Openspace Announcement Discussion with Jack Linden

I do not ask for your pitty! Yes this is about bottom line! However there is no amount of Lindens or USD that can replace the time i have invested in here and the number one thing to me is my friends! 95% of my renters are my friends i speak to them daily the other 5% are people that rent and continue to pay although they are on Sl maybe 2-4 times a month. The numbers do not add up here on what Linden has imposed nor do they make and kind of sense. Unlike others i invest whatever profit i do make each month directly back into what i have to make it better. The do as i say not as i do attitude from Linden is also another issue i can not accept. Anyways just like the many 1000's of others out there i sit and wait to see what the next move is from them.

Its fair to say i think that Linden have been extremely naive to think that open spaces would be used for oceans/ forests etc, surely the appeal of extra space for residents residential projects was obvious to see? I saw it! and have sold many OS for that very purpose, the bottom line here is that Linden do not want private individuals making profits from selling/renting land, and will stop at nothing to make it hard/unworthwhile to do. Personally I do not trust Linden top management anymore, since starting my business here I have had VAT, assets devalued by reduction in sim pricing, empty land plots that i can not rent due to stupid flooding of the mainland land market and now this really is the final straw. Each month I am paying in excess of 1500 us dollars to linden in tiers plus commissions on money exchanges both from myself to dollars and my customers to lindens, and I got to say that I am so close to abandoning everything, I genuinely feel that if i survived this then it's so much a case of what next? ooohhh.. how about 66% up on full sim pricing too? bet that comes soon.
I loved this virtual world but now it's turning into being a stress and a worry, thanks Jack and co, nice work!

lol as you won't state your position I can only speculate, mind you all those full sims for rent not openspaces and pointing to the blurb about openspaces do suggest you simply didn't like the impact openspaces had on the land market.

Thank you for finally stating your real issue.

I agree that the Lindens seem to have a wish to line their pockets.

They are, after all, a for-profit company.

My suggestion would be to stop giving money to them if they continue to burn you.

When they changed the price on sims earlier this year, devaluing estates, I had saved up money enough to buy 2 more sims. With the new changes, and new lower price, it gave me enough money to buy 3 instead of 2. But instead of doing so, I decided not to give the money to LL as they have proven themselves time and time again not to be a good investment.

This is a mala fides action, flying in the face of the reasonable expectation of use, intended simply to profit by reselling the resources they are daring us to abandon. The response does not address "misuse" of sim resources. It in fact is most belligerent to people who don't misuse their openspaces, as they are generally the ones with no income derived from them.

We are using openspaces as they were provided to us, and as they were being used even before the last change went into effect. The extra we are using, namely more avatars per openspace, more prims per openspace, was GIVEN us by LL. The legal expectation is that we will be able to use what we purchased. The idea that we are somehow abusing what we have by using it is facetious.

If the openspaces were sold with the trust that we would not use them to their full potential, LL has the ability to cut script use, the number of avatars, the number of prims. Instead, they raise prices and attack non-profit endeavors on openspaces. This is a transparent move to retask hardware that the users bought for them, while keeping people who are willing to pay, regardless of the amount of "abuse".

It's really clumsy, and I expect this to be tested legally as LL has not granted us our reasonable expected use. It is no different than a landlord who charges large deposits and who once the property is rented makes the situation unlivable, so he can then get someone else's deposit. It's an old story, and a risky way of attaining capital.

And well, you seem to simply not like the impact the price change will have on the land market.

So it appears we are in agreement.

Just this last little bit may be confusing to a reader not accustomed to analyzing sim performance, because "Lag Meter" is often used to describe the little gizmo (Help / Lag Meter) that reports various causes of viewer lag, not sim lag.

A Torley vidtut introduces the lag meter: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Video_Tutorial/Learn_the_Lag_Meter.

Some introduction to interpreting sim performance statistics (View / Statistics Bar) can be found at https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Statistics_Bar_Guide and (especially for Estates) https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Region_Performance_Improvement_Guide.

I have been in SL over 2 years. This increase is totally unfair and an exploitation of all those you marketed the new higher prim ocean sims to.

You want to bump the price by 64%, refund all the set up fees and let users choose their product.

You devalued all land offering the ocean sims in the first place, then after only a few months you want to bump the tier by 64%? An obvious manipulation of land values to benefit only linden labs. The new CEO after Rosedale left must be totally out of touch with the average SL user, or else interested only in Greed with no thought to what is ethical.

The rumor is to drive folks to your new nautilus double prim continent.

We are all very upset with this short notice right here at the holidays. Many of us will have to take up weeks of work.

hhmmm my lag meter must be better than yours...because mine reads Client, network and...oh yes...Server! And where is all this info located? In the server..and if the server is lagged (because it's trying to process too much info) then the region (sim) will lag! Hence the name Server on your lag meter. Now we all agree that that many things contribute to lag, but only one thing (that I know of) does not have a defined limit for OS is scripts! Granted different textures are in that also, but you can't have a texture without a prim to put it on, but one prim can hold many scripts and long running scripts.

But ok..convince yourself the scripts you run on your sim don't cause lag. Fine by me! End of this discussion because arguing with you is pointless!

So, on with what is NOT pointless! Hopefully, LL will sort this out quickly. An occasional response would be nice.

I stopped back bye, as I saw a post from Qie. I would like to thank You as You seem have ample knowledge on the subject. If there is a voice Jack listens to I am glad it is Yours.

I would like to point out this jira. It further complicates this matter.

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-2755

This would mean we can not even monitor our regions with any accuracy. Perhaps even being an order off magnitude of in some calculations. Deeming, I would think, the Lag meter inaccurate also.

Alisha

I was complaining about this months ago so neener neener

Well, we've known (at least the people I've talked to) that the lag meter was inaccurate. I wasn't implying they were totally accurate. I was only using it as an example to Thomas who asked for an answer to his question. Mine, however, isn't as inaccurate as that jira describes and I use it often to estimate problems, to check if the problem of lag is due to my connection or not. I find it quite useful. So sorry you have problems with yours working properly.

As I was communicating this to my cutomers I've come to realize that the people who are getting the short end of the stick are exactly the people who are using their OSs responsibly.

The people who are running successful business in OS sims will be able to absorb the tier increase. They don't like it but they can afford a smooth transition. The people who are using OS sim for their home, not taxing the bandwidth or the server resources any more than one would in 1/4 of a regular sim are the ones that cannot afford to pay another $US50. So these people who were within the guidelines, keeping their use in the 'light' side are the ones that have to move and in some cases lose their initial investment.

Sad really.. people who have built beautiful places and spent a lot of time and money to do so are the ones that are going to pay for LL incompetence. These are the people who are the soul of SL and precisely the kind that LL should be trying to keep happy and coming back.

.d

Geek mentality of Supply and Demand principles:

* Linden had the geek mentality that "if you build it, they will come."
* Linden priced mainland sim out of reach to an average buyer.
* No one bought mainland sim.
* Demand went down
* Linden had to lowered mainland price.

* Openspace had existed long before this but Linden made OS info very obscured so not too many people knew about this.
* At the time, you have to buy a set of 4 OS.
* Linden hoped allowing sim owners to buy 1 OS (instead of 4) may boost their sale, increase their income, while leaving the price structure the same because they don't dare to make the same mistake of price hike on mainland sim.

* OS sales indeed went up.
* As demand went up, Linden kicked themselves for not profiting from OS if it is such a big seller.

* Linden decided to devise a scheme to get rich from this.
* Linden had learned their lesson from mainland sim earlier that jacking up the sim purchase price would kill their nest egg.
* So they are not going to make the same mistake again by jacking up the OS sim price.

* Instead Linden decided to jack up the OS tier instead.
* As a geek, they think throwing out the resource overload abuse would be a good justification for a price hike since there is such a great demand already.
* The reasoning is that if OS is such a big seller, people will go along with the tier price increase since they are committed to the land they had already.
* So why not rip them off while you can.
* The sim owners are stuck with their land already, they can't get out of this.
* If they can't pay tier, we can foreclose them and repossess their land.
* They can turn around and sell these OS repossessed sims to the next buyer since there are plenty buyers waiting to buy OS already.
* This can't go wrong. It is a win-win proposition for Linden to make a quick buck.

* Here we are...
* Surprise, surprise!!
* Linden never expected this will generate a *tsunami*
* Not only did it caused an instant drop in demand
* But also shoot themselves in the ass for pissing off all of the resident-base by bleaching the trust and consumer confidence.

* SL land owners quit...
* SL residents left...

* Quick, help, find me a damage control plan...

hello Jack,

I think it is not fair to decide price change of anything without discussion because "You" changed it this April, not us.

Before doing that, I think you should consider the way to prevent over usage.
And discuss with users about it.

Here is my suggestion (I'm not the engineer, so I don't know technical things)

1. low usage
- 10 avatars limitation at same time is enough
- no bots
- no heavy scripts (can you limit?)
- no huge prims
- no voice chat
- no media (music only)
and... no price change.

From dictionary.com

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/witch+hunt&

witch hunt
–noun
an intensive effort to discover and expose disloyalty, subversion, dishonesty, or the like, usually based on slight, doubtful, or irrelevant evidence.

There's the source you were looking for, Chris.

The initial OS blog post by missing Jacks seems to have been substantially rewritten. his favourite words "abuse" "abuser" etc have been removed. The tone is very much different now and not the orginal, ie lots of bits about listening, caring , wanting information (And NOT replying in here) . Funny there is no edit comments to show this, so has the blog been deliberatley altered to cover Linden's ass more? Instead of the edict issued, now we have all lightness and kisses.

Another poster here a few pages back noted that the knowledge article quoted seems to have also been altered to strengthen the Linden case.

Neither is a big issue unless of course someone wanted to test the TOS in a Court. Then Lindens would have to provide the document history and simply make their own case worse. Retrospectively altering documemts and NOT advising such changes/amendments simply reinforces that some panic is within in the Lindens ranks.

It is also exceptionally dishonest, future SL gamers and investors's looking at the history of the place, will see a false reality created after the event by Lindens. Its called revisionism.

So three questions (that won't be answered naturally)
Has the Openspace Pricing and Policy Changes (Monday, October 27th, 2008 at 6:05 PM by: Jack Linden) been amended since that date? If so, why hasn't it been advised as it impacts directly on what many have written and distorts the the reality?

Has the Knowledge Base article quoted by Jack been amended likewise as a forum member here noted?

Finally it destrpoys trust even further, knowing that Lindens may change any document retrospectively to suit their purpose and not advise. Investors need stability not quicksand, they need honesty and integrity not smoke and mirrors.

So Katt and Jack, a very simple question that goes to the very heart of the issue (Are the Lindens worthy of customer's trust) , was that initial blog rewritten to mollify the masses and why was it not recorded that it was done so?

. . .

>>" 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. "<<


. . . I'm not abusing anything nor am I being irresponsible or unfair to anyone . . I just pay my rent use what I'm paying rent for as best I can and simply live here !
The only unfairness and lack of responsibility is that LL have allowed this situation to develop . . .
and as always it's the innocent folk at the bottom of the ladder that end up getting screwed !

There have been 2 arguments on this, which are mutually exclusive of one another.

1-the knowledge base article was altered, so people didn't know that they weren't supposed to use openspaces in this way, because they weren't told.

2-the knowledgebase article is old and outdated, so therefore it didn't apply to them

I posted a thread about the openspaces over a month ago and was roundly criticized then as well. You can look at the thread and compare to see if the knowledge base article has changed since I quoted it on September 22nd.

/327/9f/283339/1.html

. . . I'm not abusing anything nor am I being irresponsible or unfair to anyone . .
. . I'm just a SL resident paying my rent , using what I'm paying rent for as best I can and simply living here !

The only unfairness and lack of responsibility here is that LL have allowed this situation to develop . . .

. . As always it's the innocent folk at the bottom of the property ladder that end up getting screwed !

Anukis

.

Well, it's definitely been changed - in an acceptable manner. They added this line



with a link, of course.

It doesn't appear that the paragraph in question has changed since you quoted it in your forum article. But that seems to be well after the original change to sell them at $250 a piece.

I know it's changed from when I bought mine since I bought mine in 2006 when you had to buy 4 at a time, at least one adjacent to a full sim, and for $1250 for the group. But then I would expect it to change. I don't remember the line about renting out to others when I bought them, but since I wasn't planning to do that, I doubt I would have really noted it. I bought mine for forest/sea and boating/car trip experiments - which fit what they said at the time. Personally, I didn't think the prim allowance was enough for residences. It was 1875 then.

Firelight

Lastly...

The chief excuse for doing irreparable harm to their relationship with sim owners and their reputation... is the last thing they deal with. Lovely.

Were they interested in sim performance, MONKEYS could have suggested they:

Proactively discuss...

then...

limit the resources that cause a problem with sim performance...

then...

address those who circumvent it, or rethink how they police and limit it.

Nowhere in that list would raising prices make any sense. Will they, um, train people to discuss openspaces with the money they make? Hire people to police openspaces? How exactly does this pay increase address lag, when the people who are most apt to leave aren't the people causing the lag, since they are most likely not gaining any income from their sims?

No, it's silly to even address server performance in this discussion, because this obviously has nothing to do with server performance. Sure openspaces cause problems when they are overused, and if LL was interested in that, they'd address the overuse. Instead, they are raising prices, and getting all the hardware being abandoned by the outraged so they can retask it to other areas and resell it.

Come on, folks, please. See this for what it is.

Snowflake,

Reguardless of peoples perseption of what the land could or could not be used for. LL handled the situation in a condeming manor and the price increase is perceived as a punishment for abusive conduct on the part of all OS land owners.

What LL's true motivations where, we will likely never really know, I personally do not trust them to tell the truth of the matter. They burry truths with out question as shown on several instances.

What infuriates me about it all is the lack of respect LL has shown not just to people who own OS but to every paying member of second life. If there was a serious problem with how they where being used... why did they continue selling them with out resolving the problem first. Why did they not inform the sim owners about the issue before it got out of hand.

I don't believe them when they say its causeing back end issues. I think they are lieing. And the loss of trust that myself and many others are feeling twords LL.. will likely damage them more then anything they decide to compromise to when its all said and done.

Pfft back in July I was questioning the policy on openspaces. This is part of the reason I'm so annoyed, Linden Lab knew what was going on. It is bordering on deceit for them to claim they didn't know why openspaces were so popular.

If you sink you're not a witch but if you float we're burning you.

If your landlord told you that because you played the music too loud at night you were getting a 60% increase in rent whether you turn it down or not...

...would you believe the music was really the motivation?