Openspace Announcement Discussion with Jack Linden

Your so called land barons leave and LL's honey pot goes away too.. who do you think sells all those linden. Strippers? LOL

I have had no problems with stability since the early spring. Are you talking about bot runners and land cutters? They are the ones gaming the system. Renting an OS is not.

Besides grid stability and the economy are two different issues. You have claimed this is good for the economy, please tell us how.

Yes, I am one of the owners who became creative with OS sims... but I thought that is what SL was about. Open, creative community building. Our OS sims house a wonderful community that is dedicated to each other, and to the concept of what a true creative community can be.

It seems to me that Linden knew quite well what it was doing when it pushed the limits of OS sims. I do not for one minute believe that they didn't realize the commercial potential of their decision to increase the capacity of OS sims and basically deregulate them.

Jack, smarten up here. You have a good product, and clearly market demand is telling you what peope want and need. However, you can't crush your community because you suddenly realized, hey... we underestimated the amount of money we could make so let's squeeze the folks until they drip their last life blood. Go ahead and make some increases, business is business, but do it in a sensible way. 67% increase????? The global economic climate is not open to greed at the moment. People are angry and frightened in RL, and now you replicate the rape of the fincial world in SL. Give people a reason to turn to SL, not away from it.

Competition is looming Jack.... and Necessity is the Mother of Invention. I expect to see a migration to OpenLife, and other emerging MetaUniverses. Force people into a corner, and don't be suprised when they tunnel out into the day light. I for one have already opened accounts with other Universes.... it may be bye bye to SL for me and my community. And believe me... I will make sure that every resident on my 30 sims knows where we are going to as well.

Disagree with this, it's the way that LL have profited from openspaces that leaves a bad taste, the same as when i read about land barons or estate owners profiting in ways that are not quite right. All profits are not equal



Openspace sales should have been suspended as soon as LL identified a problem. They should be suspended right now, or from tomorrow, the new pricing applies to newly purchased openspaces. That should have been the very first step taken.

I agree.

I saw one crying in here the other day about how LL ruined her business and stole from her, and she saw fit to give them $20K US AFTER that, and now they have ruined her business again with the price increase. (her side of the story of course)

If she really did give $20K US to LL after they had stolen her land from her, I kind of see why they would keep her around, from a purely fiscal standpoint. But I have to say, I did not feel very sorry for her.

I agree with you on this one,my guy makes $35 profit a month off me,he pays LL $75 and charges me $110
And as i have said before,with this increase,and the mark up i pay him and the exchange rate,i will be paying about $190 tier

You're confusing adfarmers with botfarmers.

LOL I didnt say I wanted or expected them to leave just that surely they can come up with better arguements than slamming LL for wanting to increase their profits

That's assuming that he doesn't pay VAT, of course. And that he doesn't hire people to help with support. And that he doesn't buy things for community areas. And that he doesn't pay someone to landscape his islands. And of course, it doesn't count whether he's paid off the setup fee yet or not. (Course, I don't know if you had to pay a $250 purchase fee or not, either.)

Thinks about it. Land barons provide customer support and community building that attracts people here and relieves some portion of customer support load from Linden. If Linden had to do that, they'd have to hire more people and then tier prices would rise.

Of course, not all "Land Barons" are the same...

And not all landowners who have communities and/or rentals are land barons.

Firelight

I am certainly not attacking LL, at least not where profits are involved. I have no clue what their balance sheet looks like.

I am unhappy about they way these OS sims where handled entirely. Both when I purchased them for 415 each, only to have the price drop within the month and Now less than 8 months later when the whole thing gets restructured again.

If a price increase is needed, than that is something we will have to bear. But the way Jack(and when i say Jack, i mean the impulsive side of LL that constantly tries to destroy itself) is handling thing makes me NOT want to hand him my money. Nor, i expect, others with any business sense.


I made my suggestions earlier(few 1000 post back), I apologize if they were stated in a different tone. But in reality our opinions only have so much effect. This is a company who did not predict a networks usage and are now backpedaling. We collectively pay them a fortune monthly and I don,t feel I (we) should have to figure out their problems.
(That being said I am a Beta tester, active jira contributor, work directly with the Linden assigned when ever possible. I follow through and make certain bugs are fixed on both grids, cuz Someone haz too!)

I withdraw from this debate, and simply await Jack's next blog.

Alisha

Well, many of them have come up with better arguments. And 66.7% (150% for some) is a pretty stiff increase to accommodate in just 2 months. Esp for those who are still trying to absorb the setup fee.

Firelight

I agree, I am one of those still trying to absorb the initial set up fee on my 1 OSS

I have repeatedly told you that I feel a stable grid is good for the economy. I happen to believe that the abuse of openspaces destabilizes the grid, as Jack has said.

Failed transactions, crashes, and grid-wide outages are terrible for the economy. So is inventory loss. It is terrible for consumers and terrible for businesses who are expected to replace items. If these are minimized, it will be very helpful to SL.

They may be two separate issues but they are irrevocably intertwined.

I wish that LL would do something about bot runners and ad cutters too. It would be nice if there would be a financial deterrent coming for them as well. I don't know what LL has done to the ad cutters but one of them was crying in here the other day about LL ruining her "business."

I think the point we disagree on is "openspace abuse". I happen to believe it has been going on and affects the grid, and you do not.

So how does charging $125 instead of $75 fixing the abuse problem? Class 4 to class 5 isn't going to help much... Now people will just have to pay more and still abuse the same (or more being class 5 is faster they can add more crap).....

Pricing deterrent. If it's not a deterrent, why are so many people claiming they will have to lose their sims?

Why not price plenty more people out if that's a technical solution? Many problems would be solved by less users, of course they'd create a whole load of side effect issues but heck just put all prices up.

Deterrent from what? abuse problem or people buying the OS in the first place? The OS's that remain will still be abused. The one's that people abandon will be gone... Not sure what your point is?

Can you provide links between your crashes and OpenSpace sims? I seldom have a crash, when I do it is usually ISP related. I am on a 4 year old computer with a lower middle range video card. I merely wish you to offer some proof to back up your claims. And Jack seems to be backing away from his "abuse" claims, now taking the tact that we are getting too much "value" for our money.

Yeah I have an OS and I love it. At max there are maybe three av's at a time. At time of purchase the only restrictions were *recommendations not rules* for use. Read the KB before comment.

We paid $250 setup and now $75 tier per month. The true yardstick as with any property was the number of prims alloted.

So we, as others setup our little SL paradise and move happily along in our virtual heaven.

BANG the bubble burst what the hell. It seems suddenly someone (LL) realized a cash cow was under their very nose.

The excuses behind this penalty don't stand in the SL or any other court. Unless the objective is to close the game down.

We are talking real dollars here not Lindens and a great deal of the people effected here travel the virtual world doing things they are not capable of physically or economically in RL. This means they do not all have the RL incomes to support such a drastic change in pricing and are having the rug pulled out from under them.

How does LL handle abuse of any other type. Do';t tell me that they don't know who the abusers are (based alone on monitoring OS servers CPU consumption). Go after the abusers and penalize as required but leave us that aren't causing problems alone.

A price increase even based on the determined cost of living or consumer price index (shall we say) is acceptable, but 67% come on now, who the hell thought that up.

The very small percentage of people that are in favour of this, to them, gallant crusade, are realtors that want to see land pricing increase (to make more money), crap disturbers (they are always around) and those that are upset they couldn't afford even an OS.

One or two have gone on the road of AV's that are free accounts not contributing to SL so they shouldn't be permitted to hold land. I have one thing to say *CRAP*. Every AV in SL contributes, if not in programming or developing then as consumers of one type or another. Remember no consumers no SL take a look at RL and its state right now with consumer confidence dropping we are into the start of a recession.

If this goes through my consumer confidence is gone and me with it, I have put allot of money into my virtual world but if I cant trust the people running it whats the point.

Its time for SL to have an internal elected body of representation on all counts between the players and the controllers. It seems that if this goes through then we have a totalitarian leadership not to be trusted.

If this is at the least not grandfather clause handled then it will be my and many others exit i will not invest my money to have the rug pulled out in single paragraph written with out extensive forethought on impact.

Remember one can't do as much in OpenLife as you can in SL but you also can't lose as much, maybe a change is good, its starting to look that way.

So the ball is in your court LL fairness breeds loyalty. Thats my vent......(

now that was uncalled for, just cos the odd person hurt you don't mean you can hurt, you seem to be enjoying the attention

Ive had a stable grid for several weeks now, I wonder, did the price increaes for the end of the year fix it already?

Claiming the increase is all about stability doesnt wash. Sure, those abused regions are having problems and should be limited. But saying its because the grid isnt stable is more than pushing it.

Alot of the Open space sims are not being used for there "intended" purpose but they are being used to build things for sl to make sl a better place for others. Have you ever tried to build in a sandbox? An open space sim privately owns give an individual space to build something without prying eyes which eliminates future intellectual disagreements.

Look at it this way, what has happen is something that LL may not have expected and something that they may have. But it has happen now.

So why not work with the people. look at our comments and select a few of us to come together with you and we as a team of Lindens and the folks that make the community and find a solution that works for all of us.

I have read pretty much most of the posts and feel that it is no reason why we cant all come together and devise a reasonable solution. Like i said in previous posts do surveys ask the right questions, then look at the results and then make the decisions. looking at it from linden side is not looking at the entire picture. To actually come to a viable solution is to look at it from all angles, you can not understand what our view point unless you have been where many of us are.

Yes at one time I did and no one really wanted it. Again, I bet it's a pretty small percentage.

I didn't hurt her. I just didn't feel sorry for her.

I have never posted anything in the forum but I am very tempted to post because of this issue. I have an open sim with a house in an island surrounded by trees and water. I hardly get any traffic at all, never had any lag problems, and despite my house and landscaped area, I still have 850 prims free. I have probably cause a very minimum amount of nuisance to LL, and despite that, I will now have to shell out a lot more to keep my opsn sim. Living outside of the US and with the full sim owner from Europe, I would have to pay my share of VAT and the currency exchange rate (a total of $178 CAD per month). I am not going to pay such excessively high price especially that I have a very light footprint in my open sim. I love my house and island, but it is not worth it to keep it.

I understand LL and their situation, where people would use open sims to their advantage (opening clubs or high traffic attractions such as malls), but they should have seen this coming. You have a full staff of highly educated individuals in a boardroom, to come up with possible abuses, and they could not think that someone would take open sims to their advantage?? If the purpose of an open sim is landscaping and buffering, why did they offer so many prims in the first place? Does it really take 3750 prims to build a forest? What they should have done was to keep prims to a minimum (ie 2000 prims less) to prevent those who want to open a mall or a nightclub, or possibly limit the number of people allowed to perhaps 20 at a time to prevent lag. By increasing the cost (tier and purchase) substantially will not only be not effective, but also run the risk of mass abandonment from a large number of people.

The purpose that I bought an open sim was to create a natural environment for my own house and a place to relax. But more importantly it was affordable and the tier was low enough. And I am sure most open sim owners have that same reason for owning an open sim.

If the new pricing comes into effect, I will abandon my open sim. It is not worth the cost.

Sorry for such a long message but I had to get this out of my mind. Thank you.