The Engines of Progress

Here are the 4 things we’re working on right now:

ADNOueepcvietegnilh oobTnpoo er IrhTm ohaPoegrd eosPsg u r b a l m i c

(That’s really Auction Images, Developer Program, Neighborhoods and Open to the Public carefully interspersed so no one will get their panties in a bunch think we’ll be working on anything “Dead Last”. The truth is, we’re working on all of them at once.

1. Fixing Auction images, we’re waiting to roll a fix out to see if it fixes it.

2. For the Developer program, it’s a very complex thing to get you to the point to where you can re-submit your previously approved designs. You see, when your Avoid changed (that’s the 64-bit number unique to your avatar), it disconnected you from all of your old submissions, and all the little bits that go with them. It’s not a disaster, we just need to make sure we put all the bits together again correctly, which entails Samsyn writing a mind-dissolving script to basically toss all the new Avoids and Submissions up in the air, and then catch and assemble them (correctly) as they fall to the ground. You can understand that one can only work on something like this so long before they need to take a break and work on something easier, like discovering the Higgs Boson or Dark Matter.

3. For the Hoods, we’re actually pretty far along here, and will probably be able to drop a There-Owned Hood (like Santa’s Village) as a test. Once we’re sure that all works correctly, Bruce can spin up another server for some member hoods, and we can start restoring them in the order they sent in their emails requesting their hoods be restored.

4. Opening to the Public is actually the easiest thing to do, but we’re probably going to hold off on that.

How long? Well, we have to decide whether new users will be concerned about the landing areas being barren (Zona, etc) – because THAT requires Hoods, and/or if they will be dismayed by the high prices in Auctions (presumably because of the Developer program not working yet). I suspect that we’ll do it somewhere between Hoods and the Developer Program, but I’m not sure about that.

Now, to the less happy part of our program. A few reminders:

1. DO NOT share Avatars. We’ve already had at least two incidents where people shared Avatars, and then “broke up” (so to speak), and got into big fights over who owned what, and ask us (all 3 of us, who have nothing better to do) to resolve it. I’m sorry, but in those situations, we really can’t resolve these things, and we’re going to leave you to your own, 18 and over devices.

2. DO NOT share Avatars with Banned members. We know there are a couple that are running around doing that, and, trust me, we WILL find out, and not only will we ban the sharee avatar, we’ll ban the sharer to. It’s kind of like real life: If you give someone a gun, and they use it in a robbery, then you’re an accessory.

3. DO NOT use hate speech, and DO NOT expect us to fall for “hate-speech-expletive”-Oh-I’m-Kidding to work either. It doesn’t work for 7-year olds who say “You’re Stupid, just kidding”, it won’t work for you.

When I have better dates for the four projects above, I’ll let you know. I also owe you all an operating costs update, which I haven’t gotten to yet .

2012 in There

Lots of news today!

First, Congratulations. Even though we only started collecting money on December 10th, we were able to come into within a cat’s whisker (no, this is not a veiled announcement about Cats in There) of being in the black – we were “only” $1300 in the red. We’re all pretty confident that if we’d been billing all month, we’d be in the black if we go by past expenses (none of these numbers are “audited” yet).

Of course this doesn’t count the accumulated debt to get us started up, which is, of course there.

I’ll be reformatting the “Operating Costs” page to reflect 2012, but I wanted to thank everyone for their support.

Second, this week we’re starting the “Great PAZ Pick Up of 2012″. Let’s review what will happen:

• Sometime around “Dan O’Clock” tomorrow, Wednesday, January 4th, 2012, Dan will pick a sector at random, and pick up all the PAZs in that sector. There will be no advance notice to prevent “Land Grabs” or “Camping”.
• Every 12 hours or so, he’ll pick another sector at random, and do the same thing.
• Once we’ve done all the sectors, we’ll be done!

Third, I’ll be working with Mackie to establish a policy for those of you who have forgotten your password, and have an inaccessible email, and either forgot or don’t have secret question. Let’s be clear here: You will be required to present some sort of picture id, and you will be required to pay us, via PayPal, some amount of money for doing the research. Don’t be surprised if that amount is > $10 U.S., and probably more like $25.00.

I know this seems unfair, but it will take real time for us to verify this, and it’s time Mackie could be spending on other support issues.

This should be good reminder to all of you to SET UP A SECRET QUESTION. Thank goodness we already require you to have a verifiable email address this time around .

Fourth, we’re working on opening the World to new members. This will mostly involve turning “off” the invitation blockades, and shouldn’t be a big deal.

Fear not, legacy avatar names will still be reserved for quite some time.

Fifth, we’re going to put a stake in the ground here as to reserved rentals. Right now, we’re preventing people (other than the prior owners) from claiming There Houses or FunZones.

The current plan is to release the reserved rentals on February 1st, 2012. That means if you have NOT reclaimed your There House or Zone by that date, it will be released for rental by whoever shows up to rent it.

If you’re a banned member, or a former member who chooses not to pay the subscription fee, the your reserved properties will be released. There is no ability for you to “will” or “give” it to a friend (or, in the former case, the “New Alt which you think we don’t know about”).

Sixth, we’re working in the developer program as we speak, with the first priority being getting old developers the ability to list their existing creations for auction. That will also resolve the “pictures in auctions” issue, which is tied to the whole “Old Oid/New Oid” business.

Finally, we don’t have a date for Real Estate yet. Still working on it.

Whew. Happy New Year!

New Years in Montana

2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

London Olympic Stadium holds 80,000 people. This blog was viewed about 770,000 times in 2011. If it were competing at London Olympic Stadium, it would take about 10 sold-out events for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

“Why are you making me use PayPal?”

Lots of people are having issues with There using PayPal, and the fact that we “require” a verified PayPal account. Here’s some background on that:

• In the Old There, we used to store Credit Cards on secure servers and connected directly to a non-PayPal payment processor. To do this, we had to be “PCI Compliant”, which meant we had to meet all kinds of regulations to be “trusted” to keep people’s credit cards on file. Maintaining PCI compliance was expensive, and, there’s also the risk, no matter how secure you are, that the card data could be compromised (that never happened to us, BTW).
• In the New There, we decided NOT to hold people’s cards on file because we don’t have the money, or resources to maintain PCI compliance. In today’s world, there are lots of 3rd party payment processors who will do this for us, so we (like many other businesses) decided to let them do it while we focus on running a virtual world.
• We chose PayPal because (1) We’re already established with them, (2) We already had the code in place to work with PayPal, and (3) PayPal offered the ability to manage subscriptions payments for us. Thousands of other businesses also use PayPal, and many use it for subscriptions, so we didn’t think we’d made a horrible choice there.
• We use “Verified Accounts” because, to be honest, we had a problem with “ChargeBacks”. Chargebacks occur when someone reverses a charge on a card, a card used proves to be stolen or fraudulent, or the credit card company just won’t honor the card. We got chargebacks for any number of reasons: People under 18 running amok on their parent’s cards, people using stolen or fraudulent cards, T$ reseller scams, etc, etc. Each time we got a chargeback, PayPal gave us a “bad mark”, and charged us. Enough bad marks, and PayPal shuts you down as a merchant. To avoid this, we worked with PayPal, who suggested that turning on verified accounts (among other things) would reduce the chargeback rate (which it did). So we didn’t just decide to require verified accounts – we did it because it was a business necessity.
• We’ll never allow people to pay for subscriptions with a GameCard, or any other device someone under 18, or a griefer, could run down to the 7-11 and purchase. We may allow them for T$ purchases at some time.
• In the future, we will try and add other payment services, like, say “Stripe”, but that will take some time, and there’s no guarantee they won’t have the same requirements PayPal does. Processors like PayPal require these things to reduce chargeback rates and reduce fraud. So you may find you’re no happier with other services than the ones we have today.

I hope this explains how we got to where we are today. I am happy to report than >200 people have already subscribed successfully, with no problem, so we know it’s working for some people (perhaps even lots of people).

Subscriptions

We introduced subscriptions for a while today. SamSyn let 20 go through, and then turned it off to take a look at what happened.

The good news is that every subscription went through properly.

The bad news is that:

• While those 20 went through “properly”, they didn’t work esthetically “perfectly”. It’s nothing YOU have to be concerned about, but it’s good we stopped to do a little polish.
• Some folks who should have had “Lifetime Memberships” (See Below), didn’t. We need to fix that.

Sooo, it was a super-good test.

On the whole “Lifetime Subscription” issue. We identified two member programs which we decided were eligible for “Free Lifetime” memberships:

• “v1_beta_lifetime.xml” – 57 members
• “v1_beta_lifetime_prepay.xml” – 214 members

As we all know, There used to throw the whole “lifetime” word around a lot, and, in the vast majority of cases (2367, to be exact), “lifetime” meant “Lifetime Premium”, which, in our eyes, means that as long as you’re a member, Premium membership is yours.

We can argue all day long about whether those 2367 (or 4374, or 7,101, etc) should get There for Free, but at the end of the day, the answer is this “If 2300+ members get There for free, we won’t make our numbers, and will have to close again, for good”.

2300 * $10 is $23,000 a month, which is a BIG chunk of what we need to stay open.

I’m 110% sure some people are going to be unhappy with our definition of lifetime. If we can’t agree, then, well, you are no worse off than you were before – There is closed, and you’ve “lost” all your virtual “possessions” (remember, virtual goods are NOT an investment, any more than a theatre ticket is).

On the HAPPY side of things, Bruce added some more servers, and, from our view, all servers are getting 30 steps-per-second internally (that is, they think they’re keeping up). I’m sure that some people will differ on that, so we’ll keep an eye on it. I’ve also asked Bruce to ready another set of server, but NOT spin them up, since that changes the cost from “pennies a month” to over $400/month.

Finally, I’ve started to update the “Operating Costs” page. As you can see, we’ve gotten about 8K in T$ sales as of last Friday, which is great. Keep those $ coming so we can work our way towards breaking even this month!

P.S. The fact that we turned on subscriptions, even for a bit, means the Big Paz Pick Up is coming SOON. So dont’ be surprised!

P.S.S. No, this doesn’t mean neighborhoods are about to be turned on. We’re going to be working on it soon, but it’s not ready YET, and no, we’re not going to say when.

Short and Sweet, here’s the Plan

Here’s the plan:

• Add 4 more iHosts (Servers) to bring the world up to capacity.
• Turn “On” subscriptions, which will allow anyone who is willing to subscribe to get in.
• Let Dust Settle.
• SamSyn will put the numbers of the various iHosts in a hat. Every 12 hours or so, he will pull a number, and “Pick Up” all the PAZs on that iHost (the dreaded, but long discussed, “Pazoclypse”

Then, we’ll start working on other things, like getting Developer back online, Peer Reviews, Hood, etc, etc.

IMPORANT
If you’re under 18, this is it. If you are under 18, and subscribe and enter the world, we will catch you. Here is what will happen:

• You will be banned for life.
• Your household and computer will be banned for life.
• You will lose all of your possessions, T$, houses, hoods, zones.
• Your avatar will be destroyed, and the name freed up for future use. Here’s a video of that process:

If you don’t try and sneak in, then your avatar and possessions will be waiting for you when you turn 18.

IMPORANT

Facebook Account

Well, some idiot has reported my Facebook account and gotten it disabled.

I’m sending in the documentation to get this resolved, but in the meantime don’t expect me to respond to posts, etc on Facebook.

I’m going to find my own special way to thank the person(s) who reported me.

Purchasing Therebucks

As of this posting, you may now purchase Therebucks. We’ll be watching things closely, so we may have to turn it off if we spot any problems.

As a caution, there will be NO Refunds for Therebucks purchases. Once you buy’em, they’re yours.

Purchasing is hooked in at these places:

ThereCentral/ Buy more therebux
ThereMenu/MyThings/Tb/buy
ThereMenu/Shop/Tb/buy

Those take you to:

https://webapps.prod.there.com/banker/banker

*IMPORTANT*
YOU WILL HAVE TO LOGIN TO PAYPAL AND THAT AFTER LOGGING IN THEN PAYPAL WILL WANT YOU TO PRESS A CONFIRM BUTTON. YOU WILL *THINK* YOU’RE DONE AFTER LOGGING INTO PAYPAL, BUT YOU HAVE TO DO THE EXTRA “CONFIRM” STEP TO GET YOUR BUCKS.
*IMPORTANT*

Update

Here’s a general update on things:

Buying T$, Subscriptions, “Trash Bug”, etc

• We really hope to have Buying T$ this week. We’re really close, we just have to put in a few more “security measures”
• That will also finish up another piece of subscriptions, which makes opening that much closer.
• We haven’t really fixed the “Trash Bug”, which is the problem that occurs when someone logs in with hundreds or thousands of items they didn’t have before. The problem is, the system has to do something special the first time it sees these items, and there’s a problem in there which can cause (a) server to become unresponsive. The good news is that it “heals itself” over time as the system processes those new things. The bad news is that the “Claim Alt Inventory” tool has exacerbated the problem since it causes people to amass hundreds or thousands of items all at once, instead of “over time” as it would happen in “real life”. Since this isn’t fatal, I’ve decided we’re going to focus on getting money into the system right now, then we’ll go back and address this.
• There have been rumors that “the new Cloud Servers make me lag more”. SamSyn has investigated this over and over and over, and we’ve consistently found the Cloud Servers are faster than the old server, and we’ve yet to see them overloaded anywhere near where people are reporting lag. We’ll keep looking at it, but we have not seen evidence of it yet.

Lost Items

Over the past few months we’ve examined scores of reports of missing items. With the exception of Cars with custom paint jobs losing their paint jobs, we have not had a single case of us losing an item. Now, it may be that people are fuzzy on where their items were when we closed, which may cause them to believe they’re “lost”:

• If you gave you item to a friend before we closed, then it’s still with them. If they haven’t resurrected their avatar, your item hasn’t been resurrected, either. It will not reappear until your friend re-registers, resurrects their inventory, and gives it back to you.
• If you gave your item to an Alt before we closed, then it’s still with your Alt. You will need to resurrect it, or claim it’s possessions to get it back.
• If the item was on a TryIt or a Loaner before we closed, then it’s gone. It was a loaner, and it’s been taken back. Sorry.
• If you sold the item in auctions, or returned it before we closed, then it’s gone. You returned it.

Each time we have to do this, it takes time, sometimes up to a 1/2 hour or an hour. That’s 1/2 or an hour that we’re not doing things we need to re-open.

Since we’ve never found a case where an item’s gone missing, we’re going to slow down looking at these reports by quite a bit, and will probably start charging you for looking into it if it turns out we didn’t lose it. I know that this isn’t popular, but I’d guess we’ve spent over a man-week chasing these geese, and haven’t caught one yet.

Age Verification Moderations

I will admit, we have been very agressive about underage bans.

First, There’s not open yet. We actually not interested in people, especially underage people, enjoying themselves in There. We’re happy you are, but it’s not a right, it’s a privilege. We’re happiest with people like Okalnix and others, who tirelessly try different things and give us complete and through reports of what works and what doesn’t. Okalnix is one of many, but if you see him in world you should give him a ‘hi5, ‘hug, or whatever for all his good work.

Where was I? On minors. Also, we only do it when we have pretty good proof that someone should provide proof of age. I’m not going to tell you what the triggers are, but they’re pretty solid.

If you are moderated for age verification, Mackie will send you a very specific list of qualifying documents. When you get the list, you’ll see that it doesn’t say “Your brother’s documents”, or “defaced documents”, or “fake documents”.

Finally, we won’t be processing age moderations until we open, we have too much to do.

Other Moderations

We’ve been moderating for another reason: Hate Speech. We – and we’ve discussed it as a group – don’t tolerate hate speech, racial slurs, or what I call “sexually” agressive speech (any sort of speech implying forcing acts on another person).

My rule of thumb is “If you can’t go up to a stranger on a city street and say it without getting in trouble, or ending up in a hospital, then you can’t do it in There”. As I said on Facebook, you can tell me to Fuck off, call me a Fuckhead, a dick head, and offer to kick the shit out of me. But if you call me the “N” word, threaten to rape me, or kill my children, then you’re outta There, for good.

I will say that the only people we’ve had to moderate for that are also probably underage. Imagine that!!!!

By the way, when we ban an Avatar, we’re banning the person behind it, not “the avatar”. So If you’re banned, we consider your Alts banned too. The TOS says that you can’t give out your Avatars to others, so the behavior of all of your former and current Avatar(s) and Alt(s) reflect on you.

Rumors

We’ve heard some doozies:

• No, we’re NOT “Closing Space” when There opens
• The OSX/Mac version was used in virtual congress, and when you see me in world, there’s a 50/50 chance I’m using a Mac client. It doesn’t mean it will be available when we open, but it won’t be forever, either.
• There will be no refunds for anything. Sorry. We’re trying to get into the black here.

When will There Open?

We’re not going to say. We don’t want a mad rush, so one day, it will just “be open”. I’m not even sure if we’ll pull up all PAZs before or after that – we need to think about that.

When will new members be allowed in?

Once the dust settles from getting all the former members in.

That’s all for now. I wish I had a happier post today, and a better picture. Maybe the next one .