Last month at the Second Life Community Convention, among the commitments Rod Humble made was that there would be improvements to Premium accounts. A few days ago, Linden Lab announced a couple ”new exclusive benefits.” They were offering gift items just for Premium members, and sandbox areas for the exclusive use of those with paid memberships.For their gifts, Linden Labs offered what they called the first of their reguarly available items just for Premium players, a set of furniture.
Premium members will regularly receive exclusive virtual items that you won't find anywhere else. The very first gift is a stylish set of furniture crafted by Colleen Desmoulins of The Loft. The set features a sofa, tables, plants and lamps to enhance your home’s cozy factor. You can change the look of most of the furniture to fit your home’s unique style and decor — whether you live in a Linden Home or elsewhere. This customizable furniture collection is the first of many Resident-created gifts Premium Members will be receiving regularly. Premium Residents can visit a virtual inworld kiosk to claim their gift now.
The sandboxes they advertised as being quieter than those for the general public.
Explore your creative side or just get down to the business of creating without the distractions of a more public space in one of the many Premium-only Sandboxes in Second Life. There are four new, exclusive Premium-only Sandbox Islands you can access right now to give you more room than ever to bring your creations to life. Members can visit right now.
Comments by residents seemed to have a small majority feeling these new features were a good idea. Not many were interested in the furniture set, some saying there were already lots of freebie sofas on the market. The exclusive “griefer free” sandboxes were liked by many. A number however expressed disappointment, saying what would really increase Premium level memberships were things like teir discounts, not “baubles” as one member called the first Premium gifts.Linden Lab stated this would be only the first of their added bonuses to Premium acounts, “keep an eye out for even more surprises in the future.”
The blog post can be read in it’s entirety Here.
Bixyl Shuftan
Thanks for the even handed level headed assessment of the new Premium level membership benefits. I was surprised at the ire of some bloggers with what appear to me to be a nice gift and useful new benefit plus the promise of more.
ReplyDeleteThe only thing I might add to your assessment would be to point out that the free furniture is really quite nice. I am not aware of any freebie furniture that can compare. Seriously.
@Missy: the ire is that the lab is wasting time, as usual, fiddling while Rome burns. There is a serious glitch in the latest sim code that some script (or mono itself) conflicts with, making sims die every 15 minutes. Concurrency is dropping. SL land is disappearing. Tier is too high and Marketplace as it is currently setup makes owning land a sucker bet. But hey, here's a bauble to distract you from the serious issues.
ReplyDeleteWhile the Premium Only sandboxes are a great idea, they won't appeal to anyone who has been inworld for more than a couple of months. Someone who already has land or is renting rather than owning, already has a private building area. While a nice benefit, I don't see it improving the Premium percentages at all. And the furniture has zero appeal to me.
Lowering the tier worldwide and making the first 1024m of land tier free would be an enticement. But until the marketplace limits the number of items you can sell to 1/50 of the prims the land your magic box is on can support, there is zero reason to have a store inworld anymore. They can easily fix it so inworld and webstores are both necessary at the same time. And I hope word gets to the right ear on the marketplace fix somehow. But as long as LL keeps painting the decks instead of fixing the hull, this ship is going to keep sinking deeper and deeper.