Openspace Announcement Discussion with Jack Linden

Read your terms of service. No refunds. You agreed to that by using SL.

I am sure abuse is present on open spaces, I think they need to be dealt with on a one on one basis, not raising prices. Maybe work on the mainland that has the worst lag in SL, I personally rarely go there for that reason.

There is discussion here, but it isn't getting anywhere. So if I may recap:

LL raised rates on OpenSpace sims, citing technical and usage reasons. It is an increase of more than %60 percent, bringing OSsims far out of line on standard sim pricing. has made people angry. There are some who don't see this as any different than when LL raised private island rates previously. Some still Have said this is a good thing overall, much to the consternation of most of those effected.

The usage reasons cited are neither spelled out in black and white. This has lead to contention between those saying "light use" means no business or residences, and those that indicate that 1) LL set up the max limits on these resources, so why can I not use up to that limit, and 2) as above, the "light use" recommends against it, but never forbade it.

For others, A large portion of the issue stems from the fact that Linden labs has a poor track record for transparency and trust. So, with the sudden rate hike, the reasons given do not and will not add up. All told, the reasons we have been told do not align with any of our personal or anecdotal experiences on sim performance, usage metrics, and how LL's server and VPN setup are done.

There are also those here that see this as a manipulation of SL's landmarket by LL, either as a bait-and-switch tactic, or to bolster the pool of possible tenants and attract them to more reasonably priced mainland areas, which many have stated they do not want to return to.

In the midst of this, there are people with a lot of heart and soul invested in SL that will see a loss with this announcement that goes far and above any monetary loss of initial investment. For others, that initial investment was no small amount of money. Please keep these things in mind.

Most people want answers, more than the LL boilerplate of "we care about your concerns" which they stopped believing some time ago. Others are pleading to please take back this decision. Still others are voicing opinions that either run contrary to the majority backlash, or are directly antagonistic to the concerns expressed. The overrall response to those has boiled down as:

Did land values go down with the explosion of OpenSpace sims? Anecdotally, yes. Were there other factors that aren't being accounted for in this discussion? Most certainly. Private estate holders and landlords complied with their market, and the market wanted these openspace sims, as otherwise, there would have been tenancy issues. Was it a mistake to loose the reigns on these regions the way LL did? From what LL and some residents are saying, Yes. Does that justify a sudden ^^ percent rate hike without some for of discussion of the issue beforehand. No.

Did private estates gut the mainland? No. They offered an alternative to those that were tired of LL's lack of governance of their own regions, and the issues surrounding lag, ban-lines, stolen content, advertisers, griefers, and the general "un-neighborly" aspects of many mainland areas. Did this create a sort of gentrification? Yes. One that LL seems to want to encourage with the development and release of their new Bay City and Nautalis regions. Concerns that Those that take pride in Mainland should band together and enrich their mainland areas and not water down this specific discussion was suggested.

Is LL acting in a way that is legally actionable? I will simply paraphrase a lawyer friend who said "Everything is Actionable." Even Terms of Service (ToS) must stand the muster of the law. Microsoft, Sun, and Sony have all learned this lesson. Agreeing to a ToS does not remove the legal rights and responsibilities of any party. Whether something is effectively actionable is another matter entirely.

LL has not engaged in meangful dialog on these point. meanwhile, in-world, angry mobs gather at Linden Offices and infohubs to cite their utter rage, bile, and sense of disgust in the hopes someone will notice.

Meanwhile, lindeX transfers are on hold, and phone support is down, and to a Lindens aren't responding to IM's or notecards, I am told...

Being relatively new to “Second Life”, I have enjoyed my experience up until now. I previously owned a mainland sim that had a protected water front and was very beautiful. I was however discouraged by the inability to use all the Region/Estate tools that are available to an Island owner.

I made the decision to sell my mainland sim and buy an Island. Been having lots of fun building and developing my Island which is open to the public and free for all adults (as it has some mature content) that wish to come and visit.

For anyone that owns or has visited a single Island sim, you know that 10 steps into the water and you come to the edge of the world as there is no Linden Ocean like you have on the mainland. I wanted to make surfing available (again free of charge) to those that visit so I purchased an adjoining open sim to have necessary room for the waves.

My void surfing sim without anyone on it has a total of 80 prims running 11 scripts at total of 0.1 ms. Granted that with people the numbers go up but seeing as how I’m doing this solely for the added enjoyment of the few visitors, I don’t anticipate these numbers going up significantly. My question is:

WHY AM I BEING PENALISED?

I will be left with no recourse other than to eat my investment losses, shut down and abandon my void sim. My disillusionment has me looking for places other than SL to spend my time, energy and money.

wonders how much LL is paying Baloo ......... hehehe

ToS are contracts which can legally be challenged in a court of law. Many of us sign without knowing our rights. Some contracts are simply not legal, that's not to say the LL ToS is not legal. I am merely pointing out that what you just said is not a great example.

I Can Promise Come Jan 1, 2009 The Amount Of Sim Owners And People Online Will Drop By A Large Number ,simply Because The United States Economy Is In The Slumps And Linden Lab's Claim To Care About Its Users And Customers ,But Your Picking The Worst Time To Increase The Price Of Land , So Much For The Little People i would call this move dangerous and not very well thought out

"Please be assured that we do read every reply."

Really Jack?

You might pass this rule as you sip on your expensive wine and order your servants to move a little lower as they massage your feet. Obviously the world economic crisis ins't affecting you.

I remember reading something about a little dream someone named Linden had about burning bush, a place to create and live.

Have you lost that idea, that dream, has it turned into a business, are you competitive with Bill Gates? Does he live next to you? Is his boat launch bigger than yours. Oh my, what a tragedy. Where are you going with this? If I rent my entire sim it is still at a loss, in fact I give land away to enrich peoples lives here in SL. Where did you lose the vision? Where upon your trail did you lose compassion? Most importantly where did you lose common sense?

Alot of people here have given common sense sloutions to your conumdrum, a situation that you created. Jack, based on the replies I have been reading, your not going to do fairly well in the christmas card industry this year. No one is asking to take money away from your kids or family or employees. They are simply asking for a responsible, educated resolution to a problem that you created. If indeed you read all replies, I hope you will reserve your decision till the new year, hopefully with this economic climate around the world we can afford to put gifts under the tree for our future SL'ers. Cheers

Never forget where it all started Jack

Let me guess another mainland holder who doesn't own any open spaces? Hahaha you're screwed, the spirit of the SL "Community". (and of eternal brownnosing)

I think the new poicy is terriable. We own 10 open sims and now we have to charge out tenates more to live. They will be leaving I already know Thank you Linden Labs. We will be shutting down now. This game is no longer fun just turning in to more work.


GOOD LUCK

There is grave concern for the health of non for profit arts groups following Linden Labs decision to raise the costs of buying and maintaining Open Spaces. They will also be cancelling the not for profit discounts for open spaces. Please register your protest on Jack Linden's blog as soon as possible. This degree of inflation in SL at a time when the RL economy is in turmoil is wrong and foolish. It will seriously damage the SL economy and cause many to leave. Please make your views known. Others will be taking direct action and have suggested not buying Linden Dollars for the whole of November.

Understand how things work... in order to get 100 avis on a single full sim its difficult to say the least and extreemly laggy if you can move at all...


You could NEVER get 400 on a single processer thats 4 open sims with 100 each.. it could never happen. Period.

I placed a poll so we can see real numbers of what people are thinking of doing and not counting the spamming of the threads....

/354/86/289847/1.html

Jack:
You are a bloodsucking, s***!!!! Move me into my new home, then jack the price up????
You can have your f*n os back and sl as well!!! I can rent a rl place for that.

Nothing. I make sure to read things like end user license agreements and terms of services before I put myself in a situation where I'm legally bound to them. It's not rocket science, it's called being a smart consumer. I know I wouldn't have made it past high school economics without understanding that concept; I'm sorry you did not receive a quality education.

You can rent a RL place for US$125 a month?

Is it a cardboard box?

Umm. No, because businesses will be the only ones that can afford an open space sim.

Those which are not for profit are no longer affordable except by those with deep pockets.

Firelight

Or a parent's basement?

True. I'm not a lawyer, but to challenge it, I'm pretty sure you would have to prove that either 1) clickthrough license agreements aren't valid in your area (I believe SL is entirely closed to everyone who lives in such a jurisdiction), or 2) you agreed to it under duress (ie, a Linden put a gun to your head, telling you to log into SL or else).

People falling into group 1 would be walking TOS violations just because of where they live, and I have my doubts group 2 exists in this case.

Dear Jack,

If you were President of Prime-Minister of any democratic country and proposed a 66% tax increase, you would face the wrath of everybody in your country, both from those who voted for and and those who didn't. I don't even think you'd make it to the next elections.
If you owned the supermarket next door and increased all prices by 66%, I guess your friendly customers would probably set the supermarket on fire with you inside it, as the villagers on a good Frankenstein movie.

Apparently, I am one of those damn criminals who are ruining SL for everybody, cause I rent one of those traffic-inducing Open Space sims, where I use approx. 2500 of the 3750 prims for some fun and recreation. Ever since I rented that Sim, on Jun 12 2008, I faced SL's downtime and constant server upgrades and downgrades with a smile on my face.

Let me put you into perspective: I have been working on the IT industry since 1987 and I started working with computers waaaaaay back in 1982. My work experience has allowed my to follow and cooperate on the development of some of the major innovations on the computer industry since then, so I feel very comfortable to say this out loud: YOUR DEVELOPMENT METHOD SUCKS and you shouldn't even have the guts to charge money for us stupid avatars to beta-test your crappy ideas.

If you want to start setting rules, LOOK FIRST INTO YOUR OWN DAMN BACKYARD and start by firing some of your own developers and testers that aren't obviously doing what they are paid for by OUR MONEY.

After doing that, take a close look at that confusing mess of hovering rotating pyramids and no-enter zones you know as Mainland - it's ugly, it's prim-heavy and it's... well... ugly as hell.

After doing these two simple tasks, you'll have good server and client software and a cleaner, better looking and less resource-consuming Mainland - and you might even find that you can lower Mainland prices after firing all those incompetent developers and testers.

Then, and only then, should you look at private Open Space sims. And when you do that, you should try to identify the real culprits, instead of labelling us all like some sort of criminals that are ruining SL for everybody.

Be careful who you insult, my dear Jack, or people might start insulting you back, and then things might get outta hand for good. Just because you woke up thinking like a f-ing moron, that doesn't necessarily mean you should share that with the rest of the world, ok?

Just to finish, let me tell you something - if you go ahead with this, I might just leave SL for good (i.e. YOU'LL STOP GETTING MY MONEY). If everybody else who either owns or rents an Open Sim does the same thing, you'll have plenty server space to create more crap like Nautilus for sure, but the only people who will stand around to contemplate it will be your friends, the other Morons who believe in you.

Good luck in the unemployment line - you'll need it.

Yours truly,
Magic Shostakovich

haha

Well, he could be living in another country where the dollar is worth a pretty penny. It can very well happen, 125 dollars could mean a lot to children who are hungry and sick in third world countries.

A thing that makes me think since long...Lindcenlabs is in the business of renting serverspace, as someone correctly defined earlier.
However they maketing it as selling virtual land. If I have bought something I normally should not have anymore payments for it to start with. It is mine, I can do with it as I wish. This does not only apply to the private island owners that falsely define their space rentals as sales and charge for it, but also for LL's mainland. I'm not a lawyer and I am aware that common sense has been excluded fom the US lawsystem long ago - however how can this false pretension marketing stand any definition at all?
So where are my properties that I bought if I pull out of this flawed system? I want to take them home since I "bought" them. Someone with the appropriate knowledge (not another blabberer please - enough that I might be one) should look into this whole strategy...

This is totally arrogant in less than 6 months after releasing the hounds of hell you decide that you made another glaring blunder and just willy nilly decide that you just must increase the price of the trash islands that you created. Well I do believe that any court would call this bait and switch. You can not even wait 1 year before you decide to make a change, and you do not even give a grandfather to the existing users. Shame on you this is very transparent but totally expected since you can not nail down solid costs illustrated in the total devaluation of full Islands earlier this year. Take the hint look at the viewers of this forum look at the response you have created over 98% negative. I thought this was someones dream it seems to have turned into a nightmare.

You by your own words admit that your active Island count went from 5000 to over 22000 in the period of time since you released the open space islands this type of growth illustrates the desire of individuals to own their own chunk of your virtual dream but it seems to have overwhelmed your ability to service the system.

Perhaps it is time to sit down with your users and work out a good and defined business plan because the past has demonstrated that you have missed the target and hit an innocent bystander, your customer base.

Also perhaps had you improved the operations of the game before announcing this increase it might have been a little better accepted but as it stands right now with over 65k online the game is a lag pit 7P.M. CDT October 28 2008.

I have been here since the concurrence was 2500 and lived through many convolutions some good, some bad but this one definitely takes the prize for PP planning.

Perhaps you are still in need of leadership you act like a professional football team with out a real leader to guide you.

You as a group present a very confusing image. This is not the way to build a stable user base.

You have just put the arrow through the heart of, at least, 17000 of your customers many who will not stay in game and will return to the more predictable environment or WoW or EQII or even the pathetic SWG.

Well you have solved your problem it seems the grid will be back to the manageable 30 to 40k online and then you can plan on how to get us back down to the 9k over night 22k daytime load.

If you had not noticed the world economy is not in very good shape at this time and you are to be considered discretionary spending. This is one of the first areas cut by those looking to save money. The timing of this is extremely poor, just where are your heads these days.

LOL if it were april id know this was an april fools joke. but seeings hows it's oct. i know some one is full of shit. this is supose to be a game. obviously linden labs wants to make it more political all for the money as in government.raise the price no benefits hmmm sounds oddly familiar (government). as far as im concerned as many paople are. the price is already rediculous for a game so raiseing the prices is absolutly absurd and will not be tolerated. if this rediculous increase isnt banished by dec. 1 myself and many people will be walking away. and thank god for internet and ability to voice opinions about such people as linden labs the blogs that will hit the net will more then likely see linden labs die. which will not be any skin off any of the residents back, only linden labs. who at that point would more then deserve what comes to them.

You're right, you're not a lawyer.


SECOND LIFE, May 31, 2007 (Reuters) - A Pennsylvania judge has ruled that Linden Lab’s terms of service for Second Life residents are not legally binding, according to court papers filed on Wednesday........