Question re premium members and access to sims

[Ada Radius]

I'm sorry if this has been covered earlier - I'm still recovering from the last surgery and have missed much, I know.
The question is on premium members and access to sims. I have been encouraging people in SL (primarily from our theater troupe) to try out Kitely, and at the troupe meeting yesterday I was startled at the entirely negative reactions to Kitely. They went to Kitely, arrived at the welcome center, signs are not clickable. They tried to visit worlds and were blocked because they don't have premium memberships. They didn't see any people anywhere, and, in the words of two of them, were "pissed off" and don't plan to come back.
Is this true that you now have to have a premium membership even to visit?
Ada

[Ilan Tochner]

Hi Ada,

(I know you know most of this but I'll be more verbose to answer others who might have the same question)

If you are allowed to visit someone elses world then you aren't charged for that access. In this regard, Kitely works the same way as Second Life.

There are two kinds of world, ones that are fixed-price per month and ones that are metered. Worlds that are fixed price don't cost the world manager extra when people visit them so world managers have no reason to limit access to them to only allow Premium Account users. Metered worlds also don't cost world managers when Premium Account users visit them but, unlike fixed-price world, they do cost the world manager extra when Regular Account users visit them. That is why most Metered World world managers set those worlds to only allow visits from Premium Account users.

World managers, especially ones on Premium Accounts, often choose to create Metered Worlds instead of fixed-price worlds in order to save on their hosting costs. If they do so and don't allow access to Regular Account users they can get full regions with 100,000 prims for as little as $1/month.

The Kitely Welcome Center was created before the latest pricing changes so it includes many worlds that are currently Premium Account only. There is an ongoing project to update the Kitely Welcome Center, which should ensure that new users are presented worlds to visit which are open to Regular Account users. See: http://www.kitely.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=1259

Regardless, the best place to find worlds to visit that are open to Regular Account users is the Public Worlds page: http://www.kitely.com/search

Please update your friends about all this.

[Dot Matrix]

I'm looking at the Regular/Premium split question in the World Showcase at the moment. Dundridge has been able to set up the underlying mechanism to automatically show which worlds are open to all and which are Premium members only -- Oren enabled this tag, I believe.

My personal inclination would be to ensure that all worlds in the showcase are accessible to all.

However, some might argue that, providing the premium-only worlds were clearly labelled as such, it could become an incentive for people to possibly upgrade to Premium. Personally, I do not find this argument persuasive -- $20 for five full-fat regions is extremely good value, but it is a lot to fork out per month just to visit worlds that are otherwise closed to you.

Dundridge is looking at the possibility of labelling showcase boards as Premium/Regular destinations.

On the other hand, if worlds had to be open to all to be included to be in the showcase, the following worlds would currently be excluded: Butterfly Cove, Castle on the Hill, Dogwood Arts Center, Friendship Skills, Laurel Highlands, Transgenia and the two freebie malls (the latter could easily be replaced by ones run by other hosts, and I am working on this aspect -- new people need free and easy access to such content). Ener's freebie shop no longer exists, so that needs replacing anyway.

[Ilan Tochner]

How many world signs are in the updated world showcase Dot? If there are more than 20 then keeping 6 of them Premium Only may be a viable option if they are clearly labeled as such and there is a notecard giver for them that explains why some worlds are Premium Account only. If it's explained that it is a cheap way to have a lot of land that some world managers choose to use than it's more likely to be acceptable to people than just thinking it was something Kitely decided to do to convince people to upgrade.

[Ada Radius]

So, to summarize:
1)If it's a world on the Public Access website page, then anyone can go there, premium or not?
and
2) the boards at the Welcome Area may or may not direct people to places newcomers can actually go.

I agree with Dot - people exploring Kitely for the first time do not find being blocked from a Kitely-authorized site (such as advertised at the welcome center) as an incentive to pay for Premium. What I heard yesterday iSL was the opposite. Both who experienced it used this phrase exactly: "pissed off".

I'm happy at Kitely because of the TOS, the prices, free uploads, intelligent approach to tech upgrades, lag-free sims, best possible VW security at this time, amazing tech support, congenial people. I can't imagine going back to building and creating in Second Life. I don't know why selling it to SL-ers is so difficult. But it is. People like what they're used to no matter how horrible? I have no idea.

Ada

[Selby Evans]

The Public Worlds page includes both worlds that are open to everyone and those that are open to just Premium Account users. However, if you are on a Regular Account and you view that page then all the Premium Account only worlds will be filtered out from your search results. The only indication you'll have that you're missing something is the label at the bottom of that page stating "Some worlds are hidden because you don't have a Premium Account."

Most of the boards in the welcome area will direct people to worlds that are accessible to everyone. The open question is will there also be a few boards that will direct to worlds that are only accessible to Premium Account users. The reason to include them is that some of them are quite impressive or belong to people who are well known inSL. The reason not to include them is that their existence in the welcome center may turn off some people.

[Constance Peregrine]

oh, hey, i just had an epiphany!! [well, a thought anyways]

could there be some way that the regular members [such as my little 'ol self] could still see the premium worlds but that they would be slightly greyed out and of course not clickable?

[Selby Evans]

The Public Worlds page includes both worlds that are open to everyone and those that are open to just Premium Account users. However, if you are on a Regular Account and you view that page then all the Premium Account only worlds will be filtered out from your search results. The only indication you'll have that you're missing something is the label at the bottom of that page stating "Some worlds are hidden because you don't have a Premium Account."

Most of the boards in the welcome area will direct people to worlds that are accessible to everyone. The open question is will there also be a few boards that will direct to worlds that are only accessible to Premium Account users. The reason to include them is that some of them are quite impressive or belong to people who are well known inSL. The reason not to include them is that their existence in the welcome center may turn off some people.

I strongly recommend that you do not show stuff that is off-limits to visitors with a regular account. Think of this as a host-guest situation. You have some really expensive stuff in your bar. You also have some perfectly good regular stuff. Do you show that fancy stuff to your guests, locked up in its glass case. Do you explain to your guests that this is the really good stuff, but you save it for the VIPs? No. You hide it, because you know you would be embarrassed to tell your guests that they are not good enough to get your best drinks.

If you have some high class places that you want to use for promotion, post pictures and videos of them. I won't write about it because I won't tell my readers about places they can't visit. --SE

[Ilan Tochner]

Thank you for the analogy Selby.

[Dundridge Dreadlow]

Signs not clickable ??
Hm, they should be all working, I'll double check that in a few minutes.

SOME of the worlds are set to moderate, and SOME of the worlds are premium. Thanks to the new tags, the script knows all

The latest script has [PREMIUM] as part of the board name, and also says [PREMIUM] in all messages when clicked. As Dot said, if people ask nicely I'll add a thingie saying moderate and/or premium as an overlay on the world texture. Premium worlds can be made slightly greyed out if you like too, but I'm not too keen on that. Please discuss