Q3 closed on a high note with an unusually strong September. Talk 11/12 w/Zee Linden

I'm sorry. You're right. It does appear that way. We certainly didn't do this on purpose. We should not have re-launched open spaces with the full prim count and without any restrictions. It created a situation - if we didn't change it - where we would not have been able to continue to invest aggressively in improving Second Life. So we had to make the change. And you can imagine this was not easy for us to do. Then when we made the change, we listened to the feedback and changed it again trying to address the various types of residents who were affected. We hope that we have found a way to address the issues of most people with the final changes that M announced.

Got it. Us to. We've got a new CEO, a new SVP of Network Operations, a new Chief Product Officer & we've hired lots of new people all over the company - more than 100 in the last year. We'll be over 300 people by the end of the year. I'm seeing lots of progress across the company. Yes the clock is ticking & we're working hard. We've got a long way to go. But we've come a long way since 1999 and I believe we can do it.

Really.. I dont understand why there are still people out that are willing to pay for a premium account, you get nothing for it. Mainland is a mess and the support system isnt that user friendly at all, so are the lindens on the phone.

Linden Labs needs to make it attractive to become a Premium account holder, otherwise it looses its income.

I think people who were renting parcels on open spaces are going to be hurt the most in the short term. Open spaces were not designed to be rented on. Too many renters could have a bad experience and that would harm their second life experience.

I hope we can both agree that some tasks will be near to impossible to do with scripts and must be left to bots and plenty of tasks are simply more efficient with bots.

Seems Zee, after answering a dozen or so questions here, has gone strangely silent. Gee, we must have asked a question that could not be answered with a flip off remark. no wait, Sigh, Its lunch time and I bet he has gone for a good lunch down down with his mates, more fun than squaring up to angry customers asking real questions.

Might have guessed!

Zee, since we have your attention: We're beginning to see the start of another mainland price bubble, land prices (or my personal measure of land prices which doesn't jive with Jack's in any way) have risen from about 2.2/sqm to 3.5/sqm in about a week and they seem to be accelerating. I'm sure it's all speculation on the OS news or something. Anyway, are you guys going to do something to stop the prices shooting through the roof again? It's obviously much harder to control than the LindeX but is there something that can be done to stop land prices rocketing back up to 16/sqm over the next couple of months? Stable land prices are just as critical as stable L$/USD rates I believe.

I think people who were renting parcels on open spaces are going to be hurt the most in the short term. Open spaces were not designed to be rented on. Too many renters could have a bad experience and that would harm their second life experience.

Zee, thanks to the slashed purchase prices in April of this year and now the hiked monthly fees coming shortly, there aren't "many folk" who will buy openspace regions. There are many folk who will offer to cover the US$100 transfer fee so as to take the OS regions off our hands, but they are not offering us any money for the regions. The regions are worth nothing.

As far as consolidating, I can imagine an awful lot of people are doing that. I am awaiting it to happen to four of my regions. Regions which were purchased as a four-pack when they had to be, for US$1675, when the prims were 1875 per OS region. Regions which have been used as open spaces, anchored to my fullprim regions. Regions which have never been 'abusive'.

I am pleased to see you are here communicating with your customers, but remain sad about the actual message. To offer us three poor choices (massive cut in service for the same price; massive price increase with a moderate cut in service; delete the regions and walk away from the setup fee and 100's of hours of work) as a solution for Linden Lab's lack of foresight is unethical, and borders on illegal in some locations. To blame the situation on your customers (As Jack did in his first blog post, and M hinted about in his) is just low.

Frankly I find it inconcievable that LL a) continued to sell OS regions right up till the moment of the announcement despite knowing of these problems, and b) refused to consider grandfathering for existing customers. I don't understand how anyone could think those were wise acceptabe decisions.

-Atashi

Yes however since it is my understanding that money sent to a Linden is destroyed can I make a donation to a good cause (probably NCI, The Shelter, or Relay for Life) in your name so that way the money is at least put to good use?

Zee,

Why drop the OS to 750 prims, when they were at 1875 there was not a problem, untill you gave 3750 prims, dropped the set up fee from 375usd to 250 usd and allowed them to be stand alone sims. How can you say this was not the plan the whole time when everything points to it. Jack Linden made the comment that OS are ok to rent out as residental sims. But yet with all these facts you still blame us for your mistakes.

Also you say there is no fee for the conversion, but when it takes over a week or more to convert 4 OS to a Full sim, Im still paying tier on the 4 OS that have to sit empty untill you get around to convert them. So far I have lost about 100usd in tier fees for the time I have waited for the convertion.

Will you let us know the numbers of OS as of November 1st 2008, compaired to the number of them when we get to January 1st 2009. The number that were returned and the number of converted between this time.

Thanks
Bart Heart

It didn't affect me because I'm totally mainland and always have been.

The first of the two changes was diabolical because LL were still selling OS sims right up to the announcement. That was so unscrupulous because you were selling to people when you knew that what you sold them would be devalued the next day. The second change, the one you mentioned, did help a few people, as you said, but only those who can make their 'open' sims fit the now devalued prim limit of 750. Everyone else who owns OS sims lost out.

But the worst thing is that M asked for discussion with him and Jack in the special thread, and he's been either too afraid to discuss anything about it, or he considers himself to be 'too far above all this' to bother with mere customers. And that's after falsely accusing OS owners of fault for using the sims in ways that LL endorsed in writing.

Zee, you dissapoint me, I asked, over two posts, some very simple, adroit, honest questions. I invited you to not give a throw-away comment about the open space sales, but to deliver real figures.

I tried to do it in a way that could be understood by all players with an interest, as well as some one with ten years internet experiance and a CFO to boot. If you do not have those figures, then admit it.

If you do have them ( and I hope to heck that if you are a professional CFO that you would have them plus a raft of other figures) then show them.

The questions are realy quite simple.

Treating us as idiots with yet another throw away line (above) really does not do any favours for you, it demonstrates that you really might not care as much as you want us to beleive.

Zee, please stop hiding behind quips, and deliver the numbers and the stats we asked for.

Put up, or, admit you cannot.

Where is the XLS for download ?

I really wish this !

Jack may have to address this one, but I think we'd like to see the mainland sell in the L$ 6 to 8 / sqm range. The data I'm looking at on this point indicates that the price rose from about L$10 to a peak of L$13 from December through February. Then the price dropped to the L$ 6 to 8 range through October. Its settled to L$5 to 6 now and I think we'd like to see it back in the L$6 to L$8 range.