Tag: Premium

November is half-over and once again it’s time for the end-of-year Premium membership promo from LL – and Premium gifts make something of a seasonal return.

As usual, the offer is 50% off of membership for those upgrading, but only if they opt for the Quarterly billing plan, and the discount is applied only to the first quarter billing period.

There is also an e-mail circulating to users about both the promotion and the gifts. I’m still not clear why, whenever the upgrade promos are run my main account (which is Premium) gets the invitation to “upgrade”, while my Crash Test Alt account never does (and it has a separate e-mail address, so it’s not like I’m confusing the two), but hey-ho.

The Premium gift is designed to be of a festive spirit featuring a range of items,  notably twelve empty cubes textured as gifts, together with teddy bears last seen in the SL10B premium gift vendors, now attired for Christmas; a thanksgiving candle; a Christmas candle; a poinsettia; “high” (26 LI) and “low” detail (15 LI) versions of an Xmas tree; and a Christmas wreath.

I’ll leave it to others to comment on the gift set. Instead I’ll just mention that the Premium  promotion started at 00:01 on Thursday November 21st and runs until 00:01 on Wednesday  1st January 2014 (although at the time of writing, the small print of the upgrade page itself quotes the offer period as ” starts Friday July 26, 2013 at 12:01AM (PST) and expires Sunday August 11, 2013 at 11:59pm (PST)”. Oops.).

If you’re interested, I offered some thoughts on the matter a couple of years ago, and which probably still holds true today and might be worth reading before making the jump.

On July 28th, I received an e-mail from the Lab announcing that they are once again running their “limited-time” Premium membership offer. As with the previous promotions (run in 2011 and 2012), this offer comes with strings attached:

• The discount only applies to Quarterly membership billing plans
• Only the first quarter will be discounted; the rest of the year will be charged at the full Quarterly membership rate.

The offer will be running until 20:00 SLT (PST) on Sunday 11th August, 2013, and those wishing to take advantage of it can do so via the sign-up page.

It’s likely the offer will draw upset from some quarters, with people pointing to the Lab “failing” to address issues of high tier. Whether such complaints are valid is actually debatable; when it comes to tier, the Lab is very much between a rock and a hard place insofar as tier cuts are concerned, as any significant reduction in tier could actually hurt their revenue stream far more rapidly than attempting to weather the storm of declining in private region numbers (and perhaps trying to deal with matters through other means).

That said, there is a finger to be pointed at the Lab where Premium membership and land use is concerned, and that’s in regard to Linden Homes. These were originally intended as providing a means to “get people started” on the road of having a house and land in Second Life. However, this has never been the case. There are no time-limits on Linden Home occupation, no incentives to encourage people to move on elsewhere, etc. So people tend to stay,  and the Linden Home regions grow, quite possible to the detriment of the land market as a whole – and I actually speak as a guilty party; I have a Linden Home and reduced all other land holdings to zero last year.

The problem here is what to do. The fact is that Linden Homes are one of the “better” perks of Premium membership, their age and (in some estate cases) their so-called “slum” looks notwithstanding. If they are taken away, or if people’s use of them is limited, it could lessen the value in having people go Premium. Plus, even if the time people can have a Linden Home is limited, it doesn’t automatically mean that once that time is up, they will simply move elsewhere and rent land; they might simply opt to go without.

Incentives are needed, and this again introduces problems: what should the incentives be, how should they be directed, and who should be involved? Some kind of co-operative venture between the Lab and rental estates might be possible; but again, which estates? And how would it be managed without the Lab being accused of “playing favourites” or damaging the market for the smaller rental operations or without the whole thing becoming too complicated to be easily managed by estates and / or the Lab?

My own thoughts remain that the entire Premium membership package needs a complete re-think; although I admit identifying how this could easily be achieved to the satisfaction of all isn’t as easy as it sounds. Back in 2011, Will Burns suggested one possible direction this might take:

Might I suggest that if the Premium Accounts were instead treated as Professional Accounts, changing the focus from casual consumer to producer, then the Gaming Toolbox options for experience creation would be an excellent (and genuinely new) Added Value to the Professional Account holder.

Since Premium/Professional Accounts require some sort of identification, this makes the Professional Account holder directly accountable for their actions using the professional toolbox systems.

The problem here is that not all current Premium members are content creators. So what happens to them if the focus is to “rebrand” Premium accounts as “Professional” rather than to introduce a new “Professional” membership category? That said, the introduction of such a “Professional” membership package, with access to a unique set of tools and capabilities, in addition to a re-vamp of the Premium membership package would appear to have merit on a number of fronts (even if it would be liable to generate its own controversy).

There are doubtless dozens of ideas which could be put forward on the subject of Premium accounts (and the future of Linden Homes). Whether the Lab would consider any of them, no matter how workable, is another matter. For now, however, the promotional offer is open. If you’re interested, I offered some thoughts on the matter a year ago, and which probably still holds true today and might be worth reading before making the jump.

I was playing with Lumiya 2.3.2 this afternoon (review coming soon!), when the veritable Lord of Dee, Ciaran Laval tapped me via IM about what appears to be an upcoming premium promotion, which looks set to be going live on the 14th November.

Ciaran spotted the news while taking a look through the JIRA, when he came across WEB-4950:

This is probably listed as a public issue in error, so I fully expect it to vanish behind the curtain next week. However, it raises interesting questions.  Why a JIRA for a promotional offer, and why a link to a Linden Department of Public Works JIRA (LDPW-77, closed to public access)?

Between them, these suggest that the promotion will be more than just the “typical” 50% discount on first payments when signing-up to quarterly membership, and that something in-world will play a part in the offer.

Now, the promo could simply be related to another premium gift, but given the last one was issued in late August, the time-frame seems a little short, premium gifts usually come out a little over once a quarter; we also have Christmas on the horizon, so I suspect that, as with last year’s sailing boat, we’re more likely to see the next gift in December.

There’s also the small matter of LL asking about what can be done to improve the Premium Wilderness Experience a few months back. While it remains open right now, could the offer be tied to a belated overhaul of this (which at the time of writing remains open). If so, it seems an awfully long time to get from the e-mail survey (May) to updating the experience, even allowing for protracted time frames at the Lab. There’s also the fact that while visited, the Wilderness Experience didn’t exactly set the SL world ablaze with positive reviews, and I rather suspect most of the feedback provided on the survey was at best lukewarm towards the whole idea. So I’m far from convinced LL are going to try to breathe life back into that specimen.

I’m therefore leaning towards us seeing something new, and I’m tempted to lean even further (and risk toppling into error) towards it possibly being something akin to Linden Realms – that is, using the advanced creator tools. The “first set” of these was launched back in July 2012, and we’re still waiting for the updated permissions system associated with them to arrive. That the term “first set” was used in the blog post announcing their arrival, I’ve always wondered if LL LL have something else in the pipeline for the tools (beyond getting the permissions system sorted). So perhaps this promotion will see further tools added to the range and rolled out for Premium members to try in a new playground, a-la Linden Realms.

Guess we’ll find out on or around November 14th!

With thanks to Ciaran Laval.