Kitely Forums

Kitely is removing Metered Worlds, and introducing Premium Worlds: http://www.kitely.com/virtual-world-new ... um-worlds/

I've been with Kitely since you added Twitter and email logins. All this time I have waited for HyperGrid to be enabled. Now that it is, I will be shut out because I cannot afford a Premium account.

Sarge, I don't think anyone is being shut out by this. Try thinking of alternative ways forward.

For example, what about working collaboratively with another Kitely user who has a Premium Account that has spare Premium Regions, perhaps paying them KC for your time inworld? If you have Region Manager rights you can still do a great deal. The one thing you won't be able to do, of course, is save and load OARs -- that would need to be done by the World Manager as usual, and you would also need to take care with permissions as you build. Some of the OSL commands might not be available too.

Another possibility might be to rent one of the homes or shops already on offer from other Kitely users. The worlds are often hypergrid enabled, so you can easily go hypergridding from them.

Kitely is a business, not a charity. Ilan and Oren need to make a reasonable living from this; they certainly work hard enough for it. I wish them well.

Dot Matrix wrote:Sarge, I don't think anyone is being shut out by this. Try thinking of alternative ways forward.

For example, what about working collaboratively with another Kitely user who has a Premium Account that has spare Premium Regions, perhaps paying them KC for your time inworld? If you have Region Manager rights you can still do a great deal. The one thing you won't be able to do, of course, is save and load OARs -- that would need to be done by the World Manager as usual, and you would also need to take care with permissions as you build. Some of the OSL commands might not be available too.

Another possibility might be to rent one of the homes or shops already on offer from other Kitely users. The worlds are often hypergrid enabled, so you can easily go hypergridding from them.

Kitely is a business, not a charity. Ilan and Oren need to make a reasonable living from this; they certainly work hard enough for it. I wish them well.

It was being able to build offline and upload my OARs that was one of the biggest benefits. Using someone else's land means that I have to abide by their rules, and it was being able to do things my way that is another benefit. I would also have to do all of my building inworld. I have one of those data flex plans so the more time I spend online the more money it costs me.

I'm not asking for charity. I have paid for my time inworld and am willing to continue to do so. I doubt Kitely was losing money on metered worlds and I am confident that they made some profit on them.

You're a good builder, Sarge. Others are not so great at building, but are maybe good at story scenarios and role-play.

What about seeing if someone would be willing to share a Fixed Price Starter World with you as World Manager, paying and sharing the cost via KC? Then you would still be able to upload OARs as needed, and enjoy creating great builds.

Hi Sarge,

We weren't losing money on Metered World access but we were hardly making any profit to take home from them either. The main problem was that most people who were happy to pay for a Premium Account or fixed-price world subscription when they first started off in Kitely were switching to Regular Accounts and just paying for time inworld. Had we had enough active users this could have been fine, but we haven't reached that point yet. Starving us of revenue is not sustainable and makes continuing to run Kitely an unattractive proposition considering the other options available to us, especially now with the growing interest in virtual reality and our proven domain expertise in this field.

We've spent the last 6 years working on Kitely and have no desire or intent to close it down, this step was required to help us avoid a path that would eventually lead us to do so.

Sarge, I just visited your world and left you a note. Great build!

This wasn't specifically addressed in the official announcement, but will grandfathered Silver and Gold Premium accounts continue to be grandfathered after June 30, 2014? I have a Silver Premium grandfathered account and wish to keep it for the foreseeable future. If the Silver plan won't be honored in the future it's not necessarily a deal breaker for me, but I would like to know now so I can reduce my Premium world holdings down to 5 regions or less to keep in line with the standard Premium account.

Hi Deuce,

Yes, grandfathered Silver and Gold plans continue to exit as Premium Account (Silver) and Premium Account (Gold) with all their previous benefits.

I have to agree with Sarge a bit. I'm a developer working with Kitely and use the system lightly and random for testing and demonstration. Those who have remaining KCs and paid for time before the new pricing changes July 1 should, at least, be able to use up their credits as agreed to when purchased. This is money paid forward for a service. I can't imagine how this would create additional costs or over burden on your system. Simply changing policy and deleting KCs on account or locking access is the same as stealing...don't you think? I'm sure you guys earn your money and I'm all for making money too...but not losing it!
Please reconsider your policy before stealing your users money
Thanks
Mark