Neither for or against the charges

Personally I am not affected by the price hike of the OS sims. I can understand the anger by those who are. And yet at the same time the estate managers knew they were breaking the rules. C'mon lets look at the name...OPEN SPACE. It is not called a residential space or a business space or anything else like that. It clearly states that it is light use and it has since the beginning, you can argue all day and all night what that really means. But in the end LL makes the decision. Did they think that people were going to use them as they have, maybe not at first but as they were selling like hotcakes it became apparent what they were being used for. Do you really think that LL is going to lose all of the revenue without finding a way to make it back up? All those people that abandoned their mainland and stop giving monthly tiers to LL and moved to an OS. Did you think that LL wasn't going to notice the money they were losing at some point?

How many here left the mainland because of lack of privacy or just the lack of regulation to rent land on a full sim or an open space sim? Let's be honest and think about it. LL is not a large company but it does have a large user base. It is losing money daily thanks to people renting and not owning land. All of the estate owners are talking about how they are getting screwed. Land is an investment and sometimes a risky one. As for the people who were using the sims according to how LL would like and are experiencing a rate hike no I do not think that is fair. It was suggested that LL make 3-4 different types of sims and price them accordingly. I think that is the best solution to this problem.

Some people will agree with me and most will not. And yes I do understand that thousands of real dollars are potentially being lost here and I think LL understands that too. Will they come up with a solution that will please everyone? No, since not everyone can be pleased in the same way. Will most? I think so eventually. LL did a bad job handling this, will they try to fix this, I think so. Put your pitchforks down and wait to hear what they say.

Actually before they were called "Openspaces" they were called... "Low Prim Sims"... which is exactly what they are being used for in the majority of cases; in an area where a full region's power isn't required.

Let's step back and look at this logically, shall we?

Educational/not for profit sims are being operated at a discounted cost, but not at all subsidised by LL - they just don't make much (if any) profit from running them. Thefore what they're charging for non-discounted regions is really just pure profit.

back to your crib.

You MIGHT have had a point, if LL had not built things like monsterous areas like Mos Ainsley on "opensims" for all to see. Or if LL had not increased the prim count - empty sims do not need 3750 prims available. Or if LL didn't allow anyone to place the sim anyplace on the grid instead of only adjacent to islands owned by the purchaser.

Try again.

How are LL losing money by people renting and not buying? For people to rent in the first place there has to be a buyer and surely easier to deal with a smaller number of large transactions than millions of tiny ones?

Don't feel sorry for LL on the finance side, a full mainland sim is $199 tier, a full ungrandfathered private estate is $299 tier ..... and a quad of OS sims will be equivalent of $500 tier for the same resources if the price hike goes ahead.

They are losing money because if you have a thousand people that previously were paying mainland tiers and are now paying money to an estate to rent then they are losing the money that they were making tiers on. Yes they are still making monthly tiers but nowhere near as much as if they were getting the monthly mainland tiers.

And as for the other comments about people being able to create islands wherever....I did not say that they had made the right decision in doing that.


I am just tired of everyone picking up their pitchforks and screaming that LL has screwed them. I seriously doubt that it was their intetntion. However now they are losing money and looking for a way to recoup their losses.

I still fail to see how you work out that they are losing money. Private estates cost more in tier than mainland (unless grandfathered islands which cost the same), plus mainland, unless abandoned, is always owned privately and tier being paid even if not in use.

A lot of people have invested money buying OS sims they can now not afford to keep. At $250 to purchase before you pay your tier. Many people have invested thousands of $US in them and will not be able to meet the monthly tier rise as their customers will not be able to afford to stay on.

Ok Imagine you have a thousand people paying the minimum of $5 for a 1024. That is $5000 a month that they were getting. Now imagine those thousand people renting to someone else and they are now getting $0. The estate owns the land...not those individual people. Yes they make the money for the estate owners' tier....but not the money the estate owner is charging for them to live there. Does that make sense?

You're forgetting support costs. In some ways, the estate owners act as a free support team for Linden. The good ones help their people, answer questions, give new users more purpose, establish communities that help other users and contribute to good word of mouth and adverising. Of course, this is not true for all estate owners.

Another thing is that many estate owners don't rent out all their land for tier or have vacancies, but they still pay the tier to Linden for that land. If Linden owns it directly, then they get no income for unrented land or community projects.

If people only owned mainland, then Linden would need to consider increasing its support staff, community projects, and such.

Firelight

Maryssa, you clearly have no clue how LL works.

Here is the deal. In mainland, the simulators are always in place. You can buy land from the lindens to the tune of 195$ per sim per month. You then can rent out the land to whoever you like - LL gets 195$ per month.

On private parcels (islands) you have to pay 295$ per sim per month. The server is not installed already -- LL has to put it in a rack and hook it up. When they do, they get 295$ a month for the island. You then can rent out the land to whoever you like - LL gets 295$ per month.

Just because someone is renting in a private sim doesn't mean LL gets nothing. They get 295$ from the island owner every month, just like they get 195$ from mainland sim owners every month. When you pay rent, you pay this tier and a little bit extra. No matter where you rent you are indirectly paying the monthly tier on the land you are renting, money that goes to LL.

The rumor is that LL wants to stop people from leaving the mainland, because the servers have to be powered and running all the time even if nobody owns the land there. So LL is concerned about paying for servers that nobody is living on. While I sympathize with them and want LL to succeed, the first question should not be "how can we shaft our paying customers?", but should be "why don't people want to live on the mainland anymore?"

No, you still make no sense saying LL are losing money. Estate owners renting out are only middle men who pay their tier to LL which is higher than mainland tier, they make their money buy adding to the price when renting out.

If you are a manufacturer of say televisions, you sell your televisions directly to the public and also through shops at the same price or even higher ... which way would you actually prefer? Dealing with say 1000 shops accounts or 1m single customers monthly?

Can I ask what area of expertise you are coming from? Any economist will tell you that it is not just people who own these things that will be impacted. The Ripple effect will, in time, likely reach all residents. And unless you are spending zero linden in Second Life and contributing in no way to the economy of said platform, it will have an impact to you in some way of another.

Very sorry it has made you tired and also incorrect statement - I don't think everybody has screamed/used pitchforks - many have used valid argument, discussion points, and postings to define their concerns.

your logic will work only if you meant that you will stick those 1000 people in 1 plot of 1024m and i dont think people like to be canned beans.
if the 1000 people bought 1000 plot on main land then they will need same space size on opensims if they moved to there, and by that it means bigger land and more tier to pay.

That money is only lost if those people leave Second Life. If an estate owner attracts those people to his sim and buys his sim based on those potential renters then Linden Lab do very nicely out of it. They no longer need to offer support to those residents who have moved, they no longer need to take care of billing for those residents but the money is still in circulation and coming to Linden Lab.

If on the other hand those people leave, then the estate owner has an empty sim so he closes down too and then Linden Lab are losing out.

I'd agree with you about the use of Openspaces if it hadn't been for the fact that for months and months people had been making blog comments on the official blog, discussing on the forums and talking about in office hours the fact that openspaces weren't being used as the blurb described. Estate owners raised concerns about openspaces and the impact that had on the full sim rental market. Linden Lab ignored all these discussions, so we had a custom and practice issue and estate owners decided to turn some of their full sims into openspaces because that's where the market was and as Linden Lab were not taking any action, heck it must be ok.

Until this last week when Linden Lab extremely disingenously tried to say "Hey they weren't meant for this usage". They sold them like hot cakes based on their current usage and they know it.

As I said in my first post I knew my views would not be popular. I am neutral in this discussion. I understand that people are angry and some have a right to be. I think some have blown this out of proprtion. I am siding with no one. But if you use your brain you will realize that LL is losing money and trying to find a way to get it back. Did I say they were going about it the right way? No, merely that this is what is happening.

I think that there were some fantastic suggestions given by people. This situation needs to be resolved in a way that most will accept. Not everyone will think it is fair but you can never please everyone. I am not stupid and I realize that this will affect everyone in the game. Key word Game. I play SL because I love the game, not because I want to make money off of it. I realize that some use it as an income and more power to them, but most are here for fun. Those of us who are here for fun are not as affected as those who use it as a business.

I am not comparing people to a can of beans? Have you watched You've Got Mail lately? It was an example to use so that what I was saying would make sense to Denise since the way I was saying it was not making sense to her. And yes I think most people who moved to an OS had more land. LL is probably losing a minimum of $50k a month, otherwise they would not have jumped in to put a halt to it.

I can see both sides of the coin, but most people cannot. And they are getting hurt in the pocket where it hurts the most. I can understand being angry and I can understand wanting to vent. LL is asking people to give the constructive criticism. I am not saying don't be angry, I am saying think about the reasons this is happening. Look beyond the surface.

LL has been around for years, they will find a way to figure this out. They do not want to end up in court and they do not want to lose thousands of customers.

I love your optimistic viewpoint I have to give you that and your faith in Linden Research. Sadly, I think you may want to research more into the mechanics, history of communication and decision making and the actual data figures rather than guessimetrics. (Although you will never get the actual data figures) to have a more accurate viewpoint on the situation. And that is from somebody who is generally pro-platform and a developer on it.

And whilst I might agree no company wants to end up in court, nor lose customers - sometimes strategic decisions are made that relate to direction of platform over micro elements within that such decisions cause.

Your first sentence I think it was made your post rather unliked in the OP. And, as I said if you are spending any Linden Dollars in game, you will be affected in the near future as will your fellow residents. And whilst you *personally* feel that way - I perfer to consider my fellow resident as well as self.

I am holding further opinion until the final posting on the blog today - that will be when all final opinions from residents are likely to be formed.

I agree with everything that LL has implemented, yeah there will be those that just love to push back and thats why i say good work LL. Can you just now, provide a fix that will keep me from Crashing 6 or 7 times a day lol. I will pay you with donuts..............