New Membership plans

[Paulsian]

1 minute ago, Ceka Cianci said:

It say's free linden home of their choice.. They'll probably either have a good idea what that is, or find out soon enough when they go to get one..

true, but in the end it's not free because someone has to pay for it. the * could be like 

*free if someone gifts it to you but must return after the gift period, or be responsible for maintaining the payments on the free linden home land usage blah. 

*free as long as your preimum membership payment clears our bank. 

It says free and I want my free linden home of my choice and the winner is. The cabin with the big giant windows. Where's my free linden home! I paid for several years on several accounts I should have them. 

[Paulsian]

1 minute ago, AzureWaves said:

You can't even buy mainland without maintaining a Premium membership (now Plus too). Most people get that part.

So to get plus a user must be a premium member first? 

[Rolig Loon]

5 minutes ago, Paulsian said:

Getting a "free linden home" makes it sound like users are getting a free linden home to keep in their inventory to rez where they wish.

You have to really stretch to make that interpretation. A Linden Home is not moveable and you never "own" the building itself. Its root is on LDPW property outside of your parcel. Take a look at any Linden Home with your edit tool.  The owner is always the person who owns the house rezzer in the region (usually Quartz Mole, a LL contractor).

If there's any quarrel at all, it should be with the word "free".  That's advertising slight of hand, since of course you pay for the Linden Home as part of the Premium membership package, whether you ever actually use it or not. Still, that's a minor quarrel because everyone in today's society understands that nothing is really "free".  One way or another, we end up paying for the things we use.  

[Nick0678]

12 minutes ago, Ceka Cianci said:

It say's free linden home of their choice.. They'll probably either have a good idea what that is, or find out soon enough when they go to get one..

There's no such thing as "free", what do you think this is, the Soviet Union? PAY!

(*also sometimes saying "please daddy" will help)

Edited November 18, 2022 by Nick0678

[Paulsian]

1 minute ago, Rolig Loon said:

You have to really stretch to make that interpretation. A Linden Home is not moveable and you never "own" the building itself. Its root is on LDPW property outside of your parcel. Take a look at any Linden Home with your edit tool.  The owner is always the person who owns the house rezzer in the region (usually Quartz Mole, a LL contractor).

If there's any quarrel at all, it should be with the word "free".  That's advertising slight of hand, since of course you pay for the Linden Home as part of the Premium membership package, whether you ever actually use it or not. Still, that's a minor quarrel because everyone in today's society understands that nothing is really "free".  One way or another, we end up paying for the things we use.  

Exactly so the ** next to free should read this.

[Ceka Cianci]

9 minutes ago, Paulsian said:

true, but in the end it's not free because someone has to pay for it. the * could be like 

*free if someone gifts it to you but must return after the gift period, or be responsible for maintaining the payments on the free linden home land usage blah. 

*free as long as your preimum membership payment clears our bank. 

It says free and I want my free linden home of my choice and the winner is. The cabin with the big giant windows. Where's my free linden home! I paid for several years on several accounts I should have them. 

They tell you right on your dashboard.. you won't see the perk unless you are premium or premium plus..

I really don't think it's going to be that confusing.. It does say Home, not House.. Home and House are not always the same thing..

A home is a place , A house is a thing..

Edited November 18, 2022 by Ceka Cianci

[Paulsian]

Like buying a unhappy meal take away with a "free toy" included *once meal is finished "free toy" must be returned or you will no longer be able to visit here again until it is.  

[Sammy Huntsman]

40 minutes ago, Reed Linden said:

In order:

We have only changed the VAT policy for membership levels (Plus, Premium, Premium Plus).

We can reconsider it in the future! But we have no plans to do so at this time. We're moving into a direction where the various membership types are differentiated not just by price, but by function. Plus is intended primarily to democratize mainland ownership (and was released intentionally with a tier maintenance reduction). Premium, while currently being the 'jack-of-all-trades' subscription level as a result of it being the ONLY subscription level until very recently, remains the membership type for Linden Homes. My intent at the moment, is to move further toward enhancing those differentiators in the future.

No. Same basic answer as above.

So now that you have done low-tier plans, will you also be doing mid-tier plans too? 

[Ceka Cianci]

7 minutes ago, Nick0678 said:

There's no such thing as "free", what do you think this is, the Soviet Union? PAY!

(*also sometimes saying "please daddy" will help)

It's just a perk and free is just a term for not having to pay tier on the land, like you would if you bought a bigger lot than the perk..

I remember when I became premium, it was get the 512 and lose your stipend.. Now, I can get a 1024 land a houseboat to boot and still keep my 400 a week stipend.. hehehe

 

[Paulsian]

10 minutes ago, Ceka Cianci said:

They tell you right on your dashboard.. you won't see the perk unless you are premium or premium plus..

I really don't think it's going to be that confusing.. It does say Home, not House.. Home and House are not always the same thing..

A home is a place , A house is a thing..

I can understand the difference, I always try to put myself in the position of someone who has zero experience with second life, with all thing mentioned here, and then realize after I get to my free house I don't actually get a free house I get to use a free house for however long my membership is and then have to give it back. It makes SL LL look slimy non professional non transparent liers misleaders.

Because our motto is you're likely not going to stick around long enough to understand how to use it and quit while we continue to bill you for it until you die because we know how to take advantage of elders. 

[Ceka Cianci]

9 minutes ago, Paulsian said:

Like buying a unhappy meal take away with a "free toy" included *once meal is finished "free toy" must be returned or you will no longer be able to visit here again until it is.  

Well, You could always, just not do it if it's gonna make you unhappy..

Me, I love mine.. I'm on a houseboat, a slip away from more open water than I can see and all the boating I want to do..

I can get on my boat and open it wide open and fly on the water and if the sim crossings are in my favor, can do that for a good long bit.. hehehe

 

[Reed Linden]

13 minutes ago, Sammy Huntsman said:

So now that you have done low-tier plans, will you also be doing mid-tier plans too? 

Possibly! I can't make any promises here. I can only say that we're watching to see how Plus and Premium and Premium Plus all perform together very closely and using that information along with feature requests and feedback to decide where the next/best opportunities lie. I think mid-tier style plans could absolutely emerge as the 'winner' in that evaluation. 

[Ceka Cianci]

1 minute ago, Paulsian said:

I can understand the difference, I always try to put myself in the position of someone who has zero experience with second life, with all thing mentioned here, and then realize after I get to my free house I don't actually get a free house I get to use a free house for however long my membership is and then have to give it back. It makes SL LL look slimy non professional non transparent liers misleaders.

Because our motto is you're likely not going to stick around long enough to understand how to use it and quit while we continue to bill you for it until you die because we know how to take advantage of elders. 

I think free houses are not a real problem to find in SL and are a free a dozen.. A free home, well that's a little bit harder to find if you are not premium or higher..

A lot of people don't go premium right when they get here.. Another thing is , most ask questions from other members what something is if they are confused.. So I think most are gonna be alright..

Really I don't see this being something that is going to be a huge problem for a lot of users interested in one of the packs..

 

[Liandra Aries]

Need's a better naming structure, its starting to look like Intel with their 14nm++++++++ naming...

[Paulsian]

I don't know what department is in charge but they need serious QA and Legal review and approval process. I only took a few business law classes and i'm pretty sure this is a liability. 

[Ceka Cianci]

3 minutes ago, Paulsian said:

I don't know what department is in charge but they need serious QA and Legal review and approval process. I only took a few business law classes and i'm pretty sure this is a liability. 

There is the knowledge base.. It goes over the steps from getting them to abandoning them.

 

[Nick0678]

3 minutes ago, Ceka Cianci said:

A free home, well that's a little bit harder to find if you are not premium or higher..

"Home" is where your heart is...

[Paulsian]

1 minute ago, Ceka Cianci said:

There is the knowledge base.. It goes over the steps from getting them to abandoning them.

 

Someone who can't place a mesh sofa in their home is expected to search for this and then attempting to try to understand how to get to the about land and release property and then cancel annual subscription after 1 day of frustration be billed for a year and when they click the cancel subscription for the next year it glitches out and continues to bill at 1 time annual rate. Yah that seems ethical to me. 

[Miguel Rowley]

Honestly, the only advantage I can see in this membership compared to Premium is for people that are only interested in buying mainland and don't care about the other benefits, otherwise the cost benefit difference between Premium and Plus is so big that it's more worth it to just save money and buy the premium membership instead.

[Ceka Cianci]

2 minutes ago, Paulsian said:

Someone who can't place a mesh sofa in their home is expected to search for this and then attempting to try to understand how to get to the about land and release property and then cancel annual subscription after 1 day of frustration be billed for a year and when they click the cancel subscription for the next year it glitches out and continues to bill at 1 time annual rate. Yah that seems ethical to me. 

They made it to the website on their own.. I mean we have so much more information nowadays  and places to get it that you pretty much can't help but tripping over information..

Other users, You tube, blogs, Knowledge base, Forums, Their own dashboard..

Seriously, if someone has the will to get something in here, most will find the way.. There are more ways than ever before.. Most people are not helpless..

it seems like you are expecting everything to be laid in someones lap, when SL has never been like that.. There is a curve and it's not the same size for everyone.

 

[Ayashe Ninetails]

For as long as I've been here, I've always had a basic account and have no plans to change that any time soon (I love living in private estates far too much to swap to mainland), but I'm very happy to see more memberships becoming available at any rate. Options are good!

[Paul Hexem]

10 minutes ago, IGarrett said:

Honestly, the only advantage I can see in this membership compared to Premium is for people that are only interested in buying mainland and don't care about the other benefits, otherwise the cost benefit difference between Premium and Plus is so big that it's more worth it to just save money and buy the premium membership instead.

Despite my critique of the entire land pricing scam scheme, I can see Plus working for small time marketplace merchants who need a little place to rez demos and things.

[Henri Beauchamp]

1 hour ago, Reed Linden said:

We have only changed the VAT policy for membership levels (Plus, Premium, Premium Plus).

We can reconsider it in the future! But we have no plans to do so at this time. We're moving into a direction where the various membership types are differentiated not just by price, but by function. Plus is intended primarily to democratize mainland ownership (and was released intentionally with a tier maintenance reduction). Premium, while currently being the 'jack-of-all-trades' subscription level as a result of it being the ONLY subscription level until very recently, remains the membership type for Linden Homes. My intent at the moment, is to move further toward enhancing those differentiators in the future.

Saving the VAT on the membership fee is indeed a relief, but clearly, land ownership in SL stays more expensive for an UE resident than for an US one... So, please,  do ”reconsider it in the future” ! 😛

Also, it would have been great to add intermediate mainland use fees (instead of keeping one level for each doubling of the surface), because the gap to jump from, say 4096m² to 8192m² is large (around $130 a year with the VAT) and I would have appreciated (and likely used, as a result of the saving I will be doing with the membership fee VAT removal) a plan for 6144m², for example...

Finally, there is something unclear in the knowledge base about stipends grand-fathering. I have been considering for a long time to change from quarterly to annual membership plan, but this knowledge base article, if exact/correct, means I would loose my L$400 stipend for a L$300 one doing so (loosing roughly $20 a year in the process), because the knowledge base says that the L$400 stipend is reserved for Premium plans opened before November 1, 2006, and I'm pretty sure mine (that does have the L$400 stipend) was opened after that (likely early 2007, since I joined SL as a basic account in October 2006)...

Edited November 18, 2022 by Henri Beauchamp

[Rolig Loon]

1 minute ago, IGarrett said:

Honestly, the only advantage I can see in this membership compared to Premium is for people that are only interested in buying mainland and don't care about the other benefits, otherwise the cost benefit difference between Premium and Plus is so big that it's more worth it to just save money and buy the premium membership instead.

I think that's the bottom line. The new Plus plan is a way to encourage Basic members to live on the Mainland.

I have no idea how many people, like me, have been Basic members since Day One. I don't particularly care about most of the Premium benefits (although I would really like to have access to an Experience). I rented on the Mainland and in private estates for a few years when I was trying to run an in-world shop, because that was my only option. I could never buy land and set my own rules for how to use it. The only way I could own land was to buy a private estate myself, which I finally did in 2014. It was a pretty big long term commitment. I can afford it because I now have a well-established community of friends who share the cost by renting parcels from me.

With the new Plus plan, I could buy a parcel on the mainland if I still wanted to.  It would be a smaller initial cost and a much smaller monthly maintenance fee than my estate -- much less scary. If I were a newbie today, I'd probably look seriously at Plus.

[Paulsian]

3 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

I think that's the bottom line. The new Plus plan is a way to encourage Basic members to live on the Mainland.

I was getting that vibe too, pretty cool having a mainland membership, seems like there will be people making tickets I can't my home. Well well you can't get a home unless you pay more! Brilliant plan. This is apparently mainly for existing customers not new. I seriously feel sorry for the billing and care department, they have to put up with this bs.