Openspace Announcement Discussion with Jack Linden

An excellent point, prices during this recession for a second level luxury like a virtual hobby should be cut down, not raised.

We all have a lot of devotion for the communities we've created in SL over the time we've spent here, but the quality and reliability of the service as is, is overpriced.

There so much our devotion will allow us to remain as customers of Second Life, before seeking for cheaper alternatives.

Except the people who are really winning isn't LL. It's the land brokers on the mainland who have invested in the new sims.

Have a look at Nautilus sometime, the days of the homesteading resident are over. Clubs, rentals and high priced sales of properties dominate. Homesteaders don't want these sims, they want sims where there is active management by estate owners. Like in Caledon, where we stop the abuse of sim resources.

LL does a slipshod job of this, and no amount of lowering prices on the mainland and raising them on private estates is going to change this. All they will do is force people out of business and maybe we'll just find other less expensive hobbies. I'm certainly not moving back to the mainland with my business activities, because LL has clearly told me that they are not interested in making the mainland a decent place for it, and I found a new place to live where I am deeply loyal.

LL, I will sooner leave Second Life before I will leave Caledon and Winterfell, and you better mark my words on that.

Lol ... Indeed ....

I bought a car, the car had 4 seats, it was intended to carry 4 people, I put a suitcase on one of the seats. Is this abuse??????

Things will be used for what they were intended, AND for what is possible.

In the most recent blog posting, I see a little backpeddling, a little sideways shuffling and lot and lots of the usual spin. Lindens, you still don;t get it! Nobody is swallowing this horsesh*t and you have devastated any credibility you may have held with your customers. Too little, too late.
Perhaps this is a panicked grab for money in the face of dwindling capital?

Of course they are. From the standpoint of users, an openspace sim is a product that offers the same functionality and capacity as a quarter regular sim. If they are being used in that way, that's not abuse, it is fair and reasonable and predictable use. What isn't abuse or overuse on a quarter sim shouldn't be considered to be such on an openspace sim either.

Of course, compared to a quarter regular sim, an openspace sim offers the advantage of more space. Therefore, it seems reasonable that their pricing should reflect that. Believe it or not, I would understand and, if not exactly welcome, willingly accept a higher pricing if it were in any way proportional to the actual relative value of the product. But your 66% coup is just way out of bounds.

The monthly fee due for a quarter sim is a little less than $74. If you'd charge, say, $90/month for an openspace, people would have to pay $16 a month for the privilege of having more space, which would seem quite reasonable. Net result: Hardly anyone would give up their openspaces, and all that money would flood your way.

The way things are, though, among my considerable circle of friends who currently have or are renting openspace sims, I don't know of a single one who is going to keep it. And not a single one is going to buy or rent mainland instead. The renters will either be homeless or settle for a plot on a private sim elsewhere, the owners will either abandon or convert to full sims.

If all this will have any effect on LL's balance sheet, it will certainly not be a positive one. And it's going to do nothing to improve any of the problems that supposedly led you to this decision. You won't get more money, your users won't get a better user experience. It's a lose-lose situation.



Speaking of detrimental effects on user experience: I've been around in SL for a little more than 2 years now. I've lived through lag, crashes, crashing sims, SL being offline for up to 2 days, inventory loss, my funds not being available, my av being ghosted for hours so I couldn't log on and many other fun things. They all have affected my user experience, but none of it has ever affected my user experience nearly as detrimentally as LL's amateurish, careless, erratic conduct of business, of which this exorbitant price rise is the peak (so far).

What embitters me and many others who have vented their anger here is the sheer hostility of it all. You treat your customers the way Basil Fawlty used to treat his hotel guests - as enemies, as regrettable, necessary evils. It was funny on tv; in reality, it is just disgusting.

I still, *still* don't understand what the 66% price hike is to pay for.

It's been pointed out that you also have the back end of serving up prims and textures , but what is the difference between serving up 3750 to an OS and serving up 3750 to 1/4 a full sim?

My understanding of server load itself is that it is dealt with by slowing the server down .. i.e .. lag. LL doesn't suffer lag .. the residences on the sims suffer lag.

If the 66% price hike is about LL trying to improve the SL experience then sorry, i'll live with the lag and wait for LL to bring in better controls

The problem here is that LL jacked up the available prims, allowed independent placement (not needed to be attached to a regular sim), and then tried to hide behind the argument that they were intended for pretty places only. Yes, initially OpenSims were meant for that, but after the increased prims and location requirement changes, can we still say that? An island in the middle of nowhere? Overall it was a really poorly handled product release. Clearly the demand is there, but rather than try to accommodate the demand, LL is trying to stifle it, for reasons I have yet to determine. Is the reason to drive everyone back to the mainland? Drive demand to overpriced theme areas like Nautilus and the ghost town of Bay City? Darned if I know yet, but it's certainly peculiar marketing.

So before blaming land barons, you have to realize that they were simply responding to available product marketing by LL...they sure were not marketing OpenSims as residential areas before that time that I know of.

Hey Jack and LL:

I am one of those people that has felt for some years now that it is impossible to move forward if you do not face the truth. No matter how hard the truth may be, it is damn near impossible to move forward until you face the facts. Once you look at something for what it is, you have your best chance of moving forward and providing some solution.

Now, the bottom line is this. There were never any real substantial steps taken to remedy the glut of unsold and abandoned mainland parcels that were on the market as of a couple of months ago. There were a few band aid approaches implemented as far as advertising, but no real steps taken to improve the mainland, to make it a viable option for SL residents to want to live in. LL began taking steps to be somewhat constructive and responsible and held onto abandoned land and released substantially less new land into the new market.

But, here's the problem. The truth. You have to make your product, this glut of unowned mainland parcels, attractive and viable. Something a person would want. You will never get there, unless you implement some type of zoning or rules. Sadly, you guys are going to have to get ready for another fight. This time with the mainland owners. Gonna have to take them on, man. No, I am not trying to shift the blame. Anyone with any sense knows this. I am facing the truth. I know why you are doing this, whether you care to admit it or not. I am looking at your problem.

And for Pete's sake, don't do it like you are attempting to do us. Don't halfway do it. Have a plan. Start reviewing regions, seeing what the majority of them are made up of. If it is majority commercial, rezone that region commercial. Offer tenants that are obviously residential a chance to move into residential areas. A swap of land, so to speak.

Another thing. While you are addressing the zoning of mainland, you have to take on the McMansion or McStore phenomenon. No more buildings taking up the whole parcel. That, more than anything in my opinion, leads to the extremely crappy look of the mainland. I mean, the mainland, for the most part literally looks like a video game from the 70's. I understand the newbie builder wanting to live in the house he "built" with the crappy free textures and all, but come on. It's crap.

I normally do not offer suggestions to competitors, and you are a competitor, and I said I wouldn't do it this time. I said, I'd let ya just fall on your asses and we'd shut down. But man, I don't wanna waste all the time I have spent here. Making less rl money than I would if I had put this many hours in a part time fast-food joint.

So, I've made my last plea. Bite the bullet. Take this mess on.

Tony Upshaw
Upshaw Island Management

and to LL from whom the land is initially purchased.

in the adfarm discussions jack said something very telling. he said something to the effect of 'll will now think of the mainland as estate land; the linden estate'

This is such an obvious solution that it will never happen,
It makes sense, It gives another level of use that will allow more people to afford their own private islands, and it keeps void sims working as they were intended.

this idea would have no negative impact anywhere except on the mainland, since customers could then have a private island at the same price as a half mainland sim.

LL will not like that.

laying for foundation for class 6 server?

I've asked to move and whether they should move to openspace many times. Of course, it is under rental. My answer is definitely "No". This is simply 2 reasons.

First, it is a breach of agreement between openspace owner and linden. If I rent through buy a openspace. I have no power to keep it when the original owner back out the contract, I think, except I get a island for keep that openspace if Linden allow. I simply have no word for any thing in the whole matter. I am out of the contract. That is foreseeable very risky.

Second, it will be laggy for unfound reason, since we simple has no right to know who is actually sharing server with my sim. In the main, this is my guess, Linden will allocate share server sim connect to each other. This is a better and simple work for both management and data transferring. In fact, what we do to ensure sim performance having 2 parts. One is from Linden to monitor the sim server performance, such as network, server loading. The other part is from resident of the sim, as we can monitor the suspect abuse and report to Linden. But openspace sim allocation of share can sim very different, and would be difficult to connect those share server sims.

What my silly opinion is that, openspace user is entitled to know who share with the server, as the design of the usage is supposed very light weight. Any one abuse can cause another 15 sims down service. If we know who sharing, we can inspect the problem and report to Linden. As to price, I don’t really want to comment, it is fair or not fair. It is a company's promise to its customer (I believe there are sufficient disclaim to protect Linden for doing that). Please don’t punish the clear hand customer, despite there are any rogue guy in SL. It like really world, it can be very dirty, extremely crim...

Hi...i got a little company how sale land to sl community and i got something like a 22 open sims...each sim cost me 250 bucks and i sold each piece of land per 1 linden and i charge just the tier....this is a great opportunity to the plp to have their piece of land in sl...please plp from LL think about this changes....the only looser with this changes at the end is going to be the SL COMMUNITY.

Thanks.

First offer the costumers low priced products at amazing and affordable prices with a nice per month amount.

Then when you have suckered enough of them in *BAM* hit them with a insane increase in per month amount.


Now here comes the dilemma, if SL follows the same road as the US did then the next thing to happen will be that all the land owners will not be able to pay their rent and lose their land.
This in effect will cause the Open Sim market to crash and Open Sims will not be worth anything anymore, people will be unable to sell their land and they will be unable to keep it because they wont be able to pay for it.

There will be so many people that will lose their income and nobody will want to ( or have any money ) to spend Lindens to buy anything , which in affect will mean that designers/builders/animators will not have any costumers to buy their product which in affect means they wont have any income to pay for their rent on regular/mainland sim which in affect will cause the sim owners to not get enough income and they will also eventually lose their land.

More and more people will not be getting their income which means more and more people will not be able to pay their cost and *BAM* the SL economy collapses.

It will only be time before Linden Labs will have to throw in a bail out.

What am I about to say may upset more than a few of you but I feel I must follow my conscience and speak from my heart so try please try to listen with yours. Thank you.

When this whole affair started about the unfair price hike of Open Space sims, I was one of the biggest opposers. I still am. I think it is just wrong. I also do not buy this smokescreen concerning overload of resources, etc and so on. Even if they felt that, there could have been a more tactful and compassionate way to have delivered that speech instead of making SL users feel as if they are bad little children. I still feel that the prices should be grandfathered, at least for a min of one year but I'm actually against this price hike entirely and feel or fear what will be next? Will they go up on the pirvate estate prices again, etc? If they do, no one will pay, that's for sure.

A group of users in SL banded together to try to effectively demonstrate to Linden Lab the errors of their ways. What started as a well intended and meaningful campaign ended up as a nasty abusive mob, ready to burn the offices of Linden Lab in California. Leadership of the larger group that I was part of .. were abusing members and encouraging aggressive and anti-social behavior.. protesting in welcome centers, harassing poor newbies.. cursing people out who chose to take a more peaceful approach, encouraging total anarchy and hatred towards Linden Lab and at one point even posted a group message to over 3000 members that I of all people was a curse curse Linden spy alt simply because I, one of the leaders of the group, advocated a more peaceful approach. Needlesstosay, this aggressive approach made us all look bad. This type of mob mentality jeopardized the very message we wanted to send and goal we hoped to accomplish.

We were fortunate enough that my lawyer generously offered to draft a petition and advise to the group to please refrain from such abusive activities, however the creator did not agree and things only got worse and to the point where I decided to disband the group for the good of the whole so that we could regroup and restructure.. all of this without sleep for 2 days.

Since then we decided to take a new approach.. try to all band together but as different factions because afterall it is about the community as a whole and not one single group. It seems that this cannot work because the group is constantly spammed by the other original group to once again take the more aggressive approach.. one that some of us are opposed to.

Now I sadly say that I regret ever becoming involved in this crusade that has turned into some witch hunt against the Lindens or anyone who supports them or who simply does not advocate violence. I will be happy when the whole thing is over so we can all move on to more creative and productive things. Infact I just want to quit now becuase the stress is simply not worth it. Somehow the original message has become lost and tainted. I still disagree with the decisions of Linden Lab. However, they are people just like the rest of us. I do not see the people who work for Linden Lab as some dirty evil slime of the earth. They are not. Many are lovely and helpful and this is just a poorly planned policy change once again made by management.

Back to the issue at hand.. LL even used OP sims to develop their own builds .. I provided links earlier in this thread but it seems that as of today the LL OP sims were converted to full prim sims. However, there are plenty of screenies saved to my hard drive and some were taken in the land controls. The point I am making is that once again this whole issue of resource abuse is simply not true. Even LL themselves used OP sims for their own builds.

Furthermore, resource abuse can happen on any type of parcel, mainland or private estate. Secondly, LL made it easy by lifting restrictions so that people could place these sim anywhere on the grid. They doubled the prims... made it so we could have a different owner than payor .. and please do not tell me they were not aware of what was going on when users were pruchasing hundreds, yet even thousands of OP sims gridwide. Of course they knew. Once again, smokescreen. They just wanted to increase prices.. but then please do not use some lame excuse to place the blame on the users of SL.

Finally I have to say this to my fellow residents, I know many of you are rightfully angry.. so I am. But aggressive tactics will not make our case any stronger. It is certainly better to take the high road. I hope that we shall all think on this and change our perspective on this situation... taking a different course of action .. choosing a more peaceful and intelligent approach and redirecting some of our passion into more positive and creative outlets. That's just my two cents for whatever it is worth.

Last words.. I hope that Linden Lab will at least consider to let the Open Space sims be grandfathered for a min of one year. Think about your users, the residents.. the virtual community of SL as a whole.. the very ones who made SL what it is today. Thank you.

PS for those who wish to join our group for support and moral encouragement and for those who prefer to take a more peaceful stance.. The group is called "Open Space Project". You can also just click on my profile to open the group and join from there since search does not seem to work most of the time. However, it is really not necessary to join a group in order to have one's voice heard.. but it is nice to be with others for moral support.

We create it. What did Linden Lab do for these past several years?Please do not depend on over time and argument. Please create service.

1) Please change name of Openspace.Personal Space　is sgood.Prim increase in quantity from 1.3 to 1.5 times.Please insist that it is land to spend calmly. Openspace increases a public access.Your naming is a crime, too.Resident unexpectedness misunderstands it.

2)Sale of Ocean(sea) space. About 500-1000.Prim .Order it in 16Region in One server. Band restrictions.And large ocean usable only.Impossible of sale of percel is good.

You should do such an announcement. Is different? Jack?

I have scanned through EVERY page and found only two posts from a Linden! (Jack and Katt. Only Jack said anything meaningful.). - I'm thinking they cant be talking because of all the legal threats that are posted?

It has been no secret that Open Spaces have been used for , - (at the very least) residential purposes. And LL should have known this but they condoned it and perpetuated it. For whatever reason.

The analagy that applies is Lenders blaming Borrowers for lieing on their subprime mortgage applications. But LL don't expect us to be bailing you out.

So what to do? Well there have been plenty of equitable suggestions but bottom line is that no user should be left at a loss for LL's - shall we say - lack of responsiblity.

And that includes settlements for everyone including, for instance, compensation for those who have bought LIFE TIME ownership of 1/4 of an Open Space SIM for $400. Yes! that's the lengths you will have to go to.

This is my first post.

If you buy a 1/4 ton pickup and load the back full of rocks and blow your engine or transmission, can you say "well, it all fit, so the truck is a piece of crap"?



People inferred the use to be beyond guidance provided. Don't get me wrong, I agree with crappy deployment of the "improved" OS. I am in no way agreeing or taking the side of the Lindens with the whole of their policy, but some things do make sense. The rest is just crap and/or smoke.



Value. At the original price, there was no need to have anything beyond a single private region to provide real estate when you could offer the same amount of prims for a much larger parcel of land. That extra land space is value in itself. The price fix (should OS be blessed for residential use) makes sense and puts the value back in order. At the ideal value ladder it would be mainland first, then private regions, then OS. What the "oops" was it put OS between mainland and private regions and to an extent, before mainland.

With the flood of real estate on OS, that put a nice dent in not only Mainland but private region real estate to where many sim owners jumped on the bandwagon to match the demand with supply. OS was no longer viewed as intended, instead the best way for any region owner to make some real estate money. Everyone is doing it, so it can't be a bad thing right?

Now LL claims to have load issues within the OS racks & beyond, and I honestly believe there are. I've been on OS where the lag is so crappy you can't do anything.

So in response, LL publishes this new policy:

1. Straighten out land value the way it's "supposed" to be to fix the market by $.
2. Flag sim types so people know they're on an OS, no doubt because the performance is bad and that in itself reflects negatively on LL's service.
3. Deter land usage by cost (policing usage), but at the same time, making the price so distant that it's no longer a decent option to use even as intended.



Actually, the marketing wasn't to promote residential or commercial usage in the first place. The land barons turned it into that once they saw a grand opportunity to tap into a very attractive market (in my first post of this topic I referred to it as a land baron's wet dream come true). Suggesting LL inferred full residential/commercial usage by adjusting prim amounts/location flexibiity is making conclusions to support your case and has very little to support it. The Concierge giving a thumbs-up to the usage in that manner although is another story.

And yes, there were a few barons marketing OS for residential purposes as cheap alternatives before all of this, it just wasn't anywhere near as wide-spread as it is now. Some of them even cheered at the increase of prims & how their residents would love them for adding prims & not increasing rental fees.

The reality is LL is a business, when the first started it was pretty much a beta project for them, as well as a big chance, wondering if this whole concept would catch on. I can remember a time when the average simultaneous log ons was roughly 8 - 12 K, when they hit 18k the GRID went into a SEVERE overload. They broke that barrier, it was rough but with some good marketing many more came, and they pulled the GRID together. I watched what was mostly a mainland GRID turn into a whole new HUGE world. Quite frankly it was amazing to watch. Then came the elimination of sale of new 512 Sq. M plots for new users at 512L, and the huge land growth, and outrageous land prices that followed suit. That of course slowed, and gradually land became less and less marketable. People still wanted it, but you couldn't sell it, you basically had to give it away, and make up your investment in your tiers. But your were still battling those who were grandfathered and were only paying $195 for their full sims. It got tough for many of us estate owners, but then came the reprieve. Sims at $1k and the ability to now purchase OS sims individually, instead of in blocks of 4. Once again the estates became marketable, and I for one moment thought that maybe, just maybe, LL actually cared for it's users, and truly wanted this to be a user created world. I have been amazed at some of the creations many of you people have created, often wondering if I only had the time, I too would rebuild my sims into a beautiful place. This slowly began, slowly creating a network of island that would harmonize with each other. My passion for SL was reignited once again... then... this. All I can say is WTF, everything I have now spent years working for may be wiped away in the flash of a moment, based on this one decision.

For those of you Lindens who have been here from the start, I commend you for all the hard efforts that brought you here today. What you have created is an amazing world. Thank you!! But I challenge you to not forget that it was not only your blood, sweat and tears that created this place, but the freedom, expression and trust of your clients, the people. It was not your corporations, it was not your colleges, but the individuals who stood by you so many times when things got messy.

I want to challenge each and every Linden out there, look at your heart, and do you really believe this is the RIGHT thing to do?

Now is your time to make a difference.

having spent some days thinking about this and owning all types, mainland, full sims and os sims, i think you have got it right jack, you have given the full sims and mainland back their value, to say you did not know that os sims would be used for what they were, well maybe less time in the office and more time here and you would have had a diff view, please do not give free conversions back, the greedy barons deserve all they get, please keep it as you have told us and ignore those loaded with self interest in this forum, i own 26 OS, but stopped buying and selling them in july when i saw the amazing greed of the so called estate company's, so i will suffer to, but thats ok, i to should of thought of the long term, thank you for giving my full sims back there value, they were my first sims and im attached to them, and im so sorry for the time a few weeks ago when i went a bit mad at you for making my full sims worthless and you suspended me, thank you

Lucinda Bulloch
Needles CEO

I bought the first Wunderbar sim in January of 2007 for $1695, in the wake of the fracas (which at least in retrospect seems a lot smaller than the present one) of the raising of fees from $1295 (I think it was) for set up of private estates and and increase of $100 in monthly tier fees of private estates -- but not mainland sims. That disparity in pricing remains to this day and (for anyone who is watching) has not been enough to move people who are willing to pay a bit more for creative and aesthetic control, from private estates to mainland in the kind of droves that would be needed to ease the blight there.

My business partners and I bought a total of 7 full sims and 4 open space sims before last March, and paid $1695 set up in each case. We noticed that you had to cram people pretty tightly onto full sims in order to make plots that most people could afford, and that we needed to be 80%occupied in order to recover tier ever month -- nevermind recovering our initial investment of $13,560 in real out of pocket money for "set-up fees" that we have never recovered in any way, though when we bought the sims, people seemed to be able to recover their investment by selling parcels to other people.

People say that was a risk we took, and I can live with that, though it really did knock me for a loop last March when prices were suddenly lowered from $1695 to $1000 set up fees, essentially making our initial investment totally disappear.

During the months just before the prices were lowered, it had become clear that private estates were not a good investment, and that most of the set-up fee could not be recovered through land parcel sales as they had not too long before seemed to be able to to do. Full sim sales were no better. People would pay perhaps $500 for a full class 5 sim (depending upon how much time elapsed between the transfer of the sim, which cost $100 and thus reduced profit from $500 to $400), and whatever percentage of a month of tier was leftover at the time of transfer, which would reduce profit from $400 by as much as one full month of tier, or by $295. That means that BEFORE the reduction in the price of full sims to $1000, you might be able to net $100-400 from sale of a full sim, at a loss then of $1200+ over the initial setup cost for the sim.

When sim prices were lowered to $1000, even that piddling $100-400 return evaporated. You might net at best a couple of hundred dollars, meaning that your loss was close to $1500 per full sim. At least, that was our experience.

If we wanted to cover tier, we had to rent at cost. If we asked for much money for rental rates or land sale, people stayed away in droves. There were too many other options. It was a buyers' market.

But of course that is not the end of the story. Because at the same time that full sim prices were lowered, we got a 1-2 punch from the lowering of prices of open space sims, the ability of people to buy them singly, AND the raising of prim limits from 1875 to 3750, meaning that one could break even with charing rents at the same rate for open space sims as for full sims.

Only an idiot would not see that, for the same money, you would get the same total number of prims and FOUR TIMES the amount of land.

As others have said, tenants starting leaving. Full sims went vacant. But we still needed to pay $2065 every month in tier to LL. At that point, simply abandoning sims became a viable option, since the couple of hundred you might take in by selling a full sim could easily be LESS than one month of tier payment. I see that many if not most estate managers adjusted as we did by converting full to open space sims -- and yet even that was not enough. Without my even knowing it, it turned out that people had found a way around the "full sim first" policy for OS ownership: savvier landlords than I had somehow worked out a way for people to pretty much own open space sims without owning full ones, with that "designated owner" policy that LL is now thank godfully getting rid of. People actually WERE able to buy single open space sims, with a "legitimate" full sim owner sort of underwriting them.

We converted full sims to open spaces, until we had only 1 full sim left, and 16 open spaces. We sold one full sim for $50 more than the transfer fee, and abandoned 4 openspaces in the process. Even so, we still were at 60-70% occupancy. My shop sales make it so I have broken even every month, but my business partners pay hundreds of dollars every month out of pocket because of the shortfall. My partners point out to me that it only SEEMS that I am not paying out of pocket; I should be counting my sales money as "real" out of pocket expense.

Well it should be clear that we will not be able to afford $800/month more in tier for 16 sims after January 1. My mortage payment is only $100 more than that! Unless there is some reason to believe that we can get people to rent from us for 66% more tier than now, when they are not renting from us at a break-even rental rate now, then it is obvious what we are going to have to do.

We will figure out some level of existence in SL that we can "afford" to maintain after January, even though it means giving up a lot of beautiful land in Wunderbar. And I will just have to hope that my desire to create and participate in SL returns, since truly my heart has been a bit broken over this.

The bottom line in all of this is that Linden Labs sold a DEFECTIVE product to a lot of people. Yes, no getting away from it - they sold us DEFECTIVE product!!!

You sold a product which was advertised as being able to support 1/4 the usage of a full sim for US$75 Tier - e.g. 3750 prims on a 1/4 CPU.

Great product for people who want a nice place (island) to live (i.e. just them and their partner) without paying the huge amount of US$295. And surprise, surprise, lots of people actually wanted that product - go figure

Any yet now, we discover, though a blog entry and a chat log that you - Linden Labs - have discovered that the product doesn't do what you said. It takes up 1/2 CPU and more bandwidth than you intended.

Well, what that really means is that the product is DEFECTIVE. It is FLAWED. There is no other description for it.

However, unlike other companies - e.g. Microsoft - who free of charge, replace or fix their product (e.g. overheating XBox power supply), you decide to CHARGE your customers to get around the fact that it's DEFECTIVE.

Imagine if Microsoft did that - "Your XBOX power supply will overheat and cause problems, please pay us 67% of the cost of the XBox for us to fix it". LOL - like that would happen.

I am sure (and I am not a legal person) that this is breaking some laws and I really hope that unless you reverse your decision, someone, takes you to court for this.

All of us who bought this DEFECTIVE product should return their Openspaces and demand a REFUND.

However, Linden Labs (and if you're still reading this, thank you) you are after constructive comments so here are mine:

1) Limit the use of Openspaces so that they only use up 1/4 CPU and the bandwidth which is acceptable for smooth running. But if you do that, you must reduce the price - not increase it or keep it the same. If an Openspace can only have 1/8 of a Full Sim's resources then the price should reflect that. So here we go, Openspaces should therefore be around US$40.

2) Clearly people like having a whole island to themselves and also prims to play with. Market 2 products, one current Full Sim (15000 prims) at the same price (US$295) which can be used for business etc. and another full size island with only 7500 prims at half the price - US$150 - for personal residence. You could limit the second product in such a way that there are incentives or reasons for business people to want or need the Full Sim - e.g. Agent limit etc.

You see, essentially the problem, Linden Labs, is that there are 3 major types of people in Second Life that you need to cater for at the right price.

First, there are people who want to run a business. Great, please cater for those people and have Second Life a great place to run a business.

Secondly (and I fall into this category), there are people who just want to live here and enjoy the scenery around them and get away from the day to day grind of First Life. Many of these people (me) also came here to be creative, and love the idea of having a nice island all to themselves where one can create their dream landscape.

Thirdly, there are recreational people who want to roleplay or do combat, or some other kind of hobby within Second Life. And they need somewhere to create the places where that can happen.

However, for the Second and Third groups it is just too expensive (probably also expensive for the first group as well). When you consider there are lots of other ways that one can be creative or get away from "First Life", Second Life is a very expensive hobby. It was expensive before and now it is even more expensive with your 67% price hike. And many will leave because of that; especially when cheaper options (OpenSimulator, Google, IBM) become available.

And guess what, without the Second and Third groups of people, the number of people buying goods within Second Life will go down, and business will suffer, and Second Life will suffer as a result.

Second Life needs the three major types of people to survive. And therefore you, Linden Labs, need to come up with a viable set of products at the right price to suit everyone if you want to continue your business.

And that doesn't mean jacking up the price by 67%!

Thanks for reading this.

LOL. Only the geeks (know the URL and) visit http://status.secondlifegrid.net/ since no one else knows it

Although I agree that everyday Joe must have demonstrated his intelligence to support people in the past when reading teckie stuff, blaming SL for everything from his video card to his ISP and his lack of brain cells.

Supporting people who don't understand but think they do is tough. Lots of resources, stress and anger. People who semi-understand are a little better. People who agree with you 100% are the best! /me laughs

Soy Nakamori

Rosie, I did not attack you. Katt edited out your attacks against me. I have not attacked anyone in this forum, I have simply stood up for what I believe in without attacking others.

Unfortunately some others, yourself included, have not demonstrated the same courtesy and have made belittling personal remarks about me and even threats of bodily harm just because they disagree with my opinions.

I hope that one day you have all the happiness in life that you deserve.