I agree with some points here and think preloaded areas would cause an expectation management issue.
But performance expectations are already firmly established prior to them installing anything - by other 3d interactive content they have experienced like games.
I don't think reducing the client download size is going to keep users. It just means a few more people will download it, but they find out they want to quit faster. SL still has a lot of people trying it out, the problem is many of them leave too fast.
I think they leave for many reasons, but in the context of this discussion this one is the most relevant :
The current solution of streaming everything fails to deliver satisfaction because most users don't understand that is happening and what benefits it brings anyway - so they just assume it is an apallingly implemented game engine. ( no offense to LL - I personally think its a brilliant ambitious project! )
I think it might be interesting to have a clear way that users could understand exactly what is going on. Ie a way they understand that SL is running in different modes - like Fixed mode ( entirely preloaded and unchangable ), Hybrid mode and Fully Streaming ( as SL is now ).
That way any region owner ( or LL if it was a welcome area ) could choose the mode it ran in. This would allow for the best type of user experience for the actual functional requirements of that region.
A welcome area might be fixed. The region would needs to be super fast, responsive, simple and intuative. The users might not want or even be allowed to build / change anything that required extra streamed content - in an extreme case even avatars.
An elaborate roleplay sim might run in hybrid mode. There may well be a large amount of fixed content that would change rarely ( which would require a re-download of the preloaded content ) plus some streamed rezzed content and avatar attachments. Here it could be much more acceptable for people who really want that experience to download the sims preloaded content, even if they had to wait prior to teleporting to it.
A highly dynamic changing sim all about playing pictionary by building could be fully streamed like SL is now.
I think these modes could be introduced in phases through the new user experience. Their understanding of exactly what SLs full capabilities being revealed to them slowly and in small easy to understand messages. Games do a lot of this stuff very well, SL doesn't currently.
I think finding new ways of displaying unstreamed content is a great idea too. I'd speculate that many combined approaches will be necessary to make the overall journey more slick - from "Why isnt it slick and awesom like Skyrim?" to "Oh I love the way I can feel the fluidity of this 3d digital improvisational jam around me."
