ok let me get this straight

first you guys drop the startup prices of all sim types in Q2.

you sit and wait as people buy into these sims.

you open up a project called nautilus to expand the residential mainland.

now you announce price increases on the maintenance fees for openspaces and refuse to grandfather new and old users to make them pay more than proposed charges to make them pay over what was intended or make them give up their openspace sims



to me it sounds more like you guys planned this all along so that you could make the community buy you servers for the mainland that you wouldnt have to pay for in the first place, because something is going to have to happen with the servers you use for the openspace sims

really im concerned because your running off my friends and the userbase that supports you, so that you can get servers that you did not pay for.

come to think of it, is this pattern of business even legal?

Im concerned here because ive been looking forward to seeing SL become the dominant virtual worlds platform but how can you achieve that if you swindle your customers and ruin what they put into this?

really you all should reconsider your actions you are taking, and if this misuse of openspace is really causing a problem(im convinced that your using the community as a scapegoat and a blind person could see just the same) you should bring the issue forward to the community rather than present a surprise attack on it.

theres many things that can be done, how about you set up load balancing on your routers that control these sims? that way if anyone is abusinbg resources they will hit limits before causing problems to others, and serverside you can set processor affinity to limit each sim to a certain core thus preventing others from jamming into the CPU time of others(a quick and effective fix) and application level, you can have your server software run in a throttled manner in which the usersof these openspace sims will not be able to exceed the limitations of a 1/4th sim and will not be able to adversly effect others, but really i doubt a lot of this is the issue given your patterns and sales tactics preceding this announcement. it comes down to your personal greed, if you wish to expand the mainland you should be going to your funds and saving up for expansion, not tricking customers into fronting the cost for your hardware and then taking it away from them. im really really hoping for a change in leadership with you all soon. if Linden Labs wishes to succeed they need to take their considerations beyond money, and focus on creating a thriving community from people of all classes, not tricking your customers into fronting the cost.

I agree with you 100 % !!

Now I dont own an OpenSpace or a full sim anymore, but i do work as the main source of information of virtual worlds for a top internet company in the Netherlands. And in the course of the last three days you, Linden Labs, have posed me with a huge problem, once again.

Reliability.

I can for the life of me not come up with a sane explanation to my potentional Second Life adopting customers why prices for sims in Second Life fluctuate as they do. we had a price drop in main sims, followed by the introduction od the OpenSim and then this extortionate 67% price increase on those. If you would like me to continue to be your champion and spread the good word of Second Life as the place to be for establishing a virtual presence, you need to start giving me a reliable, long term future. If you can not, I will never be able to take Second Life serious as a platform for commercial investment.

Treminari, I think you hit the nail right on the head. Not only did you provide a technical solution that could readily resolve these smoke screen issues that Linden is using as fodder, but you've correctly assessed why they won't do it. While my thoughts for Linden have not always been positive (to say the least), I'm still shocked that they would commit such an underhanded act. As I see it, Linden must either grandfather the rate increase or provide a complete refund to those who bought OS sims under their false pretenses. If not, those who are victimized by this ploy must seriously contemplate legal action.

Well said..and summed up..

The Lindens basically fooled us into giving them money for a product they now say basically doesn't exist to fund their new ventures while their practices kills ours off..

you got it in a nutshell I'd say

Ok i summed things up, and the community has summed up many of the same things, whats linden lab do?

offer us a dumbed down product for the same price or you gotta accept the price change as is

the only people ive seen supporting this are griefers and openlife groupies that would assume that the SL grid goes under

i saw another thread here that pointed out posts on secondlife performance metrics(posted by LL) and confirmed some suspicions of mine, performance is on the upside

but none of this is why im posting right now, above i questioned the legality of this but merely questioned and did not state where it was illegal(it was borderlining it) however new information has confirmed this practice to be and linden labs current course of actions to be illegal here is why:

they offered you a product and service with certain specifications(IE a sim hosted on a server allowing use of that servers resources defined as 3750 primitives)

that service you were offered is now to be replaced with an inferior surface if you refuse to accept terms it was not offered with before(IE the price change)

this is classic bait and switch, if you want to keep your product at that price you must accept it in an inferior form or you must give it up to a higher price range as was not previously advertised until the sum of purchases were made in Q2

this would have been legal if linden labs had notified users in Q2 when they dropped the startup costs that these sims would have to be degraded to retain prices, no such notification was made, just a little surprise were charging you more with a sidenote added later on after that that you could accept a far inferior product in its place

this is just about the same as a company having a recall on an appliance due to an issue with it catching fire and rather than fixing or refunding they replace it with a far inferior product

linden labs, just as the analogy above sais, as a US based business and under consumer protection law, if there was an unseen issue with your product where it performed out of spec it is your obligation to fix the product rather than pass the damage onto the consumer while your product may be virtual, it is still a product and service still constrains to the same laws as everyone else you are obligated to fix your product, but whatever the fix may be, your product must retain the same and all specifications it was initially offered and advertised with

One very large company whom I deal with at work has refused point blank to deal with SL/LL - this is a global brand.

My nephew runs a record label. He also was disinterested in an in-world presence here.

This was BEFORE this debacle.

Another point: we had load issues at work. We made the decision to cut off freeplay accounts as we knew that the particular ones we targeted were not going to turn into cash - and we also optimised our load balancing.

What really doesn't register with this mob is that their user base IS intelligent and that many work in fields where they should indeed be flying the flag and bringing people in. That balloon has burst now - and Jonathan, you sound like I did when they made the first announcement about the OS prices. What did for me was the rebadging and spin.

Customer trust is hard to gain, easy to lose. Customer loyalty is variably hard to gain, VERY easy to lose. Customers who put their heart and soul into supporting you is not so easy to lose but if you really try hard enough then punching an adoring puppy in the face means it will either run away from you or grow up into a mean-spirited dog who'll be very happy to bite you.

Me, I'm a cat. Check your shoes. I didn't poop in them because I am a nice well brought up cat but you should check if those shoes have been chewed by your neglected puppies or if other cats are just in the mood to mess with you. Maybe they brought a dead frog or two.

I appreciated that analogy, Tremanari.