The beauty of the Second Life world, to me, is that it is allowed to grow and flourish without structure or a pre-determined purpose. Each of us can decide what the world will be for us, the "game" itself has no innate goals or purpose.
For many of us, Economic endeavors are a large part of our experience. We buy, sell, lease, and provide services to each other, generating some income, or sharing our real life money with others in the virtual world.
We all know by now, that hard Economic times are facing the entire world. It is logical to expect that this recession will extend into the virtual world, as people find they can no longer afford luxury items, such as entertainment.
In the 4th paragraph of his Announcement regarding the openspace pricing policy changes, Jack Linden says, "We need to therefore take some steps to improve their performance and better reflect their actual usage levels in our pricing so that we can maintain the best performance level for everyone." Yet, aside from converting some Class 4 servers to Class 5, No explicit suggestion is made as to what will be done to improve performance.
So I must ask, .......
What will Linden labs do to improve performance in Openspace Sims, in return for this 67% increase in revenue on Tier charges alone?
How will they use that revenue? No suggestion of a long term plan is given in the policy announcement.
Perhaps Linden Labs is trying to suggest that by increasing the price, the demand will be reduced, ... classic supply and demand economics? Let's ask ourselves, will fewer Openspaces help the situation in any way? Unfortuneately, as the number of SIMS decrease, the green dots within them will likely find themselves closer together in those that remain, Decreasing their perceived performance. Or, perhaps in response to a frustrating experience, they will abandon Second Life for other virtual shores.
I spend the majority of my time in Second Life in Openspace Sims. I enjoy virtual sailing and I make my home in a rental property in an openspace SIM. My experience has not been one of poor performance, but the Estate I am in is well managed and there is no overcrowding. We sail these spaces, in battles that sometimes involve up to 10 ships and up to 20 people, and yes performance suffers in those conditions, but it is still satisfying, and is still something we all choose to do, and to spend our Lindens on.
If the Oceans dry up, I can say for certain, I will find other virtual waters to sail, and I know they are out there.
If a Standard SIM supports 15,000 Prims and let's say 32 people, each on a 2048 lot, why can't a Void Sim support 8 people, each on an 8192? In each case they get 468 Prims, and their share of the Tier is around $9.25
Why would Linden Labs worry about overcrowding? They already have stated, in the Openspace FAQ, that they, "will not respond to performance issues reported", if the Openspaces are not used in the manner that they recommend.
Perhaps a simple, and more satisfactory solution might be to only offer Void Space SIMS in groups of 4, to a single estate owner, and shared by a single server. This would discourage overcrowding in a market driven way, since the estate owner would end up with the complaints.
In the midst of a Presidential election, we are all used to hearing promises. Yet Linden Labs makes no promises. Jack Linden, why not just call this policy change what it is, Opportunism? Grab what you can, while you can. Look at the short term bottom line, and to hell with the future. If Linden Labs has expressed no plans for improving performance, why should anyone assume that they plan in improving performance.
It's a dangerous game that Linden Labs is playing. Let's hope that they have made a wise decision. Personally, in light of the economic situation in the real world, I believe that they have made a very poor decision..