Openspace Announcement Discussion with Jack Linden

*sighs too*

Hey Sharie. What's a sim is good for if you don't supposed to live and build there? Walk around at a flat land, with 2-3 linden trees?... even an openspace. Excuse me for living in one?

Shakes my head. Not much else to say. Penalize everyone for a few users. I am beginning to suspect that they do want the servers back to expand their own land sales, because this will drive a lot of ppl out.

Sometimes i wonder if it's worth it. I may just drop back to a free acct and drop all my land holdings. TIred of this crap.

These are some key points: people doubting the wisdom of giving RL bucks to Linden Labs. LL needs to put red flags all over these posts. Business history is littered with companies that didn't notice when their customers stopped feeling they could be "trusted."

Prims are fetched from the SIM
As soon as you rez an prim the prim is stored in the sim database.

One core of a cpu is one cpu, this means there are 4 sims per core, this means 16 sims per physical cpu.

And the importants thing: WHY YOU PAY WHEN YOU DONT LIKE THE POLICY ?
All people here will pay because they want to pay. You dont need to pay !
Abond your sims, leave SL.

If you have the money to buy sims *shakes his head* so expensive, then you have the money to hold openspace sims with more tierfee too.
If you dont want to pay for them, dont buy them, buy full prim sims.

It is a stupid argumentation

What's the cost to LL in server load of all the "no payment on file" free residents?

I understand server load pressures, and some people have gamed the sims. But LL doubled the prims...if these sims truly were for light use, the original prim allowance would have sufficed. So why was that? And LL can easily control traffic on them.

Additionally, LL can easily see who is abusing and who is not, and deal with those users.

This decision was poorly planned.

First an increase in the prims to 3750 and a decrease in the purchase fee to $250...then this.

It seems completely ludicrous to slash the value of everyone's land holdings by 40% in March (moreso if you consider the value decrease effect of the market saturation you opened up in doing so) and then as soon as you sell literally THOUSANDS of open space sims (on which people are, funnily enough, using the 3750 prims you provided them with) you decide to drag in an extra 66% from every single one you sold.

In terms of personally, the effect is minimal for me. Cove Islands real estate never really branched out into the open space thing and the vast, vast majority of our holdings are full prim sims. However, this will kill a lot of companies off.

Personally, I see that there will likely be positive effects for the land holders whose bulk is in full prim sims. But once again, in terms of a business decision by Linden Labs, pretty shocking stuff. It's one extreme to the other with you guys. When will you learn that these extremes that appear to severely lack in any real planning will serve only to provide you with a disgruntled bunch of paying customers and some severe effects on the virtual economy on which SL (where's that tm symbol gone again) relies so heavily.

Hello,

We got caught up in the march/april Q2 Pricing and was ONLY offered open space sims as a replacement to our sims being ordered in the middle of this.

Since then we have found our full prim land sims emptying out by the day and we were
forced to follow the demand of our clients and the new trend that Linden labs bought out
to be the next thing to Slice Bread!!!!

We own over 100 open space sims in our estate and work very hard to keep our tentants happy and service there needs and trust me we make very little lindens on them.

We bought these Open spaces under the terms of - Land cost 250usd and Monthly Tiers 75usd. can someone show me where it says that tier may increase to over useage of these sims???

Now your asking us to pay 125.00usd for the same land? NO updates NO new features?
Thats like going to buy a car and in 1 year they bring out the same car with nothing changed and ask 66% more for it. TRUST ME that wouldnt happen in a lifetime!!!!!!

Im trying to justify and understand why you would release such sims with 3750 prim usage
and not allow or expect people not to use 3750 prims?

I feel cheated once again, Not only did we have to lose a HUGE amount of money when you decided to drop the prices on full sims from 1695 to 1000usd resulting in privately owned estates either losing hard earned money or closing down!!

Then you offer changing FULL prim sims to 4 open spaces and charge us for it also!!
So now you expect us to pay 500usd for 4 open spaces? where as the sims we exchanged them for was just 295usd a month?

Those who post here and praise the lindens for this sudden decision clearly have no business background or can feel for people who have invested in Secondlife and spend hours daily working trying to make it a better place for the Residence or feel for the people who own open spaces and are JUST managing to pay tiers to enjoy there land!

So im seeing this as you fooled us once again , made us believe you were doing us a favour in bringing out these new open spaces , estate owners like myself buying up to keep in demand of the sims for our tentants then slam us with a tier increase CAUSE your servers aint handling it and now we have no choice but to pay you 125.00usd or close up estate and lose BIG time once again all within 1 year period!

Cmon tell me your not that heartless linden labs? Tell me your not making us pay for your bad business management and not seeing this coming?

We have worked so hard to get where we are , spend hours daily providing support to our tentants cause Linden labs dont get involved with privately owned estates.

If your going to go ahead with this new tiers , Id hope you offer the estates who traded there FULL prim sims for 4 open spaces at 100usd cost to do it .. a full refund of 100usd and change back the 4 open spaces to full prim sims , cause we for one aint paying you 500usd for something we use to pay 295usd and get 15000 prim and high performance!!

Well if I had not renewed premium a while ago for a year, I would have quit it. LL can be sure it has been my last time anyway. As if they care.

I will be moving back to a parcel on the estate, instead of the open space I just moved to, and only because my business makes a profit. The only thing keeping me in SL at the moment is that profit, for the rest I see no use anymore.
Every single piece of trust I had in LL, is vanished with this move. As I said before, every con artist in the world envies this scheme.

Just thought I'd say its pathetic to change a contract with someone and increase the cost at such a rate. Almost seems like a breach of contract, or a bait and switch or something. Saying that people can have x amount of prim and x amount of avatars, and nothing to cap amounts of scripts is just bad business when you don't let them know that they will be punished if they actually use those amounts. Seems kind of common sense that if you don't want people using as many scripts as they want, to cap them somehow. If you don't want them having their open space sims filled with the maximum amount of people then restrict the number they can have. And if the amount of prim you've sold the sims as having cannot support it then you just plain lied to the consumer. I think this is an event that should see some legal investigation personally. I really think the customers of linden labs are being more than taken advantage of. Forget all the arguments about their TOS, and that people have a choice to be here or not. That doesn't pertain to something like this. People paid into a contract of sorts with a company and then were told in order to keep that service they'd have to pay much more for the same things they originally were told they could use. I think LL needs to give people the option of getting their money back, sticking with their original contract, or face a class action suit. I hope a group of lawyers comes through LL and investigates this type of virtual business practice. LL needs to be made an example of on matters like this and for the sake of consumer protection in the future. If there aren't laws that protect customers in a situation like this then there should be. There needs to be more attorneys and people getting laws into place that will protect these types of shady business practices that are protected by words like.... TOS, we're just the service provider, you can always quit, its your choice to be here, etc etc etc. Doesn't matter as far as I'm concerned, the impression has been made to people. They're basically going to be able to get away with whatever they want and they know it.. The scary thing is that they also know people will continue to pay for the services, and they will. So really all in all people can complain as much as they want, but in the end they'll deal with it as they always have with decisions from LL. Once again its in their TOS, they're just a service provider, you can always quit, and its your choice to be here etc etc. It doesn't matter at all if LL looks like they're just a money hungry company that has made a game where they can manipulate their own "game" money market so they can profit off of people who "play" their game.

The latest announcement by linden Lab will create another killing blow to the Second Life real estate conomy, the whole business economy and impact all residents directly or indirectly.

Again Linden Lab is screwing it's customers (the users/the residents), for sake of short term profit and change over sustained growth. I am getting angry now.....

At a time when Linden Labs should be increasing performance, lowering prices and growing, it instead shows it cannot support growth, its customers or a secondary market/economy.

In the past year servers have become cheaper and faster, technology across the internet has reduced costs of business, look at your phone bill, email & Amazon cloud storage costs.

Folks this is going to be a hard year, and not a time to raise prices or devastate a user base. Linden Labs has its business model ASS BACKWARDS and it's management is incompetent, lets be frank about it.

http://jeanricardbroek-architect.blogspot.com/

no it's the other way arround, your argumentation is based on marketing scandals from LL. The only thing that happends on the sim, is the physics, the script execution towards the client, and a snapshot of the coordinates for pims (rotation, sizes, locations etc)
not the shapes, the textures, the contents etc.. THAT IS STORED on the ASSET server, my friend. And for the CPU usage, again wrong..
a CPU is a CPU, there is NO mentions of CORE CPU usage, in their explanation, so it DOESN't APPLY. it's about the CPU in total.
(power, cycles etc) 4 sims MAX per total cpu. thus a quad cpu e.g.
Pentium Core2 Quad CPU is still ONE cpu in total. Because a full sim is on the SAME hardware, dedicated...
Divide 4 sims over such a processor, and BOOM! more power for each sim compared to dual core system.
Simple.

But if you insists, on stay brainwashed, be my guest.

I rent an OS, and i pay in good trust, and so does the OWNER. (he uses my money to pay LL)
And now LL changes all of a sudden, from a social beast, to a greedy beast..

My friend, think OUTSIDE the box, and you see exactly what i mean.

(no offence though, just facts)

I can understand why changes are necessary, but why do we all have to be punished for the reckless irresponsible estate owners?

There is a ratio of 4 openspaces per full prim sim, why not deal with the abuse when that ratio is not respected?
Why not affect the new sims coming up? why do that to established sims? At this point, what it will do is shut down a large percentage of these sims, and potentially affect small businesses and residents that cannot afford these prices.

IS SL becoming elitist?

WHat this may do is push people away and get them into other SL like environment like OSGRID, I admit I am already there!
I am assuming more people will follow...

I could be wrong, maybe! Maybe Not!

http://integratedtalentsalliance.squarespace.com/open-sim-osgrid/

LL exacerbated the situation by removing the constraints on OS sims (increasing prim limits, removing the restriction that they be sold in blocks of four). If they wanted to control the abuse, they could roll these back, and maybe add a few (like... avatar limits). They'd still get flamed, but people can handle prim rollbacks better than price increases.

I am owner of a prefab store which happens to be on an openspace sim and has been for over a year. I make my living from this store so needless to say this effects me. I have 3 "rezzers" that rezz my prefabs some of which are over 1000 prims. I have never had any problems at all with lag or anything like that. Actually this has been the most stable land i have ever owned. Compared to main land stability, openspace are 10 times better. If there is people abusing these openspace sims it would have surely effected me by now, and it hasn't. But my main concern is how the search will be changed. Paying an extra 50 a month sucks but ill survive. But i have worked tirelessly on my search rank and i want to know how it will be effected. If i lose my ranking i will lose sales and then second life will lose me..

Brilliant, Just brilliant...Price Hikes...and Dumbsh*t excuses to do so...You granted Openspaces 3750 prims, your fault not ours. Expect the grid to be more sparse than usual, your favorite club to disappear, your neighbors sim to just suddenly up and vanish, and your small roleplay area that you vanish like a fart in the wind. LL...christ...Has my experience got better or worse in SL?


It's got Terrible, Give yourselves a pat on the Back.

The current model of everything being under Linden Lab's roof isn't working; it's too subject to the arbitrary decisions of one organization. They change the ground rules more often than Carter's got pills.

I know it's early days yet for OpenGrid, but hey, it's early days for LL, too. What do we need to do to move OpenGrid along? http://osgrid.org/

One of the barriers for me with OpenGrid is, well, not being sure where to start. There are so many grids:

http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Grid_List

Do they all connect with each other? If so, why not? Where are there some "central-ish" places on the web to try to understand how to make the move? Many thanks to anyone who can answer.

p.s. I can see Sinewave is now getting into OpenGrid: http://osgrid.org/index.php?page=gridstatus&btn=3

And that "all" is you, who - let me guess - probably does't even have any openspaces - or are you one of the 5 strange people that sit in a"light use" empty square of water enjoying the sight of having 3700 of 3750 prims available?

That minority that LL has been cashing in on, should be thousands by now. Stop talking of yourself as "all" , the rest is part of all too. The openspaces are the prettiest and most creative sims in SL at the moment.

so lemme get this straight...
1/ some people are complaining about price hikes when all they used the Openspaces for was their intended use,
2/ some are complaining about it 'cause they ignored the simple and clear guidelines and chose to buy up large and rent their openspaces out, forgetting to advise renters and letting them ignore the guidelines too,
3/ and some are complaining cause they got cheap rent for large spaces and didn't know they weren't meant to reside or have businesses there - due to their unscrupulous landlord not advising them of the guidelines?

From https://support.secondlife.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=4417&task=knowledge&questionID=4235
Quote "For those estate owners wishing to provide empty areas such as water, hills and forest -- we offer Openspaces, light use regions sometimes referred to as voids."
Quote "It is therefore important to understand what these regions are. They are provided for light use only, not for building, living in, renting as homes or use for events. As a stretch of open water for boating or a scenic wooded area they are fine"

I can understand the no 1's complaint - it's a big price hike - but i think theres very very few of you - maybe cursing the number 2s instead of LL would be a more accurate blame throwing exercise?
no 2s? well profiteering rule-breaking unscrupulous landlords deserve what they get.
no 3's? you got cheap rent - tis a pity you lost build hours but did get cheap rent to make up for it... you can easily move on.

bait n switch? nope... advance notice of price hike, yes.
class action for fraud? nope, the only fraud here is the people buying OS sims and leasing them out for residential and business use when LL clearly states not to do that.
anti-trust behaviour? nope, plenty of competition in the virtual world business.

For all those saying "i only have a small house and one or two people visiting" or "i only have a small business" or "what am i going to tell my rentors" ... i have this in reply - did you bother to read the guidelines before spending $250? Or did you just think they shouldn't apply to you?

For those who actually abided by the guidelines (not just think they did) - i do feel sorry for you - its a big price hike for what is essentially your act of charity in providing a park... personally if i had done that.. i would be abusing every person in here who has the audacity to complain "but i only have a small house on my OS sim" or "i only have a small art gallery and don't charge artists much rent on my OS sim"

What truly amazes me is how many resort to screaming foul-mouthed abuse when they ignored the guidelines.
And anyone who wants to abuse this post of mine? Please provide the name and co-ords of your OS "park" so we can all check out if you actually abide by the guidelines BEFORE criticizing me for pointing out some home truths.

Sorry, it's 4 OpenSpace sims per core, one full sim per core. A quad-core computer at Linden Labs, whether it's two dual-core CPUs or one quad-core CPU (if they're doing that), supports 4 standard sims or 16 OpenSpace sims.

Why allow 3750 prims on them if you cant use them?
what did they expect people to do use 50 prims and look at empty land and pay
over 7k lindens weekly for it . I think NOT !

If Linden Labs ONLY intended open space sims to be used as open ocean or park spaces to add to full sims then why did they create them as free standing sims without having to be adjacent to the full sim? It seems to me that Linden Labs very well knew and actually encouraged these "stand alone" open space sims to be used for purposes other than ocean and empty green space, this is also very apparent in the increased prim limits to 3750.

Personally I have spent thousands of real US dollars here in second life since I joined in March 08. I'm still rather newish but have paid for land on the mainland (a little less than 1/4 sim there), which already lost value during LL "adjustments" of land pricing and most recently an open space sim PLUS all the associated tier. This doesn't even take into account all the money I have poured into buying all the AWESOME stuff created here in Second Life by very talented and creative residents whom I try to support.

Moves like these are very irresponsible on the part of Linden Labs, they also reinforce the feeling I have that Linden Labs does not see me as a customer but mearly as an annoyance taking up space on their grid. Once us "annoyances" who are spending REAL $$$ in SL start leaving what will become of Linden Labs? It will be full of basic accounts owned by griefers who will be running around griefing each other and not making LL any money.

To everyone who keeps quoting the "current" knowledgebase. The knowledgebase in regards to open space sims was changed/updated this month. I did read this before I purchased my open space sim and at the time there was text in that knowledgebase article which discussed other uses of open space sims. Too bad Lindens changed that knowledgebase article a couple weeks ago so we can't go back and reference the information that was actually in there.
Topic #: 4051-4235
Date Created: 4/11/07
Modified: 10/6/08

As an individual, I have some tolerance for instability. After over a year of expecting Linden Lab to live up to it's promotion of "Your World. Your Imaigination.", I've managed to accept that:

1. Lag will always be present.
2. TPs will fail.
3. Logins will send me naked to Gor sims.
4. Scripts will break.
5. Voice will falter.
6. Server and Viewer updates add as many bugs as they fix.
7. And so on...

Mind you, this is not what I expected as "My World. My Imagination.". It is just something that I've accepted. And I, as an individual, will adjust (once again) to this new change in Pricing Policy.


As Linden Lab promotes Second Life as a platform for RL Businesses, I, as an RL Business Owner certianly would not tolerate (in any way, shape, or form) the instability of of Grid Performance as it is now nor the lack of Leadership that defines the unstable Pricing Policies that I've seen since being a resident here in Second Life.

It is not possible to include Second Life into a serious business plan without a Core Competency of Stability!

why didn't they start recovering the mess on mainland first? i moved to an OS because i was fed up with the ugly towers, ad farms, malls, banlines, neighbours using temprezzers and other sh*t. have sold my land for half of what i've payed for it, because no one wants land on mainland anymore due to that mess and because lindens have created lots of new continents so there's plenty of land on the market.

i don't do commercial things, so a regular sim is no option for me. the OS was just fine. well, scr*wed again by the lindens.

What an eloquent and accurate description of the problem, perhaps Lindens should hire you, as they are lacking in basic customer care.

Linden Lab are either doing things against better judgement or they have a particular plan about NOT allowing estate owners to create light use open spaces like ocean/nature areas. With this move, they effectively kill the original idea behind Openspace sims.

In March 2008, Jack Linden announces changes to the Openspace product
http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/03/07/announcing-changes-to-the-openspace-product - stating:
"However your prim limit for each Openspace will double to the new level of 3750."

In October 2008, Linden Lab is baffled to see that...
"...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."

What a shock this must have been to the Lab. "Folks, you will never guess what our investigations have shown - by doubling the number of prims allowed on an openspace, we made people put out twice as much stuff as before!"

Instead of bringing the Openspace sim variant back to its intended use, Linden Lab has now decided that because of their bad planning, even those who DO use Openspaces for the intended purpose, will have to pay for a sim performance load that LL themselves promoted in the first place through the March change of product.

The decent thing to do would be to give current sim owners a choice. Reinstate the original Openspace product as an alternative.
If you want the current 3750 prim limit, you accept the tier raise. Or you can have the Openspace Light with a prim limit of 1875.

The choice should be fairly easy to implement into the land store estate owner region list, and to establish the variants as separate sim products. This would not be a too large part of the announced work to make changes in sim types becoming more visible.

If in fact the load and performance issues are the real reasons behind this, that is. One may wonder...