So you are just going to wait this out, Lindens?

You promised discussion...did you actually mean that?

Right now it feels like you are just waiting out the surge of anger and frustration...and it seems to be working...posting here has slowed down. People are starting to give up the fight. Sims are being abandoned (read: peoples' dreams, confidence, and motivation to use your product are being cast off). But if you keep waiting, eventually we will just go away...

Your product is very complex. It’s not like you are just selling widgets. This is much more intangible in this venture; there are psychological and emotional attachments to a simulated reality. We buy into our utopias, our dreams, and their virtualized realizations. Tied to the success of this shared dream world are real, tangible people with feelings and intelligence. The sense right now is that you only remember this necessary, if intangible, half of the equation when it benefits you. We create this world, this society, not you. You just provide the sandbox (which is an impressive accomplishment, don't get me wrong).

So how about that discussion? How about letting us know what you guys are working on, and how you perceive this issue? Let us contribute to solving this problem. Sure, some people you will never make happy, but some of us are looking for reasons to understand, reasons that may allow us to accept your conclusions But you sure as hell haven't laid out a plausible case for what you have proposed, and especially an honest answer to the ”why”....especially, why it was handled so ham-handedly?

If you are going to retain some leadership and credibility you are going to have to address our concerns, questions, and accusations. Do this honestly, and people will at least understand, even if it doesn't make them happy. Continue to keep us in the dark and treat us with incredulence and annoyance, and then we will probably leave...and I'm telling you that none of us want to leave, so you must realize how hard pressed we are to arrive at such a conclusion.

The Kübler-Ross model:
Denial:
Example - "This can't be happening, not to me!"
Anger:
Example - "Why me? It's not fair!" "NO! NO! How can this happen!"
Bargaining:
Example - "I'll do anything, can't you stretch it out? A few more years."
Depression:
Example - "I'm so sad, why bother with anything. . . What's the point?"
Acceptance:
Example - "I can't fight it, I may as well prepare for it."
(modified excerpt from Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCbler-Ross_model>

I'd say we are moving into stages three (bargaining) and four (depression), some have clearly gotten to stage five (acceptance) as can be seen from the metric showing the number of sims lost. There is time to stop this...but when you lose too many people who provide the society, culture, and ingenuity to maintain your precious sandbox (i.e. people who reach “acceptance” about your lack of honesty in communication in your decision making process, and choose to leave your world for something else) populations and fun are going to plummet...sure, you might recover...but you might not...there are always other options for us users (or as we have been called, “abusers”).

Right now you are the only game in town, and you act like it. It is this kind of behavior that loses customer loyalty and confidence...people will jump ship and you are daring them to do just that...your monopoly will only last so long...that’s inevitable...how will you keep us here when real competition arrives? Not by treating us like you are now.

- dip

The discussion is over. They aren't going to change their minds. They are fully aware people will leave over this. And they know for everyone who leaves, someone else will come in, and they won't know or care about how things used to be.Enough people will stay with SL to keep it from collapsing, and the constant influx of new people provide enough income to keep LL happy, at least until the competition is ready to seriously challenege them, which is still a ways off. SL's feature and general ease of use will make it the entry level place for people who want to explore virtual worlds. They shall become AOL.

Well we can fight on this by telling others how "reliable" Lianden Lab is.
If we give up they win and i dont want this to heppen.

Dont give up! Fight on!

SL is nothing without you and Linden Lab is aware of it so show them that your not happy!

The proof was in the pudding, of course they didn't mean it. They believe they've explained everything in an excellent fashion and made a huge compromise by listening. The fact that they did nothing of the sort doesn't stop them from trying to convince all and sundry that they did.

We have simply come to the conclusion that, evil or incompetent, we cannot do business with LL as we have been thus far. So our small island chain shall shrink by one (maybe two) OS sims in the next couple of weeks. And those of us considering buying a couple more full sims to add to the group's chain are abandoning our plans.

The only feedback LL can sense is a drop in money flowing in. So we are giving them feedback. The more they ignore it, the more feedback we are going to give them instead of cash. Thus, we've stopped commenting here, since we are clearly preaching to the choir. LL is ignoring our complaints and recommendations to fix the crisis; let them burn on the pyre if Ineffectual Management like so many others will in the months ahead. You'll find me there, selling marshmallows to roast over the burning remains.

Shockwave, if your feedback is making them lose money does that mean that you and your annoying threads will leave the forums and the JIRA in peace now and entirely move onto that because that woudl be just great since the repeated forum threads on the same topic all in the same whiny tone were/aren't doing anything other than annoying your fellow residents.

Maybe we must protest infront of the Linden Lab office to get an awnser.

I can see the headlines now:

Protest in front of Linden Research Inc.'s headquarters by disgruntled customers fizzles out when employees ignore them. Protestors retreat back into parents' basements to bitch and moan about how protests were ignored.

They have a VERY different vision for SL now, and it does not include the little guys. There vision? Go where the money is, target big corporations market it as a collaboration and training tool. Those that built this world no longer matter, our incomes yearly are merely in the thousands, they want the groups with net incomes in the millions to buy in, that way LL can charge them prices out of reach of us little people. We all become homeless and would only come in world to conduct business with these new corporate residents.

Second Life is now aimed at becoming the VW equivalent of .com

As for you Gordon, stuff it! Seriously if you want to just insult residents then stop reading.

No Gorden couse we ar not kids we are how have ben deceived by Linden Lab and how want to fight them thill thit topic is clarifyd!
If you dont understand it stay out no one cares about your opinion!

Actually most Island and Open Space owners are grown ups who own their own homes, and are legitimately concerned over a 67 percent cost increase combined with a drastic reduction of services. Anyone upset that people would protest unreasonable cost increase and service reduction means they probably don't have an Open Space or an Island, and aren't interested in the well being of Second Life as a whole.

Protestors can do a lot more than retreat if Linden Labs decide to ignore them. They can stop buying Linden Labs products and decrease or even stop spending money in SL. Besides losing the ongoing income of Open Space owners now burned by the latest back stab of land owners who will have to abandon their OS due to unreasonable price hikes and service reductions, Linden Labs will be losing tons of potential sales as now potential sales of new Islands will now decrease significantly. Seeing how LL has hiked up an ongoing recurring cost 67 percent after you buy into the product will severely deter anyone from buying new product from LL.

Bliss

Gordon, if you find the posts so annoying, quit reading them. You're the one clicking on the topic; no one is forcing your mouse hand to left click on the Openspace Discussion at all.

While some of the posts may not be the most articulate, the fact is, the forum is here and those of us affected have the right to complain, to push LL to examine their decisions a little more carefully, and to explain their choices to us. SL isn't a typical service; people have built and created things here that can't be moved or used elsewhere (yet). If my cell phone provider or my ISP raises my rates 66%, I can go elsewhere, and I haven't lost anything.

There's a lot of truth in Brenda's post, unfortunately. Doesn't mean some of us won't still follow the topic and post commentary when we feel the need. It's like TV, Gordon; if you don't like it, change the channel.

Dear Mr. Runon Sentence,

I believe you have me confused with someone else. I have not entered anything into the Jira in over a year, and that was a suggestion for additional land tools to deal with griefers. Furthermore, this is a public forum for all users of Second Life, and I am posting well within listed guidelines. I do not agree with LL's approach in this and I make no apology for saying so. If you do not agree with me, or simply do not like the tone of my font, please feel free to ignore what I say. But until such time as you pay me to write for you, your influence over my screeds is nil.

And honestly, I am hardly the most prolific poster here, nor the most ill-tempered. I do, however, expect people who challenge me in a forum to have some rudimentary command of the English language. Find your comma and your period on the keyboard and set your sights on easier game.

It's not a matter of waiting us out. It's a done deal. Unless a legal entity intervenes, they will pull this off. There's not a thing anyone can say to them. No amount of reasoning, common sense, fairness or tantrums will change their minds.

Bend over 'residents', LL stands behind us all.

This.

Ironically, a year or so ago, there may have been a better chance of the issue still being open. Back with Captain Phil at the helm, the good ship SL often meandered about, without any inkling of where it was headed, decisions were made, policies were announced, countermanded, withdrawn and reissued. But for better or worse, in the M and M era, I think there is a definite plan and while LL's move's may be disagreeable, they will be lesss mysterious.

Yeah pretty much game over, but keep throwing your alts on the fire regardless..................................

OP, yours is one of the most well written responses I've read to the problem at hand, yet, and there has been many. I have to assume that LL doesnt read the forums, and Im probably pretty sure if they DID, they'd laugh at half of these posts, because in this world of a monetary system, they are higher up on the ladder. Which makes us the little guys.

Honestly, Im sure they also dont give a rats ass who leaves, as there are always new people coming in. It's not going to hurt them if you all threaten to leave. They'll just find another venture. They're raking in the dough no matter how you see it, so a few people leaving SL, sure isnt going to make them stand in the food line at the soup kitchen. I have to say that Im pretty sure we're just spinning our wheels when we post here. We might as well just post pictures of naked celebrities, at least that might get their attention.

If we realy want attention then we have to take real world action!

As someone who recently arrived at SL following the closure of a game (Sims Online) badly managed by its owners (Electronic Arts) who didn't have a clue about what customer service is, Let me say kudos to Linden Labs for at least giving everyone a heads-up that this sort of thing is going to happen, rather than just drop the bomb on everyone in the form of a silent rate increase.

My kudos end there, however.

Linden Labs is showing itself to be, like Electronic Arts, nothing more than a large corporation, blind to its customers needs. Instead of investigating why Openspace sims weren't being used as LL had intended and adjusting the game model to meet the needs driving current OS usage, they instead stick their heads in the sand, letting some old road map rigidly drive their decision-making. Instead of modifying full sim limitations and rate structure to best meet the needs of those turning to OS sims, they simply resort to punishing the resourcefulness and creativity of everyone who has managed to make OS sims meet their needs with draconian rate hikes and service reductions, all in an effort to force everyone back to the same tired, rigid road map that hasn't been meeting everyone's needs in the first place.

In a time when the Real World's economy is in the crapper, when millions of people are waking up to find themselves unemployed (except for collections agents, who are finding more work than ever), and hundreds of thousands of people are losing their homes to bank foreclosures... Is this REALLY a good time to institute idiodic rate hikes like this?

In all the responses to my post the one I will actually respond to is the change the channel one (odd choice I know). I'd love to change the channel or ignore all the threads however instead of using one thread with different posts for each person who wants to post their own thoughts and opinions on the topic which would be the logical thing to do there are hundreds of threads each saying exactly the same thing so to push the comparison it's on every channel so I have nothing else to change to. Even non OS threads keep getting hijacked for this "agenda" so even if the topic isn't OS related it could be an OS screed.


Edit:

Shockwave, to clarify I as I said in that post I meant you as both you and the broader group of residents posting about the issue so my comment about posting on the JIRA was aimed more generally at the group than at you specifically.

Well I reached stage 5, i removed everything off my sim a couple of days ago, and i havent logged back in, can't face it. My SL partner hasn't seen me in a week, can't face him either. After removing our house I told the main sim owner just to take it back n do what she wants with it. Will probably be abandoned like the rest. I have now gone to another grid

Perhaps so; but in a forum labeled "Openspace Announcement Discussion", what sort of threads do you think you'll find?

For someone trying to avoid the topic, you sure pick a strange place to do it.

If you encounter OS-discussion posts that are truly not germane to the thread's topic in other areas of the forum, simply use the "Report Post" button and let the moderators do their job.

It should also be noted that the owner of the ACE exchange on which that is listed as well as having his name as the listed name on the IPO has publicly stated that he is having major financial problems right now. I've known Int long enough to know that he isn't crooked so I doubt he'd steal the money but that being said if the exchange goes under regardless of how honest he is that puts a bit of a dent in his ability to raise the rest of the cash he needs and pay back the people who gave it. Of course he'll keep lists and could do it by hand but it still ups the general level of risk.

ADMINS how long will you tollerate the behavior of Gordon Wendt? Others get baned for less!

and now back to topic

@ Dip: best post in this subforum so far.

As for Gordon: I do understand your frustrations since the topic comes up in all subforums and not only this one. But is hijacking this topic here the right way to express your discomfort? Basicly by doing so you have entered the "can't beat them, so join them" group.

Also something for everyone to consider, and I say this since I am one of them:

A huge amount of the Residents don't speak english as their native language. But still they feel a need to express their thoughts about this subject. Respect for those that dare to comment in posts like this. Honestly, as well written as this one is, I would never be capable to do that, at least, not in english. Lost of foreigners posting with a restricted vocabulairy means that a lot of posts might come across as whining or as saying the same.

But it feels so damn good to sometimes write it off.

If people however find my english inadequate and not up to standard to post here, let me know and I will be happy to continue replying in Dutch