Sunday, January 18, 2009

The Downs and Downs of Second Life

Once again I ponder the "Log Ins are Disabled" message or similar ones and wonder if I should begin to devote my weekends to Real Life (iRL) rather than to Second Life®. Perhaps I should get out and enjoy the 20℉ temperature as I slog through 8" of fresh snow to see where the next anticipated 5" would look best (in Maine we are required to move snow to the prettiest spots for the pleasure of the tourists). At least iRL I can change clothes, give things to others, and spend money.

As usual, database problems are the scapegoats for the regular round of weekend issues. Would it help if fewer people were in-world, putting less stress on the databases? If so, then as someone with two premium accounts I vote we limit the free account access during times of stress. Give Premium customers a perk here, Linden Labs®. Let us use the world we are paying to access.

Perhaps that wouldn't really be fair, but I'm not the first to suggest that nor will I be the last. Such a move would upset the many, many members that don't pay a subscription, especially if their in-world activities are vital to the economy. I wonder if it is possible to determine an avie's economic worth.

Ooooh. If that doesn't have the smack of discrimination to it ...

See? Gotta let me in-world so I don't wax philosophical out here in the cold.

4 comments:

Kira McCallen said...

I would definitely like to be able to log in. As a premium member, I think they should just boot a basic member off as I log in. That's fair, right? LOL

Peter Stindberg said...

I never had a premium account, as I not only see the value-for-money as extremely poor, but as it is also putting european residents at a disadvantage due to the bizarre double-VAT LL imposes on us.

However each month I move almost 100.000 L$ on the grid. I run three successful businesses, and work for some of the big names in content creation and entertainment.

With what reason do you classifiy me as "drag on the grid" (neither of your words - I know - but it has been used before), compared to someone who has paid his premium fees but otherwise behaves like a couch potate and does not take an active part whatsoever in SL?

Would the Premium options sound halfway attractive, I would have subscribed long ago. But it boils down to the ability to own Mainland, and that privilege is not worth the price imho (especially since I do not only get double-teaxed for premium fees but also get double-taxed for tier fees too).

Limiting logins is a desperate measure, patching weaknesses in a system that is everything but not scalable. IF logins get disabled, the only fair way would be to make it completely random, like "every fifth login" attempt (which would give you an 80% chance on a single(!) login attempt to get in) or something like this. Favouring one resident over another on any other criteria is discrimination of the worst kind. "Sorry, blacks need to wait for the next bus."

Uccie Poultry said...

/me puts her tongue deeper in her cheek for increased effect.

Severe limits, Peter? Good idea! Really, we should limit the Grid to women only because the selection of clothes and hair for them is much larger. Men are only a drag on the economy. After grabbing a Frenis to wear, what do they really buy?

Seriously, I doubt that the past use of premium-only log ins was that effective (or fair) and that is why they haven't been used since. What would be effective is a scalable asset server system. Trying to use a system that is fine for typical weekday loads of 40,000 residents on weekends that see loads of nearly twice that is simply poor planning.

As for you not having a premium account, I can only encourage to you think about it more seriously. A successful and influential business owner friend of mine had a basic, No Payment Info on File account when another resident (falsely) accused her of stealing his product designs. Her account was canceled without a hearing or any reasonable recourse for appealing. She lost land and property of substantial value.

I'm happy to say she is back, thriving, and even more influential with her shiny new "protected" account.

Peter Stindberg said...

http://stindberg.blogspot.com/2009/02/why-i-became-premium-after-27-months-in.html