Kitely Forums

One of the marketing points for Kitely has been the low cost of land. It's something shared by quite a few OpenSim hosting companies and grids, and as a result OpenSim people get used to thinking in those terms. But is it time to break out of that mould?

I've certainly been guilty of thinking like that -- using the flexibility offered by the different time-based plans to find the lowest cost per month for the number of regions and amount of inworld time I need.

But Kitely offers a great deal more than just vast quantities of affordable virtual land. The ease of use, optimisation, coding, bug squashing, support, community building via involvement -- all that adds enormous value to the grid.

By going for the lowest level account that gave exactly what I thought was needed meant I was thinking in the "low-cost land" mode -- not valuing those extras, even though I recognised that they made a huge difference to life on this grid.

Was that fair? Was it encouraging those doing all that work?

So... this different mindset suggested it was time to upgrade to Gold. $35 per month is not expensive -- not for what is included (20 regions; unlimited inworld time), and definitely not for all the value added by the Kitely founders and the Kitely community.

And the freedom and space Gold gives for experimentation and exploration -- tremendous!

Thank you Dot, I hope many others currently on cheaper plans will follow your lead and upgrade to the Gold Plan as well.

Just refreshing my memory, the gold plan is one I would likely do also, if I could make enough real money to offset the costs.

20 regions would be perfect for me...but unfortunately, I am not currently selling enough terrains to do such things, and may have to even reduce what I currently pay for....still, it is a very good price and is going along with the current trending in such things...slightly higher than what I currently pay otherwise, and I would want to keep other things going, but it is doable if some things would happen.

I have to do things within making the real money to pay for them without using my own in real life...it is simply how things are for me.

I am very enthused about Kitely though, for sure.

Hey Dot, Ilan, Mine,

yes, I also think the service Kitely offers has a lot of value and should be payed a reasonable price for. I think Dot is also right with the thought that people think Open Sim based worlds and everything with it, like goods and products must be free or at least cheap. In my opinion there needs to be a slide shift to this thinking. People like Ilan and Oren are working their butts off and deserve a fair reward. Also the people that bring good quality items into Open Sims should be rewarded equally.

The pricing LL is handling is way over the top but if Open sim based worlds and grids want to be taken serious the community will need to change in thinking and attitude. Value for money and the other way around.

Ami

Land is an interesting thing in the Metaverse, and I can't help going off on a couple of related tangents.

I have a couple of thoughts about land and how things might develop over time. First, we've got variable regions coming to OpenSim. I've worked with them enough in AuroraSim to be confident that Kitely will also adopt them once they are part of the main OpenSim release. 0.8.something, I think. In fact, I see all SimHosting companies adopting variable regions even if its only to keep up with the tech. And that means different pricing structures. My ad hoc personal testing shows me that a variable sized region uses fewer resources than a megaregion of the same land area. Fewer resources used means lower costs to the simhosting company. I have no idea of what the pricing structures will look like, but we gain the benefit of greater variety at lower prices.

And then there's the future where OpenSim is Main Stream. Currently, we are all people who enjoy the nitty-gritty of setting up and managing our own worlds. But, in the future, we will see a huge shift in the population where the majority are people who simply want to set up a house and then go have fun. They aren't builders or scripters or animators, they aren't Creators. They are Consumers. That's when virtual real estate will change.

Currently, in the metaverse of open grids, we have SimHosting companies and self-hosters. What we don't have are Landlords. People who own the land and then rent out parcels. I see that coming, though. When SimOwners will build up their sim a bit, putting up houses and shops and places for venues, and parcelling it appropriately for rentals. Just waiting for Norman Normal to come by and settle in.

Sarge Misfit wrote:Currently, in the metaverse of open grids, we have SimHosting companies and self-hosters. What we don't have are Landlords. People who own the land and then rent out parcels. I see that coming, though. When SimOwners will build up their sim a bit, putting up houses and shops and places for venues, and parcelling it appropriately for rentals. Just waiting for Norman Normal to come by and settle in.

I wonder whether we're beginning to move towards that in Kitely with the discussions on towns, villages and other community- or theme-based virtual homes, both as a way of encouraging community development and in the light of coming changes.

Dot Matrix wrote:

Sarge Misfit wrote:Currently, in the metaverse of open grids, we have SimHosting companies and self-hosters. What we don't have are Landlords. People who own the land and then rent out parcels. I see that coming, though. When SimOwners will build up their sim a bit, putting up houses and shops and places for venues, and parcelling it appropriately for rentals. Just waiting for Norman Normal to come by and settle in.

I wonder whether we're beginning to move towards that in Kitely with the discussions on towns, villages and other community- or theme-based virtual homes, both as a way of encouraging community development and in the light of coming changes.

We will have both. Plus whatever else people will imagine and experiment with

However, given how our societies and cities have evolved in RL, I see much the same thing developing across the Metaverse. Grids will become our urban centres and independent sims will become the rural homes.

I do have to admit to thinking of Kitely as being 'different'. Its both a grid and a SimHosting company. I tend to view it as an archipelago where the different islands (worlds) are built up to different levels and purposes.

Sarge wrote:I tend to view it as an archipelago where the different islands (worlds) are built up to different levels and purposes.

Funny that. I've been talking with Paislee and Mat about possibly developing villages in parallel that will reflect our different styles. The Gold plan gives us the space to experiment like this. In my mind I've been using the word "archipelago" too.

Dot Matrix wrote:

Sarge wrote:I tend to view it as an archipelago where the different islands (worlds) are built up to different levels and purposes.

Funny that. I've been talking with Paislee and Mat about possibly developing villages in parallel that will reflect our different styles. The Gold plan gives us the space to experiment like this. In my mind I've been using the word "archipelago" too.

You know, I've been thinking about the future of Regio Excelsior. Which brings to mind an idea for Ilan and the Kitely team to ponder. Letting people setup side-by-side. I would love to place Regio next to other people's worlds as part of a community archipelago of worlds.

Sarge Misfit wrote:

Dot Matrix wrote:

Sarge wrote:I tend to view it as an archipelago where the different islands (worlds) are built up to different levels and purposes.

Funny that. I've been talking with Paislee and Mat about possibly developing villages in parallel that will reflect our different styles. The Gold plan gives us the space to experiment like this. In my mind I've been using the word "archipelago" too.

You know, I've been thinking about the future of Regio Excelsior. Which brings to mind an idea for Ilan and the Kitely team to ponder. Letting people setup side-by-side. I would love to place Regio next to other people's worlds as part of a community archipelago of worlds.

I'd love to have Donnybrook Beach become part of such an archipelago of worlds as well.

It's not too difficult to imagine a future in Kitely where it would be possible to drop a 2x2 world into the middle of a 4x4 "connected world" where the outer ring of sims are reserved for navigable water and the edges connect to neighboring "connected worlds". This would enable people to sail, swim or fly from island to island in the connected archipelago of worlds. Cool stuff!

Not that there wouldn't be issues, of course. Like what happens if you're flying across the gap between connected worlds and the world you're headed for is offline at the moment? But I feel confident that such issues could eventually be dealt with in an acceptable fashion.

This is a fun thread!