Openspace Announcement Discussion with Jack Linden

Greetings to all,

I wonder if someone if at all anyone will read my humble reply, and I must admit that I have not read any of the replies, so there is a chance that someone already touched this subject.

I understand your position of needing more equipment due to the maintanence cost of each SIM and Open SIM.

I also understand that there are users abusing of their open sims affecting other open sims.

And I understand your position that in order to stop that abuse well, let's increase prices and that will put an end to it, or at least allow you to have the right equipment and maintanance to allow such use of open spaces.

But then I turn around to see the global economy right now and I see that the worst thing to do right now is increase prices, if any I would lower the prices to keep my clients. Do you really think that people will keep on paying a higher prices when gas is through the roof, they might have a mortage to pay, education, etc. What do you think they will put in first place? an open sim? or daily food?

Between my husband and I we own two open sims that we recently acquired, and we really considered and thought about it before buying. But I can tell you than when the increase is active on January we will cancel our open sims. And it's too bad really because mine is just a personal sim, but my husband plans to us it for his business. But the cost might not be worth it.

Take a look on what is happening to the land market, everybody is selling sims, full sims, open sims, there will be a overflow of sims but little market for them. Your sales will drop, your economy will break and in the end SL will collapse just as the world economy has done.

You have to make things easy for you to retain your costumers, either maintain prices but increase service offer, or create new products that match the needs and payment possibilities of your clients. Offer SL jobs to people; don't just make them camp somewhere. Allow them to earn $L so they have money to spend on your virtual economy.

Allow people to own open sims without making them buy a full sim, that will be a way to control open sims, and allow people to create new land and businesses.

Be proactive, and not reactive to the real life economy, create new products and services tha create demand. But focus on what really sells; what doesn't sell well is better to stop selling it.

Create systems that allow to work with RL, (and I don't know if this exists already) for example create a SL supermarket linked to a RL supermarket, allow people to create a shopping cart of groceries and when they are done the RL supermarket can deliver the products to their homes.

Another example is to link cell phone services with SL in some way or another, either to create chat software, buy sell lindens with cell phone credit, send postcards directly to your cell phone, or images from your cell phone to your SL inventory. Create a store that sells ringtones, wallpapers, images and games in SL and delivers them to your cell phone.

Make SL to be useful on RL, not just a way to interact with people, make people NEED SL in their RL for something.

My husband and I are full of ideas that we would be happy to work with you in order to make SL a great tool for RL businesses.

But the worst mistake you can do in your business is to increase prices in an economy that has and will have money problem for a long time, at least 2 years from now.

So think it over, really consider all your options before creating a situation that will collapse your virtual economy.

My best wishes to you all,

FireDragon Nightfire

We need immediate action than we do, it will be free to revert to full islands should tell us immediately so we can ask that since the delay in the reopening is 5 to 10 days.

It is great to see so many people offering better solutions to the proclaimed: "overuse". BUT I am convinced, after reading other experiences and my own experience as estate manager in an estate with over 150 Sims, that this is not about "overuse" at all.

It is just another effort to kill the (mini)estates and force people onto terrible looking, no customer service and no policed, mainland. LL has nothing left else to do. They made private regions 100 us$ per month more expensive then mainland, they forced sudden changes, over flooded the grid with mainland, etc etc.

Some Estates have managed to survive the unequal competition and ridicules instability of LL policy so far. But this is, most likely, the final blow as I see so many great Estates announcing their end.

Why can't this issue be about overuse?
Simpel: The current announced increase of tier is way way higher then the amount needed to balance any "overuse" even if everybody would have been "overusing" the openspaces.

To my "humble" opinion, LL goal is forcing people into mainland. I have news for LL: There is no way LL can provide the customer service, looks and management that is offered by the estates. The huge amount of people, living on private estates, prove this already for a long time. People were willing to pay more for not having to live in mainland ghetto's.
LL not only misses the empathy for customers, they simply could not afford good customer service because in private estates, 95% of the managers and estate owners are not only in SL for the money. This little huge extra is called: "Love and dedication".

Massive (forced)leaving of people, who build the most beautiful creative things, makes me more sad then all money issues that are mentioned.

But You are killing our world not because of prices. The main thing is that for most, this is really the final drop in proving LL is a way way to unreliable "partner".

(Of course this is only my heavily frustrated and very sad opinion while looking at our beautiful landowners created dreams)

LL has made much of the fact that the Openspace sims have not been used in the way they were "intended" to be used, and continually point to the Openspace article in the Knowledge Base to prove their point. But when I read the following passage, I can't help but think that they've essentially ENCOURAGED the behavior they are now penalizing:

"It is therefore important to understand what these regions are. They are provided for light use only, not for building, living in, renting as homes or use for events. As a stretch of open water for boating or a scenic wooded area they are fine, but we do not advise more serious use than this and will not respond to performance issues reported should you not use them in this way."

Yes, they clearly state that the Openspace sims were INTENDED to be natural space for residents to enjoy. But the final sentence in that paragraph is where they have gone horribly, and tragically wrong. Simply put, they say lawbreakers won't get user support for performance issues if they choose to use the Openspace sims as residential developments, etc. Essentially, they said "you're on your own" if you misuse them, when they should have said that anyone who misuses them runs the risk of having their Openspace sim TERMINATED. Saying that you don't "advise" someone to do something with their Sim is simply not enough, you have to actually FORBID it to keep people from doing it.

Sorry LL, but you must have been truly delusional to think that no one would misuse them, especially when there was ZERO mention of penalties for doing so. If you don't want people to break a law, you need to articulate a harsh punishment for people if they do, pure and simple.

Interesting posts in the blog


2 Qie Says:

October 30th, 2008 at 5:57 AM
It might be time to outline and refine a plan that LL and most OpenSpace owners can live with. I’ll try to outline something, stealing liberally from the many good suggestions in the thread, where I initially posted this strawman.

Two classes of OpenSpace sims. There is demand for the “original” OpenSpace “void sim” application: lower primcount, very few scripts, very few avatars–just very light load, and only in areas surrounding other, full-primmed sims. There is also a clear demand for heavier use OpenSpaces–still much lower density than full-primmed sims, but posing much more demand on the backend services than does the “void sim” application. These need to be separated into two distinct products with different fee schedules; let’s call them “Void” and “Low-Density” sims.

The details of what’s a “Void” and what’s “Low-Density” should be worked out in consultation with LL Development and Operations, but I’d suggest that “Voids” could continue to run 4 per CPU and Low-Densities perhaps 3, and that new Voids would have to be attached to full-primmed sims and only available in groups of 4. For both sim classes, Development must devise ways to throttle inter-sim demands *and* demands on back-end central services and networks to keep the products viable.

Conversion without penalty. Like it or not, the “unbelievably good deal” of $75/mo OpenSpaces was a product marketing mistake. Such things happen all the time with new products, and LL really should step up and admit that this was their f*-up, not the fault of an evil empire of abusing buyers. Or don’t admit it, but act responsibly anyway: That $250 set-up fee should be credited toward whatever product to which the buyer chooses to transition now. Four OpenSpaces to one full-primmed sim: Free; any fewer: $250 credit per OpenSpace. Also free: choosing “Void” or “Low-Density” for existing OpenSpaces.

Temporary Partial Grandfathering. Everybody has to expect pricing fluctuations for new products, but nobody can plan for a 67% increase–that really is punitive, and a business breaker. So, instead: on 1/1/09, Low-Density sims ordered before 11/1/08 will be charged $100/month until 6/1/2009, when the rate will go to $125/month; new Low-Density sims ordered after 11/1/08 will go to $125 on 1/1/09 without grandfathering. Maybe fees for Voids could even nominally decrease on 1/1/09.

“Hardwired” Estate sim clustering. The idea that an Estate owner can manage their OpenSpaces as a group, so they share CPUs only with each other, has some real merit. It’s understood that inter-sim resource demands are only part of the problem: what load they pose on backend central services still has to be addressed, but LL Development and Operations need to come up with a way for Estate owners to choose CPU sharing for their OpenSpaces. Indeed, it has emerged that full-primmed sims can affect others that share their server box, even though running on a separate core, so a generalization of this could be of value to Estates who have no OpenSpaces at all.

3 JACK LINDEN Says:

October 30th, 2008 at 6:18 AM
@Qie: Amidst many excellent responses we’ve had, yours might be the most constructive I’ve seen yet! As I think I have alluded to in the post, we do recognise that there are at least two clear usage models at play here, and I agree that we need to look at how we recognise that in whatever we do. We’re discussing that along with other feedback at the moment. Good post, good ideas.

This whole notion that there are too many prims, too many avatars, etc. is irrelevant. Yes, it may cause the individual server hosting the open space sim to use a little more cpu clocks, adding to the electric bill for LL, but that's it. The idea that it has anything to do with asset server requests is fundamentally flawed:

- the sim itself does not have much to communicate with an asset server unless there is an AVATAR involved, and avatars are controlled by people. Thus, asset server issues result from high concurrency, and have little to do with WHERE those avatars are.

Now obviously this is not entirely true. An avatar in sparsely developed sim won't require nearly as much bandwidth as an avatar in a sim with 15k prims and lots of other avatars... Each avatar has a lot more data to download in that case! The question of how much content an avatar will download depends on where they are. To insist that an open space sim loaded with 3,500 prims will cause too much asset server load is ridiculous, because if that SAME avatar were standing in a full sim with 15,000 prims, they would be making 4x as many asset server requests! In that sense, open space sims REDUCE overall asset server load!

The avatar is there because they are interested in the sim's content. If the content is not there, the avatar will not be there either, they will instead be somewhere else where there is content.

The open space sim is a good product, obviously, as the demand for it has been over the top. The "expanded" space is a brilliant for the small SL business whose monthly pull doesn't quite allow for a decent profit margin on a full sim, but doesn't want to hassle with the ridiculous nuisance of neighbors on unregulated mainland. The price is appropriate, considering the pro of added space and control vs. the con of scripts running at about 10% of the speed of a full sim. If you want to improve the product, that is great, go for it, but don't destroy the market in the process!

What is contained in this post isn't hard to realize, it is only logical. Jack could you please, then, tell us the real reason for this price change?

Raising prices the way you guys intend to, Is basically stabbing every single open space owner in the back. I am just curious as to how many you will be taking offline? Post that static! Formerly i owned 3 Open spaces, And yes i DID rent them, and yes ONE of them was being over used, Badly... But then i realized that there really wasn't as much money as i thought in Open spaces, And all the work i did to try and keep them managed just wasn't worth it... I have to Thank LL for allowing me to return all 3 Open spaces, for a Full Refund! I think the cutoff day for returning is 15, If any of you new owners want a easy way out... But i just couldn't not believe what i was reading. You say you want them used Lightly... In meaning No homes, or stores, or whatever... I bet only like 5% Of Open spaces are used like they should be... But LL has the ability to Limit these open spaces, There WAS a Prim Limit, but they raised it, So what i don't get is, If they are disabling the Payer Owner requests, and are working to make these more stable, then apparently they are taking things away, to make them better, In return they are going to charge US more for taking away...

Bottom Line, LL is a company out to make money. That was the intent of inventing SL, They want money, They don't care about you, and they dont care about me. And they dont care what linden has to get cussed out over it, They want their money and they want it now... And they say they will be making these improvements, But we all know, the grid will run as laggy as it always has... They raised the prices on Regular Islands, To make more money, However they seen at that high they were not doing any good, so they change their servers, to cheaper servers, allowing them to lower the price to 1,000.00 Selling them more islands, making them more money, Not to mention each and every tier charge. Just like when they raised the tier from class 4 to class 5, There are STILL Class 4 islands out there, Not having any problems, Running as good, if not better than class 5's and they pay less.

LL needs to focus more on its Community, rather than its wallet. I Understand its a Business, BUT, It has Millions of users, and could go down in an instant without them! I dont know about everyone else, But if i am treated like shit at house a, And loved at house b, I am going to live at house B, Even if i have over 300 Friends at House a, there are other means of communication... Skype, Phones, Yahoo IM... (Hope everyone caught that) More and more all i see are people Playing SL to make Money, There is hardly anyone playing just for fun, There are a few... but very few... I rem the good old days, when i logged on, played in the sandbox for hours, and meet ppl, And we just set around and talked. And how neat it was just to talk to people all around the world, and see what represented them, as their avatar, standing there, right in front of me.

Due to the amount of Islands on the Main Grid, new islands will fail... When i came in to island business, My intent was to make enough money for tier, and then if i made any profit it would go toward my home, I owned 1 Full Island, and 3 Open spaces, I barely made tier the 1st month on the Main island, and i had too much invested to just loose it all, because i couldn't pay tier, I started then to try and sell. I did not sell until month 3, I only got 600 - the transfer fee, For it, When i paid 1,000.00, I lost Out of Pocket for 2 months tier, The last month i didn't even try to rent it, I just made one big A** House! Everyone needs to realize this is a game, Its JUST a Game.. LL needs to realize that Price Gouging is not the way to turn, And definitely not against your users, just because you want more money...

I can gladly say, Once i lost so much on SL, my past 3 years of playing, didn't seem to matter any more, I see what a Money Racket SL Really was... And i stopped playing. thanks to SLExchange or XStreetSL, I still make money occasionally, And that is the ONLY reason i log in, Is because i make 1 l here and 5 l there... More and more every day i believe, that one day, SL will Fall Threw, and will just Go Offline, and everything, that everyone has, will just be gone, and all that money will be gone as well!

Grandfather all existing OS's no changes. If you need to upgrade the performance on the existing OS's then do but, not at our expense. We bought a product, you should supply that product as stated without imposing "new" limits or prices.

Future OS sales can be higher so people can budget that and with limitations you feel you can live with and be fair to new customers.

DO NOT penalize existing OS owners for your mistake.

Let's fix this and move forward with this platform.

In world businesses are already seeing a decline in sales as people either leave the platform or are hesitant in any new purchase until the dust settles.

DO NOT loose the trust of any more of your customers Linden Lab. Show us you can do the right and only fair thing here- grandfathering.

Renee Faulds and my small two OS's

[8:20] MarkByron Falta: Linden's themed space sim at Mons Aimsly was convereted to a full sim yesterday
[8:20] Harmony Linden: Actually, that was always a full region, it just had Openspace prim limits.

[8:21] Selena Lowell: a full sim that had openspace prim limits showing in about land? .......hahaahahah..........I just spewed my coffeee out

Mos Ainsley is (was) an Open Space Sim LL owns which has now been converted to a full sim. It was an OS which holds thier space station...all but 637 prims had been used and a shipload of scripts.

Funny how they suddenly now say it was *always a full prim region* but only showed as an OS...and NOW...WOW.....its suddenly a FULL PRIM SIM!.........

me thinks LL is backpeddling fast and furious on thier own guilt of so called OS abuse.

Lower the bogus $1,000 USD setup fee for full sims and I'll be happy to pay you $295 a month!

In mean time, Jack Linden, stop jerking us around and fix the problem that you've created by admitting that Linden Labs screwed up.

Give us three options:

Option 1: 1875 prims, 10AV limit $40 a month


Option 2: 3750 prims, 25AV limit $80 a month


Option 3: 7500 prims, 50AV limit $150.00 a month (for heavy users and businesses!)

Turn this horrible situation into something positive, Jack. Listen to your loyal customers whom are screaming. You're chasing them away, Jack.

"Openspaces were intended for space, empty areas of ocean or forest."

Right....so...if ppl are not using light this...let's increase the rate..


Ok, it's not fair...So, what about the ppl that's really using with this purpose ?

Is fair let these ppl pay for this ?

Also, why the prim count has increased few months ago if the purpose is light use ?


Sorry, LL....This is just non sense excuses to increase the rate !!

Ah, I really wish to know one thing...It's about loyatly...

So, how many voids has been sold since the price decreased and prim increased ?? Maybe 10000 ? Let's pretend that 10000 voids has been sold...

10000 times 250 = 2,500,000 US$ !!!!

new incomings from fee: 750,000 US$


LL, do you really beleive that´s a loyal act win up to 2 millions of US$

I have spent hours reading all the post relating to the cost increase for openspace sims.
Most of the post are against it.
I have seen a lot of Changes since Jack came aboard. Most of them are positive. At lease now LL's listens.
When the openspace sims first open I told a friend that it would be abused, and LL's would step in. I see most of the complaints are from people who rent out their openspace sims.
As owners do you check up on your renters to make sure they are staying within the guidelines LL's set up for openspace sims? If so I don't think we would be in this forum.
I find it hard to believe, all the people who say they are leaving SL because of this, will do it.
I have yet to find a game, that comes anywhere near SL. So bite the bullet from the smoking gun that you create by not keeping an eye on your renters.
The Mainland has improved alot. and I hope this move will help increase the mainland price.
I can look on map and can not see one ad farm on any of the sims that boarder my home.
Thanks Jack!

If I remember right, I think Jack cited that once as an example of an OS ...

I don't really have time to read through the 2000+ posts already in here, so forgive me if this is answered somewhere in the wash.

How this price increase will benefit the users? Are you shifting so only two voids are on a cpu? Doubling the system ram in void servers? Summoning Shiva and Ifrit? Or is your intention to just drive the 'true' light users off of their void sims, leaving you with exactly the same problem you already have but far fewer customers?

I don't have an OS, but i certainly use them (notably for sailing). Plenty has been said about how this affects OS owners; how unfair it is to address a problem (assuming there is one) simply by hiking everyone's tiers; how economically DUMB it is to take that approach; what an unimaginative, reactive "solution" it is.

But this affects all of us, not just Open Sims and their owners. For me and for many, SL is a complex, multi-faceted world. I am very much a consumer, I buy lots of stuff (my inventory is a disgrace!!!) and I hope I help keep talented people creating and building. I buy wonderful ships and boats that I can sail; I have friends who buy amazing planes to fly: I find surprising serenity in virtual forests and beaches. And that keeps so many of us coming back, keeps us buying, keeps us contributing to the social network. OS's enrich the world. Destroy them (and this looks like a pretty effective way of achieving that), and the whole experience becomes poorer. People visit less, spend less, contribute less..lose interest..feel unappreciated... resent having treasured places taken away...feel exploited.

Not least, there is a major issue of trust here. Open Sims today...other sims tomorrow..How can anyone feel safe planning to do anything if this sort of thing can be announced as fait accompli at a moment's notice? LL wants to learn the difference between consultation and "feedback" - feedback is what sharks get after they bite you.

Economics, in SL as in RL, is not really a science, more an art. But you don't have to be Keynes to realise that a unilateral hike of tiers on Open Sims will have repercussions throughout SL, all the more so in these times of RL economic turmoil.


If a government urged people to use bicycles more and cars less; then found out that people were responding by using bicycles not just for leisure but for commuting, shopping, visiting, rickshawing; so then decided to put a new annual road tax on bicycles...well I guess the difference is that SL is not a democracy. But we can still vote...with our feet.

The first paragraph tell me that they need to raise the tier so that they can upgrade to improve the ACTUAL USAGE LEVELS so they CAN MAINTAIN THE BEST PERFORMANCE.

"....We need to therefore take some steps to improve their performance and better reflect their actual usage levels in our pricing so that we can maintain the best performance level for everyone. As a result, we will be implementing a pricing change effective January 1st along with some policy changes effective immediately....."

now this one tells me that they are going to get people to use them how they original intended..

"...Lastly we will begin to proactively discuss overloaded Openspaces with their owners. This is important because as with abuse of region resources, a heavily overloaded Openspace can adversely affect other Openspaces sharing the same machine which is clearly unfair to residents who are using them responsibly. We have listened to your feedback on this,..."

so why not just make us use OS as intended without the increase in fee? since they are going to use the excuse of us using the OS sims incorrectly to have to upgrade hardware and increase the fee then we should be able to continue using them as we are and pay the increased fee. if we are not going to be allowed to continue to use them as we are then why increase the fee?

I find it interesting the number of people who say they "owned" a single open space sim, or say something along the lines of "I finally got my own open space to live on".

Clearly, some full sim owners, with the collusion of LL with the "designated owner" program and the new ability to local open space sims just about anywhere and not tethered to their qualifying full sims, were misleading a lot of people by telling them that they could "own" their own open space sim.

I truly did not know until today and yesterday that this was going on. I knew there had to be a reason that we were having so much trouble renting our land when others were reporting full occupancy. Now I find out it is because some subset of people were finding a way around the full sim attachment restriction -- not to mention the VAT. I guess some landowners were reporting OSs that had been turned over to "designated owners" or "payors" or whatever, as "rented."

This horrifies me more than anything else that has happened.

Jezzzz you guys can't be serious! How on earth should that help? I'll still have to abandon my 2 open-spaces and with doom hanging over them the way Quie mentions, I might as well abandon them right away, as nobody will make a temporary living on them anyway.

I bought 3 sims - one full and 2 open-spaces next to each other - on the conditions set up by LL.
We do not all want to live on the mainland - personally I detest most of the mainland, that's just my opinion.
On each open-space I have 4 residents (well within the usage limit) paying tier and thus the sims barely pay for themselves.
There is no way the residents will stay if I raise their tier by 65% - and I certainly can't afford to just keep the sims on my own budget - I'm by no means wealthy.
I bought the sims in good faith for my savings because I have/had a dream about creating a beautiful, peaceful place where a small community could live their SL lives and make their homes.
So, I'll have to abandon the open-spaces (and my dream) and lose my money.

I don't necessarily have to abandon the full sim; but it's part of the set up with the 2 open-spaces and as things stand at the moment, I can't really imagine keeping it; but I may change my mind - yes I'm a bit bitter too.

In the present mess there is only one way out (or 2 as the case may be) that are legally respectable and lives up to the commitment LL made:

1) LL grandfathers the existing open-spaces without any restrictions but those already in effect.

2) LL refunds the 250US$ to all owners with 1, 2 or 3 open-spaces, that do not want to keep them.
LL gives the option of conversion of 4 open-spaces to a full sim, to those who want it - otherwise they receive a refund too.

Huh? Anyone can buy an OS. Plus, the VAT does not apply all over the world. Or did I misunderstand something?

Jack,

I am a full OS island owner/renter/whatever it's called. I purchased my island just after the announcement of the new islands being available, this past spring. The purchase price was one I could handle and the monthly tier, although high, was something I could do. I named my island after my daughter, who passed away this summer, after battling breast cancer for 4 years. It was, is, a way for me to keep her memory alive and gives me a place to go when real life gets too hard to bear. Although most non SL people don't understand, it's been a private place to help me get thru many real life events this year, a place to go to see the sun rise or set, to learn to build something, or learn a new script. It truly has been my home away from home. SL life is good.

Since your announcement that the OS sims aren't be used as you intended, I started thinking about what happened here. Obviously there are a lot of people who read your "for sale" announcement last spring, as I did, and thought I can actually own a whole (or half or quarter) island now without paying the full price of a 15,000 prim island. And with 3,750 prims on a whole island, I can learn to build and script in private, without neighbors, and not have to always take my builds into inventory for fear that they will be returned to me from a sandbox I was using. I don't need 15,000 prims, so 3,750 was great.

My island was sold to me as "You can do anything you want with your island, you're the boss". So, being fairly new to SL, I didn't question what I was being told, as the estate owner had been in SL longer than me. And the prices he was telling me were a bit higher than the prices on the SL website. I expected that because this is a "business" and he needs to make a profit also to stay in business. So when you say the tier is going up from the current pricing of $75 to $125, it's actually higher than that for most of us, as the estate owners have to increase their portion also. So my current $95 tier is going to $150, just like that.

So what happened? I don't have a club or mall on my island. I have friends on my island occasionally, but not more then 2 or 3 at a time and mostly when I'm on my island. I can't find a reason why my tier should go up 58% after just 6 months. No one came to me to ask my option on "how's it going for you?" or "having any issues with your island?" or "we're thinking about raising your tier 58%, is that a problem for you", etc. In my RL job, I have to work with my clients, do my research, and come to a mutual decision that works best for both the client and my company. If I went to my clients and said "I'm raising my consultant fees 58% now", I wonder how many of them would go looking for another technical consultant for their computer systems.

This is a difficult situation but I feel it can be resolved in a way that works for most people. Talk to your clients before just making an announcement that affects a large segment of SL people. Get the feedback, which is what you're doing now, although unfortunately after your announcement (positive input is much better before a decision, than negative input after the decision). Don't treat all OS owners as "One Size Fits All". There are many different uses that the OS sims have been used for. Perhaps there can be different levels of uses for the islands, with different pricing structures. Maybe anyone with a mall or club should start paying more for the island and islands that are lightly used are grandfathered in for now. I believe your goal should be to keep people on their islands (and in SL), and work with them to resolve this.

As for me, I'm not sure I can handle $150 in real USD, each month for my island. And since OpenSim is a reality now, I'll start researching that, connect to my friends OpenSim spaces, and only pop into SL occasionally. You may have lost another island owner, unless this can be resolved in a way that I'm not being penalized for the overuse of the abusers.

Thanks for reading my feedback.
-Kincade

I've been thinking about this one myself, but I'm not certain enough that this is entirely true. Each sim has its own cache, makes its own connections to the asset server, and so on... it's certainly possible that LL is just seeing higher total load and attributing it to OpenSims because that's where many people are, but I'm not confident enough to assert that's the case.

If, as Jack Linden apparently noted, some huge proportion of the estate sims are OS sims, I don't see how they can grandfather them as is. That makes their reaction more understandable.

Some kind of compromise where you can get the original price (or something close), but you have to make do with limitations (say... 1875 prims, <10 avatars, must be attached to a full estate), might be workable.

thanks for proving my point.

With the US economy in the proverbial s..h..i..t..t..e..r it makes no sense to do this to residents. If the abusers were the main reason for doing this then Linde WOULD go after them. The main reason is MONEY though. They see popularity rising in open spaces and they want to cash in. GREED at it's worst!

I cannot afford a 67% increase and I am positive nobody else can either. As someone who owns a 1/4 sim in one of these estate owners sims, how does this trickle down to me? Do I get 67% more prims since I am paying 67% more money?