1  ...  9  10  11  12  13  14  ...  17  |   Order by default

Jan 2, 2002, 6:34pm

I disagree. $100 a year isn't a lot for many teenagers. Around here, if
you go to the movies ($8.50) and buy a popcorn ($4.00) and a soda ($2.50),
as well as pay for gas and car maintenence in getting to the theater
($1.00), the total comes to about $16.00 for one night. Thus, a trip to the
movies that lasts two or three hours is almost 1 and a half times more
expensive than a subscription to AW for a month.

The question isn't whether most people can afford to pay (anyone can set
aside $2.00 per month) - it's whether people will want to pay instead of
buying other things that they can afford. Personally, if 3.3 is as good as
AW makes it sound, I'd definately put out the money. Heck, the elimination
of tourists isn't that bad after all - there won't be any more annoying
tourists at GZ who only cause trouble and can't be kept out. With the new
system, everyone is responsible for his or her own actions, and people can
still try AW for free.

I lied there. What's going to determine whether I pay or not is whether
everyone else will put aside the money, not whether I will. If AW's
community loses interest and there's only 100 citizens logged on at 10PM VRT
on a Sunday evening (which seems to be AW's busiest day), then I probably
won't pay.

AW made a big mistake not by proposing the price change but by stating that
3.3 could possibly be the last version if such a pricing scheme was not
implemented. Everyone knows that 3.3 can't be the last version of AW if
they want to continue as a feasible company. Technology changes, and after
a year or so AW would start to become obsolete, and people wouldn't even put
out the lower $20.00 a year for citizenships anymore. 3.3 being the "last
version" is something that simply isn't an option.

By the tone of the letter, this plan is far from finalized yet, so I'm not
going to spam AWGate protesting mindlessly like a lot of people are,
especially since nobody, not even the posters to this newsgroup, knows what
the pricing for current citizens will be. Everyone needs to calm down and
talk about this change reasonably after they know ALL the facts, not fire
off two-sentence letters consisting of obscenities to ENZO screaming that
they disagree with the price change.

The people starting these ridiculous petitions that have one-sentence
justifications, spamming telegrams to AWC staff members, flooding inboxes,
and screaming and yelling at ground zeroes are only making the situation
worse.

[View Quote]

Jan 2, 2002, 10:14pm

This is all true, Tony. Unfortunately, the poorly organized petition that's
floating around now is not going to get the job done. What executive would
listen to people who make posts like "F AWCOM over this!" I certainly
wouldn't.

What someone needs to do is write up a nice letter in a pleasant tone and
mail it via snail mail to Activeworlds with his or her opinion. If many
people wrote such letters, or even nicely written E-Mails, then AW would
listen. But as it is, people aren't organized enough to get anything done.

What's needed is someone with enough sense to lead the community to write
reasonable letters. The person could act as recipient of all the letters,
and then ship a large box filled with opinions to AW. But right now, that's
not happening, and these petitions are only making things worse....

[View Quote]

Jan 2, 2002, 10:49pm

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.

------=_NextPart_000_0017_01C193C5.89BBC830
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

I'm being negative?! Look at the posts on the petition, lol - and then =
you'll see who's being negative. I don't care who you are - that's just =
not an acceptable way to act in public.
[View Quote] [View Quote] This is all true, Tony. Unfortunately, the poorly organized petition =
that'sfloating around now is not going to get the job done. What =
executive wouldlisten to people who make posts like "F AWCOM over this!" =
I certainlywouldn't.What someone needs to do is write up a nice letter =
in a pleasant tone andmail it via snail mail to Activeworlds with his or =
her opinion. If manypeople wrote such letters, or even nicely written =
E-Mails, then AW wouldlisten. But as it is, people aren't organized =
enough to get anything done.What's needed is someone with enough sense =
to lead the community to writereasonable letters. The person could act =
as recipient of all the letters,and then ship a large box filled with =
opinions to AW. But right now, that'snot happening, and these petitions =
are only making things worse...."tony m" <fldmshl2013 at hotmai
[View Quote]


------=_NextPart_000_0017_01C193C5.89BBC830
Content-Type: text/html;
charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META http-equiv=3DContent-Type content=3D"text/html; =
charset=3Diso-8859-1">
<META content=3D"MSHTML 6.00.2712.300" name=3DGENERATOR>
<STYLE></STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY bgColor=3D#ffffff>
<DIV><FONT face=3DArial size=3D2>I'm being negative?!&nbsp; Look at the =
posts on the=20
petition, lol - and then you'll see who's being negative.&nbsp; I don't =
care who=20
you are - that's just not an acceptable way to act in =
public.</FONT></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE=20
style=3D"PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; =
BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV>"icey" &lt;<A =
href=3D"mailto:icey at altavista.net">icey at altavista.net</A>&gt;=20
[View Quote] ------=_NextPart_000_0017_01C193C5.89BBC830--

Jan 3, 2002, 12:59am

Having AW 3.3 as the last version is simply not an option. If AW 3.3 was
the last version, then nobody would stick around as AW becomes more and more
obsolete.

I might stick around if asked to pay $9.95, but I'm definately not going to
stay if AW 3.3 is the last version when competing companies are developing
their software further.

[View Quote]

Jan 2, 2002, 8:20pm

You're all forgetting on thing - and that's that if AW raised the price to
$30 a year, 50,000 citizens wouldn't all pay for an increase. There's
always going to be someone who says the next dollar is too much. I'd be
willing to bet at least 10,000 citizens wouldn't renew even if the price was
raised to even $30. Therefore, AW wouldn't make 1.5 million dollars but
substantially less.

Second, $71K is hardly a lot of money for a huge corporation for AW to make
in one year. They're attempting to increase their bottom line - it's that
simple. Chances are, they can make more money by charging that much,
because even if they make the same amount in citizenship renewals, so many
people will leave the universe that they'll be charged less for bandwidth,
hosting, salaries, and so forth. There's the reasoning behind the increase.

But sheesh - why is everyone complaining about the price increase when they
don't even know what the increase is going to be after all? For all you
know, you could be paying $30/year after all next year. Everyone should
read the letter a little more carefully.

[View Quote]

Jan 2, 2002, 9:14pm

I'd like to propose the idea that charging more for citizenships will be the
solution to all the problems with community involvement AW's been having
recently.

If people are paying $9.50 per month, they're much more likely to put more
into AW than they would be if they're paying only $20 per year. In
addition, chances are that people like Radon who continue to buy new
citizenships to cause trouble will decide that the price is now too high to
be worth the effort. Furthermore, the elimination of anonymous tourists
will most likely mean the end of a lot of GZ spamming and a reduction in
vandalism - people won't vandalize as much when they know it can be nailed
to their account.

Furthermore, if you read the FAQ that's posted at
http://www.activeworlds.com/tech/faq.asp, you'll find out that all current
citizenships will be good until they expire. Not only that, but the price
for renewing existing citizenships will probably be lower than obtaining a
new citizenship.

In short, AW's not going to disappear one day tomorrow or a day in February.
The fact that AW is phasing in a pricing plan instead of simply filing for
bankruptcy shows how stable their financial situation really is.

I'm not going to go signing any ridiculous petitions that say "F AWCOM" or
something like that because doing so is simply a waste of time and probably
would only hurt the community. I'd bet some money that, in a week or so,
public opinion will have drastically changed once everyone learns all the
facts and calms down a bit to think more reasonably.

[View Quote]

Jan 2, 2002, 9:17pm

One more issue I should bring up - for all those complaining about AW not
adding improvements the community wants, AW simply HAS to listen to the
community's requests for improvements from now on, because consumers now
hold a much bigger share as compared to the big businesses that run AW.
Expect to see more user-requested features in the future; heck, AW probably
decided on this plan months ago when they suddenly changed their public
policy with the feature vote page. The timing is interesting, as is
Roland's cancellation of Tech Talks recently..... just something to think
about :)

[View Quote]

Jan 2, 2002, 9:07pm

Instead of having your proposal buried in E-Mails, find out AW's address and
send a nice, clean, proofread letter to them stating clearly what you
propose and why you think your suggestion would work. Be sure not to curse
at AW employees or anything like that; instead, address them as "Mr. Noll"
and such. It's a much more professional way to do things, and chances are
your opinion would be much more highly regarded.

[View Quote]

Jan 3, 2002, 11:49am

My citizenship doesn't expire until January 2003, and I'll be paying after
that every month, as long as there are enough people around to warrant using
the software.

As I said before, it's not a question of whether I'll pay - I'm not the
richest person in the world, but I'll find a way to scrounge up enough money
to stick around if AW is worthwhile. But if AW's citizen count is cut in a
quarter, then I can't justify spending that much money to hang around a
dying community.

What I find a shame is that I've basically wasted all this time programming
software that won't be used in the upcoming months. Thus, I'm not going to
be programming any bots anymore until I see what the results of this price
change are in the end. I had always considered AW's decline making all of
that a waste of time suddenly; what I hadn't considered is a new plan like
this that will slowly decrease the number of users on AW instead of AW
simply giving out suddenly.

[View Quote]

Jan 3, 2002, 1:17pm

I've been looking around at these online petitions and surveying the GZs to
see what public opinion seems to be, and I came across something
interesting.

Go to http://www.petitiononline.com/, where that AW petition is hosted.
They have a list of the top 10 petitions for each day. Out of thousands of
petitions about topics ranging from the abolishment of nuclear weapons to
bringing Final Fantasy X to the Gamecube, take a look at the #1 most active
petition right now.

I'm not saying that I agree or disagree with the petition; in fact, I'm
waiting for the citizen price plan to make judgement. I'm just pointing out
something interesting.

[View Quote]

Jan 3, 2002, 1:47pm

I agree, but it seems that you and I are in the minority - a heck of a lot
of people signed that petition.

[View Quote]

Jan 3, 2002, 10:59pm

I'd say that that was a good idea, except I can't support Goober on this
one. Obviously, AW is in an extremely dire financial situation, so who
knows if AW will even be around in late 2003 for you to stock up on
citizenships now? You could be risking losing the money you spend now if AW
fails between now and your citizenship expiration date....

[View Quote]

Jan 3, 2002, 5:14pm

I didn't know what to think about this plan before, but I read the
"citizenship cancellation" help page now, and look what's written there:

"If you change your mind and would like to renew your citizenship, you may
do so for up to 30 days after cancellation. After 30 days, your citizen ID
and any properties built with that ID will be permanently deleted."

I guess that means Roland is going to purge the AlphaWorld database
periodically, which is bad news for all the historic buildings that people
have worked so hard on. Better back up AW's history now.

Perhaps I'm just misinterpreting this statement - can anyone clarify this?

Jan 3, 2002, 6:57pm

I'm going to forward this post to Roland and see if he'll answer a
clarification :)

[View Quote]

Jan 3, 2002, 8:25pm

Which is why I appended a sentence on the bottom asking any if they know
what it means. I asked Roland, and he basically replied saying that he
doesn't know what the heck that means.

I'm going to E-Mail Mountain Myst next - maybe she'll have to answer :)

[View Quote]

Jan 6, 2002, 2:56am

[View Quote] Such is the case with a lot of people who think their English skills aren't
that great. Many times it turns out that they have a better grasp of
English than quite a few native speakers :)

>
[View Quote]

Jan 6, 2002, 10:14pm

Apparently, it's very easy to cancel - the link is right on the webpage at
their citizenship signup place. You don't even have to talk to a person to
do it, either.

[View Quote]

Jan 6, 2002, 8:53pm

I wouldn't be surprised if universe prices were raised so that, in turn, the
owners had to raise their prices as well. Not doing so would be bad
business, because they'd be reducing their income substantially when people
leave.

[View Quote]

Jan 8, 2002, 1:14pm

Hold on a second. It's most likely that AW is closing down universes that
are cracked, but they've always been doing that - that's nothing new. It's
not as if these people paid for these universes.

But as to making free citizenship universes paying, AW doesn't have any
legal right to do that, unless there is some fine print somewhere that
states that "all universes purchased from Activeworlds Corp must charge for
citizenships" in the universe license agreement. Unless the agreement was
amended, then I don't see how this rumor can be true. Most likely, a
universe owner decided that they could make some money and started charging
for citizenships by themself. Then, a user who was disgruntled started
blaming AW for making them charge, and thus we have the current rumors :)

[View Quote]

Jan 8, 2002, 5:46pm

Again, this is probably just a rumor. Do you know for sure that it was AW
that forced Dreamland park to stop giving away free citizenships?

If not, then let's wait for the official word :)

[View Quote]

Jan 8, 2002, 8:42pm

All that is is a chat log. Not to put anyone down, but it could have been
modified or some of the people involved couldn't have had the best
information.

I won't believe these rumors until someone from AW confirms them.

On another note, I wonder if Protagonist has heard about the policy change
in the software he started? Someone should go to askearth.com and post a
question, lol

[View Quote]

Jan 8, 2002, 11:36pm

I'm sorry, Goober, but I'm getting tired of people continuing to rattle on
about how we need to "keep the community going," and that we "should
perserve in the face of difficulties," and similar things. Since when is it
solely our responsibility to keep AW running? If AW wants to raise the
prices, then they should keep the community going.

It's contridictory to disagree with the price raise, and then state that you
will stick with AW "until the end." If you don't like AW, then leave - it's
not your responsibility to maintain the community.

Closing worlds WILL have an impact on AW, even if it's not immediately
apparent. Unlike online games where the company pays people to design the
game and you simply play through it, in AW citizens are the ones who create
the content. Thus, by closing all of the French speaking worlds in the
universe, perhaps a few French speakers will decide that AW simply isn't
worth the money because nobody is around speaking French. In this regard, I
find it ridiculous that AW management will be charging citizens these
exorbitant fees to create content for their universe. Volunteering with no
exchange of money is fine, and a minimal fee like the $20.00 a year is still
acceptable, but is paying $10.00 a month to help out their business? Media
executives pay people big bucks to do the sort of things that you do every
day :)

[View Quote]

Jan 9, 2002, 1:01pm

[View Quote] I never said that ALL of the french people in the entire universe would
leave instantly. I said that, perhaps, a few new citizens who know how to
speak French and don't know much about computers will leave because they
don't see any French worlds around.

>
> What do you think will happen? "Oh no!" Rick exclaims, "Three more
> worlds have gone red! Whatever shall we do?!" Get real, Brant. AWC has
> already gotten all the money it's going to get out of those worlds
> (until next year, at least), so why should they care if they close down?
> The only people who would care are the people who frequently visit that
> world, and I doubt they'd be very happy if the world owner shut it down
> simply because of a futile protest. Who do you think all the kiddies
> would blame if you decided to shut down AWTeen in protest, hmm?

I never said that AW's upper management would even know. How could they
possibly keep track of such a thing? They might never notice that three
citizens left, but in the end the act of shutting those worlds down will
have contributed in some small way to showing their displeasure.
Furthermore, if the visitors to these worlds are disgruntled, then all the
better for the protest, because these French visitors might not stay around
either if the
worlds aren't up. Finally, AWTeen is a completely different type of entity
that is owned by AWC and has nothing to do with a few french worlds shutting
down, so it's completely irrelevant to the discussion.

>
> Do you expect Valve to create and maintain all the Halflife and Team
> Fortress clans? Do you expect the Everquest guys to run all the auctions
> for their in-game items? Do you think all the video game companies
> should be running IGN? The only responsibility AWC has is to the
> product, and to make sure it's the best damn product they can make. It's
> not their fault a community decided to spring up around their product.
> Don't get me wrong, they should still listen to us, since we use their
> product, but it's not as if I think they should be expected to run
> ComReg, AWHS, and everything else in the AW community. Simply put, AWC
> gets people to come here, the community *keeps* people coming here.
> That's how it's always been, and that's how it will always be.

None of these examples fit the current situation. Sure, Halflife players
create their own teams and clans, but they're not designing the acutal game;
i.e. spending hours creating objects to create an arena. If all of the
teams in Halflife fell apart, I'm sure that some people would be
disgruntled, but most people would simply stay and play by themselves. In
AW, the
citizens create the objects and build the worlds themselves. If all the
worlds by private citizens fell apart, then who would want to come to a
Universe where there are no worlds or builds other than AlphaWorld GZ and
other places made by AWC staff members?

>
[View Quote]

Jan 29, 2002, 6:16pm

Fortunately, this virus doesn't function after January 29. Therefore, all
the damage should be pretty much done :)

Feb 25, 2002, 8:50pm

Not that this bug is much of a threat to AW's livelyhood, because it
requires a citizen login before using tourist mode - I doubt that it's high
on the priorities list to fix.

[View Quote]

Mar 5, 2002, 4:03pm

According to the document posted at http://www.activeworlds.com/letter.html,

"Existing citizens, who expire on or before March 3, can renew at the old
rate of $19.95. Any citizen expiring between March 3 and December 31, 2002,
may renew for $49.95 for the year. On January 1, 2003 all renewals would be
at the monthly plan of $6.95 or annual of $69.95."

It's March 4, but the renewal rate listed in the universe attributes still
stands at $19.95. Anyone know what's up?

Mar 5, 2002, 8:16pm

Oh come on, Gamer - did you really think that if you didn't mention the
pricing update that people would just "forget?" lol

Mar 13, 2002, 12:11pm

Everyone's making a big deal about this as if it's the end of the world.
I'm sure that someone can think up a better (and more original name) for the
event, and even create a better logo than the Olympic rings.

Right, Chris?

[View Quote]

Mar 19, 2002, 5:57pm

I agree wholeheartedly with what you said, but I cannot support this letter.
I agree in that while prices might need to be increased, there is any reason
whatsoever that expired citizens' buildings should be deleted. However,
this letter states:

------------
"Personally, I think that Rick and JP are incompetent. In my personal scope
I think that if they had ANY sense whatsoever that they would take the time
to LISTEN to the great ideas I hear people say in AW almost every time I
login. I feel that those two have done more damage to AW than anyone ever
has before."
------------

Insulting the ONLY people who can change the policy will do nothing but
alienate yourself (and others) as well as cause more strife between the
community and AW's management. While the letter had a good cause behind it,
it was ruined and will have no effect because of these and similar
statements. Regardless of how you feel about ENZO and Cryonics, a letter to
them is not the place to share your hatred and disgust.

I had been planning to draft a letter about this subject to send to AW's
staff, but after this disaster, I doubt that they'll take it very seriously.

Mar 19, 2002, 6:54pm

Well, it's a good thing that this was settled. It still could have been
done with some class instead of calling AW's management "idiots," however.
Guess the policy was changed since January.

[View Quote]

1  ...  9  10  11  12  13  14  ...  17  |   Order by default