Openspace Announcement Discussion with Jack Linden

Ad farmers did ruin this thread though.

Why? It's true, they did.

My situation may or may not be unique, but I am in a rather difficult situation regarding this change. I teach computer science in a university so I understand the technical issues in this situation, however, I just leased an OS from the ALS and it arrived a few days ago. I started to develop it when this news came. This new OS was bought to set up a presence for a not-for-profit poetry journal. While I need to stay within a limited budget for this project it is quite possible that I could find the extra funds for a full sim at the special not-for-profit pricing. So if LL is interested in keeping a long time customer I think they would see the benefit in converting this OS to a full island (even if it means starting over with the development on a new sim) and applying the initial set up fees to the new full sim purchase. Otherwise the OS I just purchased a few days ago through the Alliance Library Association will disappear twelve months from now because they will no longer support OSs at that point. So I am quite desperate for some help from LL.

I'm in OpenLife now! WOW, everyone is flooding in!!!

As we face the reality of having to make a decision, [keep our OS and pay more; abandon our OS and lose our setup fee; pay more $ and convert to a full sim] maybe LL could be professional, at least at this point, and let us know NOW if full sim tiers are also going to increase in the near future.

To take the fee, to convert over to full, and then turn around and raise the tier shortly after, would be ... well .. just another time we will have been f*cked without a kiss.. and wrong, even more wrong than what is going on now.

LL, If it really is all about land ownership, then lay it out.. put it all out there. Piss us off, kiss us off and let us walk.. but don't take more money from us and hit us with a full sim tier increase in a few months. Get some backbone to ya and lay it all out there.. we can take it.

Well said, m'lady.

Being one of those rare folks who understands that 'land,' while the dominant SL metahor, is actually ephemeral, I neither 'own' - another metaphor as is being demonstrated - nor rent. I do pay an annual fee and I support content creators through purchases and tips and the occasional gift.

Were I a sim renter or 'owner,' I would be disputing charges to LL, based on their breach of contract, through my credit card company. I figure, one way or the other, this is about money/assets, so let money do the talking.

Here are some more Ideas to increase performance! LOL

Flying only allowed for premium accounts!

Teleport and login tax!

I think this will increase perfomance! Because nobody will do this anymore!

You've done nothing but troll this thread in the hope you'll see an increase in plain old mainland. This move however damages plain old mainland too, people aren't going to rush back to plain old mainland after being burnt in this way.

The knowledgebase article you have so gleefully been posting also says this:

"we do not advise more serious use than this and will not respond to performance issues reported should you not use them in this way."

Do not advise is not the same as forbid. The fact that we simply haven't seen heaps of people complaining about Openspace sims, the fact that they have even until this week been selling extremely well suggests that they are working fine.

This whole abuse thing is a smokescreen.

Sell it to who? No one is going to buy an OS sim at these rates.

The value of your land just went from the best in SL to zero return. An OS sim now cost more per capita than a private region (with degraded performance).

No one in their right mind would invest in that.

I'll be shocked if you get pennies on the dollar.

It was enough of a warning to keep me from doing it. *shrugs*

the thing is about these ... so called supporters of LL actions.

They are in all likelihood very spiteful people .. you know the kind .. .the ones that pull the wings off fly's to watch them try to fly away. They enjoy seeing pain and like to poke at wounds to see if they can make it hurt more.

They are enjoying the fact people are upset, Most of the time they don't really care one way or the other cause they have nothing to gain or loose either way. The game is to be against the majority, to protest anything and to generally make a nuisance of them selves‘.

Kind of like a evil troll or a bully.

If they would only grown up the world would truly be a better place, but the likelihood of people acting mature with adult subject where money is involved and people are upset is slim to none. such is the nature of humanity, they simply do not know how to behave.

Usually I wouldnt reply to my own post but since there are now well over 2000 posts here I want to be sure my thoughts are at least seen by thoise posting later since a few comments have been made regarding them.

Someone pointed out that they dont think LL is smart enough to come up with something like this. I beg to differ. Just because they are inept on some levels doesnt mean the bean counters don't know what they are doing. LL has many large investors, usually taking on large investors is accompanied by a shift in both management and policy to meet the requirements of the new investor. Management comes first and I would point to the announcement of Phillip Linden resigning as CEO as the starting point for all this.

Legality and Profit models are the first things to be addressed in terms of policy and I would point to all the commentary about proper use of logos and trademarks as the evidence that a policy shift was being driven by "forces unknown" around the same time.

Once all the posts regarding tradmark issues died down we see the first evidence of changes to their Profit model, in the form of a shift in focus from premium accounts to land use fees. From there the above statement pretty accurately describes LL's behavior, if not their intent. Intent is dificult to prove of course. If it were easy then these changes, one after another, present a strong case for a bait and switch argument.

Nearly every step LL has taken along the way has generated new land use fees for LL while being cloaked in the guise of community support. Maybe they really are that dumb, but you can only get lucky so many times before your behavior is perceived as a deliberate pattern.

Bait and switch can come in many forms, one of which, IMO, perfectly describes the behavior of LL wrt to land use policies that have been implimented since the first salvo was fired by simply upping the prim count on OSR's and making them so attractive, while at the same time making 16k parcels on regular regions so very unattractive.

It took me all of about 10 minutes to realize that I would have to convert my full prim sims to OSR's or get out of the residential sector altogether, surely the notion didnt escape their notice while they were planning all this. If it did, l let them know, and Im sure others did as well.

So how was this a Bait & Switch tactic? Well, it was just the bait, and we bit like crazy, they were selling 1000s of new sims immediately thereafter at the inflated prices of the time. Do you really think they didnt know that 3 months later they were going to devalue them? They were of course already working on the new land store, the release of which was timed to coincide with the drop in prices. Thats the switch, and thats where they might have a legal issue to explain. They knowingly enticed us to purchase sims at the inflated cost and then devalued them across the board, scraping our setup fees off the table into their pockets by the $buckets full.

So where to go from there? Well, why fix it if it aint broke? Lets Bait & Switch again. The new landstore and lower pricing enticed 1000's of idle residents into the land market creating the glut we see now, thats the bait.

They did say they were light usage when they announced them but that was basically the end of their attempts to "regulate" anything. Comments regarding their intended use for residential and commercial purposes were met with complete silence. As many have noted, and some of us noted even at the time, their usage as residential sims was well established before the upgrade of the prim count. So this silence from LL can be interpreted as just part of the Bait.. "we warned them... shhhh. Lets see if they bite"

Since then any attempt to get LL to talk about issues related to Private Island sales has been completely ignored, they dont even acknowledge having seen the comments as they shifted their focus to mainland beautification and the release of new continents for the next phase in what is arguably a brilliant idea, even if its rife with fraud from the outset.

And now the switch, again. Land values have plummetted to the point where no one can sell an island for a dollar even at fees that barely cover tiers. Obviously that means landowners will have stopped buying them in the land store for the most part and the growth in fees to LL will have dried up yet again. Since growth is what every investor wants to see its tme to figure out how to get things moving again...

"Hey we warned you about the limited usage and now we have to up the fees to cover the cost of the burden on the infrastructure, blah blah blah".

67% is not only honorous, its deliberate. It means that nearly anyone that bought into this product has been devalued to... $0. Again they have waited until they squeezed the last drops out of the demand before they announce their plan to fix the problem and "improve things for the benifit of the community". Again they scrape all the fees off the table into their not-quite-overflowing-anymore coffers and talk about how blue the skies will be.

The only reasonable thing to do for most of us will be to abandon or convert. Oh more fees for LL? Purely coincidental. More empty rackspace? Well its a darn good thing they had the presence of mind to have started cleaning up the mainland and adding all those nice new shiny yellow patches on the map for the residents that will be put off their homes to come and setlle on. Oh, more fees for LL? Purely coincidental.

All for the good of the community, and all so well timed.

This behavior is not only transparent but I believe it should be actionable. I join in urging you all to consider contacting the California States Attorneys Gerneral's office and filing a complaint if this goes through. I also suggest a bit of patience while we wait for LL to digest the reaction and give them a chance to consider a more moderate approach.

Ive contacted the Ca AG's office and, if this is implimented, will be filing a complaint myself. The phone number is useless, they will refer you to the website. Their complaint filings are not taken over the phone. The web site for filiing a complaint is:

http://ag.ca.gov

Click contact us. click "contact us resources" in the upper right. Read and follow the directions for filing a complaint online.

do you hear me NOW Jack?

Yeah, maybe you're right.
If it's not sold, i just abandon it.....Let SL deal with it.
Like i said. SL isn't going to get a penny from me anymore.
I know i'm not the only on this matter....

Keep you from doing what Felix? Using the prim allocation you've paid for?

No. Kept me from starting a business renting out OSRs to people.

Well All i can do is something that most prolly others will do i used my void/opensim to live on as land prices are riduculous especially when you already tax the european markets (incidently off topic Have you actually been paying those collected Taxes to the various governments? cos if u been avoiding it i hope u have golden parachutes cos pleading ignorance wont save you doing extended holidays behind bars)..that done
I used my sim also for building new projects to sell in shops but with this hike we can do littel to afford such Idiocy i feel sorry for all those landowners in a way as i see floods of abandoned land on markets soon and nobody will want to invest another Dime in this place as value for money there is none in my book so with reluctance i will be throwing away yet again more money as i abandon my sim yet again thats like 6000USd i have spent on this so called second life i invested and as we are all your investors i feel the payback that is coming you as a company are doing what greed has done in RL a credit Crunch a reccession is only future i see for Linden labs..
Do not make Microsofts mistake into woolly thinking that you can monopolise everybody ok u have your fans but those that matter most to you the real creators of second life will only take soo much abuse before abandoning.
SUCH A WASTE OF TALENT ARE YOU PREPARED TO TURN YOUR CREATIVE WORLD INTO A FIASCO?

Actually.. I like this idea. I would be willing to pay a bit more than this for it. But, I would want to own it. As a full Island. Most people, given the choice would avoid Linden land for the previously stated reasons. Lag, abuse, ugliness. It doesn't matter how much lipstick they put on these pigs, they are still mostly ugly. Granted they need to continue to sell mainland to live, but maybe they need to readjust their business plan on these.

It would be nice to have a medium use sim, light living, recreational use that a few friends could build on, live on, and maybe have a shop on, or just as a club. Limit the prims.. 7500 as said. Limit the resources if need be, and sell them for a reasonable cost. I am sure a lot of people would jump at it. Drop the number of prims, throttle the scripts and leave, or drop the price on the openspace sims. This opens up more income to Linden, as it builds more options for users to explore.

I also believe they need to allow the not for profits, the educators and such a break. We can all help to bring people in.

Enjoy

I wonder why the Governor set this sim Mos Ainsley to "down" .... lmao....... its an OSS with heavy use, and we shall pay for that.

btw, Jack, when will we be called to reduce Draw distance to 64 m to reduce lag?

huggs
Anny

And there are people in OpenLife!!!! SOOOO good to see people swarming around the welcome area!!! This is how you make LL listen. Walk away and support up and coming and open source grids. Learn to live without some of the comforts you've grown to enjoy in SL and support the competition. We all know LL sorely needs it!!

I make extensive use of water and other light-use areas, where the owners may have sets of OS sims. They are some of the saving graces of SL. No matter what other nonsense may be going on, I always have these areas to go sailing, swimming, or just hang out on a beach with friends.

These can't make any money, and I suspect that given the numbers of them I see under common ownership their tier is carefully budgeted.

This price increase will cause many of these areas to go away, and that can't be a good thing -- a major piece of SL's appeal is to have places to explore and just "be" which are surprisingly beautiful and inviting for a hosted reality (not just crowded clubs, RP areas, or shopping districts).

Think about living in a crowded city or suburb, as many of us do IRL -- where do we want to go to kick back and have had enough of unfamiliar faces?

Additionally, the over-consumption of OS sims for residences should be instructive (half my friends seem to own one...). People *want* to have places to call home in SL to entertain and play -- really badly -- and when they do they will invite others into SL and quite possibly start businesses, etc. (trickle-up economics?).

There is a fraction of typical RL, disposable income the average resident can't justify going beyond, however, but at that level (which I suspect tops out at where OS sims were priced) they can't get the space and prim count to create an inviting place of their own unless they're skilled/experienced builders.

This suggest the current balance of pricing/area/prim count will inhibit account retention and increase land turnover in the long run. Please consider biting the bullet on the OS pricing, or coming up with another solution.

Maybe steps like these would be useful, as well:

- Give OS estate owners visibility into the other sims on the same server so they might deal with the other owners directly when issues arise. If anything, low-use residence owners might be able to help over-users or put pressure on them somehow.
- More flexible performance monitoring and control features. Right now it's possible to identify errant scripts, but the UI could be more helpful. Additionally, estates could provide their owners with alerts and delivered summaries of performance, possibly triggering script suspension or agent limits when desired parameters are exceeded.
- Differentiate OS sims into sea, mixed, and sky with structural and altitude limitations. "sea" sims can't have any land/objects above the water or a suitably low height, "sky" sims can't have any objects, and mixed are limited in altitude to (e.g.) 500m. For consistency, allow these to share boundaries only with others of the same type (or full islands?).

...anyway, thank you for this discussion, and I hope something good will come of this in the end.

I agree i don't mind paying the extra for more prims,but to pay extra for nothing is not right.

Another error of the logic here



We dont ADVISE sim for heavier use... AND won't respond to support requests.


So to my analysis that means........ We allow you to do what you want and we know you will and complain about it but we won't answer.


So in essence that is proof right there that you KNEW people would use it for uses other than what you advised, setting out a warning that you wouldn't support it.


And I might add you sure did respond to performance questions. You sure did!!!

I don't read it that way at all, particularly when they explicitly list "boating". I don't know if you've been boating in RL, but it's definitely in the "hanging out" category.
If the idea is that you're supposed to go "OMG, I'm in an OpenSim, better not stop here" that's just horribly impractical, unnatural, inconceivable, implausible, and violates all the laws of human nature and common sense.

Not anymore, it's a full sim now.

There is no way that upping the price by over 50% for the same lackluster performance will cure the problem. What will cure the problem is Linden Labs actually defining what the real expectations are, not throwing something out here knowing that its going to fail and then saying "Let's price gouge everyone for our error".

It does not take rocket science to figure out that the servers are overloaded, poorly setup at best as we all know from "other" server failures. Oh and I guess no one in the upper reaches of the labs has noticed global economic meltdown as of late either, which only serves to verify the short sightedness of management.

"New & Improved" leadership?, hardly looks like the same old "Business as Usual" mentality. Question for Jack Linden and your staff, "How many times will it take for us to be stabbed in the back, or given empty promises before you sit around with no one to charge?"

Is it about those stock options and investor dividends or about the people who pay to enjoy being creative here and making Second life a haven for creativity and fun? For when we leave the grid how will you pay those anonymous investors?

Ponder your actions wisely before penalizing everyone for the few, don't be so quick to put arbitary policies in without including the people most affected, us, its we who have the stake in the future of Linden Labs.

It is said "Those who fail to study history are condemned to repeat it", I suggest you study your past and choose wisely.