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Your Letters

Richer Experience for All

I agree that the open access policy is great. Lots of people are joining who are renting land from people with private islands and are so contributing just as much to the economy as the so called payers. Plus lots of these people buy clothes, houses, and all sorts of stuff from existing members

My experience is that they generally make it a richer place to be. Many also often go on to become premium members and without the free start up many would not have joined in he first place. I say keep the open membership going and also keep developing SL to cope with larger community.

- Absolute Balderdash

International Flavor

We (managers of the Latin community: Corazon's Inferno) are very grateful for the open registration. Many new players from Spanish speaking countries have arrived in the game and it brings us so much joy to help them learn and adapt to an English based game. Mostly from Venezuela and Spain they typically stay free accounts but still play, build, and have fun just like anyone else, and the many resident made personal translators help a ton. From my viewpoint, your idea worked and I've watched the results first hand. Thank you.

- Yumil Ogre

Basic Account Holder Speaks Up

I am a basic account user my name in SL is Anna Sparrow.

I have contributed thousands of Lindens to the economy. I my not have put them in my self using of the payment systems but I did work for them all. This is how an econamy functions. People work and then spend.

If you close down the basic accounts you will lose a lot of working people. I work in clubs, I also build things and design cloths. I could not do this if I did not work and get the lindens to upload the textures. One of these days I might upgrade my account however if I am forced to by the basic accounts closing I will not as it was not my free chouse to. I feel that a lot of people will leave SL if this was to happen especially the schools and universities that are looking at SL.

Another point is that SL is meant to be like RL (except the flying and tp of course lol) but in RL we don't have to pay a monthly subscription to live if we choose we can live totally for free. We can choose to be tied down but some people just don't like that and I feel that removing the free account would kill of the spirit and the groth of SL. I see SL going on for a long time and becoming a big part of RL don't kill it by closing the basic accounts.

- Anna Sparrow

Building the Metaverse isn't Easy

I am one of those "basic account holders [who] are finding their place within Second Life and settling in.", and I encourage you to keep open registration in SL. I began exploring SL with a basic account and now have a premium account paid up for one year.

My RL I am a professor of Computer Science at a small college in Ohio named Mount Union College. Years ago I spent some time in MUDDs, MUSEs, and so on. I knew that the potential was great for a virtual world experience, but it was not quite there yet. I wanted to continue my exploration of virtual worlds, but found my RL duties a little to great. A friend of mine told me about Second Life about two months ago. Since then I have gone from being a hopeless newbie to becoming a friendly, new resident who is learning how to live in a virtual world.

I am already working on ways to bring SL to my campus. Like nearly every new SL resident I have grand dreams. I hope to one day have a college island where many of our professors and students live together and help each other build and share in a fantastic virtual world. For now, I am trying to be a model SL resident and to learn how to script.

My SL name is Reuben Kraft and I am now renting a small shop from Ruby Iddinja. "Reuben's Little Script Shop" is devoted to selling small scripts that help SL residents learn how to script for themselves. The shop is really a vehicle for me to learn scripting myself and for me to become a part of this marvelous virtual reality world that you are nurturing.

Even though my shop doesn't yet have a sign out front and the grand opening for the plaza where I am renting will probably not be until mid-January 2007, there have already been a few customers who have drifted into the shop. Some are clearly just playing around, but some are very serious about becoming model residents and scripters in your brave, new world.

I encourage you to keep open registration for many reasons, but here are the three reasons that I believe are most important.

1. The phenomenal growth of the web was due in part to the fact that there were many free browsers. If you want SL to continue to grow rapidly you must allow free access to your world.
2. If you truly hope to create the metaverse, then you must allow diversity in residents. I am occasionally annoyed with the antics of overly playful strange furries and the like, and I am occasionally dismayed at the attitudes of some greedy residents. But RL is diverse and if you want SL to become the metaverse then it too must be diverse.
3. I believe that there are many other educators like me who will only begin exploring your virtual world if it continues to have open registration.

Thank you for your time, and thank you for the birth of the metaverse.

- Reuben Kraft