LL Do The Right Thing Honor What You Sold Us!!

IMHO there is no fair solution to this situation other than LL honoring what they sold to the people they sold these 3750 prim sims to.

65536 sqm, 3750 prims, no limits other than that... no support calls for performance issues with the sim if it is used for other than open space, parkland or waterway; set up 250 usd; tier 75 usd per month. THat is what we bought that is what you should honor period. That is what you sold us LL!!!!

If you need to make changes going forward that is fine. People will buy them if and only if they feel they are of value. I suspect few will, but you need to honor what you to sold to those of us who have bought these sims over the past 5 months.

And you need to apologize for calling the use of them abuse.

Bump!

Exactly! Fine if they want to change the TOS for new buyers now, but the existing ones have been downright deceived on this one!

Agreed. I can tolerate the rate going up to 95USD for those of us who use them as residences, and disallowing large shops or malls on them, but the whole thing stinks of bait and switch.

Throughout the last two years, I've watched LL do things that I felt were wrong to their customers, but this last switch is the last straw. No matter how wonderful a product they have created, no matter their good intentions when they started out, it's all negated by this indecent screwing of their customers.

Any admiration I had for them is gone. I'll never trust them to do the right thing again, and I'll always know that at some point, they will do it again.

I wish they would leave the price as is ... and if they are causing serious issues, reduce the resources a bit as we were told that is the problem.

I would happily keep paying the same amount for:

2,500 - 3,000 prims
15 - 20 agents max
Throttling of scripts in line with 1/4 resources of full sims

This should stop the over usage we hear about and keep them still very useable for most.

I would even be happy if they:
Disabled classifieds/land listing to prevent business use
Disable land dividing to keep them being carved into small plots and rented out to many.

They could even just put covenant limits on them like what they have said for the new OS or homesteads like no clubs/large business use preventing them being used wrongly so we don't all have to pay for others over use and still provide decent resources for a reasonable price.

I think I can handle up to $95 for what i have now if they must raise the price but for higher amounts I think we should be able to buy them direct without owning a full sim first.

im only willing to pay more for the open sim if i get more

I would probably pay the $125 if I could also own the the sim....so if the restriction of having to own a full sim is removed.

I would be happy if we were allowed to buy the land (whatever size we have) without having to upgrade to regular sim, and keep the avatar limits to 40.

What I am unhappy about is the price increase and decrease in avatar limits. They are asking for more and taking away what we already have AND AGREED TO. Who in their right mind would think this is a viable option? What they really want is to drive us away from the OS's and bring our cash to the mainland. They are trying their best to make the OS's an unlikely option so we opt for full sim or mainland instead. I have never known such an unscrupulous and greedy company.

"Homesteads will also have technical limits for avatars and prims, and eventually script limits as well."

So what exactly will we be paying for?

I second that and in plus I d just add that LL should instead focus on may be limit the number of avatars allowed on openspaces to 1/4 , allow 1/4 of scripts and so on compared to normal sims instead of rising prices with non sense , if they do not do this then I guess means that the "technicall issues" where just an excuse rto rise more money ...

You'll be paying for a cheaper, limited alternative to a full region. Want a full region's capabilities? Buy a full region! This is getting stupid.

No, Michelle, it's not stupid when someone has purchased a legitimate product, and then after the purchase, the price goes up 66% and the substance of the product goes way down.

LL tacitly approved the use of OS's for general home use, raised the prim limits, encouraged people to use them as living areas and rental spaces, then yanked the rug like it was a surprise to them that folks did indeed use the land for homes.

Now, the customers are angry. Go figure.

Very well said, Puck

Shame the Lindens fail to see how unfair this is

For me it is not about what we can pay or what we are willing to pay or how much prim would be acceptable or how many avatars would be acceptable. It is about the fact that LL cranked out thousands of these sims at a rate of $250 US each to set them up and told us they were 3750 prim and 75.00 USD per month to keep them. They cranked them out under that guise the very day they made the announcement. I personally know estate owners that bought them that asked about their use as home and business that were given the go ahead. They doubled the prim limit on them. They made them easy to buy as they made them available to the estate owner in lots of one where they had previously only been available in lots of four and they made them available at the rate of 250 usd not 418 each thus encouraging sales of them and they for the first time ever allowed them to be placed anywhere on the grid. Further the word on the website said they were for space and if they were used for anything else support would not be given on them for performance issues. Which was fine since there were no performance issues.

On an estate of 9 low prims ( were bought at the higher price and 7 full sims and the low prims often run better than the full sims. (at least before this announcement- interestingly enough performance since the announcement on the low prims is less than it has been for the past 5 months) (could it be someone is messing with something at the lab?)

For me the point is LL should honor what they sold period...

65536 sqm, 3750 prims, no limits other than that... no support calls for performance issues with the sim if it is used for other than open space, parkland or waterway; set up 250 usd; tier 75 usd per month. THat is what people bought and that is what you should honor period. That is what you sold us LL!!!!

If you need to make changes going forward that is fine. People will buy them if and only if they feel they are of value. I suspect few will, but you need to honor what you to sold to those of us who have bought these sims over the past 5 months.

And you need to apologize for calling the use of them abuse.

But they did. They listened to the numerous eminently reasonable proposals to leave openspace alone for its intended purpose and create a new product that's openspace+a bit more for people to do more intensive development on. Sometimes a compromise is the best you're going to get. Getting a company to admit wrongdoing is next to impossible.

I don't know what you guys read, but the thing I read told me that openspaces weren't suitable for anything but essentially 'open space', so I stayed away from them since I knew what my requirements were. 'Tacit approval' is hard to prove to be such, and acting on it can prove risky. Caveat emptor.

Maybe they read the bit about them being ok for rentals, or the bit that said if you don't use it as an openspace you won't be supported. They clearly didn't read the bit that says you can't use them for rentals because it doesn't exist.

"It is therefore important to understand what these regions are. They are provided for light use only, not for building, living in, renting as homes or use for events. As a stretch of open water for boating or a scenic wooded area they are fine, but 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."

Now granted, the blog WAS edited on the 6th and there's no indication of what changed (I'm going to assume it always said that because it helps my case, you're going to claim they just changed it because it helps your case, but there it is), but...

https://support.secondlife.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=4417&task=knowledge&questionID=4235

It did always say that. However you're missing a couple of pieces of the jigsaw:

"but 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."

Which doesn't forbid the usage, it just says if you have performance issues you're on your own. You're also missing a Linden quote, that you won't find in the knowledgebase but is out there and has been out there from the very start:

"Just to clarify a little, we're not saying that folk can't rent out these areas or live in them - we just don't recommend it because of the relative performance compared to normal regions.


Jack"

Compelling, somewhat damning even (For the record here I never said LL acted completely ethically, just a lot of OTHER people, and not 'everybody', didn't act completely properly and I can't have too much sympathy for them, especially when they're very vocal in making demands). But why wasn't it reflected in the KB article, which is generally taken to be a good source for policy? It's either an omission or not an official statement of policy. Where was this, the blog/forum?

Agreed Ciaran, it also acknowledges that they knew they were being used for more than that when they released them in the very attractive easy to buy package and raised (doubled) the prim allotment.

If anyone thinks that they were not being used for more before this think again. They were a year ago selling in dreamland for residential use with 1875 prims at about 140,000 - 175,000 linden. And were selling well - that was market price.

Further here is the blog post the day they released them in an easier to buy package...

http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/03/07/announcing-changes-to-the-openspace-product/

read the posts. Do you really believe that LL did not know the intended use and approve? they gladly took people's money on them for 5 months.

That quote was on the forum right at the start when someone was asking: " is it right to rent out low prim sims as residental living places? " That was the title of the thread.

There was a "nudge nudge wink wink" attitude to whether rentals should be allowed. Cynically it could be claimed that the reason it wasn't stated in the knowledgebase article was because Linden Lab had performance concerns across the grid ...but that would be pure speculation.

You're correct however that there are right and wrongs on both sides, even allowing rentals should have included some sort of attempt to explain that they were light use. There's no real excuse for people not to have stated they should only be used for light use, even in the case of a rental.

If they did have performance concerns that surely was not spoken of when they were touting the 44% growth that was "Our growth was due to the popularity of our newly launched “Openspace” land product along with a change in pricing to make the purchase of land more accessible to first time buyers. "

http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/07/08/second-life-virtual-world-expands-35-in-q2/

There is Tacit approval (which is implied by not saying that something isn't allowed), then there is something a bit more direct in terms of approval Michelle where someone actually says something directly that indicates that something IS allowed. There are numerous documentations of this kind of approval from Lindens including Jack Linden himself.

Jack Linden posted this himself here: /130/cb/107206/2.html#post1042460


*Note that this statement was made while the prim count was still 1875, when Linden Labs raised the prim counts they were certainly well aware of the different ways that these regions were being used (they certainly should have considering comments like this that were made by their own employees, and employees who were in charge of these areas)

Then of course there are other documented cases where a representative of Linden Labs has said in no uncertain terms that rental of these regions as well as building residences was certainly ok. Even going as far as telling people that the KB's had not yet been updated to reflect this, but that they would be. - This is what is upsetting a lot of people, people who based their decisions on what they were told Directly from Linden Labs.

So it was made a while ago. Plenty of time to have had it entered into the de facto statement of policy, which was edited as recently as three days ago, regarding Openspaces if it was, in fact, policy?

Sure, Jack is in a position to make policy, but a comment in a forum seems a little informal. Remember: Linden Labs loves handing down policy. And of COURSE they knew how the regions were being used. That's what bothers me most about the whole thing, as an otherwise uninvolved third party. I never said they acted completely properly, most of my argument is that a reasonable person, reading the official policy, should have been able to arrive at the 'official' conclusion about openspaces. That's why I don't have one!

And seriously, if you don't like the discussions within this forum...go back to Resident Answers. Nobody is forcing you to come in here.

Those of us who feel we are right in this matter, have a right to voice our unhappiness. And I will continue to do so right up until the day I have to abandon my sim because of this unconscionable action by LL.

The only RIGHT and FAIR thing for LL to do is to grandfather the existing OS sims, and put their new policies on any new purchases, and actually target those truly abusing their sims with 40 avs and thousands of scripts. I think every single one of us OS owners would be good with that.