Openspace Announcement Discussion with Jack Linden

I just joined a month ago, bought an Open Space and use just over 2000 prims, Its is for commercial use but relating to our magazine and is more for Kudos and marketing, I don’t expect many visitors.(even less now) I have enjoyed spending the last month setting it up and unless I am banned for this post I will be here for a year.

It is because there is so much impending competition that this price rise will go ahead, in a year from now we will be offered a number of better honest and friendlier alternatives and this will be the last chance LL will have to extract capital from its customers who have largely invested too much to run off right now and most will stay regardless, finding some way to cover the extra cost.

At 67% increase even those that leave will still not take a way from a huge short term gain that LL will enjoy... but it will probably be their last. This explains why we have not heard any thing meaningful form LL.

In my opinion , that LL were once pioneers will be forgotten. Decent creative types will find better hosts and fair trading/treatment due to competition.

In the developing virtual universe LL are a company who have lost their nerve and are simply profiteering, it’s not personal, its just good business sense if you’re a bean counter.

No one will forget the day they sent a note to OS users saying were putting the price up 67%...only a company with a monopoly and little consideration for its customers can do that; but it tells the developing competition that they are ready to be taken out of the game.

My heart goes out to every one who has invested their time and money in creating something beautiful and feel so betrayed, something I will have to swallow myself.

Thanks guys for pricing me out of my sim. If you go ahead with this rise i will have to give it up thanks! all that hard work for nothing. I don't understand all this tec talk about servers usage all i know is i unwind the stress of a day here in sl and how much i can afford each month. I pay my rental on time always keep at least 500 prims spare, and there is only one or two of us using the sim. Why don't you come and visit me and my sim and let me show you around and what i'll have to give up and let me run some ideas past you. It has got a lot of people p**sd off but there must be some middle ground. Lets see if you take notice and visit me.

Wow. Glad someone else has noticed the texture load issue. Hard to believe that Dan Linden indicates several times that he can't reproduce it. Although he did admit after some tests that it took too long to load textures.

I looked at several things and didn't think my graphics adapter on my primary PC was the problem, but bought a new graphics adapter with 1 GB of DDR4 memory anyway. No difference.

This texture thing is one of the reasons I love openspace sims. Not as many textures to load.

Oh, I am fully aware that it is real money we're spending. I've sunk my thousands of dollars myself into SL over the past 2 years. It is still a game... we are all just prepared to spend money on it. There are many games we spend real money on.

This 'punishing/dissuading everyone for the deeds of the few' is a joke and was either a poorly thought out solution or, more likely, a feeble and greedy smokescreen to try filling part of the mainland land glut of partially occupied sims. Think of all the people who jumped in on these openspaces with a considerable pricetag for purchase who have to let them go now and get nothing. I'm sure LL is hoping for the double dip when these people will have to pay again for land with a reasonable tier.

Either way, the answer is not to sour people's SL experience and this does EXACTLY that. I am abandoning my openspace and will not be replacing that land nor renting any other.

I will honestly spend less time on SL as a result..and spend alot less, which is probably wise considering the state of the economy everywhere.

I feel especially sad for all of the builders who worked so hard to make their openspace a home or lovely place to visit. I don't know what's going on with LL...but the last two moves I've 'felt' (booting hundreds of SL mentors) and then this??...I've really had it with this place.

The thing is Jangles, folks have an emotional investment in SL, regardless of any financial investment. Sure, it is fun, but that doesn't mean that for some it is not really emotionally important. I volunteer with an educational group in SL who own over 30 not-for-profit sims full of resources, events and projects to help educators, students and the residents of SL. We also have some Open Sims. With these new price hikes and no discount for educators quite a few of those sims will be forced to close. This hurts both us and our patrons, and I simply cannot understand why LL would make such a crazy decision.

I am seriously concerned about the sudden price rise of 66% regardless of the reasons behind it. This would be an outrageous increase no matter what product it was applied to.
I am concerned about paying a huge increase and still having the vague references that services will still be further limited in the near future. So we would in effect be paying more and get even less value in the future.

I am however pleased that there seems to be some willingness to hear other suggestions.

Suggestions:
offer more than one kind of void/OS
1) true void - low prims, low agent limit, low scripts $50 per month

2) current full size OS with decreased agent and script limits equal to 1/4 of a full sim with 4 per server $75 per month

3) full size OS with 1/2 the prims of a full sim, limit agents to 20-40, determine level of scripts to keep it to the load equal to 1/2 a full sim with 2 per server $150 per month.


If we are to pay almost the cost of half a sim for a void then allow half the privileges.

Also please allow private continents to realign there maps for free during a one stage reoganization as OS's are traded in etc.

Kat

But it is more than a game. It is a social outlet a creative outlet, etc. etc. And some people really make a business of it.

A really unique place to be because it can mean different things to different people.

I do not own regions in SL. I do happen to have a parcel on an openspace sim. So, my only financial impact will likely be a 67% increase in tier fee assuming I don't scale back to compensate, or just give up altogether.

Since my exposure is relatively small, I could certainly handle the increase. But the way this happened just sits so badly with me that I'm not sure I can live with it.

I participated in Burning Life 08 and really enjoyed the creative energy I saw and was looking forward to participating in future functions. But this latest LL bomb just sort of zaps my desire. I think it's because if feels like LL does not care for the residents. And it probably feels that way because businesses don't raise their fees by 67% in one shot if they truly want to retain customers.

Maybe I'll take my energy and go work on the opensource opensim projects.

I think these new policies for OS is a disaster for this community. We have 3 non profit open space sims where people come to relax and have a good experience with great nature and some fun activities. Quite a few of our visitors have said that our place is the best place in all SL. I am aware that some other people will say that about a lot of other places too. And perhaps those places will disappear like our sims will now. We simply cannot afford higher prices and more VAT and more fies for money exchange.

I cry for the loss of my beautiful sims and for the loss of all the other beautiful places that will vanish. So much creativity... so much art realy...sacrificed on the alter of bad trading policies.

On top of that I shall be acused of being an abuser! And with me a lot of other totaly inocent residents in SL. It was an amazing experience to be shown such distrust and some here seem to nearly hate me, just because I am the owner of open space sims.

I cry for the loss of trust and for the splitting among residents in this community that the messages from LL has created lately.

Why do LL need me and other OS owners as scapegoats and for what?

Is it too difficult to get rid of the third of SL's population consisting of heavily scripted robots that causes lots of lag?

Are we easier to get rid of and do LL actually hope that we leave SL so that they do not have to have more costs upgrading the servers?

Am I no longer a worthy member of this society? Can I be treated without any respect or rights justified by the fact that I own open space sims? LL speaks about grandfathering.. what about commen respect and fairness?

I do cry for the touch of discrimination that has sneaked into this world.

I see a lot of damage on the field of creativity and art.. and not least on the field of trust and humanity.

SL has become a much poorer world..

Poor SL


Best regards

Fia

There will be no grandfathering. Who in their right mind will pay $50 more a month for this? But many of us already invested will be forced to. Look at the benefit for LL:

12000 OS sims X $60(average of increase of normal and grandfathered sims) = $720000 / month or 8.64 million $ / year

Even if we allow 25% attrition:

9000 OS sims X $60 = $540000/month or 6.48 million $ / year.

let's assume that 2000 out of the 3000 that drop OS sims will move to full prim sims, paying same tier. Then the real loss is 1000 OS sims X $75 = $75000/month

even at the lower case $540000 - $75000 = $465000/month

you can run other cases all day long. But it's hard to see any conditions where LL doesn't clear at least another $300000/month

So don't delude yourself .. this is nothing but a price increase to fund LL growth.

Should a company not be able to increase prices? Yes .. but 67% is unconscionable. Only an organization that exhibits monopolistic behavior can get away with this. If there was one competitor to SL, would any of us still be here ? Jack and LL are jamming this increase up our rectum. One day we will wave goodbye and never look back.

.. and you thought the oil cartel had it good. Monopolies beat oligopolies.

This issue is much bigger then Jack. I'd like to hear from Mark Kingdon how he can justify a 67 % and 150% fee increase to a captive market at a time when the entire world is in a deep recession.

When these Open Spaces sims were merely 1870 prim, it was quite clear that they needed to be used for oceans and forests etc. When they were upgraded to 3750 prim, and promoted by some of the larger estates, that guideline became much less clear.

Regardless, I would like to know exactly how a price increase and not allowing us to sell these parcels, will solve the issue?
Also how do you justify the fact that 4 openspace sims would then cost more than double one full sim?

If they are four to a server..with one fourth of the prims, wouldn't knocking back the allowed number of avatars to 10, down from it's current 40 be a better help to performance?
I think that would also discourage the larger commercial builds which drain the resources most (clubs, etc)

I say, get rid of the abusers, make a few minor adjustments (like lower the number of avi's) and grandfather the rest of us. Make the newer offerings the new price, same way as you did the change over to the class five islands.

Making the changes as outlined, will do nothing for you, other than discouraging you long term loyal members...

Wow! I am practically speechless with this decision and the manner in which it was SPRUNG upon the SL residents. I have been a very active supporter of SL for both personal and educational use. I and my friends own a considerable chunk of a mainland sim as well as manage the educational island for my College. In reading over the Blog messages regarding this I found this:
"We will no longer offer an educational or non-profit discount for new Openspaces. As mentioned earlier, this is due to the increased back end resource required for us to support Openspaces in the way that they are now being used. For the small number of Educators that already have Openspaces, we will be contacting you directly to discuss this change."

Which leads to several questions:
1. Are non-profits and educational areas abusing OpenSpaces? And if so, how? My college is one of the "small number of Educators that already have Openspaces", so if there are so few of us and the significant abuse of the Openspaces is coming from commercial use, then why are the educational discounts to end? Our Openspace is very open and as the island manager I have clearly defined it as low use. We have terraformed it to be lovely, with large expanses of water. I keep a very close eye on prim use. We have very low prim office areas set up there, and rarely are there more than 5 avatars present at any given time. These are designed for faculty members to have 1-1 meetings as needed, or as maildrops for assignments. Once a week we *MAY* have more than 5 avatars present as we gather to dance and have some fun while discussing the important issues of the day. Major meetings occur on the main island. The terms of usage for OpenSpace sims was very carefully examined before the decision to order one was made.

2. When are "the small number of Educators that already have Openspaces" to be contacted? Gosh, I really think that we should have been contacted by now. Did you not know that 2 of the major educational conferences have been last week and this? Last week: League of Innovation - Conference for Information Technology, and this week: Educause. This has become a major topic of conversation and frankly some communication is needed right away to stem the tide of mistrust. Word of mouth is very important and we educators do talk to one another! I have been a huge proponent of SL as an educational platform. I am afraid that it will be very hard for me to promote this in the future unless there is an immediate response to address the concerns of legitimate educational and non-profit organizations. Can you really afford to lose the voices of the promoters?

3. Educators do see the value of virtual worlds, not just Second Life -- see the Sep/Oct 2008 Educause Review. One of the advantages of Second Life was the support provided to educators. If this support is eroding, and certainly this is the direction many of us see this going, then we will need to explore alternatives. Is Second Life getting out of the education business? Are educators being penalized for the commercial actions of others?

One of the questions educators often get asked is where is the research to support our belief that virtual worlds are pedagogically sound. We are caught in a tautological loop -- If we want the funds to develop a teaching / learning program using virtual worlds then we need to show the legitimacy of such practices. Until there is a sufficient body of literature to support the contention, funding will remain low cost 'pilots' or 'proofs of concept'.

Come on! Most of us are operating on shoestrings! In order to get *our* learning spaces we needed to develop a multi-year budget with a very tight margin. These increases will affect the look and feel of our learning space as we will likely be forced to give up our OpenSpace sim. If other educational rates change, we will most definitely be required to explore alternatives. Second Life is already a tenuous sell for Canadian educational institutions due to privacy considerations and the US Patriot Act.

And finally, 4. If there are abusers of the OpenSpace sim policies and practices, address the issue with them! If this was indeed a series of poor business decisions on the part of Linden Labs, then take it and move on. Provide grandfathering for legitmate users. Don't punish the people and organizations that are working hard and contributing to the success of Second Life. Stuffing this genie back into the bottle will likely be more costly than LL can imagine.

This posting was much longer than I intended. I usually spend Thursday evenings with friends and colleagues in SL, discussing what's hot in education and dancing. Too bad that log-ins were capped... A sign of things to come?

LoriVonne Lustre
Manager, NSCC Island

A base model Lexus costs about $36,000.

Even with no money down and no interest, that doesn't pencil out.

$370 x 60 months =$22,200.

If LL really believes it’s load issues that is forcing the increase in setup and tier prices, then why not offer a cloud approach like Amazon has recently with their EC product?

I did some measurements on opensim water regions and concluded a Debian quad Xeon can handle 32 regions without breaking a sweat. So that relates in dedicated server hosting tier costs to well under $5 a water sim.
A typical sailing regatta will have, at most, 4 boats in one sim for about a minute maybe thrice a week. What a perfect scenario for burst load balancing.

Hmmm hard to buy into your metrics, Jack.

The profit % certainly are beyond the Exxon Mobil class and I do hope LL staff are compensated in that league as well.

Jack Linden should just fess up to his “the market will bear it” analysis and back off all technical spin with which he embarrasses himself.

Adjustable rate tiers with no terms or conditions. Hmm, that worked well for the US mortgage market. We the tax payers are forced to bail out the banks for their incompetence. We don’t have to bail out Linden Lab for economic ignorance. Consumer consumption is down 3% last quarter, the biggest drop in 28 years. Brilliant time for a 67% price increase. What do you think would happen if our new president decided to raise taxes 67% after 3 months in office?

Well we don't *buy* our sims. We lease them. I think someone would lease me a Lexus for 370 a month.

I suggest that it might be a better deal than spending it on SL.

I see a platform like Second Life as more than just a game. I see it as a potential way of worldwide communication of ideas, much like the telephone, television, internet etc.

Companies like this slowly become accountable to the public as a necessary service, and finally fall under some sort of semi-governmental body who monitors the service to make sure that standards are met, that the customers are not abused, and that appropriate penalties are meted out.

If SL is as important as Linden Research makes out it to be, and as important as I feel this sort of platform could be, then I believe that they should fall under the same scrutiny and accountability as, say, a mobile phone company, or television company.

If its an issue with 'performance bottleneck" / over-use as LL claims, the SIMPLE and fair solution is to apply constraints on the resources an OpenSim uses - so first-off limit the CPU utilization so that each OS region cannot HOG resources from the other 3 on the server. 3750 prims are no problem, but the scripts may be ... so if CPU limit is not enough limit the timeframe scripts can use per OS. To stop users putting clubs on a OS sim, simply half the allowable AV's per OS sim. That way 4 OS's utilize a server the same as a full sim does and there is no "over-use"/abuse.

These are all acceptable methods to reduce so-called "abuse".

What is NOT acceptable is a 66% tier hike on one sector of the userbase - thats just not fair and it is SIMPLY NOT ETHICAL business.

BTW neither is a 30% hike on OS tiers only acceptable - which is likely what this is all about : drop the bombshell ... get everyone to get their heads around it ... then come out the hero's and "only" raise it 20% or 30%!

If the 'hidden agenda' is LL needs to generate more income, then raise ALL tiers by 10% or whatever - across the board. Mainland included : mainland is ALREADY cheaper on tiers - which is already unfair.

If LL has made a total mess with OS sims (or by increasing them to 3750 prims), then take it like a honest business, and apply changes on future OS's, grandfather in existing. But still don't be ridiculous like 66% hike on new OS's!

We are sorry to hear that LL has now realized OS sims are good value for money. But thats what they are, and thats why so many invested in them. It's just purely unethical to target good-intentioned existing users now. At most put restriction on CPU utilization etc on existing OS's.

There are MANY OS owners out there who are on the bread-line with their tiers ... there is just no-way they can raise 66% tiers, nor is there any reason they should. This IS the product LL sold them and they have invested in : and therefore it needs to continue to be delivered to them.

There would have to be FULL refund options wit ha 66% price hike on OS sim's only.

This is all really shocking business acumen, and surely has crushed a significant percentage of the user-base's perception of LL upper management, and surely that includes a large portion of mainland landlords too ... how do they know what coming for them!

And in this economic climate too! Shame on you LL!

Based on LL's own track record and proposed solution, the only thing they plan to change for the OS is the price and completely sidestep their own supposed 'concerns' of use and performance.

Seriously, if they are so suddenly concerned with performance, why start addressing the issue on an OS sims? You know, the same place where they said "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."

I think more people have problems and issues on mainland areas than the ones using OS... Doesn't seem like OS owners and residents thought it needed fixing, so why break it now?

Still don't see how 10 avatars on each of 4 OS sims on a server can draw any more resources than 40 avatars on a full sim with its own server. 15k prims is 15k prims, script are scripts, and all are potentially used anywhere. I fail to see how $50 changes that?

I seriously hope LL reads and digests this post, as it makes absolute sense. LL may have messed up with OS sims to date, but that being the case fix it. And fixing it doesn't mean a 67% price-hike. Create various OS's as suggested above. A "true void" for sea etc can have 1850 prims and 1/8th resources (so 8 on a server) at a $50 price will make it affordable as a "true-void", the current OS to stay as it is (but cap the resources to 25% of a full sims ... maybe for agents do a calculation so it all levels out - so 20 can visit for a few hours etc). Then for those wanting a big more, a "Power-OS" version at $150 tier running 2 on a server and limited to half the CPU resource.

Once thats implemented, existing users which are "abusing" OS's will have to upgrade to "Power-OS" to get the resources they need.

It's really not rocket-science.

Come on LL, put your thinking caps on, and try make this fair for everyone.

I think its kind of contradictory that the purpose of the openspace sims was for them to be used only as countryside landscapes or oceans with low or no prims, you know trying to make them more a nature place when you already have all this constraints in mainland to give them the "natural look", my friend and i have a serious lump in the middle of our mainland sim that just divides the whole thing... and we cant put it down since its got some constraints for it to have a more natural look....

The supposed use for mainland then is for all this buisnesses that have been running to openspace because its cheaper, then in RL if you have a land and want to flatten it you just do so. And lets say ok openspace sim = national park, do you really think there is only 10 people walking around the place? If people want to relax they might as well be going to a beach or forest in rl instead of paying those fees for an openspace.

I have been here for almost 3 hours reading posts. Many have a lot to say and I respect that everyone has a voice here.

Right now I only want to express my opinion on one matter: poss that say that the freebie accounts (which is what I have) should be eliminated and everyone should have a premium account and pay the monthly fee.

I've been on SL for almost a year. Originally I considered joining. BUT, as described above....why the hecky would I PAY for all the annoyances stated above when I can be annoyed for free? I'd pay, but I've been waiting and waiting for SL to improve. LL show me that my $9.95 enhances my SL experience, and I'll sign up.

It's not deliberately controversial if I really feel a certain way, just because that way doesn't happen to match popular opinion.

To be very honest, I am completely fascinated (and baffled) that people continue to spend such huge amounts of money on a company with such a dismal and high-profile record of (lack of) customer service. And act all outraged when yet another unpopular change occurs.

And then spend a ton of money 2 weeks later on the "next big thing".

Look I dont agree with the OS price hike but thats pushin it abit too far the problem is with the OS not with 15k private estate sims jackin up there tier even more on land that you can barely give away for tier cost atm due to open space sim rentals would make the economy in SL even in more rough shape and cause alot more ppl to abandon land.