January 2, 2002 - Price Plan Letter #1 - Rick Noll January 2, 2002 - Price Model FAQ #1 February 6, 2002 - Price Plan Letter #2 - Rick Noll February 6, 2002 - Price Model FAQ #2 Revised after February 6, 2002 - Price Model FAQ #3 Price Plan Letter #3 (Revision to the Feb 6 letter) - Rick Noll This letter appeared at http://www.activeworlds.com/letter.html on the activeworlds.com website through most of January 2002. It was replaced in February with a revised price plan letter.
Rick Noll Letter #1 - January 2, 2002
http://www.activeworlds.com/letter.html January 2, 2002 Greetings to the Citizens of Active Worlds, Since Active Worlds was founded it has been our goal to offer the best and most advanced interactive experience possible. Our development has always been fueled by our passion for what we consider to be the best 3D software available on the web. We like to think that the Active Worlds software makes it possible for anyone to create their dreams in 3D and share them with their friends. The worlds you have created and shared have made AW worthy of a place in Internet history. It has become much more than an Internet 3D application, it is a unique destination for millions of visitors over the years. The love that you, the citizens, have for AW is obvious to all of us here. You are the settlers and colonists of a new kind of reality. You have discovered a new world and have turned it into a living place. From the homes you have built to the worlds you have dreamed, you continue to inspire us with what is possible. You are the ones who have forged the friendships that breathe the life into the Active Worlds software. Your citizen groups and events have grown AW into a true community. We look forward to continuing to work with you in keeping AW ahead of its time. Anyone who has been in AW for more than a few months has already seen the many changes we have added to the platform. Anyone who can look back for a couple of years will tell you that AW has grown in ways they only imagined back in 1996. We have improved frame rate with the introduction of hardware acceleration, we have added lighting effects, fog, MP3 support for superior sounds, Truespace COB format, and firewall support, to name just a few. Our next version 3.3 will contain many features you have been asking for. There is an enhanced contact list and privacy controls, DirectX 8 support, you will also be able to rotate and build objects using all 3 axis, there will even be an additional tab which will allow searching the world list. Add to this in the eye-candy department: on-the-fly terrain, coronas and new rotate, move and sound commands. There are even new SDK features which will make your bots much more functional. This new version will make all previous versions look rather limited. The worlds you will be able to build using these features will surely astound and inspire anyone who visits them. These significant strides and improvements would not be possible without programmers, artists, support and staff. Activeworlds Corp. has grown in each of these areas over the past few years. Where we once had a programming staff of 1 lonely superhero, Roland, we now have 5 programmers, we have hired artists, customer service representatives and many more, most of them people from the AW community who you know a on a first name (or at least an AW name :) basis. Almost everyone here at the office was once a citizen who loved AW and wanted to make it better! As many of you remember, Activeworlds Corp. began charging a fee for citizenship back in 1997. It was a flat fee and helped get us over the financial hurdle we then faced. We have not changed this pricing in almost 5 years. In our early days of slow development and largely volunteer workforce it was much easier to keep our costs at breakeven. Since those days, we have expanded all areas of our staff and hardware. To say it in business terms, the cost to revenue ratio has grown disproportionately over the last year. The costs of adding staff, hardware and connectivity, along with a sagging economy have eaten into our revenues, much like many other software companies. Contracts we counted on have lapsed as companies have gone out of business. While we firmly believe that markets for our product will develop and grow, we are increasingly in a position where we have to make very difficult decisions. To put it simply, we need to increase revenue so that we can be profitable or at least break even. Although our software and community are unlike any other, Active Worlds is also a business, very much like every other. The choice is this; continue making these great enhancements to the Active Worlds technology and change our pricing structure to support it, or stay with our current pricing and almost certainly AW 3.3 becomes our last version. Now you see why I said there were difficult decisions to make. Our preferred choice would be, change the pricing structure and keep AW at the forefront of Internet 3D. The following is our proposed new pricing model: 1. Tourist mode would be eliminated. 2. New users, who log in, would have to input a credit card number and would be able to enjoy Active Worlds for free as a citizen for 2 weeks. 3. After the 2-week period, they would be charged $9.50 per month until they cancel their subscription. This new pricing structure would go into effect on the 3rd of January, but no existing users would be affected for this initial period. Renewals would still be done at the regular $19.95, per year and sometime in early February we would announce what kind of pricing program we can offer the existing user base. We certainly appreciate all the years of dedicated loyalty you have offered to both the AW software and the community, and we will do everything in our power to offer you the best possible rate while still being able to provide regular upgrades to the Active Worlds software. This plan comes out to a little over $2.00 a week per new user. This weekly cost is less then [sic] a cup of coffee and a donut, which some of us get every day. There are many things we all buy weekly or daily that cost a lot more than this and yet give far less enjoyment than our time in AW. We realize this is a large increase over our original pricing, and yet we see no other way we can continue our current level of support with less. You are the voice, and ultimately you will decide if Active Worlds is worth $2.00 per week. We respect your opinions, but please understand that without this change, 3.3 will probably be the final upgrade for Active Worlds. It is our hope that you will feel that Active Worlds is worth enhancing and that together we can help make it better with each new version release. We know we are asking for a tremendous amount of understanding from all of you, and we hope we will continue to earn your business by providing you with even greater things in the future of Active Worlds. We truly believe this is the best approach to take that will ensure the long-term success of the Active Worlds technology and its community. We hope you will all agree. Thank you once again for all your support and loyalty these past years, it has been a great journey together and we shall forever remain grateful. Rick Noll President Activeworlds Corp. Pricing Model FAQ