Openspace Announcement Discussion with Jack Linden

Well honestly i do hope you realize that with the world wide economy the way it is now, that things are not stable to begin with, so i do not know if this will hurt the LL or it will aid the LL, i just see alot of sims being vacated. I guess that this will be found out though, if the decision to raise the costs goes through.

One way to get a message through to LL lab is to write emails/letters to the big companies that participate in SL.
Tell them you wont visit their sim or buy their product while Linden Lab does this.
Make a stand!
FIGHT THE POWER!

Considering the 115+ pages of disgruntled replys you are getting in response to this announcement at what point do you think this decission might have just been a REALY BAD idea?
it does not make sound business sense to me to hike the price up by 66% or whatever it works out too, ESPECIALY considering the fact that at a guess at least HALF of the people who own one of these openspace regions will now drop it, so you are going to have a lot of redundant servers sitting idle all set up for openspace regions then in a ears time some bright spark will want to reduce the cost of openspaces and start the ball rolling on this whole fiasco again.

there are mianly just TWO reasons why people go for these openspace regions.
1. have you spent a lot of time on mainland? try it maybe, its super laggy, super ugly and griefer central.
2. price, Full sims cost FAR to much to own, simple as that

Seriously why is there such a massive charge on machines that are probably no where near top of the range and nearly $300 a month to rent it? WOW is all i can say that i have seen dedicated servers at a 3rd of that cost.

the sooner the server code is open sourced the better for the rest of us who do live in the real world and who are not paid a ransome each month to upset half of the user base.
as for me MEH i will probably get shot of my land and go back to being a free account at least i wont get screwed over everytime somone has a bright idea like this, until free accounts are done away with then i will just go to one of the other grids any way.

When I was a teenager my mom put up a big sign on the fridge that said:

"Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine"

If only that held true in the relationship between Linden Lab and its customers.

I became premium in hopes of purchasing first land, only to be told I was SOL.
I bought mainland only to see my land made worthless as you flooded the market.
I see a mainland blighted by lost prims (on LL land, even), a land still gamed by extortionists, and (silly me) wait vainly for the errant particle fire that glitched into my absentee neighbor's land to stop spewing flames into 32m of my space (I could go on, but that's another thread).
I don't own an Open Space or rent on one, but I've watched over the past year as LL let the disaster grow and even encouraged it's growth.

My frustration isn't about financial losses, although it would be if I had money to loose (a $100 loss on my mainland is quite enough for this single mother, thank you). No, I am dismayed because LL consistently passes the cost of its own poor planning on to the customer. The thought that LL was so naive as to not foresee what OS sims would cost in either policing or server load is laughable (or terrifying- I prefer laughable).

Bite the bullet. Take responsibility for cleaning up after your mistakes in a way that respects paying customers instead of screwing them over.

Stop moving on to the next shiny before you pick up the mess from your last experiment. Stop treating it like an experiment, period. The power of the internet is that it re-empowers cottage industry, but right now I'm feeling rather like a serf whose lord has overspent himself. Luckily, the land I work isn't real.

Dear Jack,

I hope you are still reading. I hope you recognise the pain, distress, hurt and complete destruction of confidence you have caused countless dozens of people.

I hope you also have begun to realise the DETRIMENTAL effect that your poor decision making will have on business. Many people here are paying you $75USD a month. It seems as though many will now pay you $0USD a month from the time you implemenet this ludicrous scheme. Well done Jack! How many days did you spend in economics class? Or business studies? I would hazard a guess I could count them on the fingers of one hand.

You know how to get out of all this and still railroad your evil greedy plan through?

GRANDFATHER EXISITING OPEN SIMS.

If I ever meet you in-world, I will kick your shins (I am a tiny)...

Take a hint SL.

I LOVE SL, but you are REALLY messing up.

It's almost been 24 hours since the announcement. An open discussion is going on here and in inworld.

There has been one reply from you.

The concept of an open discusion and promising that you will respond more is... well actually that you do!!

So get behind your keyboard and type!

Or.. no... you and Linden really don't expect us to pay 50$ for every answer too right??????

If Linden Lab makes a decision like this that will affect Second Life this much for so many people... YOU DO NOT HIDE!!

prolly in an emergency meeting wondering wtf to do when an angry mob comes to SF to lynch them after loosing god knows how much money

bitch bitch whine whine...

Two choices

Accept it.
Do not accept it.

Simple.

It is very strange dear Linden: you allowed 3750 prims for each open sim and now that they are used and diffused you tell us that there is an abuse. How is possible to abuse? there is a LIMIT OF PRIMS so please tell us the true story and don't do what you like without thinking that we give you money everyday stayng in SL with or without sim, land and so on. I hope that there will be a massive protest against your decision because a lot of ppl was doing a good game using the opensim for their own business and for funny and i know a lot of artist that uses them... We are maybe not so rich has you wanna so maybe you wanna only rich and very rich ppl in SL. This is a great discrimination.

yes and there is also this lovely castle valeria ..
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Castle%20Valeria/54/58/24
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Mos%20Ainsley/132/137/48

Both of these Open Space sims were actually built by the Moles who work for Linden Lab. Both of these Open Space sims are perfect examples of hypocricy and deception on the part of Linden Lab.

This is a prime example and can actually be used as evidence against them in a court of law that they are indeed in grave violation of the AntiTrust law. They are monopolozing the economy and market to benifit them, giving them an unfair and unrealistic advantage over their competitors, the users of Second Life. Naughty naughty Mr Linden. If I were you now, I would be consulting with an attorney.

Speaking of attorneys, my lawyer has kindly offered to represent the users of SL (probono) pertaining to the Open Space sim issue. You can contact him via his website:
http://www.ralphgaboury.com/

He is currently setting up an official petition to present to Linden Lab.

Once again, I really do love Second Life and normally I support Linden Lab on many of their policies but this time are they are just wrong. This action will hurt more than 50% of SL users. It will destroy the virtual and even real life dreams of many. I sincerely hope that they rethink this decision carefully.

Today I cancelled my two premium accounts as a direct result of this, sold what mainland I had left and seriously considered walking away from Second Life completely.

I stayed not for any sense of hope that Linden Labs will change their minds - I stayed for the sense of loyalty and fraternity I have with those I associate with in and around the lands in which I live - Avilion. Will I pay the increase on the Openspace sim I have on the Avilion estate - yes.

However, my pay has not gone up 66%. Food bills increase weekly, the cost of getting to work increases monthly, I dread to think how much the next energy bill increase will be. My employer is going to take over another business so there are question marks over jobs due to duplication. The money for this increase I will find from a dwindling "spare" cash amount.

I cannot express how sad and angry I am by this. I knew the limitations of an Openspace sim and regulated it's use accordingly. Those of us who are responsible and levelheaded people are being punished for the few who are trying to get traffic patterns and builds on Openspace which rightly should only be seen on a full sim. Any Openspace sim which expects to have more than 10 avatars on it at one time is seriously over estimating what the sim is for. Whilst I have capped my Openspace at 10 avatars it actually is lucky to have 2 on it at once - and you know what - I really don't care as the land is simply there for me to enjoy the views not to try and run a business from it.

LL should hard code all Openspace sims to allow a maximum of no more than 10 avatars, they should also disable the subdividing of the land on them into smaller parcels. They should in other words introduce in world controls over their use instead of just raising the price thus hurting those who can ill afford to pay the increase.

Linden Labs are not bullet proof to the current state of economic affairs in the US. This would explain their misrepresenting the tier costs of OS sims as recent as yesterday and taking money from people knowing full well they were going to boost tier. Disclosures should have started the day they knew they had a problem.

Companies in trouble often make panicky financial moves, very similar to this price increase.

If they are not in trouble now, they might well be when the smoke clears - Tier income is going to drop dramatically. Don't underestimate the effect this may have.

"DO NOT HOLD LARGE CASH BALANCES IN YOUR ACOUNT - IT MAY BE AT RISK".

Think like an investor - keep as little as possible in your account and transfer in only what you need - minimize your risks.

One wonders how much they are leveraged and if they hold leveraged positions in other companies - suppliers for instance - the margin calls sweeping the US could explain the sudden financial need.

Grandfather Exisiting Openspace Sims.

AWSOM!!!

informed Sensual and the -SOS- group of your offer!
if a nub like me (wich only has a big mouth) can help in any way, just yell!

-----------------------------------------------------------------

I am with you guys all the way... let me know how can I help?

I purchased one of these open spaces many months ago it seemed like the perfect situation, i didn't need massive prims i mainly needed the space. I paid a good amount of money for this sim, i own the land but not the region. I was always told i could resell my land at any time but this anouncement does not make it seem so. The region owners will not buy them back that would break them finanicially. So now i have a piece of land i can not sell.....and it's gonna almost double in cost a month..... WOW i wonder if the lindens will bail out the SL economy the way bush did?
i have owned my business in SL for over 3 yrs. this raise in fee's on my land will destroy my business. already we are struggling because of the economy, luxuries get cut first and SL is a luxury (clothes u can't really wear or a house u can't really get shelter in pale when your hungry in RL). i sell homes in SL beautiful fully furnished homes, they don't sell....who can pay 7k for a house when the economy is bad? personally i had to stop buying linden to cover my tier. now i rely solely on sales to pay the bills in SL.
If my bill doubles.....how will i survive? Now i have to tell all the small business owners who rely on me for free rent so they can survive, that i now have to evict them all(destorying their businesses as well) because i am going under? how will anyone but the biggest names in SL even have a chance? all the creative artistic smaller businesses will be gone and SL will lose it's color, diversity, and character. When it's all said and done only big RL corperations will be able to keep a business going in SL.

This sounds like such a simple fix right? raise the land prices for the openspaces?
well it's not it will destroy SL .....all small businesses gone no clubs no small shops....
this is a bad idea LINDENS........just as bad as removing LIVE help to normal ppl.....
one question? why do i have 2 pay 125 USD a month in teir before i can even get a linden to respond? or take an abuse ticket seriously?

sincerly, AN ANGRY LONGTIME BUSINESS OWNER

I currently rent from someone who owns an open space sim. Nonetheless, I am not exactly effected because I can completely stop renting from the person. HOWEVER, after reading that just now I realized something. I read it all and noticed you are having issues keeping up with the openspace sims. I hardly ever see more than a few people in openspace sims other than RP sims with usually over 50 people at a time etc. Mainly I want to know though, how do people who rent to live on open space sims, even provide any sort of fault to your CPUs? Maybe if there was a openspace sim with over 10-30 rental parcels, possibly yes..if everyone was on at the same time, in each of those sim, might your cpu load be effected.

Anyway, this really isn't the point I am getting at. I just want to point something out if anyone else hasn't. You speak of providing better maintenance to all of Second Life/Sim/openspace/Etc whatever, but ALL I can see from this is an increase in price. Nothing else. And better yet it isn't only just an increase in price. It's an increase in price on ONLY openspace sims, which you have so thoroughly mentioned. Because of the few or many? openspace sim owners who actually load the sim to the hill causing whatever overload possibly, everyone is getting effected? No let me rephrase..every openspace SIM owner gets their price jacked up through the clouds!?

When you say you are going to provide a better more stable Second Life for everyone by targetting only openspace owners, instead of targetting those who have really high traffic and charging those owners extra? Maybe that would be a better answer for people see?

"Recap"
Increase of price for only openspace+privelage to have one
Increase of price for maintenance
Increase of price to buy openspace sim
Increase of price to owners who don't overload the server they are on
increase on price for those who do overload their servers for their sim.
Better..stable SL for everyone, but is -everyone- happy...with that?

Sorry I rather see realtime statistic instead of "pay us more, because other people are obusing what you aren't."

As a part of the Mis managed pricing structure, coupled with the massive increase in land sales, the number of users per sim has decreased over the last six months. I have whole empty sims for sale for one linden dollar. Nobody even comes to look at them any more. My accrued resources are being eroded by paying tier for half empty sims. It is unsustainable. My sim holding has dropped from 13 sims to 1 sim, and four open spaces. As a sim becomes empty, I have been asking the lindens to switch them off if a buyer has not been wanting to take them off my hands.

I, and others, had thriving concerns, we balanced the books, provided a great resource for many, charged fairly and gave credence to SecondLife's concept. Since the over issue of Open Spaces, the massive availability of mainland, and the decrease in real members ( rise in bot logins), our customer base has eroded daily.

Sure wish I had something positive to add here, but I doubt we will be here much longer. Mark, for fun I also joined Openlife Grid, they sure are an attractive option now. You were happy to take 4000 USD a month from me for over a year, I supported Linden Labs to the full. I don't know if you can possibly imagine how gutted I feel, not just over the Open Space Gouging, but by the way you have eroded a good working economy given to you by the outgoing CEO.

If there is a financial issue, use a graduated financial fix.
If there is a technical problem, use a back end technical fix.

If the sim or virtualization doesn't know how to self regulate in the manner of a common router, than apply a technical fix and leave folks' pocketbooks alone.

If this is financial (which the lack of grandfathering and end of educational discounts suggest) than design a comprehensive financial adjustment to address it.

And learn communication skills. Talk to your userbase first, craft solutions, and then give a timeline. Do not make an absolute declaration, then talk to people after you have angered them. It is a bad practice, and yet, at some level we expect it.

LL does not have a good trackrecord for transparency or trustworthiness.

-Vivito Volare

OK I just went through all my OS sims and monitored them to see if by any chance any of my sims had slipped by and had been the cause of any of this. I currently have 9 OS sims all of which are running between .99 - 1.0 One does have a spike that happens approx every minute that brings it down to .92 which lasts less than a second. All of my OS sims generally only have 1 or 2 users on there at a time, and one can have up to 5. Hardly overuse.

I then went to back to my main OS sim which is where my residents pay there tiers. This to was running at .99 - 1.0 with a occasional spike when the tier boxes updated. Again overuse.

I am sure there are moments when this could go higher, but generally it is within the above limits from my observation.

Yet I can head to one of my full sims, and when one of my tenants is hosting a large party I have seen it drop down to a crawling 0.54 time dilation at which point I contact the land owner. So if the above warrants a 66% price increase, are we to expect price increases on our full sims soon as well?

I have been in SL now since 2005, and I have stuck by you guys many many times when so many didn't. It took me almost two years before I had enough to pay for my first sim which was $1695, as well as my second on as well. at those rates I could have bought another full sim at the current rates, but I didn't complain, instead I took the new pricing as an opportunity to break passed that barrier and allow my long term residents the opportunity for some privacy. I am on each day, and generally check in on all my residents private sims to see if there is any problems, particularly sim related, as I felt I needed to protect my investment as well as theirs. At this point all of them are looking for ways out, and not lose to much money, but with all the talk of OS sims going up for sale they basically will be taking a full loss.

I am not sure whats going on there in the inner sanctum at LL, but when you lowered the sim rates a few months ago, the affect was basically you couldn't give land away anymore, most of my first residents had to take a big hit when they attempted to sell their land, most of which ended up being abandoned by them. Now the price increase, which is doing the same thing to the private OS sims.

Your hurting a lot of people, I hope you know that.

A lot of people spend their hard earned money in here because they believe in the product you guys designed. I for one don't make a lot RL wise, but SL has always been a good creative release for me, as well as an opportunity to maybe build a nice little community, and make a minimal amount of profit in return. Most of which I have reinvested back into SL, because I believed in it.

But this decision destroyed that belief, and faith in you guys/gals. You of course still have a chance to fix that. If your going to make a price increase go ahead and do it, but be honorable at least and cut us who have already spent time and money some slack, grandfather the sims that are purchased up until this point or the end of this month, or something. Maybe create a penalty fee for those grandfathered who cause high levels of overuse, the same way a hosting company would do. I am highly disappointed, and ashamed that I introduced SL to so many people.

Do whats right, in the end you have to sleep with your decision, I just hope it's the right one.


(Those of you checking my start date, realize I made this one in 06, but my first was in Nov 05)

Very good idea I bought expencive mainland,when i started here.My buisness growed,and i moved to a bigger parcel.I invested much money in the beginning.Then Lindens placed one region after another on the grid.The land price felt !When i moved again,i lost hundreds of $Dollars... Then there came this great VAT.I had a half region at that time,mainland! I know,it was not Lindens descision to pay VAT for european members.But,in summer, i had to pay again real life money to sl,to pay my fees.I sold my mainland and rented a low sim.i wanted to be premium,of course.cause the support is much better.but now,if you really do,i will cancel my premium,and sell my stuff at slexchange.
We ll see how long SL will exist.

Sorry about my english,but better when i not type in german!

Greetings from Germany

There can't be anything new to say after so many posts on this topic already, and there's no way I can review 1700 posts to make sure that I'm not repeating someone.

But thanks for the birthday present, LL. I was first rezzed in SL three years ago today. I've been a landowner in SL since my second week, and I moved everything into half an Openspace sim I rent a few months back. I didn't move immediately, it was well after the price change and it became clear that people were using these things to build on and live in. My co-tenant and I keep well within the prim limit, occasionally stress out the sim by having 3 AVs on it, and keep a tight hold on our script usage.

In the time since I took on this land, the exchange rate between GBP and USD has added about 40% to my monthly costs, now this as well. That makes my monthly spend on SL much more than I'm comfortable with. I need to have a chat with my landlord about what he's going to do, but I suspect I'll be downsizing.

My thoughts on this:

* This is a big rise in one go at short notice. There's nothing to stop LL from adding another 50%, 75%, 200% next month. No guarantee that tier fees will remain at this new rate for any length of time. I don't think any of that is fair on residents.

* LL waiting a LONG time before doing anything about this. I don't remember any previous blog post saying "Remember what Openspace sims are supposed to be for". I've certainly not received anything telling me to watch my prim/script usage.

* I'm with anyone else who says people like my were inveigled by LL into making a commitment by what has effectively turned into an introductory offer. If someone had said it was going to be USD75 for my first 4 months and then USD125 thereafter, I would have thought hard about that.

* LL seem to be pushing all the panic buttons at once. How about here's some guidance on what's fair use, here's the Prim Police or whatever who will come and make sure you keep within it, and either differential pricing based on level of usage or a delay in the price rise to give people a chance to fall into line with this policy and avoid a price hike.

* We're only getting two choices here - pay the extra money, or abandon our investment. That's not a very nice thing to do, LL.

And I'll bet L$10 that Jack doesn't make it as far as this comment.

I wouldn't be attacked if I AGREED with the prevailing opinion in a cold and callous manner.

That is a fact. Another fact is that LL is a business, here to make money. Its not surprising in the least when they try to get even more of it, and use money as a deterrent on the openspace sims that are being used, as a whole, at a level LL have been very open about not supporting.

A healthy grid and a healthy economy are in LL's best interests, and having the mainland mainly empty while people continue to expand on openspaces, are clearly not what LL wants right now for their business' in-world economy. And I agree.

LL cares more about money than your fun, as cold and callous as it may be to tell you what you don't like to hear.

I hear ya mate , WE are also Aussie and own 155 sims ..shakes head