I'm quite fond of the XRT / BL1 combo which is rather rare in S2-land (TBO dominated by FXOs, "all car" BL1 servers inevitably end up as a BF1-fest). So I spend probably a bit of an unhealthy amount on time on demo. Is it the wrong thing to spend time on a combo in which you are vaguely competitive?
Yes, the quality of driving and level of driver etiquette is noticeably lower on demo, and indeed there are some sessions when it really is spectacularly bad, but if you know where to go, you can get some great racing in. DFH seems pretty good nowadays, and the old domagk45 server was certainly a place of legend.
What I aim to do when I'm on demo is to be an exemplar of the right sort of racing behaviour. E.g. politely remind folks to observe the blue flag (without being smug or arrogant about it), even explain what a blue flag means, race with courtesy and respect, politely ask people not to mindlessly join the track from the pits just in front of me as race leader, be extra careful not to punt slower drivers off the track even if I am 5 seconds per lap faster than them*, be gracious with setups and advice etc.
This way you encourage the right behaviours, for both demo and potentially for S2, if any demo racers make the switch. Certainly it also gives you a good opportunity to put a gentle sales plug in.
One thing that would be nice is some sort of visible differentiation for the S2 racers hanging around on a demo server. I wondered if perhaps letting the auto-skin download for only S2 licensed racers on demo servers would be a big incentive - you'd have all these anonymous white cars plus a few guys with the full car skin treatment:
Demo: "yo Rakhsh - ur car looks rly cool m8 wtf??!?!?!omg!!!!111one" etc.
Me: "Well that's because I'm an S2 licensed racer. Cool, huh?
"
Demo:
etc.
And don't think that this is an academic or farcical conversation thread. I often get asked how do you have a coloured racer name...
While this would chew up some of the LFSWorld bandwidth as the demo racers download the skins for the S2 racers, but potentially it might get a few more demo guys to buy the game, even if it was only for the skin feature (not that they would stick on just demo if they had an S2 license, but you know what I mean). Think about T-shirts with company logos on them ... you are just a walking advert. An S2 racer on a demo server could act as the same.
Cheers
Rakhsh
* p.s. not being arrogant here, it is not that hard to be 5 seconds a lap faster than a newbie on demo