Openspace Announcement Discussion with Jack Linden

I have been on my new open parcle for around a month now... I have grown to love being there but this new action and price increases will force me to have to move on to a smaller parcle in a closed sim. This is not fair and i know alot of open parcle owners and sim owners that are also very unhappy about these increases. More demand for these open parcle sims should be a good thing for all and not incure price increases!

Second Life is not that important to me so I will simply use it as a chatroom. Doesn't cost me money for that and they don't profit from it, if that's what their motive is for a 67% price boost. And if their motive is to cut back on things that cause lag, I love my gestures and particles and poofers and follow-me-pets. Perhaps I just might go find one of those temp rez boxes or megaprim thingies, too.

looks to me like a lot of open space areas will become just that. empty open space. since no one will want them at these prices. hello emptiness good bye SL members.

Assume that abusers depend on leaching performance from non-abusers, why not solve the problem technologically? Meter OS sims to compute "load factor" and each time an OS sim moves, it migrates to a CPU hosting similar load factor OS sims. Puts everyone in control of their own destiny, and keeps the abusers away from non-abusers with a whole lot of gray area in between. Too much lag? reduce your own resource use and you'll get migrated down. Want to open a round-the-clock club on an OS sim, go for it! but be aware that you'll be sharing the CPU with 3 other clubs. Everyone rises (or sinks) to their level of resource use.

I've opened http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-3344 in case this strikes anyone as interesting.

What's needed? ability to migrate sims (done), ability to meter load (presumably done, given LL's statements), ability to track moving average load (trivial, maybe done), ability to search for open OS slots for minimum difference for co-resident sims (trivial given above), and a tiny script to do the query and migration periodically.

While I think it would solve the current situation pretty quickly without significant architecture or pricing changes, it acts completely separately from the pricing model. Surely could be implemented before 1 Jan 2009, might staunch the hemorrhaging.

So there is a silver lining to all this. I know OpenGrid has a way to go, but every little boost will help. Thanks for the update!

I would think the smart people are at least signing up to reserve their names for the future so someone else doesn't grab them.

Don't sims have to be restarted to migrate? Seems that would be a pain everytime it was "throttled". Anytime my sim has had to be migrated to another server, it must be restarted and takes about 10 minutes to complete.

Since we are exploring SL as an educational tool for teaching college students we are very dismayed and disappointed that the educational investment we made in August for an open space sim will now cost more than we can afford; so we will likely be dropping it. We have our own RL mortgage and bills we have to consider in these economic times.

We have been trying to bring students into SL for a more immersive and interactive learning environment than what is available with plain text chat and static pictures. We had no intent to exceed our allowed prims or use it for anything other than educational purposes. I feel we are being severely penalized for something that is not our fault.

I can see where the abuses have led to some of these corrective measures but it has been tipped too far in the other direction. Linden Labs should have had some foresight to see when they brought these types of sims online that there would be people who would abuse it as much as they could get away with. That's human nature and "real life."

this is the worst case of complete and absolute greed lindens have done so far they allow us to buy open Sims then because they are so popular they decide its time to line their pocket again at their members expense why give all the prims if they cannot be used come on lidens you need to realise its a recession and by doing this you are putting sl in danger of bursting at the seams with ppl using two fingers at you and leaving in droves.

Indeed.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Originally Posted by Draghan Marksman
There is a solution that would be a win/win situation.

Why not having opensim converted to half-sims?
With 7500 prims it will be worth paying 125$ /month and land will keep its value..
LL would solve its overload problem.
And everyone will get out of this crisis the head up high..
~~~~~~~~~~~


This is a good solution and i would opt for this too.
possibly 7500 prims on a Sim, with 2 Sims on a server should be able to handle traffic/lag.
And keep a 3750 or even lower prim count and keep it to older pricing and maybe disable certain features on such regions?

raising prices and such abrupt announcements is rather cruel and doesn't reflect too well on LL

I've been looking for a reason to live out of world, and let the Linden's make money off me without tiers *rolls eyes* Thanks, Jack, watch how fast I either sell or abandon mine

I bet she goes over to openlifegrid.com as well as the others. I found it easy to set up, but not as functional as your set up. maybe I should re look at that because you realy dont seem to want to maintain an active grid. Sorry Mark, I supported you for a while, but your guys are destroying the grids and they can only do it because you give them authority. if you are prepared to ban Sarah Nerd, its painfully obvious your business experts are on vacation, and that is no way to run a business.

Change of owner in organisational (educational) uses of open spaces needs to be allowed of course, as these are not the personal property of the payor in almost all cases... and the management of the region can change if people leave, or arrangements change for such educational regions.

Well just what would be the purpose of someone paying even the $75 for a place to have "no content"?



Are you so ignorant to believe this is just an OS issue? Just charging more does not improve performance, but it does continue with your theme of providing a less than great experience.

It sure is interesting how LL's first 'solution' is a 66% increase for the same OS area. You have said nothing as to clarify 'abuse', avatar rendering costs, prims, or mention any other options. In fact, the truth is should people decide to absorb your price hike, they can continue to do the same thing they have been doing. And after a few months you can come back with the same sob story, attempt to charge more again, and still do nothing to address the true issues - provided there really is some other issue at hand...

She got banned for using an expletive in concierge chat. It was almost immediately lifted.

The thing about openlife is that it is still so buggy, and sooooo 2003. Of course, having some of SL's great content creators move over there would help the growth significantly.

Residents have been in touch with Jack in world. That's probably for the best, no one would even see his responses in this thread, with it being spammed to death by the old ad farmers.

Those who paid 250 USD or paid and rented to get OS sims are not ad farmers.

It's not nice of you to say that. Go talk to Jack in world if you know him. But don't classify people's anger (for another one time but this time is much more serious) as ad farmers.

Soy

I know Second Life is just a bussiness for the owners and for many people who use it to earn maoney. But there are so many people around the world who use SL for other purposes like frienship, education, building, relaxing, etc etc. and so many of them don´t have money enought because "dollar or "euros" is not the same in all countries, so many of us to buy a dollar means sometimes to stop eating a day... you can say to me... well in that case... watch TV it´s cheaper... but that´s not the point and you all know it...
This open spaces gave us the opportunity to have our own parcel (for those who bought one) with very few tiers, and that´s the only oportunity we have to be owners of a parcel. Despite of that I have to work hard to get those 6.600 L per month. I have to say that since I bought that parcel I became a designer, I can practice building, I can create and develop my imagination, I can help more people and I can make something usefull.
Now you decided to take me that off... instead of find a way to give us the opportunity to keep enjoying your creation (SL), the best way to stop wrong uses of open spaces was to increase tiers and raise prices.
Please think about other countries, those countries what are not in the FIRST WORLD, those countries who found a way to access the first world in a virtual way at least...
It´s not that bad you increase the prices or tiers but... try to find another way to give us (people from poor countries) the possibility to keep develop, create and enjoy your virtual world...
Thanks for reading me. Greetings from Argentina. )

Well Snowflake, I don't know really what your issue is but SL has been very good for my university. I have been teaching graduate level courses on my full sim very successfully- much better than other online venues we have used, as well as augmenting face to face courses. Perhaps you have never bothered to visit the many educational sims SL has. The OS sim is an extension containing ONLY plants and water! This sim is designed to teach ecosystems to my undergraduate and graduate biology students who cannot easily visit similar areas. Yes, I can continue to teach here without it but I do not feel I should HAVE to give up the sim that I just received because LL has decided a 148% increase with no grandfathering is fair. Yes, that is correct. For education this will be a 148% increase. I don't know why I even feel obligated to answer this post. It is obvious to me that you have dug in your heals and really closed your ears and mind to any other side of the issue. But perhaps some other reader (or Jack Linden if he can ever realistically read all these) will learn something and perhaps see what is happening in the educational sims. Clowey

First, everyone who bought the voids at 75$ a month, get a choice: keep it 75$ a month with a 12 person limit on the parcel, or they may sell it or abandon it. Grandfather people for the next 8 months with a notice that the rate will rise to 100$ mid next year.

Second, for the next 3 months, allow people to abandon Voidsims without losing everything else they own.

Third, make all new void purchase 100$ across the board and make it clear that 12 people are all that can be in it at a time.

This will prevent 60 avatar dance clubs from crushing the voids and dampen the fury your actions have created. A hard limit on the number of people in a void should prevent clubs and their script loads from remaining in voids. And keeping the prices as is for at least 8 months, people don't feel like you've ambushed them. For those who still feel ambushed and want to dump their voidsims, allow them to do so without any penalty - throwing so many people and their thick wallets out of SL is not a wise business move.

Much distrust have you created. It is up to you to attempt to make it right again. Sure, it's your system and you basically can do what you like. But it's OUR money and time, and we are likewise free to take it and go if you behave like greedy mortgage lenders.

Well, this is all clear for me.
If you increase the price, i will sell it and downgrade my account to a "non payment info on file" member again. I rather keep my money in my own pocket then.

What a joke....
One moment you guys come up with great news about low prims for everyone.
Now that they are popular you increase their price, claiming that your crappy servers are stressed out?! Who's fault is that? Ours?!
I don't buy that for a second. This is just another way of making more money.
As an Art Gallery, my sim was never overloaded, just visited by few. I loved working on it, creating it and more.
Ah well.....it stops here, i give up.
SL is becoming less and less interesting to me, and i'm sure i'm not alone on this matter.

You guys go ahead. But don't come crawling back that you will get left behing because more and more people are moving over to "the other side", where life is cheaper.
You know which ones i'm talking about....

Cheers.

** not much more then a troll who's been posting inflamitory comments for 2 days just to see who she can get a rise out of. She likely works for LL or simply (like the fly that will not get out of your face) likes to bug people.

You Loose
.......................................

Game Over

I just purchased an OS sim with someone who is dear to me. Had we known that there is/was such an issue with them, we seriously would have thought longer and harder on the decision. The outcome? We probably would have kept the land we traded in to get the money for the OS sim. Linden Labs knew as far back as August and September, yet chose not to say anything to the general population about this. After months of watching other people live on them, I figured it was acceptable. What the hell did they continue to sell them for if they knew a crisis was mounting? A simple pause on the selling would have helped the situation. Either it's ego or it's money... or both.

Oh, and btw, I researched OS sims prior to the purchase. The wording they have on the land page was not there when I was looking. All I could find was that it was intended for "light" use. The words not to live on, build on, etc were not there, that I recall.

So now that I/We find ourselves in this situation, what's to do??? I am still waiting for Linden Labs to respond to many of the thoughts, questions and outbursts from the general population. I have heard nothing so far. Meanwhile, panic spreads across the grid. Since they are raising the price to "boost performance", does that mean we are allowed to live there now?

What exactly does this mean?

Lastly we will begin to proactively discuss overloaded Openspaces with their owners. This is important because as with abuse of region resources, a heavily overloaded Openspace can adversely affect other Openspaces sharing the same machine which is clearly unfair to residents who are using them responsibly. We have listened to your feedback on this, and agree that we need to make changes to better support our Openspace users by actively working to keep the performance levels as high as possible. We will also provide some detailed guidance about what ‘overuse’ looks like and how to prevent it.

I am leaning towards keeping the sim, but I don't want to find myself in a situation later where some Linden comes along and says, "Sorry, you can't live here."

Personally I think this is an outrageous way to deal with something they let get out of hand. And honestly, performance issues have been a problem since way back in Dec 2006. It was around that time the free account situation came about. I think this is a bit of a scapegoat for performance problems that they have. There have always been bugs in this system, probably always will be... One thing that does bug me about the performance issues and updates, LL continues to try and introduce new features without fixing old problems. Keep that in mind when you are talking about performance issues.

I hope someone answers soon...

/me sends Snowflake a cookie and a virutal hug.