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Mar 15, 2006, 2:30am

I emailed AWI not long ago about buying a much larger world for public use.
I wanted to know how much I would spend doing so. The reply kicked me in the
pants.

How much does an AWTeen like world cost? The answer is probably here
somewhere in an old post, but I am not intelligent enough to delve into the
newsgroup and find out with the software that I currently have. Does anyone
know? I've been told that I'd have to take on 2 more incomes in a hope to
actually come near that size of a world and sacrifice my first born child.

I'm in SL as well, and though I have many misgivings about that environment,
at least I ALWAYS know what it will cost to do what I want. AWI seems a
little more vague... and what they are NOT vague about seems to be way over
priced for what you get. There is absolutely no way in carnation that I
will spend 64000 dollars to create a large enough world for me to be
satisfied that you or a tourist can build in with a reasonable ability to
find a plot of land not already occupied by someone else. But what sucks is
that I want to have that world available.

We all have our desires and dreams, that's a given. Mine is simple but hard
to aquire. It's a wonder why no one has taken a uni server and hacked it so
everyone can have their own.... huh,... I wonder why anyone would ever do
something stupid like that.

lets be reasonable here... I have my own internet connection that I pay 40
dollars a month for.... 4mbs connection. I have my own path/web space which
I pay a decent dollar for. I run the server off my own computer.... or in
the environment my web provider allows. I'm providing everything for less
than 100 dollars a month... except for a license. What should someone
reasonably pay for a large enough area to provide enough building room for a
couple of hundred friends/aquaintences?

I'm just saying.

Mar 16, 2006, 12:37am

Actually.. you can see all the annual fees at this page:
http://www.activeworlds.com/products/worlds_pricing.asp
The highest they have there is a P-100 which is plenty big enough to last a
long time with many friends, and if you want 20 friends in the world at
once, the annual cost would be $1,150. But you would also need to run a
highly sophisticated world server with plenty of bandwidth for a world that
size and 20 people at once. World server prices vary. If you are serious
about doing this, I would look around for really good ones at the best price
you can find. Also, if you want something bigger than a P-100, AW might be
able to make you a deal on something. But of course, keep in mind about
having a Galaxy or Universe as your own, if you could afford it. Those costs
are here for Galaxies (1 world universe):
http://www.activeworlds.com/products/galaxervers.asp and here for
Universes (more than 1 world):
http://www.activeworlds.com/products/uniserver.asp I found all these
addresses under their Products on the main page.

-Kenneth



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Mar 19, 2006, 1:06am

I'm just saying. <- key phrase.

I was not asking them for a P100 sized world, I was asking them for a P4000
sized world and that webpage which you linked to which I have reviewed a
hundred times in the last few years doesn't say how much that would cost.
BTW, nor has that page you linked to ever changed in that timespan either.

With SL, you always know... period... unless it's land for auction... and in
that case you get to decide how much you are willing to pay.

Get my drift? If I want to buy a p4000, please have it out front as to how
much it will cost me... don't just ask me what my budget is.

Mar 19, 2006, 8:35am

Can't you just do the math? The worlds have a set price per square meter
no? Yeah, it's just $0.00025 per square meter.

So, a p4,000.. that's 80x80km, or 80,000 x 80,000m, thus 6,400,000,000
meters square. So... a p4000 would cost, using the basic private world
formula, $1,600,000.00

Wow.. yeah that's right. I can't imagine a project that would need that
much space. But there you have it, if you want a p4000 with NO special
pricing for 'buying in bulk', there's your price.

Obviously the only project that would need that much space would be some
sort of new super public building world. But Alpha has soooo much space
left, another isn't needed, in terms of just raw space. If you want
newer objects, cutting edge features, and the ability to donate to the
path, try awteen. There's also mars.

All of these words, even alpha, rarely have more than a few dozen people
in them. A new private public world, unless it offered something truely
new, also wouldn't ever have more than a few dozen. We can clearly see
from AW's pricing that every user capacity costs $10, so to literally
get a 'a few dozen' would cost about $360. Now, to have enough space
that no one has a trouble finding a plot of space, their largest listed
size of a p100 is quite large. Unless every single user is SW Comit,
with about 50 builders (and that's going to be hard to find in today's
AW) that gives everyone almost their own p30 world's worth of space to
build in.

So, to make your dream come true will only cost about $1360 "sticker
price". But we all know if you have a really good project, something
that is truely needed by the community, valued by awi, and you are a
reliable person, this cost can come way down. Not that a grand and a
half for one's absolute dream world is too ridiculous. You even get
$350 worth of free cits back from the deal! You could give these 5 free
cits to people to get some people to actually build in the new public
build world. Which, after a couple months, will probably become as
abandoned as wildaw, mars, or thebeans. Raw public building isn't
really that popular anymore. There are soooo many private worlds out
there, and world prices are fairly low that most people that are serious
about building just buy their own world. There's still life in the
public build worlds, look at SW City. Active worlds has TOO MANY worlds
and TOO MUCH land for the number of cits it has. The new trend is games
and such that push the limits of AW, something new.

We're like a city that at one time had a ton of downtown office demand,
but then there was a huge flood that killed most of the people, and to
make matters worse, tele-working became more popular, so there's too
much empty office space downtown, way fewer people, and technology has
changed to make such centralised office space obsolete for most. The
idea of building a new huge office tower in this city is a pretty
ridiculous idea. The key is to find out what IS in demand, and go with
that.

Mar 20, 2006, 1:14am

I don't work for AW. But I've heard in the past that huge worlds larger than
a P-100 are only dealt with on a one to one basis. I think that's the best
way so they can know who they are dealing with, with such a huge investment
of theirs and also yours. It's like buying a car, you want to know who you
are getting it from first.

-Kenneth



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Mar 20, 2006, 1:01pm

Yeah but we would offer a discount.

E



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Mar 20, 2006, 3:43pm

That's really cool. So a P-500 world would be (10,000 x 10,000) * 0.00025 =
$25,000 a year but with a discount like Enzo just mentioned.

-Kenneth


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Mar 20, 2006, 4:28pm

for $1.6m, i bet you would :)

-SWE

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Mar 22, 2006, 9:31pm

I still think myself that AWI should consider lowering prices for cits and
worlds.
I know 2 people now that had worlds in the past - and would like to have
worlds again - but have limited financial resources (like many of AW's users
do) and so far they can't afford it.
I also just heard from Ivie (cit # 7600) the other day that she can't afford
to renew her world and will have to let it expire. And other people are
dropping the number of the worlds (plural) they owned
AW may still be getting new users - but they are also losing and have lost
many users because of that $69.95.

Paul

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Mar 22, 2006, 9:59pm

If they lower the prices too much, then it won't just be the users who
are poor, but aw its self. it's like that damned game Lemonaid stand.
Rick and crew are attempting to set a price that will make them the most
money over-all. If the price is too high they'll lose money, and would
obviously lower the price if needed. When they first changed their
pricing model it was a little higher no?

Obviously the community wants cheaper prices and more users to play
with. You could argue that a more thriving community woudl attract more
people and make more money over-all, but I think we can assume awi has
poured over the data and come up with the current pricing system as the
'best' system for the current state of things.

maybe once 4.1 is out and they want to do a big user-drive it will come
down.

Maybe they'll do some clever promotions to attract new users.

Maybe they'll do some interesting sceme to help hold ON to existing
users. Perhaps some sort of 'loyalty discount'. Say 10% off the yearly
price every year you are a cit.

Who knows! But of course they know the community thinks the prices
should be lowered. I want new state of the art computers to cost $200
bucks. I'd like a house for $50,000. I'd love a door to door huggagram
service staffed by Enzo for only $10 plus five cents a word. But they
ARE trying to run a business here.

if you've got some data and real hard numbers to back up why they should
change the prices beyond some antidotal evidence and personal feelings,
I'm sure awi would thoughtfully consider it all.

Mar 22, 2006, 11:08pm

baro is right. I am a world owner. I had two worlds in fact, and in order to
afford things I have to drop one or both of them. I think if citizenships
were affordable(price comparable to the past when I entered AW at $20),
people would then spend their money by buying worlds and once one owns a
world they usually like to increase the size and number of users. Its this
area that can give the biggest potential for income increase, by world
purchase & increase in size and ownerships of multiple worlds. With a costly
registration fee, the available funds for world purchase go toward
membership, with nothing much left go aim for a world purchase.
I would like to see more people in AW and I would have brought in 3 or more
friends except at this cost they are unable to join.

CoLor

[View Quote] > If they lower the prices too much, then it won't just be the users who
> are poor, but aw its self. it's like that damned game Lemonaid stand.
> Rick and crew are attempting to set a price that will make them the most
> money over-all. If the price is too high they'll lose money, and would
> obviously lower the price if needed. When they first changed their
> pricing model it was a little higher no?
>
> Obviously the community wants cheaper prices and more users to play
> with. You could argue that a more thriving community woudl attract more
> people and make more money over-all, but I think we can assume awi has
> poured over the data and come up with the current pricing system as the
> 'best' system for the current state of things.
>
> maybe once 4.1 is out and they want to do a big user-drive it will come
> down.
>
> Maybe they'll do some clever promotions to attract new users.
>
> Maybe they'll do some interesting sceme to help hold ON to existing
> users. Perhaps some sort of 'loyalty discount'. Say 10% off the yearly
> price every year you are a cit.
>
> Who knows! But of course they know the community thinks the prices
> should be lowered. I want new state of the art computers to cost $200
> bucks. I'd like a house for $50,000. I'd love a door to door huggagram
> service staffed by Enzo for only $10 plus five cents a word. But they
> ARE trying to run a business here.
>
> if you've got some data and real hard numbers to back up why they should
> change the prices beyond some antidotal evidence and personal feelings,
> I'm sure awi would thoughtfully consider it all.

Mar 23, 2006, 12:23am

Good in theory, but thats not how business works. if the price is dropped,
most the citizens will not buy a world, because i'm guessing most of them
would not think it's worth it, instead, they would just be saving money,
which AW could have had instead.
And the ones that do own worlds, i'm guessing only a very few of them would
upgrade simple because cits are cheaper. at $10/user, i don't think $50 in
saving would pursuade them much.
And so, to make up for the lost profit, they would need 3 and a half times
as many users, just to be taking in as much money. But more money, also
means higher running costs, and as unlikely as that many new users joining
is, they would still be loosing money if they put the cits back at $20s and
got 3.5 times as many cits.
I think AW is fine the way it is now, they just need to advertise more. they
need something creative, apparently, they tried it before and it wasn't
worth the cost, so maybe they need to try something diffrent this time
around? especially after the 4.1 upgrade, things should become more
interesting.

And hey, they're hiring now, that has to be a good thing?

-SWE

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Mar 23, 2006, 12:25am

"I'd love a door to door huggagram service staffed by Enzo for only $10 plus
five cents a word. "

A huggagram? O_o you'd pay somebody, to send someone else a hug? aren't hugs
more of a personally touchy types of things?

-SWE

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Mar 23, 2006, 2:50am

I agree with both you and Baro. Many people complain about the prices
(aka beating a dead horse :P) and also the tourist building in every
public world which I have seen pop up a few times recently, but they
neglect to view things from a business perspective. I like the way Baro
stated it earlier, that "we can assume awi has poured over the data and
come up with the current pricing system as the 'best' system for the
current state of things." This is probably the best way that I have
heard someone put this across, because things do change and we can't
expect things *not* to change. As for the tourist building issue - same
issues..tourists cannot build in certain worlds until they
register..it's like a demo..you don't want to give your whole product
away for free! Ultimately, a business is a business, there is profit to
be made... no profit, no AW.

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Mar 23, 2006, 3:28am

[View Quote] AWI must be making hundreds of thousands a time from uniserver and support
sales to edus and e-commerce... from a 'business perspective' reducing
prices here would be what most people know as an act of gratitude to bolster
customer loyalty.

--
- Mark Randall
http://www.temporal-solutions.co.uk

"We're Systems and Networks..."
"It's our job to know..."

Mar 23, 2006, 3:53am

Mark.. Do you ever consider that AWI may have to pay for several other
payments outside of AW, just within the building (I'm sure they have to
make payments for the office space they have within the Arwood
building), webspace, servers, their employees. And I doubt that a lot of
those uniservers are full up-front payments..at least, the last time I
checked, I don't remember paying for a car upfront. I would think that
they'd offer monthly payments for those as well. One way or another, it
all adds up fairly quickly.

Do you know for sure how much they are making through those? To be
honest, I don't think it is very fair to them for anyone to bash their
price decisions (especially at $6.95 a month) unless they find a way to
get AWI's actual financial statements noting the expenses. Then they can
determine if AWI is giving us a fair price or not ;)

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Mar 23, 2006, 4:31am

[View Quote] Firstly, if AWI were not capable of making serious cash by now, I very much
doubt Rick and JP would have bought it outright.

Secondly, we have seen AWI's finances from the SEC filings several years
ago, they will be out of date but services tend to go down in price, not up,
and there are less staff there than there used to be.

Building and Maintainance / Rates will have no doubt gone up in the past few
years, however not massivly.

I doubt that AW itself could come anywhere near to sustaining AWI's
financial needs, if we for example take 800 worlds at $100 each thats $80k,
probably part of JP's salary, throw into that a few hundred cits, and you
find that AW universe must play a very small role in AWI's overall finances.

What AW does come into itself with is its word of mouth, and especially its
developers, bots, modellers etc - the people that provide things that AWI's
next client may have swing his or her descision towards using AW.

--
- Mark Randall
http://www.temporal-solutions.co.uk

"We're Systems and Networks..."
"It's our job to know..."

Mar 23, 2006, 10:59pm

>. As for the tourist building issue - same issues..tourists cannot build in
>certain worlds until they register..it's like a demo..you don't want to
>give your whole product away for free!

The reason I originally registered was because I was able to build as a
tourist in Alphaworld. If I was unable to build and my experience in AW was
simply as a fancy chat room, I never would have stayed. Back in the late
80's and early 90's there were several avatar style experiments being done
which I tried, but none allowed building, they were just chat rooms with
fancy surroundings and people dressed as a few different avatars. Big woop.
IBM even tried it and ultimately shut it down. I quickly lost interest.

Now, there was ONE 2D avatar environment that I was totally hooked on a very
long time ago on a service called Q-Link... back in the days of 300 baud
modems, commodore 64's, and when CompuServe was the ruler of all online
services(before the internet as we know it for you young kids) and it was
called Club Caribe. You couldn't build there, but there were many games you
could play on the island/city paradise and you could customize your
appearance for a small fee at vending machines. Buy a new head, or a can of
paint to change the color of something you were wearing... and you could buy
all manner of odd objects... there were towers you could explore, malls
galore to buy in, underground labyrinths, the island, underwater ruins, and
loads of special places you could take your honeydo on valentines day.

Maybe it was just that era or period of time, but there has never been any
game, chat room, or 2d/3d environment that I have ever experienced since
then that was so addictive and compelling to use. Maybe it was my age. I
don't know... all I know is that my last bill was over 800 dollars and I
lost access to my very first credit card as a result. :)

Now, since I registered with AW, I've opened a couple of user accounts and
had several worlds since 1999. None of which would have happened if I had
not been able to build as a tourist.

Building for the uninitiated in AW is a little confusing at first, and
therefore I feel it is important to give Tourists the ability to try it out,
learn how, and implement their ideas. They always ran the risk of having
their builds deleted by a citizen and they were always warned up front that
it could happen at any time. If they wanted their land and their builds to
last, they'd have to register. That was their incentive, and I know it
worked for a lot of us still here today.

For me, the 70 dollars a year isn't that big a deal, but I know it is for
many. I also know that when it was 20 dollars a year I referred everyone I
knew to come take advantage of the sweet deal. Since it bumped up to 70 I
have not referred a single person. There are too many free things on the net
to keep people interested without having to spend that kind of cash on. I
mean, get yourself a copy of yahoo messenger, find a bunch of chat buddy's
and if you want, doodle on the same window with each other and see each
other on your webcam's while doing it. I know it doesn't compared to AW, but
it's 100% free to do.

If you don't know it by reading older posts, I am a Cable TV installer for a
large cable company. I install internet service for many people a day when I
work and I get to see the icons and programs installed on their computers
during the process of my installation. People like free stuff... and the
number of installations of Morpheus, Kazaa, and Limewire is extremely
widespread. The use of AIM and Yahoo messenger is rampant. But not once have
I ever seen a copy of Activeworlds... never. I've seen people with World of
Warcraft, Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot.... nuff...
I'm praying that 4.1 is the killer app. :)

Be well!

Mar 23, 2006, 11:17pm

You have some good points Talisan. The fact of the matter is though,
tourists do have the ability to try it out.. there are many worlds just
like AlphaWorld that allow tourist building, such as AWTeen. I can
understand yours and a few others points with AlphaWorld allowing
building, because when I first started AW, yes, building was enabled as
a tourist...but then again, when I came to AW, cits were also free :P
But you see, things even changed from that too. What I meant was, that
I have heard a lot of complaining that every world left and right should
be allowed tourist builing or access when there are well over 50 or so
worlds that have tourist access and over 20-25 of those are building
enabled... that's more than enough to test out a program. I CAN see
both sides on AlphaWorld being building enabled though :)

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Mar 23, 2006, 11:54pm

Fair enough Elyk, and I do know that there is a website available which
tells tourists which worlds are tourist and tourist build enabled. However,
why should a third party have to create such a list? There *should* be such
a list available from the activeworlds website. It's to their advantage to
advertise this... for free... on their website.

When I was a player of Dark Age of Camelot... or Everquest II(no longer)...
they made websites that told of every minute detail of each player, each
guild, each server... you name it... you could get the details.

When my world server goes online with the AW uni server... all the
information needed is transmitted to it.... in order for the worlds list to
be generated with the correct rating, access, etc. Thus when one of my
worlds shows up on the list, you will either see it colored or grey,
indicating you can go there or not... or it may not show up on your list at
all because you decided the rating was inappropriate. Nowhere on this world
list does it say "citizen building available" or "tourist building
available"... or even for that matter "tourist enabled". Of course is
doesn't say "citizen bots allowed" either... but these are all features that
every world owner has the right to enable or disable.

I do not work for AWI obviously, but if I did, I would strongly push for a
dynamicly updated page on the AW website that showed which worlds were
online, and what their stats were... because you gotta know the UNI server
knows these details... and I know there are some talented people there that
could punch out a script for such a page in a day or two. This would
eliminate the need for third party sites to try and guess which worlds were
or were not whatever. And thus give all of us citizens and tourists the
ability to find the world we 'wanted to/could' build in.

It would solve a problem we have complained about for a long time and
probably others we are not even aware of yet.


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Mar 24, 2006, 1:36am

I think we're trailing off into one too many subjects now... my post
wasn't regarding whether or not the worlds were advertised properly :P

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Mar 24, 2006, 2:20pm

But but.... it's my thread :P~ hehe

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Mar 24, 2006, 7:04pm

gah.. my mistake :P I had been up since at least 6am yesterday and
was a little out of it by that time when I posted.

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