The Kitely team sent out this email today regarding the new changes to Metered Worlds which will come into effect on 1st July 2014. See Removing Metered Worlds and Introducing Premium Worlds blog announcement for the FAQ and for the latest feedback from the Kitely community. There does seem to be some confusion in comments and some positive feedback too.
As you can see above my access to this virtual world is restricted because I’m not Premium and due to the fact I don’t have any Kitely Credits. Personally I like to explore the worlds on Kitely for free and not have time constraints etc which has been the case in previous months. I do have a Regular Free Account and I don’t have any interest in upgrading to Premium. This applies to all other OpenSim Grid and the main Second Life grid.
Q: When does this change take effect?
A: Users with a Regular Account can’t create new Premium Worlds: this change is effective immediately.
However, users with a Regular Account that have existing Premium Worlds in their account have a grace period until July 1, 2014. During this grace period, Regular Account and Hypergrid users will still be allowed to visit these worlds. On July 1 the full rules described above will take effect, so Regular Account and Hypergrid users will no longer be able to visit these worlds.
Changes to Metered Worlds
On July 1, 2014 Kitely will be making a change to its services that may affect you. We’re renaming Metered Worlds to Premium Worlds, and only users with a Premium Account will be able to use Premium Worlds. This means that if you currently have a Regular Account, and you’re using Metered Worlds, then starting July 1 you will no longer be able to visit your Premium Worlds nor allow other Regular Account or Hypergrid users to visit them. In order to keep accessing these worlds you’ll need to either upgrade to a Premium Account, or change the worlds to be Fixed-Price Worlds.
If you already have a Premium Account then this change won’t affect you. (Grandfathered Silver Plans and Gold Plans are also considered Premium Accounts.)
If you don’t care whether people can visit your worlds or not then you can ignore this email; you don’t have to take any action.
For details see this blog post.
Other Updates
Here are some of the advances we’ve made in Kitely lately:
March 2014 – Kitely Cuts World Startup Time in Half, and Improves Performance
We upgraded the servers that we use to host OpenSim worlds, and this has improved performance significantly. This upgrade is available automatically to all Kitely users at no additional cost. For details see this blog post.
March 2014 – Kitely Market Delivers to the Hypergrid
You can now buy items from Kitely Market and have them delivered to your avatar in any Hypergrid enabled grid. For details see this blog post.
May 2014 – Kitely Enables Hypergrid Access with Strong Content Protections
You can now allow Hypergrid users to visit your Kitely worlds, or use your Kitely avatar to visit other grids on the Hypergrid. Kitely respects content creators’ rights, so content that isn’t allowed to be exported out of Kitely can’t be taken to other grids. For details see this blog post.
Sincerely,
The Kitely Team
Daniel Voyager 