Openspace Announcement Discussion with Jack Linden

This is stupid the upping the cost of the openspaces. it seems get at the few who are not abusing the system. they should either update the servers with the money they make or at least put in tighter controls. I live on a openspace sim which only the family use and has light use as intended. I also see the comments that are supporting Linden labs. well they can talk as many of them don't have sims or a openspace so really they cannot talk. This effects everyone i mean in europe for the sims they also charge on top our VAT price. The price increase when converted into my currancy is like 100% increase from the currant price. WHERE IS YOUR HEAD AT LINDENS. your attacking everyone where really you should crack down on the abusers and miss users. I have to say if this goes ahead and the Lindens DO NOT listen then the owner of the openspace sim where i live said they will have to close as they won't be able to afford to keep it and i guess this is the same across the board for many of Us. In my eyes the lidens just want to make more money and pocket it as yet it seems the problems increase. Upping the costs is not going to solve the problem. the new costs are the same as a 6th of a sim. and you get more prims. You really need to look at the choice you made and think very hard about it. I also noticed that there seems to be no answer from jack like there is suppose to be either. what is it gone deaf. This is a way to make alot of poeple get out of pocket, and i think that regardless of all the threats and protests Linden labs won't change they mind. AS I said look hard at this Lidens crack down on the system abusers and not the ones who are actually abiding to the rules. WTG lidens good job, I think not

SL isn't a commodity it is a luxury. Apart from those few who have viewed SL as a (high risk) investment vehicle - no one needs SL whereas people need food, water etc.

Although the prices of essentials are going up, the sales (and hence prices) of luxury and discretionary good and services are going down.

Matthew

Okay, so then it's around noon and he's got three pages of threads and thousands of posts to look through...

Not according to a lot of people on here. They consider it a necessity.

I came to SL for 2 reasons.

1) To have fun. SL is still fun. "IF" SL survives, it will probably continue to be fun.

2) To see how the Internet will develop, with Virtual Worlds playing a central role. We are still in the Pre-Cambrian phase, with rapid and diverse evolution. This will be followed by mass extinction of most of the unworkable business models for virtual worlds.

You can bet your sweet bippy that LL's competitors will be reading this thread (and probably laughing). LL has promoted SL as a business tool for training, marketing, etc., as well as being fun for the casual user. The in-world economy has been a fascinating lab experiment. This is why the big players, such as IBM, Nissan and Vodafone, are in SL. To test the waters.

LL have made some imaginative leaps over the past few years. What is frustrating is that they have made some really, really, dumb business mistakes that anyone running a business should never make. A 66% price hike is one of the worst.

LL sees itself as a benign ruler of a world; this view is so entrenched that LL fails to see the real picture; that they are a business supplying customers, and customers can never be taken for granted. In the real/commercial world, the customer is king, and LL calling itself 'governor' ain't going to change that relationship.

I first considered buying land in late 2006 - indeed, I was going to 'buy' (i.e. rent from LL) a Sim. The huge price hike in late 2006 rang the first alarm bells, especially as LL disgracefully gave at least one big landowner advance warning, enabling her to buy up Sims from other unsuspecting players before the costs went up.

Since then prices dropped again; but the damage was done. On top of fluctuating exchange rates and the real world economy, LL's wildly fluctuating charges add too much uncertainty to any in-world business model.

My non-purchase is LL's financial loss, and no doubt I am not alone in refraining from purchasing a Sim.

So, rather that set up a big in-world business, I experiment on a small scale, and learn from my (and other player's) experiences. No doubt many others do the same. We are playing for time, gaining a better understanding of how virtual worlds may work in the future.

It would not be so bad if the price changes were small; it would not be so bad if one did not have to pay significant set-up fees for a Sim. However, LL's price changes have been so wild, one can only conclude that they are either experimenting with a business model they do not understand, or they do not understand business at all.

Any business should be very careful when increasing prices; a 66% increase when a recession is looming is insane. Perhaps LL want to kill off OSS; but in so doing, they are creating a lot of resentment in their customer base.

No doubt any Linden reading this will be smiling wryly; at the moment they are raking money in. As were a lot of financial institutions worldwide, until reality recently stepped in. Hubris does not insure you from market forces.

Waiting in the wings are many more virtual worlds, some of which will take the best bits of SL and avoid the mistakes. SL players will not stay in SL indefinitely; they will also try the new worlds out, and if SL does not improve the user experience, residents will migrate. New players will go to newer worlds if they are better, instead of SL.

My strongest reason to remain in SL is that my friends are here; but already I also meet some of them in other worlds. If SL is seen to be inferior to other worlds, a tipping point will be eventually reached.

I understand business and do not begrudge LL for making money; the initial investment to create SL was a risk and required a lot of money. Like all VC funds, the initial investors will normally be looking for an exit to take their profits, perhaps by selling on or a flotation.

If so, it cannot have come at a worse time, with a world-wide recession looming. Has LL boosted OSS prices by 66% to hike revenues in the short term, to make the business more attractive to potential buyers? If so, it is incredibly inept. Due diligence would expose the customer dissatisfaction, and I suspect that LL will soon have a lot of unused simulators on it's hands. That might not look so good to potential investors.

Alternatively, if the investors in LL are there for the long term, then losing customers cannot be sensible at a time where competition will increase.

As for me, my decision not to buy a Sim was probably a wise one. I have still learnt a lot in SL and learnt from other people's mistakes (and, in some cases, successes).

And one thing I have learned is that LL can screw up in a big way.

Exactly!!

What ARE we getting for our price increase???

But last night we were told he has gone on vacation so I suppose he will be reading this all on holiday will he, and commenting from Hawaii or wherever, not.

ok you may not have any interest in this, but if LL does see this through, your store WILL be affected Jenika, people will have less money(if they stay in SL at all)
You seem to have a vested interest in defending Linden Lab Jenika ... why is that?
Can you not see that if they get away with this all other land will be next.
In other words the land you rent will be affected eventually, especially if there is a mass exodus and LL needs to pull the rug out from under us all again and raise other rents.
Its a blatant money grabbing exercise.
Defend this decision all you like, but if it goes through.... watch it affect your business.
have fun with that......

Part of the problem here is that this was entirely predictable - indeed potential renters where looking for island owners and landbarons were beginning to take orders on the forums even before LL had fully implemented the changes. Moreover, it seems likely that LL even intended this. Apart from the mixed messages LL staff were giving there is no other explanation of removing the restriction that OS needed to be attached to a full sim apart from LL expected people to rent these OS's to other people.




I don't think anyone says this doesn't happen but that not all OS are being used as cheap full sims. There are those using OS's purely as light use or scenary sims (about 6/10 given your own experiment) who will also suffer this price hike. As others as said, it is more lilkely that people will turn light use or scenary into heavier use rental sims just to compensate the price hike!



This is where is comes down to technology - it is entirely predictable that opening up of OS's would increase the probability of heavy use OS's affecting normal/low use ones. What really is needed and should have been in place before the OS's changes are throttles on the simulators which prevent any OS from using more that its share of the available CPU, memory and network resources rather than stealing them from other OSs (similar throttles should be in place for full sims since they also share resources with other full sims).

Matthew

Some people DO consider this a necessity - and I met quite a few of them

People who, in their RLs, are sometimes not even able to leave their beds because they are sick, seriously ill.
I personally know of somebody who cancelled his cable tv to fullfill his dream of a bit of land, a place he could go to in his imagination and do things his RL did not allow him to.

For these people, SL has become a necessity. For a lot of people, SL has become so much more than just a game - it has become a REAL Second Life, a chance to escape from the burdens of RL, a chance they would have never been given in their RL.

Can it really be that LL does not care the least bit about all that has been said here and in other forums so far?
Well, I don't really want to know the answer...

its a day later, he had yesterday to response and didnt, and today i am still seeing no response of Jack, And you know what, I am just one hour ahead with him cause I live in Netherland so he could have responded at least 1 time more in this all. So I hope he is standing in the punish corner cause when my kids should do this kind of ignoring they have a huge problem. This is an act of no respect for other people. And even if he might be ill (what can happen cause he is a human also) then one of the other Lindens could have responded.

AT LEAST ONE OF THE LINDENS COULD HAVE SAID: "WE ARE READING ALL THIS AND ARE NOW DISCUSSING THIS ALL WE WILL COME BACK WITH RESULTS AND THINKINGS"!

MsToya.

I mean they are even doing it to non profit org's.
This is such a blatant money grabbing exercise, and proof that they regard us as just numbers on a database.
I know someone who has been doing work with Autistic people on here, and he can't do any of what he had planned now.
Way to go heartless Linden Lab, we see your true colours now!

o.o

Well put Ms Toya,
that would be common courtesy, i mean Jack isn't running LL on his own.
Some common Courtesy would be very much appreciated.

Yes it's around noon on the SECOND day after the announcement - what happened to his 8 hours at work yesterday?
and incidently - gas prices here three weeks ago were 3.89 a gallon, yesterday the were at 2.27 a gallon - le-gasp.

this isn't JUST about raising prices for service

this is about offering something at a fixed price with a set monthly liability; finding out there is a problem with this offering after what a few weeks? and then continuing to sell said product for several months more. Then after several thousand of them are sold "jacking" up that monthly liability by 66 percent - rendering the initial investment worthless and leaving the consumer with two options - pay the extortion rate or abandon and give up the initial investment. Let me see if I can come up with a good analogy -

It's like buying a car for 25,000 that can only run on the fuel sold by the maker and the said cost of that fuel is 1.00 gallon. It seems that this is a wonderful and attractive deal and people buy the cars in droves. Well after the first few weeks the maker realizes that they didn't plan right for the overhead of distributing this fuel in such high demand, yet they CONTINUE TO SELL THOUSANDS MORE and then - after all of these cars are purchased notify the buyers that now the cost of fuel is going up 66 percent- because we didn't expect you to drive that car more then around the block once a week. No we aren't taking the car back and refunding your money and no now you can't sell your car either because no one sees the benefit of it anymore. So now, either pay up or so sorry you invested 25,000 in good faith to begin with.

Don't feed the 8 foot bears dam when is bear hunting season??

I'm not defending them, I'm offering what I think the reasons for them doing this could be. I never once said that what they're doing is right, or that I wouldn't be mad about it, but I just don't see how it's illegal... it's how business works, costs increase, the economy effects things in subtle and not so subtle ways.

Basically I'm just not convinced they're doing this out of greed, but possibily out of necessity.

Hi everyone thought I would give an explanation to you all seen as LL obviously don't feel the need too. To make it easier to understand I have used cows as the commodity

LL has 2 cows

They sell all THREE cows to thier publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by the brother- in-law of the ceo, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that they get all FOUR cows back, with a tax exemption for FIVE cows.
The milk rights of the SIX cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island Company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the righty to all SEVEN cows back to LL.
The annual report says LL owns EIGHT cows, with an option on one more. They sell one cow to buy a new president of the United States, leaving them with NINE cows. No balance sheet is provided at the annual general meeting. THE RESIDENTS OF SL BUY THEIR BULL

Sorry everyone to make a funny comment but what sl is doing is so bad if you didn't laugh you would cry

TC everyone..........I for one will be gone from here

I suspect that this is more due to the people they meet than SL itself, and other social networking platforms could achieve the same.

I'm not saying that there aren't those who would dramatically miss SL, just that I don't think LL can base there business model on one which classes SL alongside essential commodities such as food and water over one which classes SL as a desirable item.

Matthew

have you EVER had a 66% price rise on anything you use????

Don't hold your breath though, the lack of LL response here signals to me that they are planning their next move to make themselves look like the good guys.

Just my opinion though

Still that statement could come back to haunt you

Im an aussie i have a open space sim and our dollar is down to 65 cents american so we are already strecthing it now another 50 american dollars they just get greadier and greadier im out cant afford it was planning on making my sim just a tourist aussie sim for people to see our nature but not anymore
maybe down under in aus we can get together and set up a virtual life with descent servers and software and show em what we can do

So... I'm not taking the time to read all of the other posts here... I just heard about this "issue" and Here is what should be done... A change to the TOS outlining what Openspace sims can and cannot be used for and then a month after the change give people warnings that they are beyond the usage of Openspace Sims and give them a month to get it together and after that month start kicking people off of their openspace sims for not following the Openspace outlines in there and then you start to keep the sims at the level they are supposed to be at, you can legitimately do it as you have reserved the right to change to TOS at any time and everyone has already agreed to it when they agreed to the original TOS. Then the costs can stay down even if people get upset it's no more upset than they are getting at the price increases.

What do you expect Jack to say? He was wrong, sorry and you can forget their decision?

Forget it - he will politely say he appreciates and understands all of your concerns, but the sims were not working properly because they were being used, and everyone was supposed to pay $75 a month tiers for looking at the pretty water.

And, because LL tried to cram 4 openspace SIMs on one server in the hope most of the processor power will not be needed in order to get more profit, it may now be necessary to either put less openspace regions on each server, reducing profit, or put up the price. And, because many will abandon their SIMs, we need to add a bit more so cover the loss of revenue that would cause.

What Jack won't do is apologize for the lack of technical control that meant some SIMs used too much power at the expense of the other 3 on the server. After all, that would make LL partly responsible for this f#$% up, and they won't be admitting to that any time soon.

Does LL care about you? About Me? Not one Linden dollar.