Openspace Announcement Discussion with Jack Linden

SLExchange seems to have frozen withdrawals as well. I'm getting, "We're sorry, you cannot withdraw funds at this time."

We are all waiting for you at

Linden Estate Services


Not a frigging Linden in sight !!!!

Shows you they care less

Land dealers aren't competitors, they're resellers - LL are still running the server. To be a competitor you would need to be running your own grid in your own data center.. I don't think there is much in the way of legal protection for resellers, especially when you haven't entered any agreement to be a reseller.

1104 posts so far. I have read the first 18 pages and gave up, but I will post my response here with my comments.

I currently own just over 200 sims, with only 4 of them being normal prim sims. I have paid roughly $50,000 US dollars for the initial purchase / setup fee of the OpenSpace sims and I am paying over $15,000 US dollars per month in tier. I have bought around 30 sims in the past month alone, most of them through transfer from other estates.

Before I have decided to start this business, I have contacted Linden Labs through Live Chat specifically to inquire about the proper use of these sims. Following is my chat with Dee Linden (April 10 2008, chat number 4051-209691) in which she explicitly stated that openspace sims are appropriate for "living".

Zeebster_Colasanti: btw, is there an "updated" statement of some sort from linden labs with regards to the use of low prim sims? the one in the knowledge base says they are not to be used for building or living in
Zeebster_Colasanti: we have openspaces all over the place with landscaping and a house without any problems, and that would certainly fall into the category of light use.
Dee: we're working on getting the kb articles updated... it's just a slow process =)
Zeebster_Colasanti: it is easy to sell those sims if we tell people they can do whatever they want as long as it's not heavy use, but when they ask what is heavy and we tell them they can't live there, they walk away
Dee: nono, they can definitely live there =)
Zeebster_Colasanti: ok, thank you. any idea when the update to that KB could be expected?
Dee: honestly? no =) I'll see if I get a spare 5 minutes to grab that one this week though =)
Zeebster_Colasanti: that would be wonderful. thank you so much

Furthermore, to ensure that people do not abuse these openspace sims, I have explicitly stated in my covenant that these sims only get 1/4 of resources that a normal sim gets and so they must not be used heavily.

From a pure performance perspective, if we take four 16384 sqm parcels of normal prim sims and distribute their exact content over four openspace sims, the result will be (or should be) better performance. True, there will undoubtedly be some performance lost due to more context switching that a CPU now has to do in order to support 4 separate processes, however this impact is (or should be) marginal. On the other hand, when an avatar with 256m draw radius lands on a normal sim, he will download from the server every texture on all those 15000 prims, plus all the textures on every avatar present on that sim. If that same avatar lands on an openspace sim, he will only download textures from 3750 prims, and textures from far fewer avatars present there. I understand that running a club with 40 people present at a time on an openspace sim can be seen as abuse to the other 3 openspace sims sharing the same CPU and we do not support such use of our sims, however this is no more of an abuse than a 16384 sqm parcel on a normal sim being utilized in the same way. Either way, the resident paying for 1/4 CPU is utilizing the resources of the entire CPU at the expense of the other residents sharing the same resources.

From the economic perspective, Linden Labs undoubtedly bought servers to support growing demand for openspace sims with borrowed money. Now during the time when the world is entering a global recession, cash is becoming scarce, and people are starting to save for Christmas, Linden Labs announces a tier increase. I am expecting that majority of my current residents will simply abandon their sims. I am expecting this to occur across the grid and I am expecting that the market will get flooded with sims for sale. We cannot lower prices because we are already giving them out for free, asking for tier as the only payment. Thus, I will be abandoning my sims back to Linden Labs as soon as they get vacated by the residents so I don't have to pay tier for vacant sims. I am expecting the majority of the larger estates to do the same, and I have heard of many people with smaller estates considering the same course of action. The result will be that I will not pay Linden Labs more than $15,000 US per month, even though my costs per sim will increase. In fact, I am expecting that by mid December I will be paying less than $5,000 US per month as I am expecting a 75% decrease in the size of my estate over the next 2 months. Linden Labs will find themselves with hundreds of servers from which they are no longer able to collect income and which they still need to make payments on. I think this is a lose-lose situation for everyone.

From a timing perspective, I have been running this business for nearly 2 years now and the normal time for processing tickets by Linden Labs has always been 5 to 10 business days. The last few tickets I have submitted in the past few days have been completed within hours. They included transfer tickets as well as a ticket to convert a normal sim to openspace sims, both of which generate $100 US income for Linden Labs. If it took 5 to 10 business days to process these tickets, they would not have yet been completed and I would have been canceling them. I do wonder if sudden improvement in support immediately preceding this announcement is coincidental.

Linden Labs is increasing tier and justifying it as a necessity to improve performance of openspace sims. Are we to assume then that more resources will be allocated per openspace sim? Can we get some clarity on what exactly are we getting as added value for the increase in our costs?

we`re busy lagging the shit out of the new continent that they want people to move into from our voids lol

well, customer always concern the price compare with what they need and support, but under this eco. climate, we residence in other countries rather in states need to pay more currency exchange to US and even now we need to pay more tiers, for openspace....
dont forgot it is lots of same kind of sim game in this market, government tell us to stay where we are to support them, i dont know what reason to stand to sl..

Interesting timing on this:

url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_Crash_of_1929

On Monday, October 28, the first "Black Monday", more investors decided to get out of the market, and the slide continued with a record loss in the Dow for the day of 13%.

That clearly shows : please don't buy anything, just enjoy other's sims.

They are not resellers. They are business owners and Second Life is an Internet Service Provider according to their own definition so as to receive that safe harbor protection by the DMCA.

You're entitled to your opinion however a few lawyers I know disagree, as do I. We'll see what the courts have to say in a class action lawsuit where the only real winners are the attorneys.

As I said previously, don't take my word on it, ask a lawyer. Better yet, let's see it challenged in a court of law. LL needs to stop playing with the users of SL as if they are pawns in a game of chess.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antitrust

Yeah, I use the phrase "run on the bank" loosely, I know there ain't a bank, but this is weird that we can't get our money out all of a sudden from anywhere.

Well gang, thank you. Now its official, I cannot afford to continue with SL. I'll be pulling all of my content and moving to my own OpenSimulator grid - which mind you at the moment is costing me $45 a month to run in comparison to what was $75 a month but will now be $125 for the lowest end sim I could possibly get through LL. Come on people, don't you realize that for some of us the decision to try and do something worth while on Second Life often falls between having to make a car payment or paying tier for a sim?

Its been fun and thanks for the learning experience.

- Orion

You obviously have no idea what you're talking about, as you admit you don't own or live on an openspace land.

Even as a waterway, performance would show a noticable DROP with just a couple of boats running around.


I am very very VERY angry at this policy announcement. These open space sims are not worth the unjustified price increase.

I agree 100%,as a non abuser myself who only shares my OS with one other avatar,i think they should go after those who open businesses there to make money
We who follow the rules have to pay because of those who abuse them,my island is everything to me,i love sl and i love my secluded island,that is where i spend all my SL time

I am an estate manager in an estate with over 150 sims.
Believe me that landowners would complain right away if the openspace sim would lag more then avarage in SL. It happens but very very few times.

1. ALL openspace sims in our estate are used to live on. This means that usually there are 4 landowners max. Usually about 6 avatars concurrent in the sim and only during a certain part of the day. (landowners timezone). So very light datatraffic already.
Normal sims have way way more the 4x landowners with way more then 4x the script, prim and texture burden.
2. 3750 prims IS already "light use" compared to the 15.000 prims on normal sims.
3. we watch the script burden actively as it is in our interest that the landowners do not complain about lag. It hardly ever happens that the burden is higher then 2ms total.
By the way, scripts do not burden the pipelines.
4. tempprims taking the sim over the 3750 is almost impossible in openspace sims as there is almost no margin and landowners will right away complain they receive a server-full message.


So the whole story is total bull. 99% of openspace sims are, and were, already used with way less burden (datatraffic) then 1/4 of a full sim.

I am really curious how many estate owners and managers can say that openspace sims lag more then the full prim sims? My guess: less then 1% otherwise they would not be so popular to live on and estate owners and managers would be handling complaints ALL the time.

not when LL can`t get rid of their mainland cause estates are booming, they become direct competitors

I was really pleased that I could get an open space sim. I got it from its owner, reveled in the 3750 prims to make my paradise.
Now we aren't supposed to use the 3750 prims allotted? What sense does that make? The tier price increases mean that I would soon be paying $161usd for tier instead of $101usd, because I first have been buying the lindens inworld, then paying them, and then they are changed back to dollars again to yield MUCH much less!! I think LL has been making quite a pretty penny already on money exchange fees. I will be moving out of my paradise by 1/1, and have no plans yet if I want to do something else.
Did they really expect people would pay money just to have an open ocean around their sim to go swimming in? LOL

That's not quite so mystifying a question as when it is asked in aggregate form:

"How does increasing the price of all OpenSpace sims reduce the load caused by them?"

While it is understandable about the abuses discussed in OS sims, and there are some who PUSH the limits completely ... I have heard bragging how every prim is used and temporary rezzers put down to squeeze even more in ... but you can't tell me that it would be that hard to have a "usage" tax if you exceed a certain server load. Seems to me that it would be a simple formulaic calculatoin. But, this may introduce a layer of interactions and complexity that isn't desired, and I can see that point as well. I think grandfathering the prices is the responsible thing to do, unless the goal is to drive people off their lands to reduce server loads. Although LL does make money from land sales (and reselling abandoned land), it is the tiers that are their real bread and butter I believe. Massive losses of OS tiers would have to hurt...

LL is a gaming business, and if money is the issue becasue of the increased resources needed to support this newer level of usage, then some level of price increase would be understandable, and perhaps a 2 tiered OS usage is the answer. I know that I won't be able to afford renting my OS sim when the price jumps from $6KL to 10KL, and there are plenty of others who will be in the same situation. I, like many, maintain my os sim responsibly, just me living and building/scripting there and occationally entertaining guests. But in life many suffer for the inconsideration of a few

Having a somewhat reasonably priced place to create my dream island has been fun while it lasted. Virtual creations are like sandcastles, and meant to be enjoyed while they last.

So what are the people claiming they have OpenSpace sims with 1000 temp-rezzers or 6000 prims doing?

Lying???

You can't use temp-rezzers to take a full sim 2250 prims over its limit, so I think its a pretty good guess you can't do it on an OS sim either.

When OS sims were bundled and sold 4 per server I had no complaints of lag. Once they were sold individually and I couldn't control all 4 OS sims on a server then the complaints increased..slightly.

This sounds quite alarming. Both you and Renee cannot withdraw money? Would you explain exactly what you're trying to do? Are you just trying to convert L$ to US$, or are you trying to process your US$ out? If so, by which method - PayPal or cheque?

Just wanted to act as the voice of Involve, Inc and say:

We appreciate the 2 month notice on price increase, which is a clear improvement on past price increases that have had far less notice. In that vein, we do hope that this 2 month period is intended to gauge customer reaction to the policy and make adjustments.

We feel that the openspaces sims are advertised as "1/4 sim for 1/4 the price". Changing this to 1/2 price fundamentally changes what an opensim's purpose is. In this time of a wavering economy and a slow advertising industry, this is *not* the time to be raising prices. Further, there are alternatives available to Linden Lab as to avoid the price increase.

I can only surmise that Linden Lab has one of two intents:

1. Phase out openspaces sims. (If this is the case, it should be stated so.)
2. Avoid fixing the real problem as stated - overload, and passing the problem to the users.

A few colleagues brought this JIRA to my attention: http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-3335

I have voted for it and passed it along.

Consider the ways Linden Lab could save money and resources:
1. Reduce max avatars on openspaces sims.
2. Finally automate the land store to the point where new sims can be renamed and moved without human resource to do each one.
3. Other suggestions mentioned.

I rarely post in the forums and I suspect everything I want to say has already been said by someone else already but I feel really strongly that these proposed changes are the result of fundamentally flawed thinking on the part of LL. Unless I take the more cynical view that this is LL trying to manipulate resident behaviour towards their own financial ends.

Jack Linden's comment that the price increase isn't punitive is also, at best a misunderstanding of the consequences of LL's actions. In the current global financial climate there is no other way to interpret a 67% increase in price other than a punitive measure or profiteering, or possibly crass attempt at social engineering where the well-off residents can have nice places to live for themselves and their friends while everyone else is forced to make do with the mainland.

If there are technical problems with the way people use OS sims then this should be addressed through technical means. Changing the price structure won't mean people will use OS sims in a way more in keeping with the way LL want them to, quite the contrary in fact. Increasing the monthly price of OS sims will force people to examine the value for money of OS sims, light users of OS sims will be more-likely to sell up because they cannot realise a profit on them. However heavier users, people working them into the ground to make money, will more likely be able to absorb the cost.
This price hike will reduce the overall number of OS sims on the grid but it will be light-use OS sims that disappear.

From a more cynical view, I can't help wonder about the timing of this price rise. On the 20th of October LL announced a new area of mainland and then exactly a week later then announce this massive price rise for OS sims. It is difficult not to see this as anything other than a blatant attempt to force residents back onto the mainland.
This could possibly be nothing more than a crude attempt to bring more money into LL but in my opinion I think this is a flawed attempt tactic in LL's ongoing efforts to make the mainland more popular.
The “Nautilus” sims are very pretty and they certainly seem to represent a concerted effort to create mainland areas that are more attractive to residents and they may well prove popular to residents, even without these price changes. However I think LL have fundamentally missed the point with why so many people find the mainland undesirable - space (or the lack of it).
The mainland is very much a high density living environment, unless you are lucky enough to own land on the edge of the mainland or overlooking a large area of protected land any attempts to build to personal tastes are inevitably compromised by your neighbours.
On private estates however the situation is very different, firstly you can choose to have a sim that is completely isolated from any other sim, you are then free to make it look however you want without fear that a neighbour will build something completely out of keeping with your tastes. You even get more control of the land under your feet, full control of terrain, terrain textures and water level.
Even without this price rise the cost of ownership of private estates is greater than space on the mainland but many many people still buy, or hope to buy, private islands.
A real problem in many places in the real world is overcrowding and it is a similar problem in SL that I think is one of LL's biggest failings to address. Overcrowding in the real world is a difficult problem to deal with but in a virtual world such as SL there problems are surmountable and Lindens should bow their heads in shame that either they can't or are unwilling to address this issue.
The problem isn't that people are using OS sims too heavily. The problem is that the mainland isn't fit for purpose (no matter how pretty you make it) and people are forced to push OS sims to their limits in an attempt to get the virtual experience they feel they deserve. Give residents more control over their virtual existence, give them affordable options to own space, maybe full sims with a surface area of 512x512 (15,000 prims), mainland options that allow people to own land as mainland but with the privacy of private sims and give them the pwoer to adapt the terrain and water levels to suit their tastes.

What disappoints me the most is the way the LL seem to approach the whole thing. It seems to me that LL have noticed that SL residents aren't using the resources of SL the way they expected or wanted them to but instead of adapting to meet residents' desires, instead LL try to force residents to "behave".
To me this is a fundamental issue to the long term viability of SL. So far SL has been pretty much the only place for the creative community to share an online virtual existence but increasingly there are other options out there now and one day, if LL don't change their attitude, SL will fail and be consigned to the Trash folder of history.

For my final comment I won't talk about any dashed hopes I had of sims (OS or otherwise) but instead I will talk about my fears for the SL community I live in. Our community is situated on a private estate consisting of several core full sims surrounded by many OS sims. The full sims are the money earners and where the bulk of the activity is, they have to earn the bulk of the money to support the OS sims. It is hard to see how our community can continue in its current form with this new pricing structure. I think it is more than likely that we will have to abandon our OS sims because we won't be able to justify their existence and either lose them completely or convert them into a smaller number of full sims. Then we'll be all crammed together just like any block of mainland sims, all our beautiful buildings and landscapes will be gone and we'll all be too cramped to spread our wings and fly.

If this is the best you can do Linden Labs then you don't deserve your residents.

PS. https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/MISC-1088

I just heard this and am posting it here in hopes that it will be denied right away. I heard that people who abandon land get their accounts closed, as Linden policy. This rumor needs to be stopped to keep a lot of us from just plain leaving SL.

Even if that used to be the policy, my guess is that LL will have to change it well before January. I only have two weeks to set up some new deal because that's when my OS rent comes due. I need to know if OS sims can be converted four at a time to full sims and certainly whether people will be kicked out for abandoning OS sims.

I have asked about the conversion possibilities in support and will post the reply.

I am not sending this post to support.