Openspace Announcement Discussion with Jack Linden

The new policy of Second Life does not take into account the interests and financial capabilities of users. A screw, which tightened, will go bust. Thank you, it was a beautiful time.

kill your own business!! Yaaay.. RESPECT!

The story of the usage being the reason for the price increase is not at all true. LL has developed a culture of lying to the community and no longer even consider telling the truth as an option. Individual users don't matter to them as they are anticipating a lot of corporate use in the near future, with a lot more money than they get from "consumers". THis is just a first step in throwing us away and trying to cater to the corporations.
They missed one minor detail, though - the only corporations that would be interested in using a virtual world are the ones that DO care about individuals. THe ones that don't will continue using their "policy emails" that allow for no feedback. Now these corporations that DO care are going to look and see how LL stabs its customers in the back - and you expect them to still come here?
The ones that were planning on using SL as a marketing platform - who are they going to sell their products to after LL drives out most of its consumer level customers and bleeds the rest of all their disposable income?
Profiteering only works for a short time, LL. And extreme profiteering doesn't work at all. Especially when accompanied by such obvious lies.

I am horrified and disappointed in management @ LL again. My RL family has had sims here for years, we were just recovering from the ban on gambling when you cut the value of their RL dollar investment by 45% when lowered the price hence to value of sim. Now you want to jack up the price 67% from what you represented to us as recent as today!!!!

We have struggled back from your actions only to be slapped down again with a lame reason and your "not the best choice" solution to it? Thats bull and anyone that owns these and has worked with them know that. We have 29 sims and several of those are LPS/Open Space sims..... they are NOT a drag on your resources. We monitor and maintain them, something that can not be said of LL's own maintaince of thier Mainland... WHICH IS a drag on SL and attract the worse of it. We educate our residents, have refused sales to people wanting them for clubs or want to subdivided for rental, asked people to vacate that did try and abuse them or make residents reduce if the load even comes close to the best performance values and can not stay within reasonable usage, and this is what we get rewarded with for all our time and money invested?????

This is the usage of 4 of them. one my personal one:
Mindano- 0.40ms 127 scripts
Visaya .010ms 21 scripts
Bicol .01ms 19 scripts
Borabon 0.50ms 68 scripts

Want to tell me how charging me more if going to improve that? Times that by 4 and you still have a FRACTION of what is going on in your mainland.

How many strikes till your out in this game? Are you going to refund the 4 we added today just as you did this and did not say a thing while we were on the phone and paying you? Or better yet the many we have added this summer. This is bait and switch and wrong

You want to lower the drain? Try starting by dealing with the bot and camper issues, then clean up your own mainland that is utter trash and looks like slums, then how about limit usage on free accts to a few weeks.... those that contiinue on that path do not contribute, they only USE. Ban the Mega's that you and anyone caring for sims know are a problem and stop sticking your head in the sand to pacify a few. Your punishing again the very people that are paying your paychecks each week and helping you build a community that people want to be a part of... this is one that we can not recover from as no residents can right now with this economy eat an increase like that on only one sim... let alone us that maintain several and have worked for utterly nothing for months to help you build SL into what it is and pays you.

I am just so saddened that you are doing us like this... a dinner and movie would have been nice.

If you hire a server - with a certain amount of bandwidth for instance and you go over that they either limit the bandwidth or charge you. It's normal practice in the world of server management, which is what LL are in.

People WERE WARNED these openspaces were only for light use

I don't agree with the owner thing though that's going to cause a LOT of people problems with estate owners having people demanding money back from them as they no longer "own" the land so to speak.[/size]

I have a problem with this "abuse" concept. You sell someone an island and give them a prim limit. When they use more than 10% of what they were told they were allowed it's abuse? If the openspace sims are strictly for having a nice view of a lighthouse and a couple seagulls why not tell people the prim limit is 75 BEFORE they shell out the money?

They can set a covenant to anything they like. They didn't say "Not for your candle shop" or "Not for your house" or whatever but they didn't. What the FARK is someone gonna do with an island they can't have a shop on or a business? If they were only meant as a scenic extension to a regular sim why did they make thousands of them that stand alone?

I don't believe a word of this.

If you sell me a bucket that holds 5 gallons, tell me I can put 5 gallons in it but advise me to only put in a quart, I agree to the deal and pay you. Am I abusing you if I put in 3 gallons? Isn't it my bucket?

They could have set the prim limit at any number they wanted then let people decide if it was worth it. They KNEW people would use a certain percentage of whatever the prim limit was.

If you do limit the prims to 75 though, why should it take up 1/4 of a server? They offered a product with SPECIFIC limitations, people bought the product and now they're changing the product without anyones consent. They justify it by saying the people using a fair share of the offered prim allowance are abusers?

Someone's getting abused here and it's not LL

Oh, I'm sure they'll get away with it. They have the lawyers and the millions to work with and we're just customers but let's get real about what "abuse" is. LL knew exactly what they were doing and it's NOT right.

LOL

I think they should offer refunds for returns with this policy change....



They would be dipping deap into their pockets then.

LL... Refund... HAHAHAHAHAHAAA.... ow ow my brain hurts AHAHAHAHAA

I've been a Second Lifer since 2004, I have sadly also reach a point where I must consider my end here....

A friend and I just purchased two adjoining Openspaces just two weeks ago, after planning for it and saving for it for months. We are using the OS sims as intended by the rules - not exceeding prim count or avatar count, as private spaces for ourselves and a small number of friends (maybe 5 at the most, at any one time) to visit us and enjoy. And now as Marx said we have exactly two months to enjoy them before the price goes up +60% and we have to give them up.

This decision is flawed in so many ways:

-You're punishing the legitimate users instead of just the offenders, which is never a just or fair decision. I see people offering constructive suggestions in this thread. I really hope you are listening to them.
-You're taking L's out of the rest of the SL economy, and driving them toward land ownership, which in turn sends the rest of the grid in a downward slump. Can you say, ripple effect? Business owners leaving because of diminishing profits, as well as landowners leaving?

Give us a choice that won't hurt the legitimate users and will run the abusers off. With all the creativity and talent at LL, you can't come up with something better than this? We're clearly finding this hard to believe, and the alternative is to agree with those who say this is gouging at its finest.

[/size]


First of all, that is really ridiculous. LL is the one who made it more desirable for us to purchase OP sim.. and they are 3750 prims. At one point they were only half that. At one point it was required to purchase min 4 and they cost the price of a regular full prim island.. 4 for 1 .. Secondly, anything can be overloaded, such as mainland and private estates and we have not reached that limit. I would aslo like to know why Open grid worlds have 45K prims to a sim and we only have 15K.

An Open Space is 1/4 the price and prims of a regular island.. so anything more than that is simply unfair. Yes what they are doing is a clear violation of the AntiTrust law;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antitrust

No one wants to go back to mainland after living on an island.. even an OP one. It's just so much better. So yeah, they are destroying allot of virtual dreams here and also in the process making it very difficult for their competitors who are land barrons mostly that own the hordes of OP sims.. these sims will become worthless and once again they get screwed by LL .. and LL may think this will blow over like all of the other storms but in all due honesty, I seriously doubt it.

I bought a small part of an island for my shop early this year which I have upsized twice. My monthly income is just enough to pay the monthly tier to the owner of the island and I have some spare LL $ to do some fun things.

Does this mean that my tier will be doubled by my island owning landlord and this effectively means that I will be out of business in 2009 as I can't afford to pay the increased tier?

After all this a game where I spend real Euro's in and I liked playing quitte with income/tier for a piece of land that exists only on my pc screen. This is after all a Second Life where we are supposed to have fun and not be fretting that a game is becoming too expensive to play!

Yea I know LOL

But then they would see the real reaction ... as people vote with their feet as they walk out the door.

Jack

On the whole the feedback on this announcement I have read from residents is genuinely felt and well reasoned ie not the shallow, bitchy comments some announcement get, therefore really worth listening to.

While I understand the argument for looking at the use of OS sims and have seen the good and bad side of their use and over-use first hand, the point that I want to make is this:

LL needs to stop being so reactionary. Extreme moves like these upsets the delicate balance of things and makes it extremely difficult for residents to manage our affairs. Start thinking Evolution - not Revolution (every few months!!!)

With Second Life, Linden Labs have opened a dream for many people, allowing us to create online businesses, learn about our customers, raise our creative game in a way not possible in other walks of life - and make real money for our efforts. With moves like this, you shut down these dreams and alienate the very people who create businesses and drive the economy (and I'm not just talking about the people selling squares of land).

This is not just about computer simulators and virtual land, it is about people who live a large part of our real lives in your virtual world. You need to stop thinking about SL as land commodity, server loads and network traffic and really think about how best to evolve a more stable and creative environment. Yes, make it all work and stop abuse but don't do it with these heavy handed moves that lump the the OS problem in one statistical mass. People may think your just trying to make a fast buck out of us.

One last notion. Maybe you should look at what people really want to buy in the way of sim options and meet that demand in a creative way. OS sims are popular for a reason.

Alex

First of all, thanks for keeping the comments constructive, it helps a lot. We know that announcements like this are never easy and we do not make such changes lightly. I've read through the 500+ comments this morning and would like to respond to some of the points.

We believe in Openspaces as a product, but the pricing just wasn't in line with how they are now being used. Just to be clear, this isn't a small minority of Openspaces either, as a general rule they are much more heavily loaded than, for example, the equivalent Linden voids.

Some people have used the word 'punish' in relation to the changes. These changes aren't about punishment at all, we simply have to recognise the change of use and the widely detrimental effect this is having on user experience. We believe these changes are necessary to better account for the increased load, so that we can continue to scale this product *without* making performance worse for everyone.

@Melody Regent: It has always been the case that a private island or openspace can have a different Owner then Payor. So the person appearing to own the region inworld, would not be the same person that is billed for the region. Estate owners use this to lease out whole regions in a way that bestows the full island owner feature set to someone. There is more explanation in the knowledgebase.

Some people have suggested a technical throttle, a hard limit on scripts, avatars and so on. We've certainly discussed that and will continue to do so as we think about how to address very specific needs. It could be that with the right technical restrictions in place that a truly light use product at lower cost is viable.

@Winter Ventura: I agree, and we will certainly be looking at different usage types and thinking about how we provide the right products for those going forward. Clearly for many people large areas of land are more attractive than prim count for example.

@Otenth Paderborn: Yes, we will provide guidance on what load level is reasonable for Openspaces as soon as we can.


More replies to come.

If I purchased an exercise bike and I asked the sales guy what max load it would take, I would expect him to tell me 15 stones, 18 stones etc. I would not expect him to tell me "Well, it's not very strong, just don't break it". If he did, I wouldn't buy it, it's an unknown quantity, it sounds unsafe.

When you sold Open Sims you told the consumer that they were not very strong. Alas you didn't provide them with the knowledge to know how strong or weak they were by explaining how many scripts could run, or how many prims could be used, exactly how much traffic it could take. You left this to the owner to experiment. The fact that you doubled the prim usage left people to imagine it was as strong as that prim limit ie 1/4 a normal Sim.

What you have done is not provide the information for buyers to make an informed decision on purchasing an Open Sim, nor on how to propper use one. "Use it as a river but have 3,000 plus prims", people are not going to utilise those prims????

You clearly made an error LL and by making the consumer pay the price is unfair. What you should do is offer to refund the deposits of those sims which will now be abandoned or risk losing loyalty. You may not depend on consumer loyalty today, but as soon as something better comes along, just see how those annoyed customers jump ship and abandon you.

Somehow typical Linden Lab; first trick people into investiing, then steal their money.

Yes, I am a Landbaron, but I do not see I have abused the system. I have provided lowprim sims to customers, and yes; I have pointed out that they are for light use.

Instead of making limits for their low prim sims, which would prevent abuse, they have now decided to to price them so high that people will be forced to abandon them in masses. This after enormous amount has been been spent on buying and converting them.

My sims are all grandfathered, which means that tier has been 50$ / per month. To have this increased to to 125 US$, is VERY steep. We need to check with some lawyers if this is even legal, to trick people into buying and converting these, when probably the decission had already been made to make them worthless in business sense for customers.



My question now is: Can we convert them back to full prim sims for free?

How could they be so stupid when they introduced these sims. One must be braindead not to see people would start to use them as homes, because it gives privacy, some shitty ( and also laggy) mainland 4096 sq.m do not give.

What about laggy normal prim sims? Will you also whipe them away, instead of fixing your software?

Lala

All i can say is that LL is obviously not respecting their own TOS regarding OS and their solution is to raise prices regardless of who is using their OS according to those TOS. Why then set rules if you can't enforce them ? I have the feeling of being ruled by technical servers and i dont see any vision or true management... Why not dedicate some resources in TOS enforcement and important issues like copy bots, intellectual property etc... In short why not pay any attention to your customers the ones who bring you money ?

I dont want a refund, i want M Linden to donate a bit of his salary to my monthly tier!

Well, I think your English is great, and this is one of the most heartfelt messages posted here.

Hi Jack,

I read your blog post carefully. Besides the UNREASONABLE raise in tiers, I didn't notice ANY IMPROVEMENT in the specifications of the servers that host the sims, which is what would have been a solution to the problem of heavy load. It looks like this raise goes straight and only to SUPPORT?

You also say that:

*** 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.***

That's why you increased openspace prims from 1875 prims to 3750 a few months back? So that fresh air and sea could make use of them?

Jack, if you really wanted to do something for the heavy load, here is what you could start with limiting the max number of users to 1/4 of what it is for normal prim sims and set a number of other limitations to prevent over-usage.

HOW can the raise limit the abuse? By driving people OUT of openspaces? Is that what you are striving for? Is it?

It is now 11:30 am, and not ONE comment from any Linden, seems my joke post a few pages back will turn out to be right. just a quick comment and " Forum closed".
Today is the second anniversary or the day I married my SL wife. Not the way I would have wished to spend it contemplating how to tell my "tenants" who are friends that they have lost their homes.

And No, they are not overusing the sims, unless a small house on the beach and a lot of landscaping is overuse.

I have been here all night waiting for a comment, and now I have to go to work. It seems that every time things start to settle down in SL DRAMA is thrown in by the Lindens.

Drama free zone ???? hahahahaha.

Does that mean you realized you could charge more if it is going to be used for residential? since there is no information regarding any performance changes but charging more, it surely suggests that this is the case.

If you are charging EVERYONE for the wrongdoings of some, it is a punishment to those that have not done anything wrong, is it not?

You have thought hard about all this and could not come up with a better solution, other than "Lets make them pay more" instead of introducing new guidelines, limitations and education.

Please treat your residents as intelligent beings.

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