Linden's promise to think again about Opensims

The latest blog states that 'It is clear that some Openspaces are being used as they were intended originally, so we recognise that there are different levels of usage that we need to account for.'
In point of fact we were NOT forbidden to put residences on Openspaces (this was clarified several times by various Lindens); we were simply told that the openspaces were for light use. It seems to me that if Land Barons can build within the reduced prim limit, they should be able to do so at the price as originally promised.

However, my purpose right now is to illustrate my own DIFFERENT level of usage: the small resident of SL who is not a Land Baron. There are thousands of us and THAT is why there is such a high degree of protest and threatened level of defection this time round..

I pay US$195 + 17.5% VAT (European sales tax) = US$230 for Faerun, my main island; and will now have to pay US$125 + sales tax = US$147 for my opensim island Gramarye. So, together, the monthly tier on both islands will move from US$318 to US$377.

I make a living by short-term renting (not leasing, or copy-selling) houses and market stalls on the main island which is a simulation of a rural mediaeval community. Revenue has averaged US$185 per month over the last 12 months. US$185/US$230 = 80% was comfortable, leaving me to find 20% of US$230 = US$46 a month for the main island from my own RL sources. I am on SL to create and run a historical simulation that offers other people enjoyment, NOT to try and make an RL living from it as the Land Barons do.

Taking on the openspace island made that last figure US$46 + US$88 = US$136... an RL input by me that was JUST tolerable. With Linden's proposed increase that will become US$46 + US$147 = US$193 a month; £155 monthly, or £39 a week. Impossible.

Am I 'misusing' the opensim? Judge for yourselves.

Main island: 20 dwellings, 30 market stalls + a few other items, 11773 prims, 3227 or 21% remaining (of which 2250 are committed as currently unused prim allowances to tenants).
Opensim: 3 dwellings, one sky-island art museum, 2172 prims, 1578 or 42% remaining.

The Opensim is set up largely as a desolate open heathland used for RP combats and Quests.

To my mind, that is EXACTLY the light use envisaged in Linden's original offer, and I invite them to, in their own words, 'recognise that there are different levels of usage that we need to account for.'

Christi Maeterlinck

I didn't gather they were "rethinking" anything and doubt they will.
But, just they acknowledged the natives were not amused and reiterated why they had made the announcement.
I mean I wish they would, I miss my winter nature sanctuary that wasn't! being misused and reading your #s feel your pain.
You'd think they would be so vigilante about the misuses of the mainland.

*edit* Side note, they could have given out warnings to resource misusers hm?

Why in the hell is this a problem with the users? Technology has existed for DECADES now that lets you limit the resources of a program to X% of the hardware resources, why can't LL just enforce such a scheme and leave the users to decide whether putting too much into their OS sim is worth it or not?

Each OS sim should only have 25% of the processor its on available, sure it'd be reasonable to let some of the four sims to use more if there's slack to be taken up, but so long as each one is guaranteed a full 25% if they need it, then there should be no problem!

This is a problem of technology, to put the burden on the users (LL's customers!) is ridiculous, it'd be like a rock-band going up on stage and spitting on the audience because a minority of them are on drugs.

Erm, sure you can throttel it with programs and all, but you dont really want such a thing, do you? I can see it now, that people will complain about such devices that limit the use of the Sim greatly. People will like "If I cant fully use it, I dont want it!" so this discussion is meaningless.

Well, at least it would give people a choice. 'Work within our "cap" for a lower price; use more prim than the "cap" allows, fine, but that will trigger a higher tier.'

The problem is that LL seems to be run by techies whose tech knowledge is no longer up to date, who have moved up into managerial positions since then, and who have little notion of how to develop consistent pricing strategies or how to handle the PR and communications side when they have to adjust them. No people skills and, as Harravik suggested, a careless approach to the technical side.

Christi

Yeah, my thoughs exactly. There seems to be a managment issue in LL. They need to hire more, experineced people that know how to run a business and I belive the new CEO dosent even know what he is actually doing. Somone said, that LL didnt grew as fast as SL did and thats the problem. LL dosent have enough manpower and not enough experts to handle a product as large as SL, they need to grow larger too.

let me start by saying all of you angry people have the right to be. wether you have a large island or a small open sim you all have a very good reason to be mad and the problem is not going away with the Lindens are proposing. Imagine this. four open sims are converted back to a normal sim. those four sims are now reduced in size. now the sim abuser, crams all his abuse into 1/4 sim. you still have the abuser. the only difference is that you have more prims in a condensed area, where they were spread out on the open sim. does this fix the abuse? answer: NO. now, what is the real issue.... the real issue is that full islands 4x the cost of current open sim with less space. so there you have it.. 4 sims. you have the same number of prims, you have the same full cpu and you have more land. I think having all those prims spread out would be better than having them all concentrated in one area. performance will be better. cramming 50 avatars into 1/4 sim is much worse than 1 sim. now when we talk about perfomance. there is server performance and PC performance. having everyone spread out helps with performance. reducing the number of prims per sqm helps performance. reducing the scripts helps with performance. so saying this is a perfomance issue is not correct. the only difference here is that you can maybe see your offending abuser and point a finger. so the real issue here is space, privacy, and cost. Mainland is being abandoned due to privacy issues, lack of zoning and poor tier structure. first privacy. mainland is a place for the newbe explorer. venturing into the unknown to find out whats going on here. not knowing what to expect and how to respect others interests. secondly, zoning on mainland has been a issue. it's free for all... your neigbor can open a script raping mall and there is nothing you can do about it. Your perfomance goes down and you have to accept this or move to a new sim and hope he doesn't follow you. third, Tier pricing there is no real good reason to own more land. the tier is pratically doubles each step. their should be more incentive to own more land and the ability to rent it out cost effectively. now back to the real issues and what should the Lindens do. The Lindens should leave it as it is. give the full island owners the choice of what they want 4 low prim sims or 1 regular sim. correct the tier issues on the mainland to promote owning it. we really need to create a rental market place for those who don't want to invest in owning. increase the size of the minimum parcel, build more open areas. spread things out. I don't think anyone likes to be cramped up in a tiny spaces. If SL is going to be successful.. they need to start heading off these possible issues before they happen. they need to reduce the cost of owning land. make SL more affordable to increase the economy. otherwise, someone will come along and take the business they thought they had secured.

Willard's comment

'If SL is going to be successful.. they need to start heading off these possible issues before they happen. they need to reduce the cost of owning land. make SL more affordable to increase the economy. otherwise, someone will come along and take the business they thought they had secured'

Is exactly right. But, too late, all too late.

People are getting ready to leave in droves. One of the new open-source grids was claiming 10,000 registrations since Jack's announcement here about Linden Opensims.

Of course people have threatened to leave before. What seems to be different this time is the lack of an informed response from the big honchos which are now running LL, and an arrogance (in the matter of Premium) which is staggering.

As soon as just one of the open-source grids puts an RL-convertible economy in place, people will turn those registrations into action. Oh, I expect they'll keep an avie in SL to see what might emerge. But their dis-investment in Linden land will accelerate and, as they find their time in the new grid more and more enjoyable as those grids develop, they will spend more and more time away from SL.

And their money will follow them: to place where land is a quarter the price it is here in SL; where a standard sim comes with 45,000 prims and not 15,000.

You ever been on a sim with over 14,000 prims in use? The sluggishness is quite noticeable. I really cannot imagine what a sim with 45,000 prims filled on it must respond like when avatars are on it as well.

um. I live on a SL region (Vulcano) that is always at 14,000 prims, and it's often pretty usable though. I'm not saying it has a constant 1.0 time dilation, but after both Havok4 and Mono performances got totally acceptable there.

That said, I follow the development of the Opensim software since 18 months, and I have been managing a public Opensim region on my own server -it's now attached to a small italian grid - since 1 year. Opensim is a WONDERFUL platform and it will become a great solution for virtual environments.

But trust me - once they really try to use it, at least 90% of SL residents are not going to accept Opensim as a viable alternative to Second Life right now. There are simply too missing things - from both technical and social points of view.

And I'm really worried by people that are buying Opensim regions right now. I hope that they tried it in depth, before buying them. I wouldn't call Opensim-based solutions ready to be sold as an alternative to SL.