Openspace Announcement Discussion with Jack Linden

I'm repeating this from the start, but they WON'T do this because they cheated from the start: they sold a huge amount of openspaces with any possible attractive reason (double the prim, lower the fees, place it anywhere on the grid, purchase it in single pieces) only to collect us in the trap with the intention to increase the fees later. If they will grandfather us or if they will return our setup fees the trap will no longer works (indeed).
It's so clear that i don't understand how the people can't see it, there's no performance issue, there's no "abuse", there's no "improve the experience" reason, because (and i repeat myself and many others):

- They increased the number of prims (so they expected an "improved" usage from the start);
- They lowered the fees and sold it per unit (to collect more people);
- They gave to us the possibility to place these OS *anywhere* on the grid (not connected to the main SIM), a piece of sea or forest without a connected SIM has no sense at all (it would be a surrounding of itself!), so that sentence on the "proper" usage is completely false;
- Linden Lab is actually build contents (living contents not forest or sea) on these OS, so a "guideline" of a "proper usage" NEVER EXISTED (even internally), there where NO GUIDE LINE of what an OS had to be, the only rule were: 3500 prims. STOP.

Stop believing or even imagine that someone is telling you the truth, because i don't see any single honest word. How's supposing that you may propose solution to a person that is lying to you from the start?
The truth is in front of your eyes, you've just to open em.

I think one of my biggest concerns from all of this is even if LL backs out of this tomm they have really shaken the faith of the ppl who do spend alot of money in SL which is resulting and will continue to result in ppl being very careful in how much they spend in here on land and other things as well which will only push the economy in SL down even more.

Hi Jack,

I understand the situation you guys are in with the explosive popularity of the OSRs and the need to restructure the price due to the typical usage of them. BUT, if they were meant to be a scenic addition to regular sims, then why on earth did you guys allow them to be placed anywhere on the grid seperate from the main estate? Why did you allow them to be set for sale to others?

Please do not raise tier for island owners in some crazy attempt to subsidize this mistake. Just sayin.

I think you should grandfather all these OSRs, but do not allow the grandfathered tier to be transferable to new parties.

Also please make sure there is a big, flashing sign on the land store about the pending price increase for any new OSRs.

Guys - what are you doing to me here.

I own 5 OS sims for Rockcliffe University and with the educational discount I'm paying $187.50/mth. Now you are talking about ramping my costs for those 5 OS sims up to $625/mth which is a 333% increase.

We are a small organization. I can't afford a 333% increase on anything in my budget between my current costs and what has happened to my savings and investments over the past 2 months.

On top of this I'm paying in Canadian dollars which have to be converted to US at an exchange rate of $1.25-$1.30CDN:USD across all 10 SIMs which we manage. I'm being nailed left, right and center here.

I have no idea what the heck you are playing at but at the very least could put the Education Discount back in place otherwise I'm going to have to drop at least 3 or 4 of those 5 sims.

The SL community shouldn't be punished because whoever was doing your costing models couldn't figure out that if you give someone 3750 prims and 80 avatars on an OS space sim, people are going to find someway to use it.

Your customer base took at good faith that your pricing model would be sustainable and this increase of anywhere from 167% for commerical clients to 333% for educators and non-profits is well beyond price gouging.

Also, jumping the Education rate up to the point where you are essentially forcing education providers to make the decision to switch all their OS sims to Full sims considering the miniscule difference in price point is well beyond a reasonable request considering what you are asking your commercial customers to bear in terms of proportional cost. I mean why would anyone in their right mind pay $125/mth for 1/4 of what they can get at $147.50?

This is well beyond a reasonable request when you are placing a disproportional percentage of the burden on one demographic at the expense of others. I dont' mind paying my fair share but don't deliberately assume that just because we are doing education in SL that we have a bottomless pit of government funding and grant money that will pick up the slack because for some of us those funds just aren't there.

YES this SUCKS!! And no its not right, LL KNEW what they were doing when they increased the prim count and let the OS be placed alone. This couldn't of been a shocker. Whats that saying... we are nothing but mushrooms... keep us in the dark and feed us crap?? I can only hope the outcry does some good this time.

Oh how very true!!!

I would really like to see Jack's response to this. We all knew the risks when we paid hard earned money for the islands and open spaces. We knew if used improperly that it was at our own risk and Linden's would not care. We took that risk anyway and have been in my case using our islands appropriately and within all guidelines. So Jack you use a disclaimer that says you don't care but then go against that agreement which was binding in the sale of the open space sims and suddenly care because of the hardware issues. We will be forced to abandon all of our sims if this change takes place and that truly saddens me not only because of the money that was spent but because of the beauty that will be lost. One of our islands is a place of beauty for people to enjoy as a park and will truly be missed. A lot of hard work and time went into creating these things of beauty for them just to be smashed because Lindens finally cares. it really is a shame that they show they care in this way. I could understand a small increase in all land and tiers across the board but to pick on OS owners only is unfair. We understand economics and are not stupid. We know the world economy effects the sl economy. You are not dealing with children we are all adults. However a 66% increase is ludicrous especially when no other tiers or costs are being raised. I personally have lived on mainland and had the most horrible experience in the world. Had griefing neighbors, add farms that drove me crazy, and the lag was insane. I never spent any time at home because I would crash when I went there... I would only log out there at night. I love my OS's and spend a lot of time there going through the gardens. My home is actually on the full sim but I love to visit the beautiful OS for away time or time to think and because of this I will be forced to get rid of things of such beauty which truly is a shame. Seeing as how there is no lag on any of our Open Spaces, we have been very strict on prim usuage, scripts, and how the land is used and now that will go away.

Instead what I think should be done is Lindens should stick to their disclaimer. If you misuse your open sim don't complain it is at your own risk. If those people want to pay more to move to a different server let them. Otherwise respond to the complaints with the disclaimer and say that you will listen once they are within guidelines. But don't punish those of us that aren't misusing our open spaces. Instead stick to the original open sim plan and just don't care. Abusers are everywhere instead punish them instead of us.

I appreciate anyone's time that reads this because truly secondlife has been an amazing aspect to my life. There have been happy times, heartaches, and up ands downs just like real life. I really don't want to have this put a sour taste in our mouths for secondlife. Instead I hope that Linden's wake up and come up with a compromise that everyone can live with. Because otherwise as an accountant they will lose a lot of income from all the dumped sims from private land owners and estate owners because they just can't afford to transact business here any longer and its easier for them to cut their losses. Wake up Lindens can you really afford to lose that income and customer base?

Now we have to move to either a quarter sized mainland of lag sim or a quarter sized island...this has caused our region manager to pretty much tell us "it's all over'. Basically it robs us or months and thousands and thousands of L dollars invested in this place, taking away content from SL and leaving everyone in our group of 500 females feeling shafted. It's going to be hours of 'crisis' talks anyway. Please reconsider

I don't own open space, but I wish I had been offered a refund when private island prices were slashed. That was bad enough. But now this?

Don't you think that prior to implementing land offers, LL has an obligation to its customer base to think through pricing and use issues?

I'm truly disheartened over the both the private island and open sim price changes that were so abruptly and sharply imposed on residents, heavily devaluing their investments.

Who is making these extreme, sweeping decisions? With all due respect, is somebody there on a sadistic power trip or perhaps in dire need of lithium?

Please guys, lets conduct ourselves a little (actually a lot) more responsibly!

You read them all? Wonderful then it will make it worth my time to post so here goes.....

You want to know what to do? Get responsible responses?

Start selling in fours once more again. No longer sell them one at a time. This will make the commitment to have them greater. Anyone that currently has an odd number, offer to even them out for free.

Charge your higher tier but provide support and value for it. Leave the REAL usage alone. Currently you have 16 Os per server at a cost of $1200 (less for GF sims). If you max them out at 12 per server you will lower the load and still make more money at $1500 per server.

Leave people on their own quad. Each pack of four sims will share together. So if one over loads, it over loads ME and not someone else. This puts the policing in Estate Owners (EO) hands and frees you.

Limit agents to 25 per sim. You mentioned that you cannot program this, I do not believe this but I will go with if cause you say so. Once more, you put this back in the EO to police. If an AR is filed for misuse, the EO will be told and asked to take care of it. If they don't, they suffer the results. From a one hour ban to loosing the sims (all four) for misuse. This means you need to fix it so that we are notified of all ARs filed on our sims.

If this is not at all about the money, like you claim offer us a bailout. If we do not take the free sims to make a four pack, buy back the ones we return. Tier that...100% for ones bought in the last 30 days, 50% 31-45, 25% 46 - 60, 10% for 60-120.

Offer free conversions, name changes and moves for 90 days. This will help those moving from OS to Fulls. It will also allow reorganization of the map and renaming of some sims that we wish to leave in place. Personally, I will have to over lap names during this and cant afford to change a name for three days. EOs will need to move and make manageable our map again.

IF, and I do not think you should with the changes above, make guidelines, make the clear and easy to understand. Do not leave a vagueness. I know you can't monitor FPS or scripts or over all lag. This varies from person to person and minute to minute, so I think laying out rules like that will not work. But limits on avs and making EOs police or pay will. Those that don't loose. Those of us that keep a tight hand on what our people are doing will.

Follow up in 3 or 6 months with us. See, on the forums, how things are going. Also, meet with people in world. Not just office hours, but invite people to a private dialog with what is working and what isn't. Let us, one the front lines here, have a larger voice. I know I am by no means one of the big wigs but with nearly $60,000usd paid to you a year, I should also be able to have a voice.

I know this is your company and your rules. That was made very clear to me by Maggie when she told me if I dont like it log off and don't come back. I should have when she decided to treat me like I was worthless. But you know what Jack, I have a commitment to the people that rent to me and I take that seriously. I go over and beyond to buffer them from stunts LL pulls. Most of the time they do know have a clue what we do to make sure they are happy. That is because it is called CUSTOMER SERVICE.

Right now, we could use some of that. Some simple customer service.

I was able to have a long conversation with Blue Linden tonight. He didn't know anything about this situation because it is not his area. As a matter of fact we educated him an most things. However useless he was in helping me with that went on I walked away feeling good. You want to know why? Because he took the time to listen. Nothing we talked about he can do anything about, but him sitting there for an hour made 15 small people feel better. Thank you Blue Linden for that.

There is alot of hotheadedness going on in world. I know you know my name because I am very vocal about things. But I am also reasonable and willing to work with you and your people so long as there is mutual respect. Something not seen by some of your people. Others, yes.

We need answers Jack. I need to tell my people what direction they need to take. You make the announcement and disappear. I am told you went on vacation. I sure hope not.

Jack, help us, help you. You are the leader here, lead. Show us what you want so we can do it and move on.

Set the price, set the rules, set the consequences then leave us alone to do what is needed. That is pretty easy.

Thank you Jack for reading this and all thousands of our post. Now all you need to do is give us some more information and less PR smoke.

Melody Regent
Regent Estates

"Thirdly, I wanted to clarify one issue. As mentioned in the post, Openspaces were intended for space, empty areas of ocean or forest."


If this was actually true, why did LL RAISE the prim limit from 1700 to 3750 if these were "for an ocean or forest"?? You couldn't put 1700 prims worth of trees on a sim, much less 3750. I was perfectly fine at 1700 prims, the limit when I got my open space. I NEVER asked for them to raise it.

Next, they allowed these to be placed as "stand alone" sims. Why would ANYONE have a "stand alone" ocean or forest away from their full prim sims? If these were ONLY to be used as empty space around an estate, what was the point of making them stand alone?

This was done ONLY to entice people to buy these as a lower cost option to a full prim sim. Now that they TOOK the money for these (as a set up cost), they can jack up the prices later AFTER they had sold them. If people default because of this almost double the cost increase, they got their hardware paid for as a "setup cost".

Also note while the tools are already avalible for LL to limit the number of avies that can be on any sim, they did NOTHING to do that on these 'light use" sims. Limiting the number of avies to 20 would have kept this at bay. This same type of resource 'abuse' happens all over the mainland and they don't seen to care about that at all. They will let one resident lag a whole sim and do nothing about it.

This WAS a bait and switch and people need to get together, hire a lawyer and SUE linden labs into next week over this if they continue. I think a massive class action lawsuit might be the only thing they will understand.

Magic is on point!!!

Lets get to the root of the problem

1- The reduction in full sim set up fee
2- The doubling of prims and lowering OSS prices
3- The increase in OSS pricing

All of the above are the symptom not the real problem

The real problem is mismanagement!!!!


If someone suggested to take OSS and double the prim and lower the prices to generate more sales I would have without even having had to research it questioned the impact on the full sim sales and the impact on the user community by flooding the market with such sims. Even with that though I would have initiated a feasibility study to determine the resources needed and the full impact asking for the inclusion of a worst case scenario. It doesnt take a computer genius to know the worst case scenario would be the use of the OSS as a fully maxed out 3750 prim sim. Knowing that, LL should have gotten a projected capacity requirement for the worst case scenario to see if it was a feasible marketing strategy.

Once analyzing this they would not have offered the sims at the price of 250set up and 75 tiers but at the currently proposed pricing structure or at least somewhere in between.

So Jack, yes LL has made a mistake. They have mismanaged their land sales and for that they have destroyed customer relations, alienated customers, created the potential for a mass exodus and probably have the LL marketing and PR dept along with the LL lawyers pulling their hair out .....I dont know who is responsible for this but I would certainly fire them. If the president agreed to this then if I were the investors I would fire him/her and hire someone with better management skills.

Does Beavis and Butthead laugh continue on

A rock or a tree, or 100 rocks and 100 trees, doesn't really matter.

They raised it because they could. It wasn't an open license to treat regions running on a 1/4 core as if they were regions with a core all to themselves.

someone please explain to me how how 3750 prims x4 is overloading a sim. this is just a lame excuse to stick it to people. sounds like the new boss is tying to earn his xmas bonus.

the way they structure the sims is only 1 type per server, its important that they do this so that regions with dis-similar requirements arent sharing resources. It creates problems, it happens occassionally by accident, Ive had it happen to me. When a full prim sim is hogging the resources of a cpu you cant have an OS sim trying to squeeze in and get some, they dont play well together.

you cant expect them to roll out single core servers because the most expensive part of rackspace is... rackspace. 4 single scpu servers would take up as much rackspace as 4 quad core cpus and provide only 1/4 of the hosting. very costly on a tier1 backbone.

they would see a huge benefit if connected regions were hosted in the same location/rack/server to the extent that they can be, but they have designed the software to load on the next available server upon reboot. likely they wont be changing that soon.

Why not reduce tier and introduce pay per prim, with a sliding scale similar to the existing tier structure. Charge extra for scripted prims/megaprims and particle emitters (yes! a "bling tax!!". The owner simply pays the "prim tier" a week or more in advance, and unused prim capacity can be credited to the following week. Collaborations should NOT be able to pool prim allowances to reduce prim tier. Only the land owner can pay the prim tier for a sim .

As for complex builds, unpaid prim tier could result in prims being made non physical for 1 week, before being returned to inventory the following week should the fee be missed 2 weeks in a row.

Might not be practical, and it would be a radical and major reform. It would allow users to scale down/scale up to a level that they can afford. Self responsibility is the key, and the payment will, given the retention of a smaller token tier for land size, better reflect each users CPU load.

I'm no expert in these things, just a suggestion, trying to be positive! If I'm being a bit stupid, feel free to say so... humble is my favourite flavour of pie!

after totally devaluing my mainland holdings with your latest land dump, you then turned around and devalued my estate before i had even taken delivery of it ($1700 to $1000 in one announcement). you said youd make it up to me by giving me an OS and three months free tier. now you have devalued the OS making it worthless while at the same time raising the tier on it by 67%. i cant even _give_ an OS away anymore.
every time i turn around you are devaluing my land and bending me over for yet more $$$. i am sick of this, LL. i am seriously considering abandoning my islands and cutting my losses. you make me sick, i cant wait to see you drown as a result of your constant greed and contempt for your customers. i cant wait for a viable competitor to come along. leaving your grid empty will be an easy task for them, thanks to you and your constant interferrence in the grid economy.

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LOL funny you can easily see the cover up on the LL OS Sims in question that are now full Sims 3327 Prims used out of 15000 avaliable and 3100 Prims used out of 15000 avaliable..

Jack if the open space sims are not mejnt for use like they are being used then why

Did you all change it so that they did not have to be ancred/hook/connected to the full prims sims like they use to be? why were they not advertisee with rules? Who is going to have an empty ocean in the middle of no place?

That alone is misleading also doubling the prims they tells people they they are for otheruses now. There was nothing saying that there were rules when the changes tool place in april/may.

You all knowing what was going on in them allowed them to be sold for amost 8 months.
YOu all made no attempt to say or do anythigng about anytime up until this point.

That was mileading and now you al have made alot of money off the sales of the open space sims and are trying to rip people off of hard erned money.

Look at the worlds economy do you think its thriving so well that people can afford this?

If your so set on the price changes then it needs to be ofr all new sims orders of open space sims not for the already inwolrd and exsiting ones.

I have 98 open space sims This is like Extortion what you all are doing. Telling us to pay pay more now that thousnads of open space islands have been bought making you laot of money and now you all telling us pay more or lose your land.

GRand fathering all of the exsiting open space sims will save you alot of toruble

and make everyone happy.

For who is not listening! OS is 1/4 of a sim!!! 1/4 of the cost to buy the OS, 1/4 of the monthly fee, 1/4 of the prims. I spoke once with customer service in the chat and they told me the suggested max number of avatars was 30.

BTW this is the text of the conversation:
<hi b. one question... the openspace sims can hold about 3800 prims... how many avs can enter at same time? B.: Hi Annemarie, you can have up to 100, but I would recommend a maximum of about 30, as the performance I think will suffer after taht>

What about this uh?

So where is the abuse. The reality is that 4 OS and 15,000 prims will cost $1,500 to buy instead of $1,000 and $500/month instead of the $295 of a normal sim. Of course this is pure greed. After offering for few months an appealing product LL is now raising the price. And this in bad economic times and when the USdollar is up and everything will cost more for the Europeans. How long before they raise the cost of a normal sim?

I own 2 sims and 7 OS. I am truly fed up and I am just waiting for their final decision. If they raise the price I don't think they are going to see one more penny from me after december.

my thoughts:

yes, the opensims were abused, no question. I won't argue it. But this is a classic case of moral hazard - the people paying the price are not just the abusers. I'm faced with watching LL destabilise Caledon and Winterfell where we most certainly controlled the use of the sims.

If we're facing rocky times, I can only imagine how less established estates are feeling.

However, LL did this to us. They lowered the entry price of these sims to the point where they competed unfairly with full island sales - which are already under siege from the new estates - which are also class fives and double prims - and effectively half price of an old Class four sim. Yes, the tier is effectively under 100 dollars a month for the equivalent of a full sim of prims on a Nautilus or Bay City sim on the mainland. I am currently watching brand spanking new Nautilus sims be bid out of sight by speculators, who are then pricing these new properties for a high price or renting them out, undercutting private sim landlords and old sim mainland rental barons alike. Old sims on the mainland and private sims are having problems competing with these inexpensive tiers.

Land barons were faced with a problem. Either fill the demand for these Openspace sims, or close their businesses as the competition takes their customers. Full prim sims were no longer viable unless they had HUGE value added, such as Caledon. (and even Caledon is struggling to fill vacancies)

So these OS sims are everywhere.

To add insult to injury. The dollar is strong, we are in a downturn economically. Everything for Europeans has gotten that much more expensive due to exchange + VAT. America is having hard times indeed with a strong dollar and the banking bust. Demand is definitely going down, and we probably haven't even begun to see the WORST of it yet.

I have a few suggestions, and I am sure some are going to be unpopular.

LL has to get their act together on dealing with extortionary activities by land brokers, which still go on. One idea of mine in this is to eliminate completely the Land sales search, and replace with paid classified ads. This will protect users a bit more who put their land on sale to transfer, due to confusion with the tools. It will also stop the abuse of search by land bots, and the abuse of estate pricing by unscrupulous land dealers.

All tier on Class five sims (yes, mainland too) need to be the same price from LL. Whether they lower them all to 195 or up them all to 295, I dont care - they all need to be the same price.

Double prim sims on the mainland need to reflect their actual cost - we need to move away from per square meter pricing and toward per prim pricing. They need to cost double in tier compared to what they do right now, as they are killing older sims.

And finally - LL needs to think long and hard about the need to contract and consolidate the Mainland. Land is getting abandoned at an increasing rate. Us folks out on the islands are being asked to contract while LL continues to inflate. This is not only not fair, it is going to kill the SL economy and we are ALL going to suffer, LL included.

and if anyone wants to know more of what I think - blahg posts are at http://minervan.wordpress.com/

Thats not good. Not good at all

When you invest money into something, you give it some faith, and acts like that if true, its just sad. Really sad.

I would like a 67% refund on my setup fee for my now valueless OSS.

Sound ridiculous....or sound familar

Seriously I think it is as fair as you asking for a 67% increase in tiers.

The problems begin with the price changes, not end. First off, you knew that openspace sims would be rented out to other "owners" and would be used for more than the "light" use you specified with a 3700 prim limit. Yet you sold them anyways, and now they have become an integral part of the SL economy, and your changes have the potential to ruin that economy. And driving out non profit organizations and education facilities when they are just starting to thrive will only make LL look heartless and encourage potential users somewhere else, as well as ruin organizations that have invested so much precious money into Second Life. And a viewer that will cause more lag, something that SL is notorious for. And upgrading class 4 opensims to class 5 after claiming that overuse has strained the CPU's supporting them? You just ruined your entire argument for the sharp increase and destructive new policies. A better plan would be to limit the traffic, scripts, and prims available to opensims, and/or upgrade your outdated hardware and software, which you should be able to do with the revenue increase from the thousands of openspace sales that you admitted to.