Openspace Announcement Discussion with Jack Linden

) Sindy )

%Tali, i do trust my Landlord, but i know many others the live on 1/4 of an open space sim ... most of them didnt know what will happen

"You" in the general sense.
As for those living on 1/4 openspace... they should definitely be prepared to go over the performance metrics with a fine-toothed comb. Something *will* change, be that enforcing of the performance limits, upping the price, or, hopefully, a choice between those two.

That's unfortunate but I still have a hard time blaming LL (even though they certainly made mistakes here) because some estate owners aren't going to wait long enough to figure out if there's even an issue here.

Tali, me knows that and i spread the infos about OSS to all people i know, but i also tell them dont buy mainland or from main-landlords

better be homeless than support people they support to destroy OSS.

) huggs

I dont see many respons from Jack Linden
and on the Blog.. 145 post and 1 answer
from Jack Linden.. hmmm... Is that a
discusion??...

Bertram Merlin
Deeply Disapointed

Seconded. Take a look at Desmond's response here (ever the calm voice of reason) to see how it should be done:
/354/ef/290082/1.html
There *is* obviously an issue currently, and something needs to be worked out, but all the landlord has to do is say to their tenants that there is *at least* a buffer zone of two months, and they intend to honor that.

i am inworld now, will not be able to answer in the forum )

I'm not aware that Linden has ever posted one. Now that the "new policy" has already been written, they have promised to explain later. At the end of the notice:

To me, this sounds like an admission that there was never a standard to judge by. As I understand it, there wasn't much official fuss or warning before this decision to raise prices. (If there was, someone please link to it.)

So now the rules are pay another month or two, and then we might learn more about exactly who has been bad or good since open spaces came out. Or, maybe there will be some new discovery or sale by then and users will be divided up and criticized some other way.

If you can afford to stay, the bill will be higher either way.

I have a wonderful writing sim on the estate of Loch Lomond. I make no profit from this venture, in fact I am running at a loss each month but it is something I truly believe in. We have poetry and short story recitals, author readings, story nights, book clubs, movie nights and a whole host of other literary related events. I have a small library where rl and sl authors display their books in prim formats. This allows them to showcase their work to a wider audience.

I have recreated the childhood farm of Thomas Dylan and installed a prim book that plays an actual recording of the author reading his famous poem FERN HILL. Scattered around the farm are mushrooms containing information about the great author and a grave honoring the man.

Deeper into the forest you will find the TREE OF LIGHT, a wonderfully illuminated work of art, that drops leaves to the ground. When you touch a leaf you are given the life and literary information of one of our dead literary greats.

People find the most wonderful treats and surprises as they wander through our beautiful fields, woods and vales and find quiet corners to sit, reflect and even write. We are their retreat from the ugliness of the world. When I listen to our talented poets share their work around a stone circle in a lush woodland, scattered with tulips and daisies, I wonder how I would ever have had the chance to meet such special people and become involved in such an extraordinary experience, if it were not for places like Milk Wood.

I am suffering from a debilitating illness that prevents me from leaving my house and forces me to lie on a bed or couch for most of the day. Before I was struck with this illness, I was an incredibly active person, teaching, writing and leading a full life. Second Life has been my lifeline; to be able to run and dance and socialise again has allowed me the freedom my illness has denied me. I ask you, please do not take this from me or others like me. Please don't force me to leave this extraodinarily peaceful and wonderful place behind. I cannot afford any more; I am already stretched to the limit financially. I do this for other writers and the joy it brings me... but... I cannot pay a single cent more.

It seems some people never learn from experience. We are presently going into a recession, spawned by the greed of the world banking sytem, which is having, and will have, catastrophic effects on society as a whole.
Linden Lab is well aware of the world situation, and yet they decide in a lemming-like attitude of increasing prices at the worst possible moment conceivable.
I have recently taken a rental on an openspace sim, where I offer an holistic healing service, to anyone and everyone, on a voluntary basis. There is no charge for this service, and I have many grateful people who have derived great benefit from it.
I personally cover the cost of rent out of my own pocket, I don't even ask for a voluntary donation, but I have already suffered an increase of 25% in my rent due to the exchange rate (no fault of LL).
If the proposed increase goes ahead, I will have no option other than to close the Healing Centre.
I understand LL is in this for profit, just like any other company, but when you consider that all you are buying is fresh air, nothing tangible, then in my opinion it is grossly overrated, and will bring on the demise of Second Life.

I only abandon the regions that my customers and friends give up. Some decided to not wait, even though they could stay 2 more months at the old price. They did it because they don't want to sent a single Dollar anymore to a company that is just robbing them out of their virtual home. I can understand this point of view, even though I myself will keep my own living OS region as long as the old price is active.

So does this mean if someone who bought the OS from a person who owns it but isn't actually paying LL for it mean they will no longer be able to own it? Or does it mean they just can't transfer the owner any more? Either way I think that is just extremely stupid....completely ruining privately owned estates forcing hundreds if not thousands to leave the game.

lol
there are three things that hold sl up MAINLAND, FULL SIMS and OS, if you look at all my post you will see i said they can do one of two things decrease the tier on main land and full sims or increase the tier on OS sims, they chose the later, so read all the post before accusing me of trolling, it is you that does not do you homework

The advice to hold-off on dumping OpenSpaces seems prudent to me. I think there's some fluidity in where LL will end up on this pricing issue, and the OpenSpace usage model(s). They won't do nothing, but it seems very unlikely that the US$125/mo as of 1/1/09 will hold exactly as stated for existing OpenSpace owners. Of course that could be wrong, but making an abrupt move at this point wouldn't seem in one's best financial interest. (There may be other valid non-financial reasons to do so: trying to prove a point to LL by lost business, maybe, or simple disgust with LL's customer relations, or something else.)

As a negotiating strategy, announcing one will leave SL is less effective than one might expect--and probably less than it really deserves to be in this case. Personally, I think this is a very serious situation that could indeed result in a significant contraction in SL population and economy. But the effectiveness of saying one is leaving is blunted by history--it's really hard to draw attention to a real wolf, when so many before have cried "wolf" about huskies, poodles, chihuahuas, and house cats.

(FWIW, to me, threats of leaving 3D gaming altogether carry more weight than talk of jumping to one of the OpenSim grids or to another virtual world; it won't be the case forever, but currently SL's more serious competition is RL. Also, from what I've seen, a lot of non-super-techie folks now going to one of the OpenSim environments with unrealistic expectations will be "immunized" against returning for a while, quite possibly delaying that source of competition.)

The texture-loading "DDOS" bug is certainly interesting, but it may not account for the (LL-reported) disproportionate load being generated by OpenSpaces. As others have noted, one would expect the number of textures downloaded from an OpenSpace to average pretty close to 1/4 that of full sims, so even if that process is buggy as hell--as indeed it appears to be--I'm not seeing why it should disproportionately affect OpenSpaces, but I could be missing something.

One thing recurs in a number of posts that I'd like to understand better. If it turns out that OpenSpaces are just too expensive for an individual's use, why is abandonment the obvious alternative? I understand there are a lot of other situations where OpenSpaces are in use, and I understand special cases (such as education specifically where absolute control of sim access may be legally required). What I'm finding surprising is the apparent number of folks for whom land is only valuable if it's a whole dedicated sim. For example--and maybe I just have an overly austere SL-- to me, half of 3750 would still be an enormous number of prims, and half a sim would be a huge area. Please understand that I'm not saying any of this is fair, nor that OpenSpaces would remain attractive at the new price--especially the price-per-prim. But... well, I mean, before OpenSpaces ever existed, there were very few avatars or projects that could afford a sim all to themselves; have cheap OpenSpaces really made that the only imaginable Second Life for so many?

This has created quite a few problems already - from estate owners packing it up and leaving their renters out in the cold, to the renters themselves who pack up and leave the estates because they don't want to deal with the stress of having to worry about working on what they have then suddenly losing it or not being able to afford an increase in fees - which then leaves the estate owner holding the bag and the tier payments for the next couple months, as no one, or very few would want to rent out an OS region right now.

I highly encourage everyone to WAIT until a final decision is made before abandoning anything as there is still a chance that Linden Labs will see the folly of this and do the right thing for the people who have stuck with them through all of this.

There have already been some excellent suggestions here in this thread, and while I understand that Second Life is a business in terms of Linden Labs, I think that the management needs to realize that sometimes a smaller profit margin is much better in the short term than losing guaranteed revenue and more importantly the goodwill and trust of their customers. While some of the suggestions will require some changes to be made from a technical standpoint - the technology to do many of these things IS there, it just needs to be made a priority and implemented.

As it is currently, the paying members of SL already shoulder many of the costs of the free members and there are certainly plenty of things that can be done to reduce some of these costs without negatively impacting the SL experience. I'm not saying to get rid of free accounts, as many of those who do not have paid memberships certainly do contribute to both the economy and content of SL, however, the practice of allowing free members to create multiple alt accounts (which has led to a proliferation of camping bots as well as allowing griefers to bounce between one account and another, needs to be stopped. This alone would reduce the server load and bandwidth used quite a bit, thus saving the paying members of SL from having to shoulder these costs.

While many will point to the KB articles on usage of open space regions, there is no doubt that there was information given to quite a few estate owners by representatives of Linden Labs that contradicted them. This fact, coupled with the way that Linden Labs promoted the sale of these regions leaves Linden Labs responsible both legally and morally for their current situation making their intial proposal totally wrong on so many levels.

In the end, what Linden Labs decides to do here may very well determine the entire future of Second Life - either they will reconsider this proposal, and make their customers happy thus enouraging people to not only stay in Second Life, but also bring others including the corporate customers, or they will push for their profits, thus alienating a loyal customer base, driving off potential new business and pretty much leave Second Life to wither away. That is my opinion, and obviously by the posts of many others here one that is shared, so hopefully Linden Labs is listening.

it would seem to me that if load is the issue and not buying numbers then suggestions like this are very valid

As it is currently, the paying members of SL already shoulder many of the costs of the free members and there are certainly plenty of things that can be done to reduce some of these costs without negatively impacting the SL experience. I'm not saying to get rid of free accounts, as many of those who do not have paid memberships certainly do contribute to both the economy and content of SL, however, the practice of allowing free members to create multiple alt accounts (which has led to a proliferation of camping bots as well as allowing griefers to bounce between one account and another, needs to be stopped. This alone would reduce the server load and bandwidth used quite a bit, thus saving the paying members of SL from having to shoulder these costs.

as quoted from above

but i feel buying numbers are important and removing these accounts would expose that, so from both points of view yes i agree.

Many peoples were already leaving SL before this new decision . I can imagine now. We are modest investors compared to others but we are hard workers. We have spend many hours of RL here. Not fair

I wouldn't mind sharing an area with a few others. In fact, I think that could often be more fun. The problem is finding those with the same vision and the same commitment. Buying a full sim and sharing with 3 others, only to risk having them drop out, is just not a viable option. Then you could rent out to random people who want the space and prims, in an attempt to recover the loss, but that is simply a land rental business; something I am not interested in running.
Opensims hit a sweet spot where I could foot the bill personally, just for fun, and if friends wanted to drop by and build a little, they would be welcome. I *may* be able to find somebody who's willing to share the expenses, but it does change the whole, relaxed, "just doing it for the fun of it" attitude around landscaping and building.
But we're back to a pet issue of mine: I think SL as a whole would be better if it was easier to build small, themed areas without either having to go all-out in rental, Caledon-style, or buy up entire mainland blocks to control and ensure coherence, in lieu of a covenant. -Bay City and Nautilus are interesting experiments, but I do think the extortion and just general non-adherence to theme there show the obvious problems in that version. (I am not saying it cannot be done currently; just that it is not as easy as it could be, and openspaces provided one of the better options).

Lets not get confused by the insults and the bullshit in the Linden announcement.

The heart of it is just an enormous price hike. This can have two alternative explanations;

1) LL wants higher profits

2) LL is desperate for more money because they themselves feel the economic crunch of the present times

At an analysis there is much that speaks for the latter alternative (especially the "no grandfathering" clause).

One can only regret that they chose to make the announcement in these insulting and erratic terms. It is not the first time the LL makes irrational decisions. It seems to be inheritable.

Thank you for your questions. The maximum permitted rating for 'publicly displayed content' is MA15+ at present (not too dissimilar from the US R18?
Rating).
Private Clusters do have their own 'Estate Controls' so you can custom choose the terraform limits, and terrain etc. You can even choose the gravity (physics) in the regions within the cluster. Multiple estate managers may also be added, ie to share building rights etc.

A cluster can be purchased in 4, 2 or 1 regions.

The pricing becomes better the more regions in a cluster. Each comes with 45000 prim

4 = $230 monthly
2 = $130 monthly
1 = $75 monthly

$145 setup to each region applies. If for example you start with 2 then add another 2 to the cluster the monthly will adjust to $230 rather than 2x $130.

You may order online here:
http://openlifegrid.com/default.aspx?tabid=269&apgroup=Private%20Clusters

After order an email will be sent with a request for setup information (you can choose the defaults we send you too). On return of that email we'll get your new cluster online!

I hope this information is helpful.

Kind Regards,

Sakai Openlife

it may be virgin but it is the next sl and the lindens are about to find that out

I agree, this will crash the economy of SL in it's own. You'll lose more money then you will gaining. This isn't right because alot of people use the openspace for what they want to do it gives people that can't afford the price of a full sim to be able to have a sim. And besides, you can't get these unless you own a full sim to begin with so why punish us with more costs? It's hard enough trying to earn lindens in the game as it is.

66% price readjustment of products. Inflation and the new Stock Market Crash . Unbelievable!

Why would I need to do any research on your threads, You have flawed logic as displayed in the post I responded and appear to have no idea as to how economics works. Not to mention that I am not really all that interested in anything you have to say.

You toss out a backwards statement about supply and demand that is absolute nonsense as if it was a fact of life... and you think for one second anyone with any intelligence would give merit to anything you have to say?

Please....

you are acting like a fool, you think that morals exist were they don't, all business try to control supply and demand with rises if they have a monopoly and here linden labs do, please do you homework on every thing and don't try to second guess me, you will get lost