More than words – The Voice of There

Hello, all –

As many of you know, we have been evaluating and adjusting prices across all areas of the service. The first step came in September when we introduced changes to our membership pricing structure and launched the new “Basic” There membership. This was followed in October by adjustments to our catalog prices and the currency exchange rate. The next phase, tentatively scheduled for February 1, 2005, involves changes to the pricing of our developer program.

Why have we been evaluating prices? All the pricing was set a long time ago, before the public launch of There, and did not change after we went live. Spearheaded by Baloo, we set out on an in-depth and long-overdue analysis of costs across the board.

The basic concept behind the changes is to link pricing to resources. In other words, items that cause more strain on our servers will cost more than items with a lower impact. This idea was born internally more than a year ago, resulting in There_Hardware and several other engineers working to define “resource categories”. When this was completed, we began working through a series of proposals with various community groups to arrive at the plan we have today. We don’t think the current proposal is perfect, but we do think we have achieved the objective of linking pricing to resources. We have also established a) a solid framework to communicate pricing decisions in the future b) the ability to expand the developer product line -and- c) the ability to compare developer product sales based on common pricing logic. We’d like to extend a big thank you to the Economic Studies group, past and present MABs, the DAB, and many other members for engaging in the process and contributing their thoughts and feedback.

One common misconception among some members is a blanket generalization that “prices are going up”. While it’s true that some prices will be increasing, it is also true that others will be decreasing. Changes were made to increase certain sectors (e.g. buggies) and to decrease other sectors (e.g. hoverbikes) based on the impact these items have on our servers. The net effect is expected to be cheaper costs overall.

When the pricing changes take effect, we will also be introducing some exciting new developer items! Be on the lookout for the bacio painter, hoverpack painter, hoverboat painter, flutterbug painter, hoverpack builder, and hoverboat builder. We will also be releasing a new high resolution clothing painter, in addition to formalizing and expanding the programs for large shop builders and animated items. Early 2005 promises to be an exciting time in There, and we can’t wait to see what our very talented design community comes up with!

To view the intended pricing changes, please click the following link:
forums.prod.there.com/forums/showflat.pl?Cat=&Boar d=Club_338987505&Number=313440&page=0&view= collapsed&sb=5&o=0&fpart=

Happy holidays!
Alex