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Jan 3, 2002, 9:57pm

If the new pricing plan really does kill the community, it might be possible
for us to pack up and colonize a new universe server with more reasonable
prices. This is only possible though if the universe server prices do not
rocket as well. Any thoughts?

A good thing for this universe to do would be to eliminate the $70
activation fee for worlds migrating from AW to their universe. I'm sure it
would encourage more migration.

I would really hate for this whole community to be destroyed. I've been a
relatively quiet member since 1998 and have enjoyed every minute of it.

-BirdMike

Jan 3, 2002, 10:02pm

dont start packign your bags just yet. Nothign is totally set in stone just
yet. I suggest waiting until at least the month before your cit expires to
start planning anything

[View Quote]

Jan 3, 2002, 10:04pm

I'm just coming up with ideas. I still plan to enjoy my world until it
expires in December.


[View Quote]

Jan 3, 2002, 10:38pm

Also the way awcom sells land to universes it works out that it is ALWAYS
cheaper per square meter to buy in aw than another universe. Otherwise it
would be a pretty silly business move to sell their product to people who
can then sell for less and make a proffit.

Jan 4, 2002, 12:32am

I can be hopelessly optimistic, can't I?

[View Quote]

Jan 5, 2002, 5:22am

Yes, Uniserver prices are fabulously high. The smallest Uniserver is 25x
the price of a similar sized world here in AW. So packing up your world
and moving it to another Uniserver just because you are upset with
prices is kinda dumb.

However, once they solve the migration between Uniservers problem (and
about 2/3 of the things they cite in their web page about doing this are
simply bogus, they are thinking in the wrong paradigm), then they can
drop prices. Why? Consider this. A community is people, if you have 300
regulars who spend an average of 10 hours a week in your Uni, then
hardly anyone gets to actually talk with hardly anyone else. Make that
30,000 regulars and you end up with a couple of hundred on line at any
one time. If AW Corp were to charge a reasonable fee for a Uniserver
*and* they did not have the technology to allow people to move around,
then you'd have thousands of isolated islands with very few users in
each.

Why lower Uniserver prices? To grow.

Internet based VR *will* be the future. Who will lead? It will not be
any one company, but a technology (a protocol really), and *open*
protocols are an absolute must. Internet VR will be way to big for any
one company to handle.

Consider the web, that is http. How many companies publish and sell a
web server? Apache (the most popular), iPlanet, Zeus, Microsoft, and
there are probably dozens of other smaller companies. And how many
different web browsers? The last number I saw was somewhere around 30
unique web browser vendors. Now at least on some basic level *all* these
web browsers can interact with *all* these web servers. So it is the
protocol that will rule, not Microsoft, Sun, or some group of open
source developers. The enemy? Why those old protocols that no one
remembers any more, like Archie, or Gopher.

If web sites are kind of like worlds (looking at the eventual future of
Internet VR) then how many can we expect? Well, how many web servers are
there (multiple sites can be run from a single web server). I'm not
really sure, but back when Code Red was crunching IIS web servers
(Microsoft) right and left, I saw a world map with estimates of how many
*infected* IIS servers there were on each continent. I remember North
America had an estimated 630,000 infected servers -- and that was only a
fraction of IIS servers, not all got infected. I run IIS, and due to my
config I escaped infection, I also run a total of 21 web sites
(including OPs) on my big IIS server. And IIS is not the most popular,
Apache is.

So what might a *successful* world/uniserver company look like someday?
How about thousands to tens of thousands of active Uniservers running
world-wide. 100s of thousands to a million or more active world servers
running world wide (and many running multiple worlds). And that would be
one out of two or three big companies along with a dozen or more smaller
companies creating this software.

And where will all the citizens come from? I read somewhere recently
that it is estimated that there will be over a billion humans (not bots,
agents, or spiders) using the Internet by 2004. A billion people, maybe
half will be citizens in at least some Uni somewhere.

So the long-term name of the game is to get your protocol named as the
world standard for Internet VR, or to at least get something close
enough (perhaps in a compromise situation) that you can rapidly
re-purpose your product line to fit the world standard. Who is likely to
have the most muscle in negotiations? Well, the companies with the most
users, the most installations, and the biggest server customer base (Uni
and world owners).

So in my opinion, AW Corp *needs* as many *cheap* Uniservers out there
as they can possibly push. Then need to price their larger models so
that their customers *can* afford to compete on price with them for
citizenships, and for world server "parking" fees (the fees paid to a
Uniserver owner to have your world appear on their list).

So, I submit that it is *not* a silly business move to allow your
Uniserver customers to make a profit by selling citizenships and world
"parking" at a few % below what you sell it to the end users for, and
still be able to make a comfortable profit. There is retail, and there
is wholesale, it's been this way ever since money was invented.

Now here is the tough part, the long term name of the game may be to win
the protocol race, but meanwhile *survival* is an absolute necessity.
Will AW Corp survive? Probably, a year, two, even three... Will they win
the protocol race? Sadly, I don't think they have the vision to, but
hey, they could get lucky (and luck is as important as any other single
factor).

ScottyDM



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