Openspace Announcement Discussion with Jack Linden

Having been around the RL corporate world for a time, it seems to me this situation of the angry responses could pretty much have been avoided if LL had a PR manager. I make this observation for two simple reasons. Any good PR person would know enough to 1) Offer some predictability to the customer, e.g., letting customers know this change was going to happen; 2) Allow the customer some control over this situation, e.g., asking for suggestions on how to tackle problems with OS.

Of course there will always be people unhappy with any change. And, don't get me wrong, I do not think that this change is good especially as it negatively impacts me.

However, a PR person would have wanted to know if all possible scenarios had been thought through with the possible consequences, and then would develop a plan as to how to respond when legitimate concerns are expressed - angry or not.

LL has backed itself into a PR corner, and will only make matters worse until someone at that company gets off their high horse and starts relating to the level of the customers.

It appears to all senses that LL is run by bean counters and programmers. Neither group should be allowed access to the public. If there were any attorneys involved, they should be taken out back and . . . well we'll let them live for the moment. They may have a lot of sorting out to do in the near future.

As I am between positions at this time, I would be more than delighted if LL hires me to help them out of this quagmire they created for themselves. The first thing I would suggest they do is an apology to their loyal customers, and a withdrawal of the proposed changes until they have time to understand the impact this has on everyone in SL, and then the next suggestion would be to listen to their customers who make SL possible.

Apologies do work when accompanied by visible and sincere changes.

In my mind this boils down to this.... and for me...trust me... i have stared down this moment many times and blinked


Linden Labs as a company...a company with the initial smarts and vision to create something we are all so up in arms about staying in has lost their way.



LL as s company can't be trusted. Linden Labs as a company is incompetent at many things. 1. Really showing us what their goals are. 2. Supporting and nurturing an economy which up to now has been one of their main selling points of the "game". 3. Show time and time again that their PR is horrendous. 4. Rolls our decisions with forethought that is laughable and clearly incompetent.

Did anyone ever think that the clammer of pitchforks regarding business decisions would take over and drown out the clammer for function and stability?


This is no longer about land sales and rentals. This is about LL selling a product they knew full well would be used a certain way and did a CYA disclaimer. They never stopped the sales just with one had said..oh no no and with the other swipped our cards.


We are at a tipping point not b/c of function or stability. We are at a tipping point b/c with this decision - stacked on top of others- Linden Labs has shown now w/o doubt or question they are not able to do things competently from defining a business plan to carrying it out.



If this policy does not change I for sure am selling out and will likely sell out (if I can) slowly anyway. The double standard of all of a sudden being worried about "our experience" is an insult and a clear signal that you, LL, are a bunch of incompetents.


It boils down to a company that finally perhaps has shot their prim toes off. Perhaps having a corner on the market can be f'd up. Good job boys and girls.

Solve this Problem

1) Offer Free Converssion to Full Sims from 4 Open Sims

2) Offer a refund for those that have 3 or less Open Sims

3) Offer Open sims with less functionality for same Cost

4) Offer Open Sims With better functionality at New Cost so they are worth the New cost
a) allow them more resources I.E. if you charging 67% more then give them 67% more.
b) put less on each CPU

5) take Open Sims off the Market completely.

6) Use a Meter to track Use and Misuse of open Sims on New Client you are Developing.

Post to the Community what the Correct usage is and How to achieve this.
1) How many scripts one can use
2) how many textures
3) examples of Loads that are with-in reason. I.E. 250 scripts 250 Textures and 25 Avatars.

Not sure this solution - the tier increase part (the ownership rules part may help) - solves the problem - might also be very damaging to LL's business. Some examples from my personal knowledge... and my suggestion for an alternative solution.

1. There's an RP region with 2 full & 4 openspace sims. Because of the requirements of the RP, lag is maintained at an exceptionally low level on all 6 sims. The estate tries to support itself through merchant & residential rentals - all merchant and most residential rentals are on the full sims - but isn't yet close to breaking even. On 1st January, instead of preparing to purchase more OS sims, the estate will be forced to close the existing OS sims & buy a new full sim; the cost of the tier for these well-managed sims will otherwise be prohibitive. LL will lose income, although it will get the capital from one full sim sale. There must be many other RP groups in similar situations.

2. Many of the better-managed large estate owners have used OS sims *exactly* as LL requested - disallowing residents and using OSs as open sea or parkland, helping reduce lag in the full sims (where residents & businesses live). The tier increase means that they now have a choice between raising the tier their residents pay - further reducing land values in the current collapsed market, and possibly causing more residents, both commercial and residential, to leave - or returning a third or more of their OS sims, leaving large and unnecessary holes in otherwise well-maintained landscapes. No net financial loss to LL, but a significant loss in experience to SL residents.

3. One individual estate owner (100+ sims) that I know - who, to be fair, has had problems with overuse of some of the OS sims she's rented to commercial operations - has decided that she simply cannot support the tier increase; she intends to return or sell her OS sims - all of them - and purchase a far smaller number of full sims, offering her displaced renters much smaller (but more prim-rich) locations on the new sims. Based on the figures I have, she will be paying LL a lot less after Jan 1 (although LL will get to sell several full sims to her in December).

4. Another estate owner, who was basically running her operation as a hobby, has decided to simply sell or return all her sims, wiping out LL's income stream from her.

There must be some way to achieve the desired effect less drastically, and with less of a general impact on SL, and, indeed, LL.

(Btw, I discount those idiots who, unable to grasp the numbers involved, think that this is a conspiracy to get the tens of thousands of us who live on private estates to move to Nautilus or Bay City...)

Jack, surely it's possible to determine just which OS sims are straining the system?

Then the terms of service could be amended so that the sim owners could be required to choose between switching to a full sim (and, presumably, having to rebuild their land from scratch), or fixing the problem (probably by ejecting one or more tenants).

Btw, am I right in thinking that the problem is as much down to *how* the mismanaged sims are used (eg. for constant building or high traffic, causing strain on the database & back-end network) as to how many prims are present on the sim? The latter seems to be what most of the posters here think (based on a quick & unscientific sample of some of those posts which didn't have swear words or pointless insults in the first line).

Lets see..

1st i save.. get enough to buy an island at 1650 USD.. and a month later.. you drop that price to 1000 USD .. yeap screwed (but hey the new OS is a really good deal)

2nd.. LL floods the land market so completly that i will not even get purchase price back i paid in 2005 .. yeap even more screwed

NOW .. they decided after takeing 10's of Thousands of dollars from us .. that the OS they announced when they screwed us on any previously purchased islands did not work out so well for them...

Yes, i rent OS sim.. i have several. I rent them with restrictions.. NO Clubs, NO malls, NO Shoppes, NO heavy scripts of any kind. I never "sold" them either. So i have 16 OS sims with houses, trees, lakes, mountian.. etc. All my residents did absoloutly gourgous work on them.. NONE of them abused them. They are not overloading the grid.. these people just wanted a private quite house. So now i have to tell them hey.. if you want to keep that nice forest and lake house u created, i have to charge you another 14K for it. Not gonna happen in todays economy.. no one will be able to afford them.

So I am left with 2 options.. dump them.. count my massive amount of loss and move on.. or have them converted into a full region at the cost of 100 USD


I have supported LL since 2005, i have reinvested every cent i have made back into this game. Never ONCE have i "cashed in". I started with one sim and i now have 28. Me and people like me are the ones who keep SL economy running. This is the last hit i can take from you. I am done. i WILL NOT PAY 100 USD TO HAVE WHAT I ALREADY PAID FOR put into a full sim. I bought the OS's in good faith. I am an honest business person. silly me to think LL was too

I WILL NEVER INVEST ANOTHER CENT INTO LINDEN LABS..

Well, not set in stone(incase a tenant is reading this).

But LL just lost 1500+ usd a month from me.

And since I will continue selling on the web and a 512er(read free) store inworld....They can write me a check each month(600usd+). =) Honestly taking their money will feel good.

I agree, those that make money and profit from their OS will not leave,it will be the likes of me who uses it for privacy who is stuck with higher tier fee because of those who abuse the rules.
I joined sl a year or so ago,i have spent thousands of $US,
All i want is a reasonably prices OS,which i now have,although i would say i'm paying a rather higher tier fee than others i have seen post here

That is not true. Many will have to abandon who did use them properly. Your going to see alot of abandoned OS and many of those residents will stay in game, they just won't own land because trust is down now. Trust with the company has been touch before but this is probably one of the worst I have seen it in over two years of being on the grid. I'm not old by some standards, but have seen alot of changes. Most can be weeded through. This one most likely will not be because it's a very high level of trust during an already bad economic time where people want and need their entertainment and have already allotted (for the most part) x amount of real dollars to spend on said entertainment. That real dollar allotment will go elsewhere for alot of people because the trust has been completely blown away. Especially for those who bought or converted sims within the past few weeks and not a word from the company that changes might very well be on the horizon.

I'll stay in world but if I lose my OS, I won't be getting any more land. I don't have the faith in the company right now to say 6 months from now "your not using it properly, we're raising you again......" Others might have that faith, but by the looks of this thread....I don't think so.

For me, it's not so much the rate increase, although I certaintly can't afford it. It's the reasoning behind it, it's the fact that is only one portion of the land choices, the way it was presented and the fact that people were able to still purchase/convert even though the company had been investigating changes. Many would not have converted to meet the demand or bought if the company had said "hey...these OS are great but we're having issues with them and might be changing their policies and/or teir in the coming months...."

They didn't and that's very poor business.

The only way to make this in anyway fair it to refund the purchase price in full.. but i dont see that happening.

Well it is clear in my eyes that the sells of the OS sims have hurt the sales of the full prim sims,So you all want to do something to force us to start buying full prim sims again.You give us 3750 Prim to use on an OS sim so we use them.How can we abuse what is giving to us?Its clear this is just a way to push estate Owners into spending more money.But on the other hands,You all are taking away from others.Some people have a low income and cant pay the high Tiers and so They rent a full OS sim but now They have to give up there home due to the price raise.I understand what you all are saying but why make so many suffer for a few others.I think myself Things should stay the way they are and if abuse happens then take it up with that estate owner for it is the Estate owner that sets his or hers own rules for that sim.So it is them that should suffer and not everyone.If I am in the wrong on this post I am sorry but its really not fair on the ones that rented a OS and use it for there own home.

A very bold and wide ranging statement. And you have no facts to back it up.

I on the other hand know of dozens of sims that will be abandoned come Dec 31, simply because this jacks the prices up too high to support. We are barely treading water as it is, and LL has put on an additional anchor for no real reason (unless you can tell me the mechanism by which more money magically makes the servers run faster.)

We are the ones NOT running businesses on the voids. We pay out of pocket rather than try to make money here. Thus, the price increase causes us to abandon our parks and farms while the clubs just pay more as a cost of business. So LL's "solution" will keep the heavy load generators and get rid of all the rest of us - you know, the guys following the rules and paying real US money to LL.

No business, real or virtual, can afford the perception of trying to defraud its customers. As has been mentioned previously, a lot of residents have purchased or rented parcels in open sims and have been using them in good faith, only to be told now that they are suspected of gaming the system and are to be evicted!

Linden Labs should care about their number of premium accounts, and should be concerned about a potential exodus of fee-paying customers. Announcements like this, while they may very well reflect valid technical issues, also reflect a very poor customer service and retention effort on the part of Linden Labs.

The chances of an open sim victim taking a loss on his or her investment, then turning around and throwing good money after bad in Nautilus is poor. As an MBA I can predict that if some recourse is not offered to residents affected by these new rules, there will be many looking for other playgrounds in which their business and dollars are more appreciated.

Its very simple its a lie.

The open space sim were intended for people to live in them and people have lived in them for years now and then in april they raised the prims of the open soace sims and made it so everyone could get singles creating high demmand for them then allowing many many thousands to be bought before pulling the bait and switch and now trying to scam people by charging nearly double the tier

anyone could be a mayor if city coffin with no money, raise the tax!!

how dissapointing...I guess it is time to look at other worlds..

I owned close to 6000sq m's in Esterhal (Mainland), where I had my art gallery, and just had to get out of there because of all the lag. I had people walking into corners of buildings, falling thru floors, frozen all because of my surrounding neighbors lagging the area down. I didn't even exhibit sculptures or have too many scripted items, because I hate lag. So I found a place. Part of an open space sim, big/spacious, affordable tier, no lag whatsoever; a clean slate to start from scratch. I sold most of my land, and moved my gallery. So now as it stands, I will have to take everything down and close shop. I will not be able to pay the increased tier that I will be charged when the change happens. I will not open another gallery. I will keep what little place I have. Cancel the membership for my alt, saves me money there, and just not be a productive citizen any longer. Even my current home is on a OS. Oh well. Live and learn. No more land buying or renting period. Stick w/ what I have before I get stuck again. Thanks!

I doubt Jack is really going to read over 1200 responses and counting but I need to say this anyway.

Jack - your presentation of OS for light use is as specific as calling something a light beer. It is light compared to what? LL is penalizing users for "abusing" the OS for something that was not well defined. LL has the ability to set a limit on CPU use and warn abusers to correct the problem or you will take action. I feel most owner of SIM know how to check their usage to keep their users happy so they have the ability to monitor the usage and keep it within the limits that LL would set.

However - it is your sandbox and you can do what you like.

I will be giving my "neighbors" the option of paying the increase. I hope you will give us a pass on the fee to combine OS into a full sim in light of this situation as that is what I am probably going to have to do as my OS become empty.

It is a luxury item, true. One I and my partner scraped to afford. We're both handicapped, both wheelchair bound. I spend a large part of my life in pain. SL makes it possible for us to be together, to do the things we can't in RL, and offers a precious escape and haven for us both. And now the little paradise we've made together will be gone.

No one's dog has been killed but I am heartsick over losing the place I and my partner just married.

If the problem is misuse of openspaces by some, punishing everyone makes no sense. A far better approach is to place clearer limits on openspace use and deal directly with violators. This is not the way to make your paying customers happy. And as I write this, what really strikes me is that I am saying nothing profound, nothing terribly insightful -- it is common sense. Why is LL incapable of seeing this?

Exactly and I agree -- the OS regions with little to no income stream (in other words, parkland, scenery, not heavily rented out to residential/commercial areas which seem to be the problem) ... THOSE are the ones we won't be able to afford to keep.

The people who have successfully stuffed their OS regions with shops and stuff... those are the ones who will continue to blithely consider an OS a high-lag but otherwise affordable alternative to a REAL region. Which of course just makes LL's concerns about OS use a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I was so happy to have region-sized areas where we could landscape and build something pretty without worrying about whether I'm making enough tier from renters. I was willing to pay $150/month for two OS regions. Now it'd be $250? No thanks, I could practically pay the tier for a full-sized region -- or a RL car -- for that much.

We'll be cancelling our OS regions as soon as we can evacuate builds.

The bigger an organisation or company becomes, the more difficult it is for one to remain devoid of hypocrisy and paperthin lies.

EVERYONE knows that this is a think pretext, a public relations-palatable evasion for the real reason. The real reason is that the US as an economic entity is going down the drain.

I recommend Linden Labs face the bitter pill and starts implementing a resource move to a more safe environment, and sustains its business in a more equitable dollar, in a more liberal, stable political environment.

That should effectively allow Linden Labs to seriously decrease overhead. With Moore's Law and all, the price of land in SL should be steadily decreasing over time, at least halving in the period of 3 years.

This is absurd. If this is TRULY what is needed to happen, LL should offer some sort of buyback plan. Half my openspace sims we paid full price on ($475) and now we're being told tier is going to double. There is absolutely no sensible reason to keep an openspace sim at these prices, and I feel cheated out of the money paid for the setup/land. For the cost of 2 you can almost have a full sim now. LL is basically cleaning up their problem by forcing out anybody who has an openspace sim. I'd say about 70% of the people or more won't be able to keep them, and this is how LL will clear up their resource problems, while pocketing all the money paid to them on the setup/purchase.

IF YOU SCREWED UP THE PRODUCT OFFER A RECALL. WHERE DOES THE MONEY GO FOR THE ISLANDS I HAVE TO NOW ABANDON?

I am sorry but I am trying to sympathies with some of you but just can't. You cry when you see that you must tell your tenants that the sim wil have to go because Lindens raised your rent. Well, if all of you took just 10 minutes to find out what a Openspace area would allow or not allow then you would not be in this pardicument.

In a earlier post I placed a link that could be copied to a very easy to understand would should a Openspace could be used for and not. As the police will say... "Ignorance of the law is no excuse for following it". Another words its your responsibility to check out what you should be able to do and what you should steer away from.

So for all those who have had decided to use the Opensouce the wrong way. Well, just tell your tenants goodbye. sell the land off or abandon it and then either go on enjoying SL or leave. You will be missed.. I think.

For those who have followed the rules laid out by Lindens on the blog then I do sympathies with you. Only suggestion I would suggest is contact Lindens and see if you can get a waver of some sort. Invite one of the Lindens folks to your Openspace so they can see, first hand, that you are using the land as intended. Good luck!

JZ

You win jack! The most short sighted spin talking linded yet!

Please people...stop saying there are "abusers" of OS sims. THERE ARE NOT. It's not possible to use the sim beyond it's design. The failure is the DESIGN. The ABUSER is the dimwit at the lab. Mister Jack Linden.

No worries. A day from now he will pop out again and say...sorry people we had no idea of the drama this would make! We have a new solution. We will now cap OS at 10 avs, not allow land division and limit to 3000 prims instead of raising your rates! And all you suckers will clap and cheer the saviour.

Hey M, do you actually do anything at the lab besides write spinfull advertising blog posts ? How about a little employe evaluation session. I think you can trim off about 3/4 of the labs mass as (brain)dead weight. For the love of all that is good...take jack off the terminal before he does more harm. Just look at his record....give him a mop or something. Someone has to clean the washrooms.

Originally Posted by Imago Aeon
The only ones who'll abandon their open spaces are the ones who abuse it and know they do.

No...that is not true...I have an OS and I am using half the prims allowd. If this goes through...I will be leaving my OS and back to homless. I refuse to spend anymore of my hard earned money into this game. It is expensive now, nevermind after LL raises it. I will be in SL...but without land, then LL can not rape me then I have no worries and can wander from place to place...if there is any place left.