Openspace Announcement Discussion with Jack Linden

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?

nothing more or better to say

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?

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?

Completely false analogy. As it stands, it is not only an oversimplification but doesn't address anything whatsoever.

If you want to make the analogy workable, you'd have to add in so many theoreticals and details that the analogy would become as complex if not moreso than the issue it tries to clarify. In that case, the use of analogy fails.

Here's how you'd have to rephrase the analogy to make it even begin to be comparable:

1) The land is sold/rented are music studios. The landlord agrees that you can have twice as many musical instruments on the studio, but it must not be louder. this is introduced in a weird theoretical economic world where having the loudest studios is economically beneficial to the studios. Also, somehow the more quiet a studio is, the less the costs of the landlord.

Now try to make analogies for mainland vs. openspaces using studios and music. Then try to fill in other details. You can quickly see how the analogy has to become ridiculously complex, and just makes the actual issue at hand less clear.

I've Been reading this Thread since the announcement (debacle) and I am thoroughly amazed at some of the posts..as a fairly newcomer to SL one year I've learned more here about the dealings of LL than anywhere ever. I am pretty disenchanted now to say the least.

I have 1/4 OS sim bought it without knowing all I now know. Shame on me. Didn't really understand what an Open Space really was until I read the stupid announcement. After of course finished getting my land just the way I wanted for a spiritual community...but I digress..sigh

The question I have is when price increases came before like for mainland or private estates and such, did LL contact you directly or make announcements like this in a blog? I mean it seems to me that if you have to own a full prim sim before you can own an OS sim that LL should have at least contacted you directly and not through a blog notice. How would you know about the increase unless you read the blog or someone told you?

Is this how LL always treated owners? Blog announcements and not direct contact?

And I honestly wish everyone well during this crazy time. I am just at a loss for words really. A loss...

Love and Light to everyone here...Indi

"Is this how LL always treated owners? Blog announcements and not direct contact?
"

Umm... yes. They announce changes through the blog. They don't send out email to owners.

That's why I have an RSS feed for SecondLife blog on my email portal so I can immediately see any announcements whenever I go to read email.

In fact, it was good when they added the RSS feed ability. Made it much easier to find out what affected me.

Firelight

You stated flat out that "Your interest here is to profit from others being harmed."

If that wasn't meant to make me look bad I don't know what it was meant to do.

But really it makes you look bad.

It will help the economy by having people put more money into it, if they want to keep their openspace sims.

1) "Full-use" region
Prims: 15000
Script loads: 22ms
Recommended agent limit: 100
Setup fee: $1000 US
Linden Lab's monthly maintenance fee: $295 US
Placement constraints: as existing for standard sims
Market niche: for those owners who intended to fully utilize sim capacities

2) "Heavy-use" region
Prims: 11250
Script loads: 16ms
Recommended agent limit: 75
Setup fee: $775 US
Linden Lab's monthly maintenance fee: $225 US
Placement constraints: as existing for standard sims
Market Niche: for those owners who wish to offer similar capacity densities as possible with a full sim, but wish to incorporate a modicum of "open space"
area(s) within the region.

3) "Moderate-use" region
Prims: 7500
Script loads: 12ms
Recommended agent limit: 40
Setup fee: $550 US
Linden Lab's monthly maintenance fee: $165 US
Placement constraints: as existing for standard sims, plus the same ownership of at least one "Full-use" or "Heavy-use" sim required
Market Niche: for those owners who wish to offer fairly equitable use of capacity and ambiance

4) "Light-use" region
Prims: 3750
Script loads: 8ms
Recommended agent limit: 20
Setup fee: $300 US
Linden Lab's monthly maintenance fee: $85 US
Placement constraints: as existing for standard sims, plus the ownership of at least one "Full-use" sim required
Market Niche: for those owners who are more concerned with the aesthetics of a region, rather than it's capacity

5) "Ambient-use" region
Prims: 1875
Script loads: 4ms
Recommended agent limit: 10
Linden Lab's monthly maintenance fee: $45 US
Setup fee: $175 US
Placement constraints: as existing for standard sims, plus must be placed next to any "up-level" region of the same ownership
Market Niche: strictly to enhance the ambiance of surrounding regions

Way to go Sunrunner! Give me some clearcut guidelines that I must meet to keep my sim and afford it! Before the Lindens make the move to punish those of us that aren't abusing our sims - give us a chance to fix things. I've done web searches and have found quotes from Jack Linden stating the opensims could be resold and I agree with people that ask why give us 3,750 prims if they aren't to be used? Not that I have ever used all my prims - I usually have over a 1000+ available to me. But to me -- you should be able to track down these sims that are causing such a load and tell them they have so much time to cut down their scripts and traffic or they will be assessed a higher tier. But I think first incorporate a plan like Sunrunner suggests:




Based on Sunrunner's plan - as far as agents, scripts, etc, I could probably get away with the Ambient Use Region -- but for $10 more I would probably stay on a "Light Use" region.

PLEASE LINDENS - WORK WITH US HERE!

Thanks Sunrunner for giving me some hope that I won't be homeless on SL!!!!

Said way to much. I don't have a premium account and I and all my friends will never and the is a lot of money we pour into this game.
You see the premium account gave you nothing you have the same lag I do the same problems I do but its funny cause you pay for them I don't.

The premium account is exactly like the OS price increase your going to pay more and nothing will change the lag will be the same the land will be the same just your cost will go up.

Get off the free account people we do drive the economy here even if we only spend 10us monthly on goods rather than the premium account.

If LL gave me something to make a premium account worth while i would get one and if they offered something that would benefit me with the price increase on OS I might not complain. But alas just like you will I will spend more to get nothing, you have done that for awhile with the premium account for you it should be the norm.

Stick to the topic.

Freeload my butt - I just made the wiser choice than you, live with it I can

My 2 cents

Did they change the rules? I thought to own a sim in Sl you had to have a premium account?

Openspace Announcement Discussion

Openspace Pricing and Policy Changes

In March of this year, we announced improvements to our light use land product that we call Openspaces. Not long after this, the new Land Store opened allowing estate owners to buy Openspaces and have them delivered almost immediately, an enormous improvement over the old method of ordering them via support tickets. As a result we have seen tremendous demand for Openspaces - with many thousands of them being ordered. We're delighted that so many of you have found them to be a useful addition to your estates.

For those that don't know, an Openspace is a type of private island that we made available for light use countryside or ocean. We figured that if Governor Linden can have ocean and green spaces, we should let private estate owners do the same. But Openspaces differ from normal regions in one particularly significant way; unlike normal regions that effectively get a CPU to themselves on the server, there can be up to four Openspaces on a single CPU (so 16 on a quad core machine), sharing the resource (hence them being ‘light use’).

So Openspaces have been incredibly popular as a perk for estate owners, but sadly there is a twist. Unfortunately most of the Openspaces are being used for much more than light use. Based on analysis performed in August and September, Openspaces are being used about twice as much as we expected, in other words being loaded with double the content/avatar load than we'd expect for a region that is supposed to be light use.

Rather than being employed as open areas like ocean with little or no content and traffic, the majority are being rented out to residents looking for a place to live. Because they were never intended for that level of load this is causing problems. For some people this has meant a less than great experience with performance fluctuations. The overuse of Openspaces has also put additional strain on some of our network and database infrastructure at a much higher ratio than is reflected in the current pricing. So higher traffic to and from the servers along with heavier demands on the asset server, both of which impact the overall experience people have inworld.

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.

Beginning 1st January 2009

We will increase the monthly maintenance fee from USD$75 to USD$125 per month. This price increase will apply to all owners of Openspaces on January 1st as well as new purchases after that date. There will be no grandfathering of Openspace maintenance pricing.

For anyone owning class 4 Openspaces on January 1st, they will be upgraded to class 5 by end of January, to further improve the experience people have on those regions.

At the same time, we will be increasing the upfront fee for brand new Openspaces from USD$250 to USD$375.

Effective Immediately

We will no longer allow the Owner of an Openspace to be changed to a different resident than the Payor. Initially we will not enforce this change on Openspaces where the Payor and Owner are already different but in those cases the only change allowed will be to set the Owner back to the Payor. This doesn't affect the parcel level rentals, this is just focussed on the whole region rental of Openspaces.

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.

Next, we will be making changes to the viewer that enable residents to know precisely what type of land or region they are on so that the land market remains as fair and easy to understand as possible. So expect to see changes that much more clearly display to residents whether they are on Linden Mainland or Private Estate, whether it is a Normal region or Openspace and what that means. This will affect various aspects of the Viewer including the inworld Search along with the About Land and Buy Land screens. Making Land easier to understand will benefit everyone, especially new users looking to step onto the property ladder for the first time.

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, and agree that we need to make changes to better support our Openspace users by actively working to keep the performance levels as high as possible. We will also provide some detailed guidance about what ‘overuse’ looks like and how to prevent it.

So to recap:

* Openspace prices and fees change on the 1st January with no grandfathering.
* Class 4 Openspaces will be upgraded to class 5 in January.
* Educator discount is no longer available for Openspaces.
* No Owner switching for Openspaces unless it’s a full transfer of Payor.
* More proactive education by support staff to prevent unfair resource use by Openspace regions.

We’re sure there will be many of you with questions and concerns on the back of this announcement. As previously, there will shortly be a forum created specifically for discussion of these changes so please head over here if you wish to provide feedback. In addition, if you need a more personal dialogue about this post, please contact support as usual.

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.