wtf would YOU have done!

with all them crybaby turds whinin about the price gettin jacked up by I had to do some REAL work calmin the nerves of one of meh rl partners! hehehehehe, do u agree with meh views on the sub?

The Open Sim Fervor:
memo to CW on Linden Lab's Latest Move

You missed the age play ban, the gambling ban, and the banking ban. Now, as you 'live" through the Open Sim price-jerk, you get a clear display of Linden Lab's methods concernbing policy changes in Second life. First, these shifts are generally characterized as sudden, sweeping, and without debate when viewed in a negative light. However, the best thing that can be said about LL is that thier moves are LOGICAL; and, therefore entirely predictable. In 2007, age-play was banned with a late-night post on the official linden blog that created a panic causing some adult venues to close overnight, when it was discovered that some residents were roleplaying underage sexual encounters. The unpopular age verification process was instituted shortly after. Linden Lab did this to avoid culpability in any resulting child pornography charges. As I'm sure you understand, the lawyers stepped in: entirely predictable. The same can be said for the ban on gambling and banking. Both these industries were high income generators for residents involved in these activities; but, these industries exposed LL to potential legal action (particularly in the United States). These businesses were shuttered. The conclusion that can be drawn from all this is that LL will move expeditiously to preserve its own interests WITHOUT debate because those interests ARE NOT debatable (to them). Open sims were created to provide areas of forest or water on or around isalnd sims. They were never intended to be rented out as homes. businesses, clubs, and etc.... They were to be low prim, light use (read few scripts) areas. They have not been used like that. Most often, they have been chopped up into heavy-prim-use, high-script areas taxing LL hardware resources requiring The Lab to take the drastic move of charging more money to provide an "acceptable" level of performance on those sims. They charge more as updates in software and to hardware were required. Grid stablility has and remains one of the basic goals of Linden Lab as shoddy performance has been the bane of the Second Life experience since Second Life came out of beta. In the end, the price hike was a no brainer; and, again entirely predictable. Nothing in any life is free. Though it causes uproar in the Second Life community (as it affects so many), nothing changes. Similar clamor accompanied each of the aforementioned Linden Lab sea changes. Everyone yelled, some quit Second life, most did not. WE (meaning me and those like me, and hopefully you) are in it for the LONG HAUL. In the LONG RUN, minor price increases will amount to nothing. Yet, I hope you gain some insight into my disdain concerning land (I could write a book on it ). "Owning" land in Second Life has never been a long term goal of Jumpman Lane. I go on and on about having our own servers connected to the Second life grid: not as a cheap way to own land, but as a means of controlling our immediate surroundings ( the purpose of "land" in the metaverse); and as a brake against LL policy shifts. I remain convinced that the next iteration of the web (3.0 if you will), will employ a fully three dimensional graphical user interface along the lines of the Second Life server code. This land panic is a non-issue. Ignore it. Nothing has changed. Linden Lab is not an obstacle. Their purposes do not cross ours. A time may come when we will require a certain measure of autonomy from our friends in San Francisco. For example, they may rail against pornography. Yet, until that time, we forge ahead, business as usual because ours is a WORLD to gain.

I'd like to know where you buy your coffee beans from, Jump In.

I know I ain't going anywhere. Sure, I've peeked around at the others, and it never took much time for me to turn right back to the SL grid. This is where all my friends are. This is where all the content I like is. This is where the useful build tools are. (^_^)

Though... About the open space thing... It's the first time it's ever been done. Honestly, where is there an example, with the pricing model, centralized asset server, business potential, and overall community like what we see in SL? Even 5 years in, SL is still an "early adopted" technology. The product is still beta. Any true matching competition is still non-existent. They're making it up as they go. (>_<

Maybe some better planning, or more diverse options are needed. Right now the two choices may be limiting the scope and potential of the private land offerings... I'm in the mood to toss out an idea. 4 estate offerings:

Estate Island Sim: Exactly as we have now, same fees, size, and server arrangement.

Open Space: TRUE open space! Bring back the old prim/script limit or even halve it, set a fixed avatar limit of 8 or 10, bring back the old fee, and have the same old server arrangement.

Resident Space: Where we're headed in January... Include the current OS limits. Use the new price here.

FINALLY!!!

Resident Space Lite: Just because there may be a demand for this. An Open Space style sim that doesn't require an island sim to attach it to. 1/2 the sim belongs to the resident, 1/2 the sim is protected water. Prim allotment will be the same as Resident Space (above). Because of the parceling, set a fixed 1.7 parcel prim bonus. Most estate powers are enabled. The parcel can be re-shaped, but, not split. Sims cannot be placed adjacent to each other or to any other sim type. Set a fixed avatar limit of 8 or 10. If possible, try to run these sims at 24 or 32 sims on a quad-core server. For pricing, undercut a half-sim worth of tier by $25 or even go to a quarter sim worth of tier if possible.

Good idea? Or am I just being cruddy and silly? (>_<

FFS, Jumpy, USE PARAGRAPHS.

Edited for clarity:

hopefully you spell checked it before you sent it off (not for spelling errors, just for typos). Otherwise, well written.

Heh... This is about as coherent as Jumpy gets. And, to be honest, I applaud him. he makes a good point. (^_^)y

Jump - you have surprised me once again and I am much impressed. Nice job (other than the lack of paragraphs that Oryx was kind enough to assist with).

Not to rehash the pros and cons of the price hike (oh, please God, not that), but I have to say that I'm concerned about this one having deeper, longer term effects than the usual LL policy bombs.

Those damned cheap OpenSpaces were popular. As a result, there are a lot of residents who will feel they lost from this. Lots more than "banking", "sexual ageplay", or "casinos", I think.

And the part I really can't get my head around is the *depth* of the loss they apparently perceive. If one dips into the official feedback thread on pretty much any page, one will find a Very Sad Story about somebody of limited means who's built something glorious on their OpenSpace and just can't imagine continuing in SecondLife without exactly an OpenSpace configuration.

I mean, most people and projects did just fine on full-primmed sims for a long time before super-cheap OpenSpaces were introduced. Now it seems every other possible siting is unacceptable. (Just search for "mainland" in that thread to see how utterly folks dismiss any thought of using what was for years the predominant land configuration for everything.) How did we get so dependent on this OpenSpace packaging so fast?

But anyway, it doesn't matter how we got that way, nor whether it's good or bad; what matters is that it sure seems to have happened, and hence people are taking this very much more seriously than just the financials would warrant.

Given the new pricing, OpenSpaces are pretty much obsolete, as far as I can tell. They're mighty expensive land-/seascape surrounds to full sims. For uses involving builds, price-per-prim is way higher than alternatives. I can't see who should want one at the new price, except maybe a few who are prepared to pay just for privacy and not much else. So the new price is not so much adjusting a fee as it is removing a packaging option from the market.

But all that said, I don't know how much the partners really need to know. For one thing, I really expect some revision of the posted policy, so giving all the gory details now might not be a service to them anyway.

+++

About style: I've always been impressed that Jumpman can do Jumpy. I couldn't even do ikklespeak without a dialog coach.

Actually I'm not surprised. There has often been a brain behind that 49cent gangsta facade that Jumpman puts forward. It is a very thoughtful, level headed and pragmatic approach. Well done. And to your editor as well.

Whew, thanks Oryx. Paragraphs and punctuation are friends!!

I spot a new business!

Leaving the general whining about it in another thread, what gets me is that the price hike seems to be going in the totally opposite direction of every other trend.
As Jumpman points out, the land market is, in the big view, a temporary phase. Servers *will* become available, through alternate grids, OpenSims or corporations setting them up for their employees and customers. Now is the time to dig in and create a product based around *the community*; intangible, not-easily-duplicated values and loyalty, rather than the easily added "virtual land".
It is something I have said before that landlords need to understand and adapt to, rather than, say, complaining about being edged out by themed communities like Bay City and Nautilus (whatever one may mean about the practical implementation of those).
So why LL suddenly decides to turn around, kick the community in the teeth and try to create an artificial value of the *land itself* baffles me.
They may simply be trying to milk it for what it is worth in the last stages of the phase, or they may be trying to scare people to the mainland, but it seems to go so much against the general trends of computing (Google is *giving away* app hosting, for crying out loud!) that it shakes my confidence in LL's business model more than, say, the legally-required clamp-down on gambling ever did.

I don't believe I am saying this.. but... Jumpy - this is one of the most well thought out posts I have ever read on these forums. I kinda always knew you were pretty sound, and this completely proves it. You are THE MAN! (or woman)

Ok explain why after LL has said OS sims are only for light use not for residental homes
or business is it it okay to do this and LL has decided to enforce this now everyone is mad
when they told people in first place only to use it this fashion?
Hey I am pretty close to retarded due to my low IQ, brainlag and unrezzness as one could get I got that part.
I can't remember how to do a paragraph.
Why isn't anyone else who has higher IQ not getting it?
Am I missing something?
If I went over to some well known business or designer's business and bought something and rented it out to others to use that it wasn't intended I have some angry people at me, they probably
try to have me kicked off SL.
Why is this any different?
Just because those I rented out the item that wasn't intended for that use people
liked and decided to have protest and say a whole lot of angry things why
should owner of product give into mob rule?

I have so far kept quite on my thoughts as to what LLs motivations are. I have thought of many possible scenarios so I am just gonna list em. Take them with about 40 grains of salt because its just me brainstorming over the last few days. And yeah I think the majority of them are dirty pool.

1. Force people back to the mainland.

2. Force out undercapitalized PI owners that are becoming bad credit risks in the current world climate.

3. Reduce the number of sims on the grid and therefore the stress on their back end services.

4. Reduce the number of residents in SL without giving up their cash cow of free accounts. (THey are a cash cow. A certain percentage become paying customers. Many camp causing the camping owners to pay for land and buy linden to payout the camping. and a percentage are bot attached to another paying customer)

5. Make up for a potential financial crises of thier own which we know nothing about.

6. It is exactly what they say it is these OS taken in mass are killing thier back end. Costing them a fortune in salries and hardware to fix it.

7. Its the old bargaining game you see at flea markets. Offer a ridiculoous price. Bicker back and forth. End up with something close to what you were will to go with from the outset.

Just what I have thunk up so far

Or maybe if you want sim they want you to pay for mainland sim prices or get
a island?
Heck if you want cheap or lots of space go to Open Life.
I am seriously considering it soon as I figure out how to do it just offline
because don't want to create any more with people instant messaging me,etc.
You can get 4 sims/45000 prims offline for free or 75 dollars a month.

A company offers a product that is labelled as one thing, but which is clearly geared to another. They do this at a low price. Many customers take the product knowing it's officially sold for one purpose but is obviously suited to another.

The using of this product involves a set up cost plus a monthly fee. So by making a product appeal on cost grounds said company rakes in cash from the setup fees.

A few months later it becomes apparent the item is being used for its implicit purpose rather than its explicit. This of course was foreseen at the time of offering.

People who would never have bought any form of this product in the past have now found they enjoy using this version and have formed a dependancy on it. These people on the whole however are accessing the product through an agent rather than paying the company directly.

Knowing the product cannot be returned and so the upfront money can remain sheltered in the bank, the company sees that its plan has worked and it can now up the price. Those who cannot foot the new monthly bill will leave with no compensation, those who can will moan but continue to pay. And even better, those new smaller consumers who now realise that they cannot do without the product may be forced to hand over more money to get the status required for the companys directly sold version as the agents will struggle to change their business model.

Of course it would be very bad PR to admit this was the plan all along, but as they were clever enough to label the product as being low use they can justify this change on abusers - After all, what right thinking person would ever challenge this description? We all hate abusers in all their flavours, and would not want to be seen to be one or support one.

Creativity can expand exponentially given the proper setting and an Openspace is a blank canvas that lends to greater vision and possibilities than a 16,000m2 parcel in another sim. People got so dependent because it was a "First Land" experience for many and what is learned first is learned best. It is a hard loss for them, and I understand why.

Good Eye Darkness,

In my own mind and in part based on the history i have witnessed with LL, i am going with 1,2, 3, and 6.

I do not think they want fewer real residents (4), (5) would have been leaked through a number of sources to those of us with connections, and (7) goes against everything I am hearing from the inside.

Where is this proof that OS sims are "obviously" suited to these other purposes. In the past few months I've been reading thread after thread after thread by users and content creators peeing and moaning that their products don't work properly on OS sims. Fancy scripts lag. RP groups lag. Events lag. And all these are situations that would be just fine on a full sim. (=_=)

Not only that, but LL was having a bear of a time selling open spaces at the start and opened up the prim limit and purchasing rules in order to make them more popular. But, one thing I never saw them put on was the suggestion that you could run clubs, malls, neighborhoods and such. It was technically possible on the surface, but inadvisable in implementation. (=_=)

Add to that. They never allowed someone to purchase an open space without having an island estate to attach it to. One would get the clue that these things were accessories to surround your region with and basically be land-bling. (=_=)

But... If they were "obviously" for clubs, malls, neighborhoods, and such... I'd like to see what makes this obvious. Bring on the evidence. And, not by prim count. Do it by number of successful and lag-free events run on OS sims. In particular, any Linden events. I'm sure as heck SL5B and Burning Life was run on full sim servers. Kiss a Linden for Valentines, full sim servers. And so and so and so forth... (=_=)

Just because you ~can~ doesn't mean you ~should~ and if you ~do~ expect there to be consequences. (=_=)

I drive a pretty powerful car. So, in the same mindset it's obvious that I should be free to drive 120mph down the freeway, right? I mean... It has a top speed of about 160 and handles well. (^_^)y

I deliberately removed myself from the big player game a long time ago so I don't have the access to the inside poop I used to. This was all me looking at the situation and trying to figure what was driving it. BTW I have seen 7 before; to this day I think that's how grandfathered sims happened. They made their unreasonable demand fully planning to at least partially back down to keep the peace.

Of course it could be any combination of things or something I haven't even thought of yet.

People want their open sims paid for they rent it out, it gives the illusion of
full sim, people love it in spite of issues with the OS, they are denial but
keep using it for what it wasn't intended for.
Then when the maker of product or service (LL) says Hey guys you're using
this for wrong purposes, we got to up the money to cover the cost of repairs, discourage this and disallow anyone except the buyer from using the service this way.
Then everyone in denial is mad and feels entitled to continue to use the product as it wasn't designed who has been running business, etc in OS.
And those who haven't been using it for anything except for water are mad too.
If it was a Well known Resident who was having their own product being misused or their servers being mishandled they have a fit especially if it started to hurt their bottom line.
And all their friends and followers would be protesting and demanding the person be banned.

Yep the "Entitlement" mentality is rampant.

One flaw in most peoples perceptions that I have seen in many of the thousands of posts I have now read is that folks seem to think SL is some kind of democracy and they are "entitled" to their vote (which of course counts more than anyone elses).

SL is not a democracy. It is a platform owned and run by LL. LL is a business. Now we can discuss back and forth weather this was a good or a bad business move. But in the end it is a business move done for reasons only fully understood and known by LL. The only "Vote" residents have is weather or not to use the platform or pay money into it. But be prepared for the fact that LL might just say "go ahead and leave there will be a new guy next month to replace you." This is not about individuals to them its about their business. LL is not made up of stupid people, if they made a decision this harsh there IS a reason for it. What that reason is we just dont know with any reliability.

Over ten years ago The sims was example I must admit I even partake when I played it.
A lot of people hacked and designed content not intended for game then when things went wrong some of us not understanding the impact would call EA asking why this problem was occurring and they would say well it wasn't designed to be used this way, remove the fan content we don't authorize the use for it.
A lot of people including myself was mad about it, we felt we weren't
being listen to years ago and eventually I personally choose to
find another platform and found SL for where it was intended.
Game designers and virtual world service providers are notorious for having their
own agendas, that as users we may not understand but really their
is no solution for this unless we have money, means for creating our
platform to be used in fashion we choose to use it for but there
isn't many of us who can do that so we are sort of are stuck.
There has to be other solutions but I don't think LL is going to give into mob
rule.

Well, now, this is interesting. I knew about the clear thinking and pragmatism, Jump, but the inspirational tone surprises me.

I agree with the main thrust of your argument, however. This land disruption, like the rest in LL's past, will pass. The scars may be deep, but on the day-to-day surface, won't be seen. It must be irritating to those who are responsible for building LL's community, to see so much good will wiped out by one badly rolled out decision.

Tangential comment: Your last line seems to indicate that you are offering your partners a chance to get in on the ground floor of the pornography industry in "Web 3.0". Indeed a huge business opportunity. If that is what you're actually doing here, my professional opinion is that you are not building your brand in the swiftest way - and speed is of the essence. (I'm assuming here that the public actions of Jumpy are all that you're doing in this vein, which may be wrong).
I think this has actually surprised LL as well. The number of impassioned SL users who saved their pennies to build a dream for a small subcommunity seems to be VERY large.

Weirdly, this particular land spasm seems to be better than any ad campaign imaginable at targeting SL users who may be willing to stick it out over at Openlife. Think about these attributes of the kind of Open Space users you're talking about, Qie:
> On a limited budget (Openlife is quite cheap)

> Passionately wanted to build something glorious (Openlife build tools will eventually be a generation beyond SL's, prim limits are higher, etc.)

> Part of a small, closely knit subgroup that did not mind being in some isolation from the rest of the grid so long as they were together (Openlife does not have the community that SL has)

If even 200 such subcommunities go to Openlife, it will be a big plus for them. I think such growth will ultimately be healthy for both Openlife and SL.

Edit: I've quoted Jumpy and Qie in the same thread response. /me faints!
.