My thread on this mess..

Everybody's got their own thread here.. Here's mine on what I think should happen.

As soon as possible, like work the weekend if you have to, LL should release viewer patches to the currently supported viewers so that residents can see what type of sim they're on and are _told_ what type of sim they're on in the Buy Land dialog. These are VWR-8768 and VWR-8770, both now over 2 months old and still not assigned. No need to change the sim - have the viewer do the math and figure it out for now.

LL should start working to define and implement throttles in the sim code very soon. Throttles like this are not easy to code - residents shouting "just do it!!!" over and over should just please STFU and let LL work on it.

Bonus: I'd really like to see some of the big brained Lindens get their own forum here (sorry Andrew.. ) to discuss throttling with us so we at least understand the big-picture issues and can ask questions/give feedback. I'd be perfectly fine with extra-heavy moderation in that forum (sign me up - I'm well known to be vicious bitch).

LL should immediately announce that prices _will change_ but that any changes will be delayed two months - nothing happens until March 1. This allows time for things to settle down, residents and landlords to make plans, LL to do techy stuff and figure out their best way forward.

Many residents should switch to decaf. Many landlords should learn something about the product that they're reselling, you (censored)ing bozos. Many residents should remember that this is the adult grid, not the teen grid, and start acting like they belong here.

LL should clarify the limits to the current openspace product and announce that they will be warning (then slapping then shooting) the more serious abusers starting one month after the limits are better documented for the landlords who were too lazy and/or too greedy to just come here and ask.

Openspace sims should no longer be able to be detached from a full sim.

LL should add a new product for a sim type that runs 2 sims per CPU core. This compares to the current openspace regions running 4 sims/core and full regions running 1/core. There have been other suggestions of more combinations - I think there should probably be a delay on any decisions there to give LL time to see what the market wants. Again, more-clearly defined limits that are enforced by the sim.

LL should offer a price break on the conversion cost for people who upgrade from openspace to 2/core or full sim.

LL should seriously reconsider the removal of educational discounts on non-full sims.

Bonus: concierge (or even 1/4 sim tier) mainland residents having a way into the 2/core market, for their own use.

Bouns: a mea culpa from LL on how this was handled.

Bonus: mea culpas from landlords who have been rude, insulting, threatening and/or dishonest to both Lindens and to anybody who doesn't agree with them.

/me continues to feel bad for the people who didn't contribute to this problem but have been hurt by it anyway.

All good ideas except I think they are trying to force the revival of mainland in the process of this price hike, since many would have no choice but to either go there or back to a shared private island.

Thanks.

Yes, I think they would certainly like to see the mainland growing instead of shrinking like it has been for months.. I have no doubt that that was going thru at least some of their minds but I also think too many people have given it more weight than it deserves. Far more.

Adding another product between 4/core and 1/core with the limits enforced will smooth a lot of that out, I hope. It will cause some people to move back to the mainland but won't crash the estate market. Maybe. I hope.

RE: grandfathering.

I spent literally thousands of dollars back in the day, never-to-be-seen again dollars, paying the incredibly high price for openspaces. Only 1875 prims on them.

Sure, I rented these regions out - but the risk has always outweighed the gain - my second set of openspace regions (sets of four @ 1675 USD) would have turned profitable in maybe 2013 or 2014.

Think I was selfish in this? Think how much money could I have made if I dumped the Caledon idea and just rented out endlessly profitable waffles of 16 flat sand islands per region.

No, I spent a fortune doing it right, and it wasn't about money.

Meanwhile, all our regions, standard and light both, were regularly nearly unusable. Teleport, asset issues - for *years* - and the stuff that people have complained about over the last 18 months is kid stuff compared to 2 and 3 years ago.

We carried on in good cheer. We made good press - zillions of articles.

And because there was compelling content the *residents* created, the millions came. When my estate began, you couldn't even round up a concurrency of 5000 residents if you tried.

We did it decently - no sexual ageplay, no vice stuff. We did our very best. Dozens and dozens of high profile blogs - the Caledon estate in particular was in a television show. Official handbooks, positive news articles all over the globe... you can't buy good press like that.

All of this, steadfastly fighting against the image of Second Life as a virtual cesspool of the most disgusting things imaginable.

...and now, I get to be told that I need to pay *ridiculously more* than I ever have.



Grandfathering is the wrong concept to apply here.

It's not 'grandfathering' us older residents, it's squeezing the current residents dry.

The grid economy was barely growing even before this, because the rates are cranked up so stratospherically.

So should we be ever so grateful that rates *stay the same* in this economy? I don't think so. We stayed at the same rates back in 2006 because when the big rate hikes came in it was *understood* that tier shouldn't be raised on the people that ushered in the millions. It would have wiped us off the face of the grid, and there wouldn't have been a Caledon to be on HBO.

* * * * *

If anything, tier rates should be dropping, and fast. Residents are leaving in droves as we speak, and growth was at a near standstill even before all this. Can any economists spot the trend?

We'll get a slight boost from winter high season, but just wait until next spring. It's not early 2007 any more; most residents aren't starry-eyed noobs just starting out.

Back in 2006/2007 this sort of tier move might have worked, but not today.

I disagree slightly here Desmond. I argued for months that openspaces were being used incorrectly, you argued that light use residentials were feasible. I believe you're right, but, Linden Lab ignored both our views.

Grandfathering is the only sensible interim solution. Linden Lab should cease selling this product right now and grandfather every openspace owner and if they have no technical solution then they start reselling them in two months time at the new rates, but they don't abuse those who jumped onto the bandwagon that they promoted.

Thank you, Desmond.

I've been waiting for a statement from you. In every case I can recall where people were crying about the sky falling, you have been a voice of reason. Now you are once again a voice of extreme reason, but this time you agree that the sky is falling. If that doesn't spell out the current situation to the people in charge, then we really are in for a world of hurt. I've told my friends that I share my island with that I will hang on for as long as possible, even if tier goes up (on full islands). But I've also advised them to go out and revisit all the places they love and find some new ones that they may have missed because a lot of beautiful places will be disappearing in the next couple of months.

I believe when he says that grandfathering is the wrong concept, he's saying that grandfathering doesn't go far enough. He's saying that grandfathering would still be charging too much and that costs should go down for everyone.

Yeah just re-read it and I agree but grandfathering is the very minimum linden Lab should be doing.

Desmond is used to me misreading him so hopefully he'll forgive me.

/me edits the OP grandfathering statement to say "LL should offer a price break on the conversion cost for people who upgrade from openspace to 2/core or full sim."


I understand.

The entire rationale for the original grandfathering statement was that I don't think that people who are treating the openspace product as a full sim should get a free ride, just because they got into the current deal. That's 100% of it, right there.

With the other things I said, in particular about the enforcing of limits for the various products and the warn/smack/shoot of people who seriously abuse their product, the old grandfathering statement is redundant and sorta misleading.

Sorry for any confusion - my bad.


There are 4-5 people here.. People that I will always try a bit harder to read & understand their posts and always, with rare exception, agree with. People that I think are good for the world of SL (and, by extension, LL's bottom line.) You're on this shortlist.

Yes. Caledon is _THE_ model for what SL estates can and should be. You did things right. You understood the product and thought about things and did things the way they should be done.

If LL declared that they were going to charge every land owner an extra US$5 one month so they could afford to fly somebody to socal and physically kiss your ass every day for a month, I would pay it.

Yeah, it sounds like a sappy suck-up but it's true and I'm just saying what everybody knows is true and agrees with.

edit: but don't let that prevent you from calling me an idiot, if that's what ya think.. Really - I'm a big girl and can take it. Forums are for talking about stuff

You're 18 months older than me, going just by forums date, but I clearly remember how things were when I joined. It sucked and it sucked badly. Weekly grid attacks, my mainland home sitting for _weeks_ at under 10 sim fps and crashing several times a day.

Not by me. Anybody using an openspace as-intended should not pay more. You have every right to be pissed off at Jack and LL. Again, it's the people who have tried to get far more than they paid for that the grandfathering statement was about.



Fine by me! I get virtually zero income in SL and I pay my concierge tier from my pocket. Nothing compared to what you pay though, I know, but we have very different slives.

I don't know how to make LL think longer term, though.

hiya sindy!

/me waves back!

If someone cuts an apple into 4 slices, and then gives me one slice, how can they accuse me of having more than my fair share? If indeed I am getting more than a quarter, then someone's cutting is suspect.

We were given 3750 prims, and told an OS uses a quarter of the resources that a full sim has. It is therefore reasonable to expect at the most, a quarter of the performance of a regular sim.

Its like being sold a 20 litre bucket (about 5 gallons for the non-metric folk) and then when I do put in 20 litres of stuff in, being accused of (in our current situation) abusing the stated intent of my 20 litre bucket!!!

What constitutes abuse?

I've been to full sims where the performance was horrible... and with few agents as well.

Abuse is a universal problem, not just OS owners/users.

Also, when LL allowed OS to be detached, it made the whole "open spaces, voids, water... etc" a mute point, they were happy to sell them as hotcakes.

After all, I think regardless of where every one stands on this issue, we seem to all agree a sudden hike of 67% for a product is bad business (others have said it more eloquently than I can). It has severely shaken my faith in LL and their stated vision. LL's actions this week have shown that the residents are not part of their vision. (re-edited this line several times to make it more polite)

If LL is realy strapped for cash, I'm sure a 5% increase across the board would have gone down much better than a jarring 67% for "select few" (according to Mr M Linden).

...
Just wondering, considering a lot of us are doing a lot of belt tightening already in these hard economic times, would it not make some sense for the management........ no, I shouldn't go there....

That's not a fair comparison.

A better one would be signing up for something like broadband where they tell you what speed you should be getting but it turns out you can actually use twice that speed.

If your thought on that is "well, that's their problem - I'll use whatever I can take" then we will just never agree.

LL says that too many people are using more than the plan says they can use so LL is(maybe) changing price the plan.

Just curious, what plan? Did I miss it?

If it is true that we ended up using more than we should have, why did they let this go on for so long?

Then we were given a faulty product if it allowed us to get more than what we bargained for.

"Light use" does not outline what I can or can't do. I'm left guessing. Everywhere I remember seeing info on OSs specified 3750 prims and a quarter of a full sim's resources. and that is what I used or less. And now I'm being told I'm a crook for doing so. Thats the feeling anyway.

When I rented my OS, I knew what I was getting, I knew that things at best would be a quarter of the performance of a regular sim, and I kept an eye on things that might unfavourably impact performance. I invited some homeless friends to stay with me, there was plenty of room, and a great time was had by all. It was fun while it lasted.

I don't want to see SL fail. I wish it would succeed. But ripping us off in the process is not a nice way of going about it. They could have implemented technical solutions that would limit the resources the OSs consume, I'm sure they have the expertise to do that. (Although Jack's second posting suggested that LL is happy with the popularity of the product, and just wants to make the price reflect the NEW FOUND VALUE of the product)

I agree, overusing something in full knowledge of it is wrong. But for 7 months no one from LL came forward and said anything about it.... .except to say at one point how happy they are with "hotcake" sales a few months back....

This whole affair has left me with a bitter taste in my mouth.

/me gets off his high horse and presses Save Changes

That's not a fair comparison broadband speeds are actually affected by others, but people don't get to use more than they should, they end up being able to use less and when it effects too many an ISP introduces caps on bandwidth. They have fair use agreements.

However I've yet to see a broadband isp say that the majority of their users are using too much for a certain package so everyone has to pay more. They either throttle usage for those who are using a major amount or they charge those few people extra.

Linden Lab on the other hand are choosing to introduce blanket price rises and that's the problem because if their product is being overused by the majority then it's because their product doesn't scale and they sold it, they encouraged its growth, they need to take resposnibility.

No worries Ciaran, re-reading what I wrote above, I was clearly not in a great mood when I wrote it, and it's barely clear even to me this next morning.

Sindy there's obviously something that has to be done re: costs and resource demands, with regard to the price-increasing issue (called grandfathering by some).

Think of it this way. Say for example's sake I rented out more prims than I had. When the problem becomes apparent, should I simply stick the renting residents with a sharp price increase, but not even the option of a refund? Imagine what I'd be (rightly) called if I did that as a landlord.

The irony is that had this been approached the right way, e.g. had the Company said: "look, we have a really tough technical problem and we need help" - the entire community would have grumbled a bit but in the end, stepped up to help in every possible way we could.

It's sort of like the fellow that stands up at an AA meeting - he may lose a bit of pride, but everyone is pulling for him. Handling it this way however, has been disastrous.

I'm going to shush up a bit if I can, until I have an appropriate response to this whole mess. Still evaluating.

I put this in one other post thread and will say it again...this is classic bait and switch...you feel you have the only product out there...you convince people they are getting a good deal, which the OS was...they buy and then within months you slam them with a huge up-charge. What they should do is offer to refund the $250.00 people paid for the OS and let them out of it since it was offered through false and misleading information. They won't do that I'm sure...what they will do is pretend this is OK...that somehow we should be grateful that it was not more...their soft touch approach to this really is sad and sickening.

I bought an OS from a friend with a full sim, built a house and lived there and had very, very low usage since that is how they were supposed to be used. I will now abandon the sim since it is worthless and will downgrade to a basic membership and keep an AVI around to talk to friends since in reality this was only ever a chat room on steroids...other than that...the SL project is a failed concept due to greed and short sightedness and a complete lack of understanding of how to deal with your clients.

The only true response to this is for people to mimic real life...economic times are difficult and people are simply doing with less. I strongly suggest the same thing here...stop buying Lindens...starve the beast...it's the only way to kill it.

Lan Groshomme

This really is the crux of the matter. I'm sure there would have been those who would still have complained loudly, but this should have been the first step. The product has been a success, it has sold well, we're glad you're enjoying it but ...... and the majority of people would have fell into line. Well if we knew where the line was, but that's a slightly different issue.

I have had no complaints from the people renting my openspace and I go there to make sure everything is ok because I've always been wary of openspaces and noticed no problems but I have no guidance on what to check other than the usual view statistics that I always use, if there's something else I need to check then I will if LL tell me what it is.

I think it's a perfect comparison!

But I don't have a ton of interest in debating how we got here, though I sure hope LL is doing that internally. I don't think I've seen anybody say that this was a good move by LL. Pretty much everybody - even those of us who have been accused of being Linden alts - seem to think that either the details of the plan or the execution of it could have been a lot better.

I was more interested in how LL might move forward.

Ack! Go away!! Get your own thread!!

edit: Sorry, Lan, I've been thru the B&S thing with too many people, too many times. I don't think this is what it is. If you think this is what LL did, that's ok too.

Absolutely.


Yep. I've said several times in other threads that it would have been a far better first move to have said "Uh.. People are using these for more than we intended. Knock it off or prices go up" when they saw there was a problem. People would still have exploded but I don't think we'd have the market panic that seems to be happening. Sadly, it's too late for that now..

For refunds, I see no way out of this where somebody doesn't get burned. I think a blog saying that they're delaying any action an additional 2 months might help a bit. I think offering people discounts on upgrades, especially if they add a new product between full sim and openspace sim, might help a bit. I'd have no problem saying that anybody who bought recently could back out, though I'd hate to be the one at LL that had to sign all those refund checks..

It was just that giving everybody a blanket "ok.. you locked into the old price so that's what you get forever" is too much of a blank check to open clubs on openspace sims. There's doing the right thing and there's shooting yourself in the foot. That would be a foot shot.

And they're just not going to refund everybody that bought in the last 6 months. Never gonna happen.

You think better of this angry mob than I do but yes, LL took us down the short route off the mountain to where we are now. I think staying on the road might have been a better idea.

In the past I've seen what look like carefully worded press release blogs from LL to explain a bad idea they had. Blogs where they throw marketingspeak and feel-good buzzwords at me. I really, really, really strongly suggest they avoid that now. Instead, a quick "Wow.. We really misjudged this - sorry, our bad. We're pushing back any pricing changes a couple/few more months. Stay tuned" would go a long way right now. That's it. Those exact words.


Thanks, and to everybody except the bait & switch chanter, for the responses so far.

The first thing to do is to stop selling the bloody product, it has a defect. If everyone had decided to pay the extra we'd be no further forward at all.

The second thing to do is to announce the price increases won't be implemented but the discussion with owners will and then take it forward.

I think it was Desmond who said it, but an open waterway or even a forest could be overused, we need to know what overuse is or else we'll never move forward, it's not a type of build as many will testify light use and residency is a feasible combination.

/me reads the blog updates..

Wow.

Well, I gotta say this is less than I'd hoped for..

It sounds like the original plan is basically still on though it's pushed back a ways. The extra time is certainly a good thing but paying 40% the cost of a full private island for a homestead when you get only 25% of the prims and 25% of the processing seems pretty harsh.

The hold on pricing for 'valid' openspace sims is a good thing but.. uh.. 750 prims? 750 prims??? That's 25% the cost of a full private island but with only 5% of the prims (5%!!!) and 25% of the processing power. A year ago, people with this product could use twice that many prims.

This really seems like a big step backwards in terms of what people get for their money, Jack & M.

YES!!!!!!!!

I believe that it is the ONLY Honorable thing to do!