Openspace Announcement Discussion with Jack Linden

what i wonder is why in Open Life regions are way cheeper then in SL and have much more prims availeble 45,000.

here some URL to the pricings ;

http://openlifegrid.com/AvailableRegions/tabid/139/CategoryID/1/List/1/Level/1/productid/236/Default.aspx


http://openlifegrid.com/default.aspx?tabid=269&apgroup=Private%20Clusters

There must be a better solution to LL's aleged server loads than a blanket price gouge. There are many beautiful and inspiring open sims that adhere exactly to the proclaimed intent of open sims. Very talented and creative residents have spent countless hours creating these places. It is at best unfair, and at worst an assault on the innocent, to raise their sim tier fees along with those creating heavy load.

LL, find a better solution or the residents of SL will find a better virtual world!!!

I got popcorn and hot dogs,

LL screwed up...what is new about that ?

This time....with the world in recession...LL won't survive...and no bail out from any govenrment

Let me start by saying what will probably matter most to the folks at Linden: I lead a non-profit of 400 members, and I was planning to do a presentation on SL later this year, encouraging my folks to join and consider leading meeting and educational sessions in-world. This is, I believe, exactly the kind of dynamic you wish to foster at SL. But this kind of policy-setting and customer service is shocking to me - if this is how you handle people making an investment in SL, then we can't count on you for support or fair warning - and I can't endorse you or work to bring in my people as I was hoping - we can't use a platform that is this unreliable, and I can't suggest everyone working to embrace and integrate a new means of working and connecting when it can change services and hike costs with this kind of short notice and drastic increases.

I am a recent purchaser - 10 days ago, what timing - of half an OS sim, an island surrounded by navigable water, for which I just spent a mint buying beautiful trees. This is part of a larger sim, Scotland, which is right in line with your forest/ocean aesthetics AND keeps to the lower prim load - I can't imagine what you're thinking. Why in the world would you penalize so many of us who are already on board with you and making a serious investment in SL. You obviously anticipat that this price hike will put me and many others right out again - I would NEVER have just bought this land, knowing I would have to abandon it and suck up the loss 2 months later. But such universal and draconian policies also put me off of SL entirely - and as above - that can't be your intention. If you are truly interested in diversifying SL's use, and making it work better for everyone - this is not the way to do it. I hope I'll still be part of the SL community in January - and able to work on bringing my non-profit in too - but that's up to you.

Lets be perfectly clear here. Any decent landowner knew exactly what they were, what their stated use was in the KB, what they were actually being used for, and what they were going to be used for going forward. Feigning ignorance to the stated use is ALMOST as rediculous as feigning ignorance of the actual use.

My original plan was to have a sailing estate, and to have the "water sims" surrounding my store at one end and the residential sim at the other. As it grew and the water grew it was obvious that I was competing for residents with OS sims being sold as residntial "paradises" regardless of the stated use. The evidence was the hundreds of islands advertised for sale as such, using the term "low prim island".

The actual use did not match the stated usage recommendation. Jack knew it, its his job to know it, if he suggests he didnt know it hes obviously lying, the guy who manages land use and the land store does not miss the fact that most of the land being sold was OSR's being advertised as residential. I personally never saw any other use of them being advertised at all.

So I rented them, 1 resident per sim. Concierge was happy to take the orders, happy to deliver them and raised not a single concern as to their usage along the way, nor made any comment regarding the houses/builds on them. They have answered my calls and supported my residential sims throughout, promptly, without question, in some cases moving them around to be nearer each other netwise because of issues at the sim borders. They serviced rollback requests to restore lost builds for my tenants, they visited the sims and tested them for issues on request. Id use their names but thats rediculous, I like the service they gave me and appreciated their responsiveness and support.

Some of this was before they were dropped in price and pumped out wholesale. I protested that move loudly, as loudly as I have been protesting the pretense that this was somehow unexpected use. Jack ignored me and everyone else complaining about the effect on land values and the effect on the grid.

As with many other landowners I had to convert my full prim sims to OS in order to rent them at all after that. It was not to achieve any pricing edge on other landowners, it was simply to provide the tenants with what they were asking for/demanding. And it was done at considerable cost.

As the new OS residential sims were released along with the new land store - and thats exactly what they were intended to be, released as they were with double the prims - I charged the same for them as I would a 16k and kept the restrictions in place with few exceptions. The changes I made were expensive to me and profitable to LL. That expense came on the back of the 40% devaluation they had just thrust upon us as well, It took every bit of profit out of the real-estate game.

Jack and the concierge team went out of their way to encourage us to use them exactly as they are being used now (not clubs/high traffic of course, ugh). They may have left the KB usage recommendations in place to cover their butts, there are. howeever, plenty of statements by lindens, written and otherwise, that show that they knew exactly what they were being used for, permitted it, encouraged it, and at least in one case here, a written statement that the KB recommendation was out of date.

Stated use is not enough. You have to enforce a rule, set an example for its use, provide oversight and guidance for infractions, or else its not a rule any more.

This mess rests squarely on their shoulders. They were warned and chose to ignore the warnings because they had their eye on the profits. Any costs of putting the genie back in the bottle at this point should be theirs to bear. If not I will be filing a complaint with the AG in california.

Note: Primbys earlier comment were posted by me using the wrong browser. Blame me if they don't sit well

Even though I haven't seen openlifegrid (won't contribute anything to my existing knowledge) I must say this:

LL has employees, high costs of salaries, offices etc. Upgrade procedures for infrastructure and LOAD. The last alone is the determining factor for pricing.

Openlife or any other cluster of servers that exists or may exist has no load at the time. When load comes, problems will come, server upgrades will come, engineers who are CAPABLE will need to be paid and so on.

It's no secret and anyone can easily understand that SIMs are server deamons running on the operating system. You upgrade the IO/RAM/CPU, you can get more prims/textures/whatever in one server.

Doesn't matter if it's 45000 prims or 100000 prims. The more you use to a user the more he will use (without caring - which is understandable for the average joe).

LL gives 15000 prims and I assume if they could they would like to give less prims (ie need less resources per "avatar".

So it's not a matter of hardware or technical capability, LL in terms of prims is technically doing the right thing. Simply put, because they have a network and clusters with thousands concurrent users, asset servers and real infrastructure that know exactly how much it costs and each second of downtime is money.

Openlife or any other Grid simply put is empty. I'm sure that more than 45000 prims could be given also. That's just a number

Put a server per SIM and you can get more too... No big deal. Or get more CPU / RAM / HD etc. Never ending story.

Soy Nakamori

Well, Looks like LL is an amateur...and i dont believe LL were so naive to the point of believing everybody would do a light use of their openspaces when they were created.
I tink its the beggining of the end of a game...too expensive, no return...

While Jack does wish us to post here, it is apparent to me that most are not reading before they post. Things are being repeated ad infinitum at this point and we stand a chance of this become so nonconstructive that our points are lost.

I think Jack hears the points made (mostly in the first 10 pages of this thread). Certainly those with some new and constructive ideas should continue to speak.

I agree with Anne here in that it would be wonderful if all parties involved in caring about this could step back and really analyze the situation with an effective and pleasing solution in mind.


LL- while I think your reaction to this problem and your decisions over the last several months at least have done significant damage here, do a mea culpa. It's the only way you will regain any trust. Follow it up by changing your business practices and actually instituting some pathways for problem solving and consequence analysis before you make such drastic pricing changes. Admit when it might be a technical issue. Youre not fooling anyone here with your changing claims and your some technical issues which you in the past chalked up to user error wont fly under the radar either with people around here that are educated about this.

Residents- Put down the pitch forks. LL won't do a turn around b/c we are "angry" or because we stand to lose money. It only breeds an atmosphere of finger pointing. I truly think LL knows we need each other. I think LL knows that they will not get nuked for a while. The ones that cash out and leave have it right. If you really feel that badly leave. Otherwise be constructive, don't clog up the cogs saying the same thing over and over or adapt.

I do not buy for one second that this is the fault of those renting out or using open spaces. We all know that LL knew what they were going to be used for and actually encouraged it. Allowing conversion of full sims to open spaces is just another case in point of LL's knowledge and how they encouraged with one hand while waving the CYA KB with the other. But let's work to fix this huge crater of anger, mistrust and insult so we can all get back to advancing our own plans.



My suggestions for what they are worth...


I think that while we discuss grandfather or price adjustments based on use, the real issue here (as Anne has said) is to really nail the cause of the problem down. If it is viewer, user or a combination, we will only really be able to assess value for pricing when we know what levels of use will be acceptable. Perhaps open spaces shouldnt be allowed at all. If LL wants open spaces as parks etc and open space products are laggy, perhaps a price point for a full sim with 1/2 the prims should be considered. Just a thought. The point is we don't really know what value should be assessed until we know what product is functional. Another take home point here LL is this all shows that an affordable lower prim sim product is in very high demand. As a land owner myself this next suggestion would be bad for me but I really don't care. What if you, LL, sold a sim server strength equivalent to a class 5 full sim for say 500 usd and 7500 prims 150 usd a month to anyone wanting it. People would be signing up for those I am sure and many would sublet 1/2 likely. This might extensibly put estates out of business but might actually just shift focus to the development of smaller parcel communities. These communities would likely be interested in a reasonably priced actual LIGHT USE filler sim to connect up their full prim sims and add value to the communities. I might add what the sims were originally intended for. Make these Park Sims at a price that makes LL a little cash but will do more to foster the purchase of Full Prim sims. Then increase the price point for those full prims sims. One huge problem has been all the private sim land has brought some private estates to mainland quality. This might reinstate the pioneer attitude of private estate developement to communities and creative outlets. However if LL is afraid of this and sees it as competing with their horrid mainland "communities" they wont go for it will they?


So to summarize- Goal one is to define the problem. Let's dispense with LL knowing what people would use them for. We all know you did and you encouraged it.

Goal 2 lets define what the demand is. Large sim areas that can be used to live, enjoy, do business, create and entertain. Is there a product that can do that w good function? How about a sim with the function of a full but capacity of 7500 prims for a reasonable price. Friends will join up on these as they have on open spaces.


Goal 3 that i might add is as important as 1 LL take all this hub bub and see that you really need to make drastic changes in your business. I said this after os debacle 1 months ago. If you don't the business we run need predictability, planning and a sense that we aren't getting jerked around in the wind....please just say it. I'll have more respect for you (i really have none at the moment anyway). Make a statement about how LL views our "business". B/c now all you have left us to believe is that SL is a canvas that changes on your whim and that we should not consider this an economy.

The latest blog non-response on this issue once again shows that Linden is flopping around as they chant the mantra of light use when they didn't follow the old policy themselves with regards to their own themed openspace sims. In fact, the stinging charges of hypocrisy and double standards were apparently hitting the mark, and yesterday they changed their openspace sims (e.g. Mos Ainsley) to full sims - bet they didn't pay the transfer fee, eh?

It's clear that the old policy as referenced in the KB was contravened the minute that Linden doubled the prim allotment from 1875 to 3750 and heavily marketed them to the point that Jack Linden was crowing about increased growth of the grid back in July (see link), and not a word about their alleged inappropriate use or how the grid resources were being overtaxed, etc.

http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/07/08/second-life-virtual-world-expands-35-in-q2/

Please don't insult our intelligence and do the right thing. Either provide a complete refund for those who purchased the OS's under false pretenses or grandfather the rate increase.

You can argue about LL not notifying people clearly enough but it's very obvious that openspaces were NOT intended as personal living spaces of any kind. They were intended to add a bit of greenspace or water around your real sim. Now, LL don't seem too upset that people have found different ways to use them they are just saying it's not sustainable to have 2 openspaces use as much resources as a full sim but cost half as much.

The price increase would not be to upgrade the server, it would be to support the unexpected load on the backend infrastructure.

There's far too much here to read and know if I'm just repeating what someone else has said .

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LL states that both tier will go up and at the same time they'll be contacting sim owners who are abusing/overusing their openspace beyond "acceptable use".

Everyone knows clear examples of abuse of openspaces but what we don't know is what LL will be using to judge "acceptable use".

I live on an openspace, using about 2000ish prims, just under 500 scripts with nothing physical on the sim. I think there is someone on the sim 10-15 hours in a *week* and no more than 2-3 people at a time. While it doesn't fit with the "0 prims, 0 scripts and abandoned all the time" concept of openspaces, I'd have to think I'm using mine responsibly.

Jack on the other hand stated in one chat that pricing *might* stay the same if openspaces were limited to 1500 prims and a maximum of 250 scripts. Is that LL's definition of "acceptable use"? One avie with a scripted vehicle could push an openspace beyond "acceptable" use where it concerns scripts if that's the absolute standard.

LL needs to establish some extremely clear guidelines on what will and will not be acceptable use from now on. Lack of any guidelines on how openspace are to be used is what resulted in this mess.

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Additionally Jack indicated that "noone has ever done anything like this before" which I would really just have to disagree with. Webhosts have been hosting multiple people on the same server for years and years and billing them appropriately according to their personal use.

Every day my webhost sends me an automated email detailing CPU usage over the last 24 hours. That's averaged out over a month (with the top spikes filtered out) and as soon as I reach a treshold value I would get an automated warning email. A second warning would result in suspension of account and the host would then propose a different plan to accomodate the overusage.

I honestly don't see why something that's been done for years by every other hosting company can not be done by LL. If one of the sites I share the server with becomes popular or starts taxing the server my host will not come knocking on *my* door to raise prices for someone else's usage. They'll be talking to the person responsible for the overuse.

If anything beyond "0 prims, 0 scripts, noone on it ever" costs LL more than $75/month then so be it, but charge each individual openspace owner according to what they are doing with their openspace and stop trying to shove "one size fits all" plans down everyone's throat.

If my usage of my openspace warrants $100/month instead of $75/month then so be it. If that's entirely due to how I'm using it then I have noone else to blame for it but myself and noone else would be forced to pay more just because I'm using more than my share.

Jack indicated that some openspaces have a load of 0.5 (with 1.0 the reference for a full sim) so I' would think it's fair to ask those openspace owners $150/month (half a full sim since that is what their load is like), and if my load happens to be 0.33 I would pay $100/month and anyone who fit within the 0.25 keeps on paying $75/month as they are now.

In addition the same should apply to full sims as well. I've always thought it's beyond ridiculous that a popular club that has 50-80 live avies 24/7 pays $295 (or in some cases even $195) while someone who uses their sim for low key private use pays the exact same amount.

It should be obvious that if you're going to charge everyone the exact same price with no penalty for overuse that some people will try and squeeze everything they can out of their sim (and I know plenty of full sims that have a top time dilation of 0.6-0.8 even with noone on them because they're so overstuffed it's out of proportion).

Draconic measures where LL raises *everyone*'s tier, regardless of how they're using their sim, is just not the way to go and will just lead people to think "well, I'm paying $50/month more so I have to REALLY get everything out of it that I can" and you run the potential of only making the problem worse.

Owners of openspaces that might actually be waterways today might be able to factor in the $75 but now decide they need to rent out a portion of them to recuperate the additional $50 and instead of openspaces settling down on load they increase even more because you're forcing everyone to squeeze them for every pennie they can get out of them.

Dans ta seconde intervention, Jack, tu indiques avoir pris en considération les différents commentaires et analyses des utilisateurs du jeu. Cette attitude a priori ouverte et diplomatique t'honore.

Mais elle ne semble que de façade.

En effet, l'analyse de fond reste la même : les OS étaient prévues pour des espaces de mer ou de forêt. Elles sont utilisées autrement, donc il faut ""adapter"" les prix à cet usage.

C'est - toujours - un raisonnement à courte vue, car, en augmentant les prix de 65%, avez-vous pris la peine d'analyser les conséquences ??

En ce qui me concerne, je fermerai 2 OS : World Wonders et Flag Factory qui sont des lieux uniques dans SL, pour me replier uniquement sur la vente de mes drapeaux via SLX.

Résultat des courses : pour SL, moins d'activités (un musée et une sim-store de drapeaux) et de ressources financières.

Ces conséquences personnelles sont à multiplier par des dizaines de milliers de cas similaires.

En gros, tu ferais de SL un nouveau Lehman Brothers !!

Car les locataires de OS sont des investisseurs de "classe moyenne" dans SL, mais ils contribuent à la solidité de l'économie de tout le jeu.
Le cercle vertueux économique de SL ne marche que si divers types de niveaux d'investissement et de comportements de consommation co-existent. Si un niveau d'investisseurs de "classe moyenne" est condamné, il faut s'attendre à un jeu de dominos sinistre...

Car... payer 75$ pour une OS est beaucoup !
Pour de nombreux amis, c'est même énorme, surtout en période de crise.
Certains d'entre gagnent par mois environ 400 € (600$), leur passion pour SL est telle qu'ils font de sérieux sacrifices pour pouvoir payer leur OS, et n'ont qu'un objectif c'est de la rentabiliser en y installant des commerces ou en vendant leurs propres produits.
Si le prix est augmenté de 65%, que va-t-il se passer pour eux ?

Personnellement, je travaille entre 2 et 4 heures par jour en moyenne sur mes drapeaux, et tout cet investissement en temps ne sert qu'à payer les charges demandées par LindenLab... Je ne produis aucun bénéfice, parfois même je dois acheter des L$. C'est un amusement, un défoulement et un plaisir personnel qui contribue à enrichir LL tous les mois. Serais-je assez maso pour devoir passer autant de temps pour creuser un déficit tous les mois, et enrichir encore plus LL ?

Les OS ont été utilisées autrement que ce qui était prévu ??

Eh bien, cela répondait (et répond toujours) à un besoin !

Ma proposition qui est honnête :

Réduire les prix et proposer différent types d'OS, c'est même la meilleure solution de vous sortir de ce mauvais pas et de garder les joueurs de SL (J'en connais qui sont déjà tellement déroutés qu'ils prévoient de quitter le jeu et ont déjà débarrassé leurs OS pour les liquider dans les prochains jours)

OS 2000 prims = 50$/mois
OS 3750 prims = 60$/mois (c'est le maximum !!)
OS 5000 prims = 90$/mois
etc...
jusqu'aux Fullprims sims 15.000 prims = 250$/mois

Cela montrera que LL est capable d'être souple et de s'adapter aux besoins des joueurs.
Aujourd'hui, c'est exactement l'inverse que tous ressentent !

Il est vain aussi de chercher à contrôler la nature de l'activité qui sera produite sur ces OS (sauf les règles basiques de moralité, etc), ou alors il faut changer le slogan de "your world, your imagination" à "My rules and your money in LindenLab pocket" !

Hi Jack,

I might be a bit of a lone voice here by saying this but i actually agree with need for an adjustment to land prices. But a reduction in tier fees would have been far more appropriate. Land prices have been in freefall. Balance needs to be brought back to the land market and drive some people back to mainland and full sim islands. However, i do NOT think that a rise should be applied to already purchased islands, the deal has already been done, and technological solutions need to be found, rather than price increases, you said in your recent blog post that it's to recognize the increased value of the product, that just sounds like, oops, we sold them too cheap, oh well, we'll just get them on the tiers. It increases the smell of this being a bait and switch situation.

When the new pricing for islands and openspace islands was announced, I knew immediately that it would mean a massive increase in the popularity of openspace islands at the cost of full islands, now they were essentially the same price for exactly the same prims, but 4 times the land area, no downsides were visible.

Sure, the islands were shared more to a server, and "light use", but from a land buyer's perspective this meant nothing, they don't know what server it's on, they don't really care, no information is given to buyers about the type of server, if it is, they don't know what it means, all they know is how many square meters, how many prims and how much it costs. Openspace land has regular sim land beat on all these, so people start to migrate from the mainland and regular estates. They are also less laggy in most instances, as for most people, the lag is in the viewer, and not on the server, openspaces sims have a lot less to render. People start moving to these islands in their thousands, and estate owners have no choice but to buy them and sell the land on them, just to try and stay in the same spot, and keep existing residents. Land on full islands gets harder and harder to sell, they seem laggier because they have more prims on them. Mainland prices keep dropping.

I estimate that essentially 20-30% or more of the grid's paying residents have now moved over onto openspace islands, however, not enough new residents prepared to pay to be here are comming in to fill the spaces left on full sims, erasing or severely straining the margins of estates, driving many out of business. More people leave SL, more people tell thier friends how they lost money here, and the growth of SL slows further.

From your perspective, loads of islands are selling, the land mass is expanding fast, there can't be anything too wrong with the land market. Just prices are lower. You lowered upfront costs earlier in the year, it was to be expected.

From the estate owner's perspective, the land market is crashing under the weight of too much new cheap (mostly) lag free land, too many people are moving to openspace islands, buying more openspaces and converting full sims if possible are the only option to keep up.

Now, 6 months later, it's realised that the server capacity for openspaces land is oversold, at too cheap a price, user experience is suffering, so, in an attempt to fix it tiers are increased 66%, During a looming global recession, The worst possible time. Hence the reaction you have got, estate owners are worried about running out of money, and thier renters are as well. The worst effect you can have on a user's experience right now is to hit them in the hip pocket. The stone has already been drained of blood.

You can't blame the estate owners who bought the openspaces sims and sold the land on them, they were just responding to the fundamental change in market forces that you created with the lowered price and increase in prims without a corresponding change to the tier pricing or prims of full sim land.

The openspaces product may have become unviable because of the server load, but, they simply must have the tier fees grandfathered to give the island owners who bought them a chance to catch up, recoup their investments, and for their estates to adjust to the change. If tiers are increased now and without grandfathering it will force most estates to increase tiers immediately by a similar amount, and in the economic climate drive many residents away completely, resulting in abandoned sims, lost content, and an awful lot of angry disheartened people.

I have over 20 openspaces sims, and i put no more than 3 residents on each sim, this is because each resident usually only has one house, one bed with poseballs, 1 set of friends, so the average load on the sim is lower. I monitor the performance of the openspaces sims closely, and all of them are 0.97+ average time dilation, and thier frame times are very low (around 1ms). Being purely residential the traffic levels are very low. Most just sit there with no avatars on them at all unless the owner is online.

Clearly one of the biggest problems is the shear number of scripts still running under the LSL2 VM. A hard script & avatar limit would solve that problem, and really has been needed all along, a full sim will lag with more than 5000 scripts on it as well. More needs to be done to educate people about the number of scripts in objects, this is unlimited and can have a severe effect on sim performance if it runs out of memory, clear guidelines need to be given on the total number of scripts an openspace region should reasonably have, and ways of detecting the numbers of scripts in objects needs to be given to estate owners and managers, not just the total effect on frame time. Objects themselves should show the script count in addition to the prim count.

A simple description of it should be forest or ocean just doesn't work, what if the owner of that ocean wanted to fill it with scripted fish?, or make a interactive reef for diving? a living forest with scripted trees that grow?, not many people would visit, that's light use. all those would still fit under the broad category of ocean, or forest, but would be potentially a huge script load on the sim, so it's not light use at all.

It's been mentioned here that prim limits could be reduced back down to 1875, this is not possible, the islands were sold with 3750 prims on them, and would never have been bought by so many people if they had 1875, lots of content would also be lost by the reduction in prims.

Free conversions back into full regions has also been mentioned, this is also unacceptable for a lot of estates, land doesn't sell that well on full regions right now, for the reasons i mentioned, and the delay in getting them converted costs at least 2-3 weeks in tiers and it would also take up to a month or more to sell the land, but not until after the price rise has filtered through setting a new base price for openspaces land and the mainland/estate market recovered a little. This move will have put many estates into an unviable position after the price rise. With a new sim only costing 3 month's tiers and the first month included, it might just be better for these estates to abandon Sims. If they do I wouldn't be expecting them to buy back in later.

Thanks for Reading,

Ashley.

P.S. For anyone who lives in my estate, please don't be worried, we will be able to get through this change with the minimum of disruption, most of you won't be disrupted at all, don't hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.

Thanks for Reading,

Ashley.

P.S. For anyone who lives in my estate, please don't be worried, we will be able to get through this change with the minimum of disruption, most of you won't be disrupted at all, don't hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.


yeah but paying half again rent no doubt Ashley thanks to this ....did you forget to mention that because I skimmed over your comment? the end caught my eye

then why the 3750 prims, and non-attachment to full prim sim requirement?

I've watched a JIRA discussion about a bug concerning texture load for a long time now http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-8503.

In short, a bug in the viewer causes textures beeing reloaded repeatedly without any necessity - generating a lot of lag and system usage.

Now it seems that the reason for this behavior was found by a resident. It's very interesting, what he says about this bug:


I think under these circumstances it's highly recommended that the Lindens carefully re-think their decision about OS SIMs. It's not the SIMs that are causing heavy load, it's a viewer bug!

I'm a Girl Friday living on an OS.
I have one house and a few trees, beach and plenty of water. I love it!
I do not have parties, a club or a business, this is my home.
I enjoy the privacy and to be able to create in peace.
I have other land on the mainland, which is open to the public, with free gifts and other events.
I have contributed a lot to SL and in a small way give LL "value" for free!
Since I have been here, you have taken away the "free land", devalued my property and now you want me to pay more, so others can can use and abuse SL for free.
Somehow, I don't quite understand what I actually will be getting for this increase.
I'm still wondering what advantages there are in being a premium member.
At times like this I feel LL don't want us here.

Even if LL responds to the protests and steps back and does not go through with the price increase on the OS but rather finds a technical solution, it matters very little to me at this stage of the "game." I doubt I am the only one who looks at the situation in the same way. I believe there are many others who feel the same way.

Essentially, I can no longer TRUST the management of Second Life. I have set all my future plans aside to expand my business in land development in SL. I will not expand, but now retreat. When trust is breached in such a way to announce a 67% increase in price and THEN ask for feedback? This is about the worst example of poor management I have ever seen in the business world, and I have been in business in RL for a very long time.

There is never a fine line between fraudulent or incompetent business practices. I would like to give LL the benefit of the doubt here. But which one is more favourable? Fraud or incompetency? Is there another alternative? I don't see one. Maybe someone out there can offer another explanation for this outrageous announcement of this 67% increase. But the damage is done, so I guess it doesn't really matter. Does it?

I'm confused too as to whether this means that one can now use OS as one wishes instead of for scenery. I have 3 OS which I use for water and forest around my main sim..occasionally I will redo an OS as a set for a machinima which will increase the use temporarily.

What would work for me is an increase in prims and computing power for the increased cost. I would pay the increase if I got an increase in value as well.

Perhaps there can be more variety in the kinds of OS.

Heavy use and light use.

That might be difficult if the OS's wander from server to server and can affect other OS's.

As far as a business decision, this is pretty poor in that it completely undermines the land resellers who had value and put the effort in to manage their communities. Please don't compete with these people with dreadful projects like Bay City or Nautilus. Please take the time to understand the crucial role these people play in the continuing future of SL.

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Disclaimer: I am not an estate manager or owner nor do I rent on an estate. I do however run a successful film corp in RL and know how vital it is to know who matters: the customer.

Another day is coming - and going - and it is mystifying as to where LL is receiving their advice on how to handle this crises. Whatever PR person is telling them not to face their customers should be fired immediately or demoted to a customer rep and let them get in touch with the customer base.

For those of you who know me [Ah, I see a couple of hands raised out there.] I have worked for companies much, much bigger than LL, and the approach to these types of problems is 180 degrees from LL's approach. Their approach works as evidenced by their continued existence, and thriving, and they have the trust of their consumer base.

Regardless of what you may think or know about Coors brewing, when there is a PR disaster, they don't have joe schmoo from marketing handle the crises. No, instead the top guy- one of the Coors' family members - steps up to plate and takes it on the chin.

This is no longer a matter about a price increase - right or wrong - it is a matter of LL taking swift action to gain the trust of its consumer base. By not acting, the customer base becomes increasing dissatisfied and disillusioned. The most obvious sign of this is the belief that LL cares not a patoee for its customers. If attorneys are handling this fiasco, fire them as well. I know many good attorneys, but none of them know diddly about best marketing practices.

I know others on this forum have posted similar suggestions, but this is my 2 cents worth:

• Immediately a message should be posted in-world that links to the forum, or blog, where there is a message from a person in authority – THE person who has the power to make decisions at LL.

• An apology is offered acknowledging that the effect of the change had not taken into consideration its full impact, and the comments are appreciated in alerting LL to those oversights.

• Acknowledge LL’s fallibility in not recognizing that its own open sims were part of the problem and steps are being take to correct that oversight, and if conversion is in the final plan then other open sim owners will also be allowed that option at no charge.

• The constructive comments from the postings will be given serious consideration, and will be posted ASAP for FINAL review and comment by the SL community.

• A final plan and roll out date for the change is unknown, but LL will do its best to incorporate the suggestions and notify everyone in plenty of time even if it means delaying the implementation date, and . . .

• Assure the customers that LL will make good on its brand that SL is Your World Your Imagination , and this will be reflected in a culture change at LL to show that it does care about its customers.

The market found it's balance. Openspace sims were what the market wanted. Now we need to find some kind of forced balance? If the estate owners can't or won't adjust to the new market they should go under. Under your argument we would be supporting buggy whip makers since the automobile put them out of business.

I don't know how many people have already posted this as I stopped reading after the first 20 pages. But here is the problem in a nutshell and I doubt LL will ever admit to it.

OS sims mean that LL is losing lots of money every day. By people renting an OS they are losing money not only on the mainland but people are not paying monthly tiers. When you combine those losses look at the changes that occur. If you make it so that people only have one place to go affordably then you will lose some customers yes, but hte majority will go back to mainland and you will recoup some of your losses.

Yes I do believe that some of the OS are being abused by being used for businesses and clubs and so forth. So charge those sims the larger fees, increase residential to 100 voila, you have middle ground. I am sure that LL can find a way to charge tiers to those who rent land as well. So they could lower the prices of Full size and Open Space sims and still make up the difference that they are losing for all those that have run to OS. This would not be a popular idea amongst most but it would solve some of the problems.

I haven't said anything yet because I have been rather dismayed by the original blog announcement and I wanted time to think.

Many have clearly and accurately stated the issues and I simply want to add my name to those expressing their serious concerns over the way in which this matter has been handled.

Linden Lab are obviously wanting to refer us back to the knowledge base article detailing the light use of Open Space sims. They DID have Mos Ainsley as an open space sim utilising more prims and scripts than are in use on the sim I share with a friend and they have now changed Mos Ainsley to a full sim with no comment on this action. This unsettles me.

Still, mistakes have obviously been made that require correction. Personally, whilst not welcoming it, I could live with a prim reduction and script limitation (we DO keep a close eye on prims and script useage anyway). A small price rise could also be swallowed. A clamp-down on serious over-users of these sims would benefit the majority of us who are careful with what we have.

I'd like to reiterate that this has been handled rather badly by Linden Labs. A fair and just resolution will be needed to restore the community's faith a little.