Openspace Announcement Discussion with Jack Linden

Err - forget the prims. You can shove all the scripts in one prim. That's one of the issues with simulators in Second Life that many people have written about ad nauseam - no way to seriously control script resource usage. And this situation seems to demonstrate that Linden Lab cannot address the issue in a manner which is cost effective to them at this point.

It's really about CPU cycles and bandwidth between servers. Rather than flagging servers that are doing naughty things, it's better business to simply charge people more for the same service without the ability to manage CPU cycles and bandwidth.

Whoever came up with this solution probably got straight As in business school. But even a 4.0 GPA doesn't put butter on the bread.

The tier is nearly equal to that of a class 4 full sim. Ridiculous. And why, (if you remember when the Lindens blog posted about being able to actually teleport an avatar from one Virtual world (SL) into another (Openlife)), should any one consider such outrageous fees, if Openlife can offer the end user 45k prims and a tier fee of less than $60.00 a month for the same bloody size as the full sims here. Not to mention that the initial buy of a sim was, last I saw $89.00. I realize they are just getting started, but something does not balance here. IBM technology?

I'm very disappointed in the way this is being handled. You don't buy a low use sim to just stare at the pretty water effects. You have people who occasionally boat on it, swim on it, even fly over it..

Yes, there are those that use them as a complete sim, just limited primage.. but that is no excuse.

I've three water sims to go around one large 2 sim island.. and now this.. I'm going to have to pay an additional. 150.00 a month..

Added to an already poor economy.

How long have you been working for Linden Lab? It seems that you do. Forgive my error if I am wrong, but you seem to be going out of your way to step into a breach that is filled with so many banana peels that you better have your padding on.

I'm outta here. cheers.

Do you have any idea how incredibly stupid it sounds to have instituted a change a few months back to double the number of prims allowed on an Openspace, and then come back a few months later and complain that "Openspaces are being used about twice as much as we expected?" Just what DID you expect would happen when you doubled the number of prims allowed? Everyone would read it, say "gee that's good" and then add no extra prims and not increase the load?

Sometimes the incredible stupidity as evidenced in the above juxtaposition is truly mind boggling. Yet another in the drastic changes in land pricing/value, instituted with little or no notice, which devastates the investments of hundreds and thousands of residents. I personally went from plans to build a slowly growing estate sim by sim as I added residents and provided them excellent services - to divesting myself of every island and openspace I had owned over the last few months and bringing my holdings to zero. I guess I should thank you for proving, once again, that my complete divestiture was a VERY prudent decision. 6 months ago, I was paying $885/mo (or $10,620 annually) for 2 full sims and 4 openspaces and looking at expansion plans. Now I'm paying zero - and I wonder just how many times this is being repeated and WILL be repeated more and more with this kind of stupidity from Linden Lab?

I would expect that most Open Space Sims (OSS) if checked are used by single people, with a few friends, or a small group. I would also expect that most OSS do not have a lot of traffic. So the apparent complaint by LL is......well one sim hogging the resources. But the pricing for OSS assumes that four sims are sharing one processor...and that is where we are now.

The 'excuse' for almost doubling the cost of a OSS from US$75 tp US$125 is to "punish" those OSS using more than their allocated resources. But this price increase does not affect the use.

It is unclear but seems LL wants to upgrade OSS (all of them?) to Level 5 processors. Ok..that is a ONE TIME charge, and should be "elective" - that is, optional - for the sim owner.

Speaking as a 'renter' of (what was partial and is to be a whole) OSS, while I find this price increase unacceptable. I find the REASONING for a price increase rather lacking in validity or logic.

I've read this notice in the blog and the only word that can say is very simple: abuse.

Linden Labs says this about the OpenSpaces in their landstore: "They are provided for light use only, not for building, living in, renting as homes or use for events". A very clear phrase, that's right, but I have a doubt. Why Linden didn't worried about the following of these rules?. It was more easy to sell a lot of "cheap" islands and not check or review what were the Openspace's owers/renters doing there.

Now Linden wants to justify this abusive measurement, "The overuse of Openspaces has also put additional strain on some of our network and database infrastructure at a much higher ratio than is reflected in the current pricing. So higher traffic to and from the servers along with heavier demands on the asset server, both of which impact the overall experience people have inworld.". Why did you allow this?, Why did you continue selling OpenSpaces these months?. You sold lands without know their final use, and and without anticipating the technical overload.

You crashed the private land business, the owners of normal islands couldn't compete with the massive entry of "cheap" islands in the market. We had to reduce our prices and and actually have to give lands at ridiculous prices (1 Linden for example, good business guys...when you paid over USD 1900 *VAT included* one year ago for your nice and ruined island).

If you can't win your enemy, join him. Many island owners bought OpenSpaces for be sold or rent, it was a bit opportunity to have some earnings. And what we have now?, a 66% of tier's increase for the next January. Your only preoccupation was to make money throughout these months, that's the reason. Why don't you increase the tiers of other islands, and the Premium too?, do you want my RL house, and my car too?

I would like to include here a line of your "recap" points:

"* Class 4 Openspaces will be upgraded to class 5 in January."

It seems that there were, and you sold us Class 4 Openspaces, is that true?, well I will include too a complete Live Chat session that I had about this question. Read and judge yourself please.

8/5/08 1:05 PM PDT \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

MJ: Hello Lucille_Babenco, what can I help you with?
Lucille_Babenco: hello MJ
MJ: hi
Lucille_Babenco: I'm the estate owner of DreamsLand II and Yume Island
Lucille_Babenco: and I would like to know how can I know the server type in my islands
Lucille_Babenco: I mean the server type (class) not the server version
Lucille_Babenco: can you help me with that, please?
MJ: both are class 5's
Lucille_Babenco: but where can I see that?
MJ: you don't really. I dont' think that's something we put on an outward facing page for residents
Lucille_Babenco: but I'm going to buy more openspaces for rent to my friends, and they are asking me about sim class
MJ: ALL new regions are 5
Lucille_Babenco: I know that DreamsLand II can be class 5 but i'm not sure about the openspaces
MJ: we haven't created new 4's for a year
MJ: openspaces are all on 5's
Lucille_Babenco: is that sure, please?
Lucille_Babenco: I going to write my covenant based in that
Lucille_Babenco: and I need to be sure
MJ: ALL new regions are 5's. including openspaces
Lucille_Babenco: ok thank you for the help
MJ: an openspace is 1/4 a full region. they all run on the same server types
Lucille_Babenco: not a lower version?
Lucille_Babenco: for that "shared CPU" I mean
MJ: nope... we haven't created new 4's in at least a year
Lucille_Babenco: ok MJ, thanks

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

Yume Island is an Openspace.
DreamsLand II is a normal Island.

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

As I said before, judge yourself. "MJ: openspaces are all on 5's"'. One thing is "light use only" in a Class 5 server and other is "light use only" in supposed Class 5. What did you sell us?

What will be the next?


Thanks for read this, and sorry for my Class x english

cada dia esta peor linden lab lucille....

You know it's not the truth and i know you'll never reply to this message..
So i can sell to you a mobile for $1000 and write on a contract (with my sign) that you will have unlimited calls from then on... it may be convenient, since you would never pay anything then, after a week i return to you to communicate that i will introduce a $1000/pm fees in the next two months. It is perfectly legal since i gave to you 2 months to decide.. but indeed you cannot sustain the new monthly fees or you just consider it not convenient anymore (and it doesn't depends if it raised by 10%.. 50%.. or 1000%.. anyone can evaluate if a service is convenient or not), so you forced to give up, and i will steal your intially $1000. Is it legal in your country? I dunno... here where i live is not (and phone company have been condamned to pay refunds for this exact reason: attract customers with low fees, then modify the service and trap him in the middle).

I fail to understand why people keep harping on about Prim counts!!! Prims that are static on a sim, represent in data terms very little, anyone wanting to see that, go to Advanced menu and turn on Wireframe... each intersection is represented by a 3 figure number (x,y and z).. when you apply a 1024x1024 texture to one single face of a prim, that adds up to MB's of info, whereas all those collection of prim numbers represent a total of around 1mb... if not less.

Now add to the equation scripts... poofers, texture changing systems, flexi prims and all the sculptie goodies worn by avatars, now you are talking serious data download.... I know the clientside does most of the work, but that still needs feeding with all the gestures, scripts, textures and constant flow of each moving prim location, shiny, glow, all bright, facet shading, water.. etc.... so in a nutshell, whilst Prims are limited... scripts and textures are allowed to run riot....

THATS where the lagg on the system comes....

Well perhaps this guy Nulflux is a major part of the problem...

http://tinyurl.com/6a5h7x (shortened up link to a discussion)

Look for the comments by Nulflux in respect to getting 6000 prims in an open space sim.

Now if this guy has been going around setting all these open space sims up to scam 6000 prims then maybe Linden Lab needs to deal with him and the sims he was hired to set up that way instead of raising the prices.

However the price raise seems odd when the ethical solution is to enforce the existing policy. Perhaps some folks looked at 401K balances and decided they needed a cash infusion to retire next year or something.

I thinl the Lab will need to pro rate some setup fees for the onslaught of cancellations that must be on the way judging from all these comments.

BTW threatening legal action is useless. If you were serious you would not be placing your account in jeopardy by openly discussing it like that would you?

?? i never said anything about a lawyer.
i merely voiced my disgust with LL and agreed that this is a classic bait and switch tactic.

LL why do you keep punishing yourselves?

You heard it here first. Everyone who own OpenSpace sims is a scam artist. Just ask Dytska.

I absolutely do not work for LL.

Also, full disclosure, I don't have an openspace sim, though I was thinking about asking an estate owner friend about maybe renting one from her - this price change sorta shoots that down. I'm currently at the 1/2 sim tier on the mainland, 90% of which comes out of my RL pockets, 10% comes from donations and my cut from things like dance poles. I remember, just last year, paying L$45k for a 512m2 at auction that I owned 3 sides of already. So.. I do get the whole "but I already spent a bunch of RL cash and now it's not worth a lot" thing. Really.

Again, I think this kinda sucks for people who used openspace sims as-intended. I know there's a lot of people in this group and I do feel bad for them.

/me too.

It's simple. LL has shown over the last year that they are dishonest and do not care about having a "community". We are all just $ sources to them, the same as to any software vendor. They see a way to possibly grab more money from us and are taking the risk that we won't actually leave, even though we won't trust them or consider them anything better than what they are - but people like that don't really care that they are looked down upon, as long as their bank account keeps growing.
If I can afford it I might keep my Opensim because I have a lot of effort invested in it. But I won't be investing any more money in anything in SL, because I don't trust LL not to find another way to defraud me.

Two months to do what???

I cannot increase my prices to my tenants,
I cannot sell the sims as they are now worthless,
I cannot get my money back from LL ,and finally
I cannot afford to foot the bill myself.

So I hand the sims back to LL.

I ask again, of what use is the two months Sindy???

Shows how well you know me.. If I didn't think it wasn't true, I would not have said it. And, hey, here I am again, replying. Last one as it's past my bed time and the old adage about arguing on the internet is really hitting home.

/me wonders if this thread will get as large and angry as the ones a few months ago, when LL lowered prices..

This seems a bit incomprehensible. I run an RP on an open sim, it relies entirely on having room to move around, I use far less then the maximum number of prims and it gives people a place to use my products and the community for the RP a place to play.

A full sim is an impossibility and as soon as open sims become unviable, the community will die, my business will crash (who wants a product they have no where to use) and I'll have to pull out of SL.

RP's do not focus so much on housing as they do activity, so paying a full sim price is ridiculous because people aren't looking to live their like they do with residential sims. So the chance to make that kind of money back on rent is very nill with these communities.

Making these sims unviable for resale and jacking up the price means that people in real-estate will be ditching their opensims right and left, so what's the point if you start making them run better? no one will want them. LL is going to divert it's resources to a dead market shortly after killing it? How does that make any sense?

And there are many many communities just like mine which are going to take the same hit, loose a place for people to play and use products, product sales go down, less people are generating money in SL so less people are investing.... it's just going to rip the economy appart and if anyone's left afterword it will be full sims selling residential homes, the rps will suffer, artists will suffer, game-content will suffer, linden labs will suffer.

We could survive a jack in prices, u increase the price of land a little, it's worth more, u can jack up ur prices and it might stabelize, but taking away the ability to resell land from people who run open-sim real estate like those I purchased my opensim from will mean they will want to pull out which makes my opensim go bye-bye.

Those businesses won't be viable anymore, and if I want to try and keep my rp community going I will have to try and do it on a quarter of the space I have. Not extreemly appealing. We could all get together and look at that one building and that tree and pretend we don't have residential neighbors with a hellicopter on their roof.

I'm not usually a harsh critic of Linden Lab, but I think their actions here border on the unethical.

They sold OpenSpace sims knowing what residents were using them for. They encouraged more expansive use of OpenSpaces by raising the prim limits from 1875 to 3500. They further encouraged sales of OpenSpace sims by changing the rules so that they were no longer bundled in groups of four. As it stands, lots of Estate Owners and Renters of OpenSpace sims are going to be left holding the bag for several poor decisions on the part of Linden Lab.

Furthermore, trying to shift the blame for this increase onto a nebulous group of "abusers" seems to me to be a disingenuous attempt to set residents against each other. LL set up the OpenSpace program; LL set up its terms and conditions; LL collected the money. There is no abuse here on the part of residents.

On the other hand, I'm not going to panic, even though I rent an OpenSpace sim for NCI (Nova Civis Caledon). I'm well aware of LL's habit of making draconian announcements of policy changes, and then pulling back from them in the face of negative feedback to something less draconian--that they probably intended to do all along.

Another possibility not yet raised here, is that LL may plan to offer the 125US OpenSpaces to individual users--not only owners of existing regions. It may not be a coincidence that the 125US price they have choses in the cut-off for concierge level support.

Whatever the case, this has been handled appallingly.

I just feel like I've been kicked. I'll be spending the next few weeks taking pictures of my estate, knowing it wont look the same come January, was great while it lasted. Thanks LL for the disappointment. sad...sad....sad...........

I don't think a business increasing its prices, which were never guaranteed to begin with, would fall under "Anti-Trust". What business does not increase its prices now and again?

A sim in SL is a luxury item, not a necessity of life. It's not as if LL is price fixing baby formula at an exhorbitant rate. Shall we call in a team of lawyers when Louis Vuitton decides to raise the price of a handbag from $1000 to $1150?

I think this is a positive change for the economy as a whole. These Openspace sims were getting ridiculous.

Since my original post on this was removed from the blog, I'll repost it here:

I am an attorney. I don't do class action work -- but I bet there are dozens of class action attorneys just licking their chops over this one.

And I'll add this:

We may be witnesses the beginning of the end here. Can LL afford to pay millions in legal fees to defend a class action suit? Especially in the wake of the thousands of business owners in SL that will now leave because of this?

If class action attorneys are happy to pick up a case against a credit card company for not telling people their "payment is due by 5pm" -- how do you think they will view a case like this, with thousands of people having bought open space sims for $250 a pop?

Easy way to avoid it = GRANDFATHER CLAUSE

Easy way to go out of business = IGNORE THE OUTCRY

LL, I love Second Life. I don't want to see you go away -- please come to your senses.

And in the end u didn't replied to my question at all... :/ Anyway i don't need a reply to know that my (stupid) example would be illegal in any civilized country out there.
But it's what's happening here.
I'm confident, this just cannot pass undercover, i think that in the end they will offer a full refund for the existing customers that won't accept the new price, or they will grandfather em (as they did previously...).

(and the price increase because of the resource... hmm... i won't say more, but i can understand their reason, they would never say (eventually) the truth (i wouldn't say it myself if i were running a such big company)).

you mean when ll yet again devalued my land holdings.
its a common theme here. islands are less of an investment than they are hot potatoes.
and yes, ll have indeed referred to land as 'investments', as laughable as that is.

You're absolutely correct. This is an excellent example of Anti-Trust behavior. Linden Lab risks a major lawsuit.