Openspace Announcement Discussion with Jack Linden

Ok it is nearly midnight here in Europe, it has been 6 days since Jack's announcement..
Still no reaction from him on the blog.
This thread is called "conversation" ???
It is pathetic...

and there are alot of angry and dissapointed non-english speaking people out there..
Only very few of them dare to post here.. but they would if it were their language.

I'd say they are MANY

We want a response.

November 2008, monthly revenue from OS tiers... $975,000

January 2009, monthly revenue from OS tiers... $1,625,000


.

Less those of us who are dumping OS sims NOW and not waiting until January.

Wonder if they took that little factor into account??? They probably did, then in the next breath said - well they don't matter anyway - because we're going to have all these new people coming inworld, we'll just sell them land at our inflated prices (OS sims and new you-beaut mainland places). So those who leave really don't matter anyway.

... which is exactly the thinking that's going to cause some major disruption to their little plan, because those who have had enough and are leaving - are some of the major content creators in SL ... and some of their previously most loyal supporters.

I don't have enough time to read all the posts... so apologies if I am repeating others. The thing that really annoys me is being told that we are "abusing" an openspace by using it as a residence. You see, I took thought and talked to a few other friends before renting one, and I read the Linden advice about openspaces. Yes, it does say "light use" but no, it doesn't define what that is, and it read like a disclaimer to me... "Hey, if you use it for something else - don't come running to us if you mess it up with heavy use".

Partly what sold me on the idea of an openspace that I would have control over the whole sim, could see the scripts, check out the effect of different builds - so that I could monitor performance so the place wasn't laggy and overused. I knew it shared a processor with three others, but I just assumed (naively as it turns out) that the loading would be equitable so that an openspace wouldn't be able to take resources from one of the others. Actually, it seems it is the same as having a quarter sim on the mainland, where there is no control over the effect that a neighbour has, and of course no policing by the Lindens like there would be in a decent private estate. Only difference is that those mainland prices aren't going up by 67%.

I have left the openspace - I had to decrease land anyway because of the pound-dollar exchange rate and this made me decide to give up the openspace rather than parcels on a normal region. What really leaves a bad taste is that LL would blame residents and estate owners for LLs mistake in not predicting the true cost of their product, or the additional value which people place on what is a premium product. The residents and estate owners bought into it in good faith - LL priced it wrongly, or are trying to cash in on it now, or want to get people back to the mainland, and aren't admitting their true responsibilty for what has happened.

and 75% of the rest of the residents are bots LOL

Since the news broke and the total absence of communication from the Lindens over this very sensitive issue, I decided to abandon one of my two sims. I pay the Estate owner 100 USD every single month for the one sim I abandoned not wanting to waste my money until the bloody end. So we fell back to one sim to try and regroup and hope that the Lindens actually gave a crap. After six days I can see the scales are tipping toward...they don't give a crap.

I did read a few interviews with the new leader of SL and it sounded more like "let them eat cake" than someone who cared about the customer base.

So now I set on my last sim. I for one am paying half of what I was paying, and while it went to the estate owner, you can bet they won't pay on empty worthless sims for long. If there is no response within the next week, and certainly before my next tier payment, what choice do I have?

Do I stay and have them force me off or force me to convert to a "parcel" on a normal sim? I don't give up easily but this "world created by users" is certainly appearing to be run by dictators who don't have a problem doing whatever pleases them and their customers can go pound sand.

In the meantime I like many others will keep paying less and less and change our spending habits not buying houses and landscaping materials and other things that go with "owning" land.

I think the writing is on the wall. So now I sit and wait. But not much longer.

By the way, Where are the Lindens? What kind of crap is this? You want constructive posts but for what reason? So that we can blow off steam while you hide and laugh waiting for the ruckus to calm down and do what you want to anyway?

Nevermind. Nothing I said matters anyway does it? Hello? Anyone there?

Didn't think so.

As expected LL has already moved on to the next topic. They simply count on new people coming in spending their dollars and do not care about existing customers.
Kat Linden has posted several times in a newer topic but about the real issue that drives thousends of people nuts (not everybody dares to vent their opinion as you can get killed for that) every Linden is very very quit. LL is waiting untill the storm has blown over and doesn't care about all those beautifull build sims getting of the grid.

They want you to give up OS sims. They will make even more money and still charge the 67% price increase.

I got this quote from the SL JIRA and it makes interesting reading...



I would say WIN WIN for Linden Labs.

For those die-hards I would also say you can't see beyond your rose-tinted glasses and know fraud when you see it.

Earlier this year prices from full sims dropped from $1675 to $1000. Almost at the same time you announced this Open Space sim product. You really didnt think people would'nt use and abuse these spaces if given the chance? That's your own damn fault. But noooooo, penalize the owners, the people who are paying your salaries and coughing up island fees month after month, year after year. At the very least work with us to convert out of the OS sims if we want out at no charge. I know I do now. It never financlally made sense to own one with the previous pricing you had so I was very happy with the current structure, which helped me fill in between my full sims with OS sims and better utilize my space on the grid. Now I have 3 OS sims and I'm hosed. Please allow us, with little or no cost, to be able to offer our current residents on OS sims an opportunity to move to a full sim under our ownership before just kicking them into SL oblivion and losing that income. What about a hybrid idea. You can only own 4 OS sims to every full sim. But, the current pricing couldnt remain the same though, it still makes no financial sense to be in these at all now...way to costly. As usual....one step forward, two steps back in my mind.

The total posts to this particular thread were 3,626 at that point in time. But posts to the whole Opensource Annoucement Discussion is over 6,000. People created many threads. Admitedly, many of the same people have posted in these other threads, so it isn't so much a comment on the number of posters as on how much each has to say.

The level of frustration is extremely high.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Given the time frame that has elapsed, I think it is safe to consider ourselves ignored. LL thanks you for the capital injection over the last few months but you no longer serve your purpose. LL has gone into damage control which entails simplifying entry for noobs to encourage more suckers. Your options? Vote with your feet and continue reporting what has happened.

Yep i just posted asking if our new fees from OS sims were paying Spaceships fees?
An on topic comment, or so i thought....
My post was removed within a minute.... just enough time for me to screen cap it
Katt seems to be able to reply quickly on that thread, where are the answers on this so called discussion thread with Jack Linden?
Discussion my @#!

If this is so, and we hear no more and it just goes ahead without any real discussion.
Don't just vote with your feet...write a blog ect., tell anyone that will listen about this companies business practices and customer service...
word of mouth can make and break businesses.
If they want to be silent so be it, we don't have to be silent ourselves!

It would be best I think to give up here and seek the help of the media and make this known to those who have authority and oversight over online marketing and advertising practices.


I have no choice but to believe that this price increase was planned from the beginning and the original incentives were just used as bait to bring people to where we are now. We leave, they have the hardware we bought and the extra money. We stay, they win with higher tier. They don't have to answer. They baited us, we took the bait.

The only thing that can help us now is LL seeing some outcome worse than either of the two. Perhaps bad press and government scrutiny of their practices will be enough. I am finished here, though.

Jack...

How can you possibly justify the economics of raising land prices on open space sims by 67%, even though the Lindens raised the prims to 3750, and still say it was unexpected?

Answer- This will force out many who use open space sims to invest and constantly keep the SL economy flowing. This in turn will force many of us to go to and use MAINLAND if we want to stay in business or have a nice open area for our homes. This will benefit only those who own mainland, thus giving more control of land on SL to Linden Labs. While at the same time giving us that wonderfull lag mainland is known for. So basically Linden Labs does nothing, raises the property fees, and to top it off, they get more people available to purchase in new continents where new releases are comming, while giving us the same old quality. This is why it is all done. I dont believe anyone was surprised with the usage in any way. If you raise the prim limit it is because you want people to use them. Why else would you raise the prim limit if you didnt want us to use them. The more effective approach if you didnt want us to us them was to not raise the prim limit. There is a sucker born every day. Today it is not us. I see clearly through the lies you are perpetuating. I am not fooled

Like sheep to slaughter you lead us as if we do not know where you are taking us. Eventually only Linden Labs will be allowed to receive payment for land. This is an eventuality and this is how we are suckered in, by investing our time and money to create the content of this virtual world. We then have no vote, no say. We just allow the "MAN" to bully us over. Well Jack...this time you may see an impact on the sl economy that will burst all your plans to basically take our rl money from us like a school yard bully.

I have to agree with Vye, it should go to the media and before the anger dies down.

And even if the protesting does cool I can see it back in focus again come Jan 1st when the tier actually does go up.

My view is to keep up the posting and encourage people to continue to look at the alternatives. Give the information and say why you are doing it. And put the Black SOS flags on your land for noobs to see and ask about.

Lindens are still sitting in their Ivory Towers with the masses hammering away at the base.

We all know they want it to blow over so they win by ignoring it.

IT AIN'T OVER YET!

This is still the top topic on the massively rss

http://www.massively.com/2008/11/02/the-revolution-in-the-news/

It seems the issue has been resolved. There's a big spaceship with brand new residents on its way over here, it sez on the LL blog, so business will continue as usual!

There's an exit that would case much less damanage to us and much more to em, and i've proposed it into a separate thread but apparently ignored (now i don't know why it works; as i don't understand how spend words into a thread that is already ignored by LL would be more convenient).
Anyway the proposal was to eliminate our Classifieds, i've 4 of them and they are priced $L50 (the minimum), i don't use them to drive the traffic (you would need to be in the higher spot to do so), but just to generate four inbound links for the search engine, but as you may already know you may obtain the same result with the users picks. So for MANY of us the classifieds are just a waste of money, while they are just 200 linden per week it may be nothing, but there are ppl out there paying thousand dollars ( US dollars!) per week to be in the first places.
So please stop a moment and try to think if removing your classified today (it may be even for just a week or two) would cause to you a such big loss (of customers?), and think if removing your classified would be a concrete way to protest instead of propose to abandon our SIM (loosing contents and the setup fees). On the other side make the counts into the LL wallet: loosing our classified would means potentially more than $100k USD per week less... and if they may ignore our words, be sure they won't ignore the money.
If you don't agree, it's fair... i may have a different (wrong) idea, but please explain to me why it won't work, and if you say: "ok i recognize the classifieds doesn't work, but even a customer more because of it helps me to sell..", i would respond: you can't protest pretending to not put anything into the pot, sometime the voice is not enough, you need to "sacrifice" something (in this case the less possible) to obtain a result.
Remove the classifieds... reduce it to 50L$ and use em just as "additional picks" if you won't to remove em totally, but *please* think about it... because i see that hanging around on Nautilus with our flags and slogans isn't working.

They are all lizards under those avatars and they are going to eat us all up.

Some of us are only here to play a game. I am not on Sl to make money. I realize that some are and I am happy to spend my RL money on thier products. But, as I said in my opening statment "I AM HERE TO PLAY A GAME". I have been on SL for a year and have found that to enjoy it more you need land. I have bought and sold a lot of it. Finally I have a place that is big enough and has more prim than I can use. (Well maybe) Linden Labs listen very carefully for I speak for many of us. You are pricing yourself out of business. As in RL (gas prices) you make it so expensive that ave. Joe and plain Jane can't afford to play we either don't play or we go to Walmart. (meaning there are more 3D games to choose from) They may not be the Sl we all know and love but it will do. I have been looking around to see what 3D games are on the web. I have a limited amount of throw away cash and Linden Labs I have to think twice if I am going to use it on a piece of virtual land that has NO value. You really need to think about the JOe and the Jane that pay your salaries and the Joe and the Jane that keep SL alive we are the middle class. Don't make us disappear....For we will...

I so agree with you. I may just follow you. SL is pricing themselves out of my price range and many others

If that was the case why did they raise the prim count???