoying Second Life, there have been some challenging moments in keeping up with the growth, resulting in the now somewhat infamous message “heavy load on the database”. When this happens it usually means that the demand for transmission of data between servers is outstripping the ability of the network to support it.

When the Grid is under stress, resulting in content loss and a generally poor experience, we would like to have an option less disruptive than bringing the whole Grid down. So we’ve developed a contingency plan to manage log-ins to the Grid when, in our judgment, the risk of content loss begins to outweigh the value of higher concurrency. Looking at the concurrency levels, it’s clear heaviest use is on the weekends.


When you open your log-in screen and see in the upper right hand corner Grid Status: Restricted, you’ll know that only those Second Life Residents who have transacted with Linden Lab either by being a premium account holder, owning land, or purchasing currency on the LindeX, will be able to log-in. Residents who are in Second Life when this occurs will only be affected if they log-out and want to return before the grid returns to normal status.

At the same time, new account registrations will be closed.

We hope that we won’t have to implement this contingency plan. As you know, we have regularly improved the Grid’s ability to manage higher concurrency rates, and have comfortably doubled our capacity in recent months. If we determine, however, that we do need to limit log-ins, there will be an announcement made in-world and also on the blog.

Scaling the Grid continues to be our highest priority, and over the next several months we’ll be working on the following:
- additional caching systems
- reducing write load on the central database by partitioning or removing data
- addressing critical bottlenecks
- deploying more internal ‘web services’.

Beyond that we are building ambitious plans for re-architecting the Grid, so that in the future we can realize the full potential of the Second Life Grid to support millions of concurrent users.

Curious.. We're just south of 29,000 concurrent sessions at the time of this writing. Since this is once again about the paying vs the non paying customers...

How would you frame your complaint if 90% of this concurrency load were premium accounts? Who should be shown the door then?

It may not seem completely fair, or level headed, and maybe in some cases it isn't, but all those "free" accounts out there loading up the grid are contributing in more ways than just the in-world economy.

It is probably the most expeditious path to the stability we all want. Problems on a system with this level of complexity can really only be identified when they're made manifest, and they are made manifest by the increased load. Once they're identified, they can be corrected. Yes, it's brute force break/fix in many ways.

The bottom line is that this grid absolutely must be able to sustain a substantially greater concurrency load than we see even today.. that is a core committment of Linden Lab to their investors, and to those who sit on the Board of Directors.. and no matter how much this gets your panties in a wad, Linden Lab are accountable first and foremost to the Board, and the folks who funded the venture, and only secondarily to those who demand that the freebies must go, so that "us paying customers" can enjoy the benefits we believe we are entitled to. Here's the kicker - there is no such entitlement.

Roll with the growing pains, or move on to something else. Your absense will only be noticed by the reduction of bitch fests within the blogs and forums.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled bitch fest.

I love little speeches like that, Zaphod.

No such entitlement.

That has such a ring to it.

So . . . we pay for SL, but we aren't actually entitled to get in, or to use it?

I think it's nice that LL itself doesn't actually say such things.

That would be sort of like if Kentucky Fried Chicken starts telling me that just because I paid them $4.95, I shouldn't expect to get the actual MEAL on the menu, as that would be entitlement.

That would be a real good way to run off all your customers, I think.

Actually, they do.

1.6 Second Life is subject to scheduled and unscheduled service interruptions. All aspects of the Service are subject to change or elimination at Linden Lab's sole discretion.

Linden Lab reserves the right to interrupt the Service with or without prior notice for any reason or no reason. You agree that Linden Lab will not be liable for any interruption of the Service, delay or failure to perform, and you understand that except as otherwise specifically provided in Linden Lab's billing policies posted at http://secondlife.com/corporate/billing.php, you shall not be entitled to any refunds of fees for interruption of service or failure to perform. Linden Lab has the right at any time for any reason or no reason to change and/or eliminate any aspect(s) of the Service as it sees fit in its sole discretion.

(I think this should pretty adequately cover the First Land issue as well)

I don't remember business being bad before 6/6/06.

Perhaps you can prove me wrong, but people did fine before free accounts.

I think too many are clumping all free accounts together as one..There are alot that do contribute..I think we would be foolish to think they don't but there are also alot that do not..It's one of the double edged swords..the damned if you do or don't thing..but even the ones not contributing may only be that way because they have not seen what is out there yet..in time most of those will aswell..like 80% of the people that try sl leave within a few hours or days because it is not for them...it could be alot worse..

I went premium account a couple hours after i joined mainly because i enjoyed it that much and thought the people were great..Infact made another avatar a couple months back cause i had so much fun making the one i have now that i wanted to enjoy doing it over again...I use the same pay information with that one and it was only a one time fee to make her of like 9.00 US i think it was..When one is not able to log out the other can log in..she has access to the same things as my main so it's just a matter of switching names on loging..that is if i don't feel like finding a sim that will let my main log in..

There are ways to deal with the issues until they are handled down the road..
I sure know one thing..I probably know more people with free accounts than i do with premi's..

If they were told one day they were cut off from sl because they had a free account and could not pay because of this reason or that reason or they just didn't have the funds to spare..
It would be a blow to my sl and a blow to everyone elses..It's not something that we would not feel in one way or another..

I know Tyci from working in the same places she does..I also know she has a big following from the job she performs in sl that helps buisnesses thrive with traffic..Alot of my free account friends help in one way or another to help things thrive..Some grew into sim owners some buisness owners with premi accounts some doing it with free accounts..I don't know anyone that came into sl without testing it first with the free account option..I don't know too many that would pay to try it..

Infact when you first get into sl it's not close to a taste of what it is..Some don't get a real taste of what sl really holds for them for a month or two..

Some come into sl only for profit..Alot of us come in for the experience,fun,communication with people all over the world Ect..

Maybe if we showed more experiences to those coming in and helped them on thier way to what SL has to offer we would get more contribution from the ones that are still learning so they can be in the same shoes we are alittle faster than when they are shunned with the famous noob phrase i hear so much..Instead of taking the time to spout insults spout some direction instead so they can become land owners or workers or whatever they choose..
SL in like being born,you are born..you have to learn it with experiences and grow..Most do that with free accounts..

You cut free accounts then you cut your own paychecks greatly..

You don't hear the complaints when that chaaa ching goes off on a sale or wow look at all the people showing up not caring what thier accounts are..I think you would be hearing a different tune from buisness owners when it came to free accounts because most know better..

Only when times get alittle tuff turn to the free account being the problem or any easy solution that hasn't been thought out clearly ignoring the effects to follow..Only the quick get me online now solutions..
most are venting rants anyways..because if we were all in the same room in RL i don't think you would hear 1/4 of the bitterness twards them.

Well even with all the problems sl has had since i have joined the pro's must be winning the battle over the cons because i'm still here.. I will be for a long time to come and i do hope it is still with my friends that have free accounts..because without them my SL would stop thriving...

SL is always gonna have it's problems..Just like everything else in the world..if you see you can't log in ..spend the one time fee of $9.00 for an alt that has control over your mains things and move on..it sure beats sitting offline in a forum getting mad because i can't get online..that or find a sim that will let your main log in..which it will..

I don't remember business being bad before the infamous 6/6/06 either. But before that time there were not near as many private sims. I think that date is when Linden Labs kicked in their plans from the very beginning of Second Life's development. They are (and have always been) interested in a platform for people to make money using Second Life as a method. They provide the servers, pipeline, the maintenance..........the sim owners do the work of making money. Linden Labs gets a cut of every transaction the sim owners make. No one owns anything there.........it's leased either directly or indirectly from Linden Labs.

That's why they are not interested in customer service to the residents. They just provide the stuff..........any problems you encounter you have to take up with someone else. But they sort of jumped the gun a little.........they aren't prepared to do as they want. They can't keep up with the growth. And they better figure it out soon. Free accounts or pay accounts will leave if they can't do anthing in world. And when that happens the sim owners will shut it down too. Sim owners could care less if any member is paying or not......as long as they get some lindens. Linden Labs could care even less since they get their cut no matter what. Us stupid paying residents are nothing but gravy in LL's bank account. We dont' get shit for our contribution because our contribution is pitiful compared to the sim owners'.

And you know, I really have no problem at all with some company creatiing a virtual world to do just what Linden Labs is doing..............IF they had been upfront from day one that it was their intentions. But they were not.........and they are still not. It's a dishonest way of doing business. And it reflects on their Better Business Bureau rating........and that's never a good thing.

Straighten up LL............prove me wrong. But if you don't I'm going to have a good laugh when some other HONEST company comes along and steals your thunder...........and MONEY!!!