{"id":3506,"date":"2014-01-09T19:52:56","date_gmt":"2014-01-09T19:52:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/?p=3506"},"modified":"2014-01-09T19:52:56","modified_gmt":"2014-01-09T19:52:56","slug":"kitelys-new-pricing-structure-closes-some-doors-and-opens-many-others","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/?p=3506","title":{"rendered":"Kitely’s New Pricing Structure Closes Some Doors And Opens Many Others"},"content":{"rendered":"

On January 1st Kitely finalised their new pricing structure<\/a>. This provided new fixed price options, but worryingly took away the two free hours a month from free accounts. New accounts will get six hours of free time, which once used up, means they will need to buy Kitely Credits to visit their own metered world, those six hours don’t need to be used up in one month. However on the plus side free accounts no longer have to buy minutes to continue exploring. I have some concerns about how this will pan out and things didn’t start well when I tried to login.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a>
Not allowed to login<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That was due to trying to login to the last world I visited. This world must have set their world to not allow free accounts anymore. So I decided to head home ….<\/p>\n

\"Kitely<\/a>
My Home Suspended!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So now I can’t visit my own free world anymore! This took me a little by surprise, I thought they may have allowed people a month with a little free time at least. However as there’s pretty much nothing on my own world, this is no great loss. So what next? I decided to explore and this is where the new pricing structure could well work well because now I can explore without worrying about being charged Kitely Credits for doing so.<\/p>\n

\"Dragon's<\/a><\/p>\n

Dragon’s Teeth<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This freedom to explore could well be a boost for Kitely, although it’s far from perfect. The worlds a free account can visit are fixed price worlds or metered worlds where the owner is willing to pay for visits.<\/p>\n

\"Evergreen<\/a><\/p>\n

Evergreen<\/a><\/p>\n

The thing is Kitely’s billing systems remain a tad confusing, but certainly worth considering. Kitely have different account types and different world types. The account types are regular and premium. The regular account is a free account in reality. However the restriction on a regular account is, as I said earlier, other sim owners will be charged when you visit their metered world. However regular accounts will be able to visit fixed price worlds all day long …. understand?<\/p>\n

However if someone has a Premium account they can visit metered worlds and those visits won’t cost the region owner a penny, so if you have a metered region you may want to restrict access to premium account holders only. A Premium account costs USD$19.95 a month and comes with five free metered regions. Now this means that other Premium account holders could visit those regions without the region owner having to incur any more costs than their premium membership fee, but costs will arise if a regular account is the visitor.<\/p>\n

\"Time<\/a><\/p>\n

Time Vault<\/a><\/p>\n

That brings us nicely on to the difference between metered worlds and fixed price worlds. A fixed price world can be open to any visitors of any account type and the sim owner will incur no extra costs for those visits. Therefore fixed price worlds offer a less worrisome experience, but obviously come at a price. What are those prices?<\/p>\n