Openspace Announcement Discussion with Jack Linden

For all those who are proponents of doom and gloom in Second Life due to this Openspace announcement should look at SL's history. Over the last few years Lindens has made many announcements that have irretated the masses. All claiming the end of SL as we know it has finally come.

Interesting statments and obviously doesn't know SL folks because over the last few years of changes the number of continual memberships who log on a regular basis has continued to increase.

So scream from the rafters of Doom and Gloom and how SL will again turn into a waste land of emptly parcels and sims.

The rest of us will just continue to enjoy SL for what it is; thank you.

I also want to make clear I AM sorry for those who DID follow the rules for openspace's as they were originally defined. But for those who decided it was just your usual sim to be rented or sold, or shopped on, I don't feel one inch of sorrow for you.

Thanks for your post Jack. Much nicer than your original blog which I and others found to be offensive due to much finger pointing and blame.

I'm really curious, price wise they are 1/4 of an island so I don't see a problem here for what you refer to as light use. LL is the one who encouraged us to buy these sims and use them for basically anything we want. This act enabled allot of SL users to fulfill their virtual dreams. Now LL comes along and wants to take it all away and yes with this unreasonable price increase, that's exactly what they are doing. of course it will hurt the competitors of Linden Lab..then there are the renters who virtually inhabit these OP sims.. many will give them up and no they will not relocate to Mainland. Yes this is a clear violation of the AntiTrust law whether LL admits it or not.

About abuse, I think it is safe to say that abuse can be seen on any land in SL gridwide so please let us not just pick on OP sims. Yes I am personally one of the people who would be effected by this uncalled for change. My store 3D Concepts does not abuse the system at all. Yet I would be forced to pay 50 USD more plus VAT. Sorry, that's just unfair.

Concerning load level, I have been informed by several different Concierege staff that reasonable was X number of scripts, full prims, etc and so on. I was also told, and yes I asked since I was curious due to the fact that I run a texture store with many high resolution textures and scripts, etc .. that my OP sim was well within the safe zone and far from overloading. Infact, the script I use for my texture vendors use little resource and they lie dorment unless used. I have little animations.. etc but still, 75 USD is allot to pay for 3750 and we should have the same usage as any 1/4 sim. I am sure some of those people must abuse and push resources.. I'm sure many do on all parcel sizes, mainland and private estates both.

As I siad previously, I seriously doubt that this storm will blow over, especially coming in an economical recession. However, hard times or not, the changes are still not justified.

I think this is a bad move by LL and its a slap in the face for SL users. Second Life is about having fun and in the current economic climate, which is not good world wide, people cannot afford to pay more for a leisure past time.

Second Life is also a source of real life income for many in the form of virtual cottage industries and it seems to me that rather than nuturing this unique form of employment, LL seems to shoot it in the foot as much and as often as they can with crazy developments like windlight so that most users see things so differently its hard to say this colour is red and expect anyone else to see it as red, or a ridiculous search facility that is a mystery to many users and where you seem to drop position when you take measures to try to improve your position so that people can actually find you. I have a theory that as well as 3000 other factors in your search placement that prayer is also a factor since the actual machinations of this system are so vague. Putting up prices does not help those already struggling in the current climate and all of these people, these cottage industries, these users, are the people who are paying the way, supporting Second Life and yes, I know you probably don't like to think about it like this, but yes we are paying your wages Linden Labs.

Just once in a while wouldn't it be nice if you could cut us a break since we are supporting you? Instead you force things upon us, they break, you don't fix them but skip off towards the next shiny thing that your bright eyes want to implement into SL.

You gave people the lower price open spaces to make them affordable so that they could have fun with them and now that they have purchased them many times and are having fun you want to put the price up, not by 10%, 15%, even 25%, no you are putting up the price by 70%, doesn't that seem just a touch steep by anyones standards?

I have 1 open space sim which is empty mostly apart from one small platform. We use it to display sim raw files to people who might be interested in purchasing them. We also use it to sail round on a Friday when we take some time off our cottage industry to enjoy Second Life. Economic times are not good and I would have loved to have had 2 or 3 more open spaces with trees, perhaps a winter themed sim that people could enjoy visiting. We recently started making trees and nature items and our Revelations sim is just beautiful, we enjoyed making these items so much that I had planned to have more open spaces in the future when things improve financially, but I will not be purchasing any further open spaces for this use at the new prices and will have to review the viability of the one I do have.

It's a shame that some people use these sims for things that Linden Labs did not intend, then again those people are paying $75 usd for the privilidge so they are entitled to use it how they want within its prim and load parameters, so long as they don't abuse it too much. I don't see anything wrong with people wanting to enjoy their own residential dream island, after all isn't Second Life about the things we can't have in our first life?

I have never understood, coming to SL originally from active worlds, why you have such a limited sims available for sale structure. In an ideal world you would offer those of us who actually do want it as an open space and not to start a residential business the option to have a sim with the old 1175 prims for the current prices and raise prices for those who want them for residential use, but Second Life is increasingly not an ideal world.

Ah I missed the post from JL, was it worth reading?? nope.

hard luck, doesnt matter what we say here, they are putting the prices up and kicking a lot of people.

I give up.

I see no LL replies here...
I see a mass exodus from Second Life due to this, either that or a mass abandonment of OS sims.
I for one will most likely leave SL, i spent my time as a mentor, did my bit for LL for FREE....MY TIME!
Now i wonder why i wasted all that time on a company that doesn't care about community, doesn't care about the people that pay their own wages, this basically amounts to a giant swindle, a massive rip off to all the people they ( Meaning you LL) swindled into OS sims only to reneg on the deal because all the money we poured into SL over the last few years isnt being spent on the Infrastructure.
What exactly are we as consumers paying for?????

Ok, let's look at my four OS sims that are attached to my Rp community, which I have had for a year.

Kuma:
646 Prims Used
1 Residental Tenant
0.1ms for Scripts
19 Scripts used

Tyl:
2038 Prims Used
No Tenants
0.2ms for Scripts
76 scripts running

Thuban:
2651 Prims Used
1 Residential Tenant
0.4ms for Scripts
134 Scripts used (which will be reduced as soon as I speak to this tenant about the over abundance of cuddle furniture and being 130 prims over her allowance).

Acubens:
1369 Prims Used
3 Tenants
0.2ms for Scripts (that's right, .2ms with THREE tenants)
36 scripts

Now, compare my four with LLs one. Tell me who is abusing OS sims. You tell me that I rented os spaces to people that didn't know or understand they were for light use! Anyone in my sims will tell you I'm an unapologetic lag nazi! It's understood when they rent whether it's an os or a full sim. Hell, my FULL sim with MERCHANTS and being the primary roleplay sim runs 0.5ms. I've had these sims for a year and this is the highest they have ever been.

I realize some people are abusing OS sims, but I really resent being lumped into that generalization. I'm sure there are hundreds of people who have even lighter use than I do. Penalize the abusers, not the adhering client base. In fact I'd be happy to see the folks who cause my sims to lag because we're on the same server and they don't really care get smacked down. I do my part as do hundreds of other OS sim owners. This is not the way to treat your good clients.

Am I the only one wondering how you can excuse such an exorbitant price increase on the grounds of unreasonable use, yet be unable to define reasonable use?

I am a member of the sailing community in SL and we aren't happy with this development as you can imagine.

Sailing estates have been employing lots of open space sims, which mostly consist of a very low-script and low-prim use by one or 2 people who have a house on it, or are even entirely open.
We have been suffering due to 'abuse' of open space sims for other purposes than intended of course, especially where sailing voids were not grouped together on one CPU. So you could argue a performance upgrade should be greeted with enthousiasm by us.

Speaking to a lot of mall and residential area owners... I don't think we should be enthousiastic, as the low revenues they are experiencing already give them little room to cover the costs of their open spaces as they are.
We can expect this price change to result into an intensification of use on open spaces, to cover up for the costs by renting more out.

The ones who can't or won;t want to increase prim and script density will be the ones who maybe forced to sell out or abandon sims. Pity those are exactly the people open spaces were made for in the first place. For a residential or mall area this may mean: further overload of open space sims to generate extra revenue that pays the tiers.
Sailing areas can't cover up for extra costs by renting more out to pay for 'maintenance fees' as this undermines the very concept of a sailing sim.

Naturally this will not be the end of SL, but you can expect this measure to be the end of open spaces as they were intended, as it will most likely drive away the people who can't afford to pay much more for the sims in their protfolio that don't generate direct revenue.

First of all, as it is highly doubtful that LL will reverse this bad decision on their part (bad in the form of it being unethical from a moral standpoint, bad for overall morale to residents, bad for the future of SL, bad for not only large landowners, but those who have invested a lot of time and energy building the content of Second Life), I would like some clarification on a few things.

1 - Jack, you stated that current class 4 OS regions would be converted to class 5 - which for those owners means a 150% increase in tier fees? is this correct? - also will class 4 full prim sims be bumped to class 5 with a corresponding loss of grandfathered tier?

2 - If resource usage on these OS regions is such an issue, would LL be willing as a good faith measure, and to possibly help keep some owners from abandoning their OS sims, the waiving of conversion fees if they want to convert 4 OS regions back into full prim sims? (although this would be some extra work for LL it would sure go a long way in terms of customer relations and help mitigate some of the drastic negative effects of this new policy) - this suggestion makes financial sense for LL as for LL better to get 295 a month in tier on a full prim sim, than lose tier from those who just give up and abandon their OS sims.

3 - Please explain how raising the tier to accomodate the 'observed' higher usage, while at the same time taking steps to reduce the higher usage makes any kind of sense whatsoever? Charging people more because they are using more, while at the same time telling people they have to decrease usage makes absolutely no sense!

4 - If you are going to charge the equivalent of 500 USD for a regions worth of resources, does this mean we can also expect both mainland and full prim estate tier to increase in the future?

While I certainly know that some people will abuse resources (take for example a 2048m mainland parcel that consistently has 20-30 avs on it, yet nothing is ever done), wouldn't it be more prudent to work on ways of increasing the performance of SL through better coding, a more stable viewer, and through better initial policies, rather than basically driving away even more members through something that is obviously seriously upsetting both new and old members alike - many of which pay a huge amount of fees to SL every month?

I have tried to be constructive here, however it is hard in the face of yet another ill-concieved and badly implemented policy shift on the part of LL

OK you say
"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."
User experience? i have seen SL user experience and performance go down down down over the whole time i have been on SL, you keep adding new things to the client that seem to always result in reduced performance.
Punishment?... I stand to lose a bit of money over this, i see it as punishment for believing the hype "Our World blah blah blah"... we all can see through this transparent facade of "Our World".... It's your companies world and you do what you please at the expense of the people who have made it what it is.
What exactly are we paying for?
I think you will see your 7k average user base go way down over this, and if you don't.....there are a lot more complacent not so individuals out there.
As a designer i stimulate your economy, pay your wages, keep the flow so to speak....
If you do this i think you will see a lot of people look for something else in virtual worlds.
Good luck on this one.

I'm still wondering how they can say using half of the prim limit THEY set before selling us the "product" is unreasonable. If they set it at 150 prims and I decide to buy it anyway I have nothing to complain about when I want to use 160. That's NOT what happened.

I'm not sure why everyopne always posts thier opposition to any LL plans because they are gonna do it anyway.There will be a mass exodis of open sims there is no doubt about that,but it's what they want i guess.

1/4 sim prims, should handle 1/4 sim % of script usage.

That is how they are sold right ?

If they handle less than that, why is it not clarified specifically to begin with ?

All ready majority of business owners I have spoke to are selling out, and consolidating. In the long run, LL will lose a good percentage of their income over this. I haven't heard anyone, say that they will accept paying the increase.

LL will be getting a lot of support tickets to return the open sims to single of those who remain. Don't expect to see renters living on these looking to reinvest in mainland or squeeze back onto other private sim property. People will go where they can get the same space, other grids.

In the end, this will cause a great exodus of users, due to global recession, loss of business for every business owner in LL, and the return of many sims, No one is going to pay that for open space, NO one is going make out on this, especially LL, because in the end, they will lose more than they gain.

Sorry Jack Linden, but what do you think will happens if the consumer price index rises by 67% in America? Will erupt in panic people? The economic system is a key factor in Second Life.

That would not be real fun for us (at least for me since i really love this "social game", but that might well be the best way to have Linden Lab understand their strategy is wrong.

I'm not a big land owner -1 regular island and 2 openspaces- anyway my monthly contribution amounts to 535 USD (VAT included as a E.U resident).

Linden Lab can you simply imagine 1000 small land owners like i am doing the same (which might well occur) ?

535,000 USD revenue loss/less per month. Hmm? P&L of some 6 million USD in your yearly balance sheet to be explained to shareholders and venture joiners. Hmm?

Its a fact of life that some peope will always abuse whatever is offered by any organisation.

Its a fact of life that you cant target the abusers as individuals because they will scream harrassment, vicitimisation or bullying.

So what does an orgainsation do, it creates polices that cover everyone.

Put it in simple terms, if you purchase a two ton truck and constantly use it to carry four tons, maintenance costs are going to sky-rocket, at some point that truck is going to fail because it was abused.

With OS, some (not all) are abusing what they were designed for, low load spaces. so because of the abusers everyone has to pay for the maintenance costs, thats fair.

If this price increase for OS stops the abuse and helps maintain a stable grid that we can ALL enjoy, then LL have my full support.

At the end of the day Second Life needs to be stable for all users, paying residents and non-paying.

That's almost as funny as LL giving refunds...

The problem is that no matter how LL behave, people still keep hanging in here and their revenue stream continues.

Right now, I think this is the right thing to do. In the long term though, LL need to able to more finely control not just the number of prims on a sim, but total script time and maximum avatars, so they can provide a range of sims for different purposes.

Also, LL, any chance of being able to pick up OpenSims without being an estate owner, now?

Not for too much longer, the first viable world that approaches the useability of SL will have a ready made population.

I want to see IBM or some large company take a real interest in OS grid technology, that will be the end of SL.

The one thing I wonder is if this policy is as of now set in stone, or if there is *any* chance of change. If the former, then I think it is pitchfork time -- or at least time to divest of open spaces for a large majority of their users. They will not make sense financially after 12/31, in my opinion. This would be sad to those of us who use them, and potentially disastrous to the SL economy as a whole.

If there is a possibility for change in this policy, then we need to know this in order to "discuss" it.

/me planning on sitting back and watching the crash and burn.

I have to say I find hilarious the occasional post here by a person who thinks increasing the prices of Open Space sims is going to actually make them run faster... and thanking Linden Lab for the privilege of paying $50 more a month for their sim. LOL LOL LOL

Like the man said, you can fool some of the people all the time...

Pertinent blog post:

http://elfclan.ning.com/profiles/blog/show?id=2295446%3ABlogPost%3A4151

Um yes but nobody mentioned any increase on anything, just simply charge more for the 'abuse' of the limitations given to us such as how many prims we can use how many avatars we can invite to our own sim etc.

So we have the same product but because we have been so terribly naughty and did not use them as just water with a few prims and almost no traffic, now we have to pay more. Yet when it comes to Linden Lab using the same openspace sim in a way that is completely against thier own light use limitation, oh, that's ok!

Sorry Jack but your reasoning is all bull, just like Linden Labs pathetic age verification and lack of control of kiddies on the adult grid. The proliferation of child AVs appearing in Adult themed areas, Beastiality, Snuff and an endless stream of distateful stuff you choose to accidentally ignore. No I'm not some moralist brow beater, I do fully involve myself in adult themed play here before someone thinks otherwise.

System resource abuse is easily dealt with, and all your flannel isnt fooling anyone, this is just a big money spinning scam. Bait the trap, smear it with nice sweet jam and then see how many poor suckers it snares.... You may ease your concience by spinning a web of deceipt and bull shot about the reasons, we the consumers know better.

After the VAT fiasco (my main reason to rent privately, not wanting to pay for more guns bombs and bullets) this is a real kick in the teeth..hardly a surprise from your outfits track record though.

I hope you slept well Jack, knowing you will most likely cripple or destroy communities like Caledon, like Winterfell, and so many more. My heart goes out to Serra and the other thoughtful virtual landlords who have the unenviable task of passing this on to her tenants like me and suffer the consequences.
Sadly now like soooooo many others I have to contemplate the options, is SL really worth the effort anymore, I dunno, it's the ppl I met and love here that holds me, not your screwed up way of dealing with us for sure, and as that circle of friends shrinks, so does my reason to endure this sh@t service.

BTW why not scrap the grid status page, its never updated when SL is running so bad it takes 20 mins just to rezz an area........ You really need to prioritize a little better, there again it wont matter much in botland will it when we all see the light and bug off.

3750 prims is 3750 prims,no matter how you slice it.Either people are allowed to use the primms or lower the prim limit?this has nothing to do with bettering the sl experience for everyone,if it were that would have been what they should have done,or not raised the prim limit in the first place.
I really can't understand why you would raise a prim limit,and then expect people not to use them,that is just silly.