Openspace Announcement Discussion with Jack Linden

If Linden Labs had set out deliberately to destroy the SL land economy, to drive a lot of private estate owners into bankruptcy, and to cause countless residents who are already economically stressed to simply leave Second Life, the company could not have chosen a better tactic. The SL private land economy is already in the doldrums because of a combination of oversupply of land plus the increasing spillover into SL of the worldwide economic malaise in RL. Now the Lindens come along and increase the purchase price of an open space sims by 50% and the monthly maintenance fee on open space sims by 67%. This would be like a banker in RL talking with a homeowner who is having great difficulty making the payments on a $300,000 mortgages and saying “OK, we are now adjusting your mortgage debt up to $500,000, with no increase in the value of your house and no other benefit to you.”

Even if the cost structure of Linden Labs did justify some increase, which is difficult to understand when the cost of computer hardware is still dropping and in RL most of the world is facing serious economic recession, there surely is no justification for increases of this magnitude. It is difficult to see increases of 50% and 67% as anything but punitive, and if one wanted to think in conspiratorial terms to see it as an underhanded effort to recapture most of the retail market in SL land.

And of all the dismaying aspects of this move, perhaps the worst is the refusal to grandfather in current levels of monthly maintenance fees for currently owned open space sims, at least for as long as they continue to be owned by the current owner. This is totally inconsistent with what has been done with past maintenance fee increases, where earlier fees were grandfathered even when the sims changed ownership. The inevitable result of increasing monthly maintenance on existing sims by 67% is that many parcel owners will leave if the increase is passed on in tier charges or the estate owner will soon be out of business if they are not passed on. In either case, I would predict that the ultimate consequence not only will be financial loss to a lot of individuals who have enjoyed SL up until now but also a significant loss of income to Linden Labs.

I urge Linden Labs to rethink this ill conceived and very untimely decision.

Jack, this has been a fairly one-sided discussion so far. It's your turn to reply.

LL has had to implement some fairly difficult decisions in the past, many of which fundamentally changed the Second Life experience. While I didn't always fully understand those decisions, I did feel that they were done in the best interest of the user community as a whole... that they were steps in making the Second Life Grid a more mature service.

The tier price increase on Openspaces doesn't have that same feel... and frankly I'm confused on why LL would choose this approach to solving the problems related to Openspaces. It's introducing a great deal of drama... and given that you gave it a lot of thought before announcing the change... you had to fully expect the drama.

There have been lots of suggestions posted in this thread. I'm sure that LL considered many of them but chose not to pursue them. Why not go to the individuals causing the problems and work it out? Why not come to us as a community first to discuss the problem?

So, there must be a certain subset of the user community within SL, of which I am a member, that you want to encourage to abandon the service. Why? We're well behaved, most of the time, and spend lots of money with LL. We bring in new users and try to make the SL experience a good one. Like you, we're trying to build a better virtual world. Why would you want us to leave?

Please help us understand. I'm not talking just about a price increase, I'm talking about the heavy handed way in which it is being done. How does this policy change help anyone? How does the drama help the public image and support of Second Life and Linden Labs. In the absence of real, meaningful information, we will make up our own stories. And LL will not be the heros of this story. Please find a way to help us restore our trust in Linden Labs.

Better yet, let's roll the clock back 24 hours and try a different approach that avoids all of this ill will.

Myk

LOL Good point Besides, it's not going to take a JIRA to decide this anyway.

My friend Euterp just had a good thought. Anyone want to check out that grid called Real Life?

Now now, you shouldn't kick a hedgehog.

I assume Meade simply missed it. It's AWFULLY easy to miss messages in this thread.

Ok, this is making the picture more clear for me (since my last post). This tells me that LL will now support residential and commercial usage on OS sims. If you're matching the price with utilization, I can't see it as anything but.



The punishment comes from the no grandfathering clause. Others who have kept with the OS and improved SL utilizing this product are now in jeopardy of removal because LL isn't being consistent. How many sims would have been abandoned/removed if LL's policy was to not grandfather old sims? I suspect a lot. This has only been offered for a few months compared to years for the old (full) sims. Add grandfathering, but transfer results in recurring increase as an option to consider.

After reading your (missed) post, I can understand now the purpose for the increase of price. Since OS are now going to be allowed to be residential, then sure, it has to remain competitive. This puts the emphasis back on mainland and private regions, making the extra cost for larger amounts of land. It truly does make sense, but my return question would be what is LL doing to improve performance on their end to make it a worthwhile investment at a higher cost? I don't mean what guidance you're providing to estate owners, but the server end? Ultimately it would have to match that of a regular estate, otherwise the experience will still be hindered, leaving the resident with nothing more than a little bit more land.

Doubt it will do any good at all but what the heck....

http://www.sl-liveevents.com

grrr hate that links dont woek here, just copy and paste!

Why increase the prims to 3750, then get upset when people use them? And a 67% increase in price? Little bit more than what would be reasonable, say something in like with inflation. I'd spurt some suggestions here, but lets face it, LL WANTS to put private sim owners out of business.

You ever tried rezzing plywood there? It ain't pretty.

This announcement begs the question, "Is there intelligent life at Linden Labs?"

I think even Larry, Curly and Moe Linden would recognize that many of the targeted abusers (a.k.a. commercial users) of open sims may be able to generate the income to offset this huge increase in tier fees. But those who bought open sims to create a more beautiful SL away from the bling and glitter of cookie cutter shopping malls, will not.

Bottom line is this: LL is hurting MAINLY those who the open space sims were designed for in the first place, the residential user.

As Homer J. Simpson would say, "Doh!"

Someone please tell me these folks don't get paid for making decisions like this. Pitiful, truly pitiful.

Huh? Indeed I did! 3 new pages seem to show up for every line I post..

What was the question?


I still think there's a few days of mindless spamming left in this thread. The signal to noise ratio is still pretty bad..

So... now my lovely home becomes an unsupportable expense. A little island in a lot of water, homes for me and a couple friends... and it goes away. And the vague statement about possible overuse... what? You give a prim allowance but don't want it used? I guess we wait to see if the "open" in "openspace" is reregulated back to empty wasteland status. I'll say this: if I'm unwilling to pay $125 a month for my island as it is, I can't imagine that very many will be willing to pay it for empty space or open water.

What we see here is a big jump back in how SL is used, and a grab for more money on the part of Linden Lab. Which is their right; it's their ball, they get to make the rules. But it encourages me to go look to see if there might be another game elsewhere. Certainly it reduces the "fun quotient" in this one significantly.

Yes, there is an enormous amount of abuse and yes, it needs to be handled. Why in the world are the small business owners that use these OS sims for their intended purpose or residents that are paying for OS sims to have a quiet, but large home being penalized. You have effectively knocked out the use of these OS sims for the very people they were created for. The ones that will still be able to afford and continue to use these sims are the large mall owners, club owners, and people of that class that have been abusing them to begin with. This is a bad idea. Far from thought-out.

I suppose my question would be didn't LL's see this issue developing several months ago when the prim allowance for Openspace sims was increased? Its hard to believe that tidbit of observation slipped thru the cracks. So I believe I'm safe in assuming this was a known issue prior to the prices for both full and openspace sims being dropped substantially and the coming, expected, onslaught of purchases. Applying this reasonable line of thought it can't help but make region owners question the motives of the decision makers of Linden Labs. Past and present.

Linden labs had plenty of time to observe the use of the openspace sims prior to initiating the mass purchases with the price decrease and I don't for a single minute believe that the coming issues which would surely result weren't well known.

My question becomes this: For this additional $50.00 usd expense, what can the current Openspace sim owners expect to receive from Linden Labs? What 'exactly' can we expect? Better asset server maintenance? Upgraded CPUs? What exactly are we funding with these projected increased tiers? Is it the $50.00 usd contact letter telling us we have scripted objects rezzed rather than just trees? (considering water is primless I'm not quite sure what else your suggesting can be placed on these sims after reading the use definition of openspace sims).

Basically what I'm reading here (past tense) was for 1/4 the cost of a full region we got 1/4th of a regions prim allocation. The upside was the landmass. That made sense. Until I got to the part about the (past tense) tier cost purchased the resources (prims excluded) of 1/16th of a full region. I believe this is the first post I've seen made publically regarding 16 loaded to a quad core. I queried a Linden'ite on this very topic once and was assured they were single servers, not quad cores, used for the Openspace sims and the max load was 4 per server.

I also read that one of their suggested uses is for boating. How can that be given most of the boats available in SL lag the daylights out of a full sim? How is it an openspace could support this level of resource drain? (again, prims aside) . More which gets filed into the that which makes no sense category.

And now we're being told that Linden Labs goofed up when they lined their pockets with the proceeds from all those reduce priced openspace sim sales after having had ample time to observe their increased use levels after the prim allocations went up. And we're also now being told that rather than LL catching up to speed for their rather profitable booboo.. LL will now offer _insert the vague mentioned element here_ and dig deeper for more dollars. To the tune of $50.00 per month.. each. That would total a sweet $800.00usd per month, per quad core server, ... profit!

I would ask for a response to the following questions:

Why are we compensating Linden Labs for their past profitable error in opening up the sales of Openspace sims as they did?

If the reasons given (overuse) are actually the motive.. why wasn't the decision made to impose a penalty fee to ONLY those which are abusing the Openspace sims? An ongoing penalty until their use back in line?

How many Openspace sims does Second Life have at the present time? In total as of.. lets say.. todays date.

I'm quite curious about the bottom line profit boom to the Linden lab pocket this current decision makes.

I remember when Home Depot narrowed the customer door to a point it closed in their faces. Prices increased with less value for the dollars. Customer service became nearly nonexistantAnd the end result. They forced the hands of their previous customer base to look elsewhere. That said and the current boom of other virtual world options available.. is there a different goal in mind here than the one which seems most obvious?

Or is it knowing those that did buy into these waste of space sims and lined the LL pockets will most likely abandon them now since the tier increase and forthcoming abuse of use notices will make them impossible to resell? Thats a good one! Not very ethical but a good move to have boomed that second quarter bottom line without suffering the increased supply drain.

Normally, 99% of the time, I support the decisions made by the powers that be at Linden Labs. I can't this time however. Sadly, in 'this particular case' this smacks of it looks and quacks like a duck.

I'd wondered back in the second quarter / leadership changes days if the old dream team hadn't set the new one up to suffer. From the current changes it appears they did. The customer base takes the hit again... ... ... Gosh, did that door just squeek as it closed a little more?

Theres much more behind this current direction.

Sooooo instead of trying to get more users to come to SL...you are chasing them away by this price hike? If this continues, no one will have land anymore and we will have increases in the prices for Lindens, then we will all have to stop using SL because we can't afford to pay the fees and SL will cease to exist

This is crazy!!! I received my openspace region as part of my orignal sim purhase. This now means that as I have now a long term renter for my main sim, I and my SL family may potentially be without an SL 'home'. As my openspace sim, is only used by my family, why should I and my family be penalised for others 'misuse' of their regions. They should be the ones who are penalised, not the ones who have been using their openspace regions responsibly

So, let me get this right.. First Lindens increase the price of sims.. Now they're doing it AGAIN with Open Sims? This just sounds to me like a play to get more people to abandon their sims and purchase land in the mainland once more. As I've heard, the Mainland has been considerably more barren lately, probably due to all the renting going on in private lands. And, can you blame them? Who would rather go to the mainland when its laggy, has virtually no rules, its entire build is user created, and often looks like total crap.

If the Lindens want to make more money, why don't they actually do something to improve the overall quality of things? Fix the countless bugs which have been in SL forever, offer paying accounts/land owners more for their money, and do more than just jack up prices so that people will be forced to either pay up or leave.

Shame on you Lindens

You're destroying NOT creating

I guess this means no free ham for the holidays then eh?

Guess we can always wait and see what Monty has behind door number 3.

Who in Germany sells a defective product liable for and
the damage can not pass on to consumers, as it Lindenlabs
just makes!

What's happening here, is LL is trying to "punish" openspace land owners for over-using their miraculously cheap sims, by jacking up the prices. I think LL doesn't realize that they're not a dictatorship. They don't control a necessary commodity, they don't hold us on leashes, and they cannot act like oil barons here.

They are, effectively, a government here. A government over a country with no border security. If they get nasty, we get going, and they can't survive without us.

If they continue these policies of strongarming, which they've done in the recent past, but which have finally crossed the line here, there will be boycotts, and mass immigration to other Virtual Worlds that are just coming online, many of which will have better graphics, better physics, better stability, or any combination thereof.

If residents are mistreated, SecondLife will die, and Linden Labs with it. But then, maybe that's the idea.

P.S. For anyone who hasn't read earlier posts, the jira issue is here, please vote: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/MISC-1776

We and countless others used their OS for the correct purposes, ours was an ocean for our members to play on, so don't make sweeping generalizations you sound like a LL mole

Heading: Support Ticketing System Is Unavailable

To all our Residents, The Support Ticketing system is unavailable do to the overwhelming region cancellation request coming into the system. We are looking into adding additional resource to handle the volume. In the meantime, please visit our Land store for land purchasing. ((Now that would be funny))

I think they should start thinking about automating land cancellation just like they did with land store. Also are they willing to reimburse the estate owners back their monies that were spent on the setup fees? as well as the 100 usd spent on dividing full sims? We as estate owners would like to reimburse those who we charged an initial fee. I hate to see the amount complaints from residents who only own parcels from open space once estate owners bail out without giving them notice.. Will they revert open space Sims back to full sim on request? There seems to be so many open ended questions that lindens need to answer. Also one last comment. The excuse for raising these prices is nothing more than an excuse..Lindens knew that these regions we’re not only going to be light in use…otherwise they would’ve stopped the purchasing of these types of region immediately. Just another cause of bait & switch

It wasn't really directed at you, in particular, one of your comments just happened to trigger the question in my mind...

I am almost always the only person on my open sim. I'm using 1648 out of 3750 prims, and the only scripts running are three fires, 8 sculptie fire sconces, and some waves. No one comes here, as it's my private residence, and set to access list only. I bought an open sim specifically because there is NO privacy on any sim that is used for rentals. Even if you set your parcel to group only access, anyone can cam in and see what you are doing from the parcel next door. I don't run a business, host huge parties, or rent out my land.

What SL needs to do is limit the bandwidth that an open sim can use, and the number of avatars that can be on an open sim. The server side resources being used up are what they state as the reason for raising the prices. Raising the prices is not the solution, unless of course, the Lindens think they can get away with it, and make more money. The obvious answer is so obvious it's like you just stepped on a nail! Any ISP can do this with a few keystrokes. You have so much bandwidth to use, and when you hit the limit you run out of resources. Throttle down the open sims, it's so childishly obvious what to do!

This is very much like the current real estate crises here in the US. Doesn't it sound just like it? First put out a way for folks to be able to acquire property cheaply. Then see the price of that property rise, (the perceived value of the land in relationship to what you can get for it, that is it's worth a LOT because you can rent it out and make money). Then when thing are humming along, toss in some stuff that causes people to default, and what do you have? A land glut, and falling prices.

Does SL need more available land? NO! Just go to any mainland sim, open the World Map, and check the "land for sale" box at the top right. Drag and move the map around. THOUSANDS of parcels are for sale! Have you tried to sell land recently? You are competing with THOUSANDS of others who have land for sale, and more each day!

Well Lindens, do you think you can sustain your economy when everyone begins to abandon their land, and you now make NOTHING off of what you were getting $75 a month for? Every sim owner I know who has an open sim has told me that they will be getting rid of some or ALL of their open sims if this price increase goes through.

Why can't you just limit the bandwidth that the open sims use, so that they are forced to be used as they were originally designed to be.

I have $600.00 USD, but I'm not going to give it to you. Instead I'll be looking at other Virtual Worlds to see what they offer. I'm sure a little competition will be good for you folks, and at these rates, I'm sure you will get it!

And YES Dear Lindens I do have a LOT of water on my open space which I lightly use for sailing.