Open Spaces Announcement & Talk with M and Jack Linden

[Read the new announcement and talk it over here, thanks!]

A Letter to Second Life Residents

M Linden here. Many thanks to everyone who responded constructively with their concerns and suggestions about our Openspaces announcement. We’ve listened carefully and your feedback has led to some amendments to our original plan.

Before I jump to the policy amendments, I’d like to provide some insight into our decision and then recap what we’ve heard from you. When the Openspaces product was originally launched, Linden Lab offered Island owners the opportunity to add Openspaces to their land for light use only –- such as ocean or park land. But we didn’t build in and enforce specific, quantifiable performance limits on the Openspaces. Why? For two simple reasons:

1. As you know all too well, many things affect performance of a Sim in complex inter-related ways (i.e., scripts, prims, avatars, media). We were reluctant to limit the overall experience and your creativity by posing specific limits on all these variables – partly because Linden Lab has always been pretty free-form and believes in the innate goodness of Second Life Residents and partly because imposing limits require that we hire staff to enforce them.

2. We wanted to get this product to market quickly. Openspaces was wildly popular. Some Island owners added ocean and park land, as intended but many built empires – glorious builds, beautiful rental properties and other great things. Since land-owners co-habitate on CPUs, if one owner adds an ocean and one builds a carnival, the shared CPU gets overloaded. The ocean-loving Resident who followed the original intent suffers and we are called in to resolve the conflict. Second Life is much too large to do that.

When we sorted through the good and bad in the many conversations, comment cards, emails, and calls, you shared many things but there were three consistent themes we can work with:

1. Those of you who used the Openspaces as originally intended — for ocean or park land — want that product at the original price point and are willing to accept clear restrictions on usage.

2. Some of you have built businesses on the Openspaces product, set your rental rates or built your groups and although you acknowledge you built more than was intended for Openspaces, a large and rapid price change is too much for you to absorb.

3. Some of you created builds that were between an ocean and a carnival and want some kind of “normal region lite” product – a lower price point than a normal region but with the ability to build a certain amount of content.

We’ve launched three land products in the company’s history: Mainland, Islands and now Openspaces. Because we have complexity everywhere else, we’re loath to add a highly complex pricing structure. Nevertheless, it’s clear we have to build a product mix and pricing structure that offers more flexibility.

Here is how we are amending the price change:

1. We are going to retain the Openspaces product at its original price point and its original intended use (forest, water, etc.). We will have technical limitations to help regulate their use, initially avatar and prim limit restrictions, eventually event, classified and script limits. Those of you who chose to use the Openspaces as intended may stay at the US$75 rate, but will need to contact the concierge team to do so.

2. If you want more than an Openspace, we will offer you the choice of moving to a new product called Homesteads that is intended for light use such as low density rentals. For existing Openspace owners we will phase in the price increase for this new product over the next 6 months. Homesteads will also have technical limits for avatars and prims, and eventually script limits as well.

* January 5, 2009 – non-compliant Openspaces will transition to Homesteads and the maintenance fees will go from $75 to $95 per month. We will offer an educational discount to qualified educators on the new Homestead product. The discount amount will be the same as Private Regions, roughly 30%.

* July 2009 — the maintenance fees for Homesteads will go from $95 to $125 per month

For detailed information on these changes, please go to the Knowledge Base.

We believe this is fair. Jack and I will join you in the forums throughout the day today to discuss this. Comments are closed on the blog, not because we want to limit dialog or free expression but because this is a conversation with Residents and the forums require log-in. This is a policy we are going to follow moving forward with all major announcements. Blog the announcement, express and discuss in the Forums.

One thing I learned and others were reminded about in this process is that we have a very connected, passionate Resident base and we need to bring you into the dialog earlier, before putting forward these decisions. The input we received after Jack’s announcement was prolific and by-and-large very, very constructive. Second Life is at a size where 1:1 conversations are difficult and the forums are inadequate for full dialog. Office hours come up short, too. We have some thoughts on how to bring Residents into the dialog earlier which we will cover in a future blog post and Forum discussion.

I’d like to close on this thought: An area of concern for Residents over the past year has been platform stability. Through the hard work of many, many people, including Residents, we have made great strides that are very well documented. Crash rates are down. Substantially. Period. And until this price change, we were riding high in user satisfaction so we know you have recognized and appreciated the improvements we’ve been making. Our breakthroughs in stability improvement are particularly noteworthy because our land mass increased enormously this year. And, a good part of that increase was from Openspaces. However, the original plan was to expand land mass but expand load at a much lower rate. But, Openspaces — in many cases — have been overloaded with content, scripts and avatars so our very substantial stability gains have come even with the unplanned load increase. We are deeply committed to making this the best virtual world platform in the world and we are making great strides. We’ve also demonstrated we can deliver on our promise of continual stability improvements – even in the face of unanticipated growth.

I look forward to hearing from you in the Forum. Thank you for your candor, patience, restraint and willingness to work with Linden Lab and the Second Life community at large. Second Life is the wonder that it is because Linden Lab has always worked together – albeit sometimes imperfectly – with Residents to build this magnificent, bigger than life world we all love so much.

Thank you.

/me tries to wait patiently for the blog post to appear.

edit: after a quick read, I come away with 2 thoughs:

First and, by far, foremost, is why LL didn't do a "hey, people are abusing the openspace product. stop it or we'll have to crank up the prices" blog when you saw that it was becoming a problem? That could have avoided tons & tons of drama. LL lost many points with many residents over this. How could you guys NOT see this coming?

Second, at first glance and hopefully future glances, is that this looks pretty good. (edit: rest edited out after reading the KB article, though I'd still be interested in hearing about how many homestead sims per CPU core there will be).

Thanks, M & Jack (and Katt!)
-Meade

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edit: wow! first reply!! I'll rent this space for a reasonable L$ fee, if somebody wants to be on the first page!

edit: Responses from Jack can be found at this URL, since this thread is likely to get big: http://forums.secondlife.com/search.php?do=finduser&userid=120501 . Responses from M will be here, tho he hasn't replied to this thread yet: http://forums.secondlife.com/search.php?do=finduser&u=1105270 .

/me wonders if we all keep pressing refresh on the blog page it will inadvertantly cause a denial of service attack?

edit: The pitchforks are out again! They were never going to give every resident what they demanded, but I think this is a pretty fair compromise. With my educator hat on, the rethink on the non-profit discount is particularly appreciated.

/me thinks that Katt doesn't understand the concept of Ready.... Steady..... GO!!!



or the meaning of the word "with".

/me finds a nice, comfy spot to sit and wait, and hopes for good news.

Get your popcorn and drinks...

Well I'd say that's exactly how people wanted it-no punishment for those using OS as they were intended and an additional sim lite. Can the bitching stop now please?

/me passes the Orvilles and Hopes Lucky Seven means good news for Opensim owners

/me hands Katt an asbestos suit and steel helmet.

I'm still confused why the OpenSpace prim limits were doubled from 1875 to 3750 if using more than 750 is a violation.

Not Good ENOUGH!

Very good! Precisely what most of us have said should have been done. Thanks.

What will the prim limit be for the originally intended product at the existing rate?

Edit: Well what I saw as an excellent decision turns out to be fluff... After reading the knowledge base I see that these new Homesteads will be nothing more than a new name for the same product. $95USD would be a decent new price for 1/4 a sim's prims, after all you are getting the physical space of a full sim... $125USD per month really needs a "benefit" like increased prims and/or the ability to own a homestead without owning a full private region. I continue to wait for a final solution, I suppose the new deadline is July now.

I have 50% water, 25% land, and 15% house ... probably 10 people a day stop by my sim ... is that a homestead or a open space? If that is a homestead, and I will eventually be paying 125$ a month, then i don't see much in this message(i.e. i would need to convert, and i don't see any conversion break - also this would make my initial investment worthless?).

At first blush, this sounds good. I'm going to have to discuss the needs of our group in regards to our openspace, but by and large I'm happy with what I'm seeing in this.

I hope lessons were learned from all this.

I am also curious as to what the limits will be, re avatars, prims, and scripts.

What about those of us who have less than 4 sims?

Can we turn in for a credit?

Can those with 4 OSS convert to full sims for free?

Why were these questions not answered......please provide answers to these questions

Well.

"Homestead" regions are a great idea. But I really _don't_ like the fact that openspace prims are being scaled back, not only below the current value, but below what openspaces originally offered. There is still the "bait and switch" angle here - that LL encouraged openspace owners to use 3000+ prims by making that an option for them, and is now reneging on that decision, possibly requiring those openspace owners to delete hours of work in order to retain openspace status, or accept the homestead upgrade (which is actually the same price rise they were offering before). Maybe the increased prim offering was a mistake by LL, but then LL - not the customers - made the mistake and ought to take the lumps.

I also have a bit of concern with the claim that, in order to remain on openspace, landowners must "remove all renters from the sim". This is the first time that LL has requires resident businesses to expose their in-world business models for scrutiny by LL regarding the in-world product offering. Is this going to continue, I wonder, so that - for example - renters may be charged higher tier than other users?

Well, I'm impressed. They're providing a product for the original OpenSpace users, they're creating a new intermediate product, and they're giving people a longer period to decide what to do.

Bravo for seeing the light, that is what you all should have done to start with.

Pretty much lost yourself a bunch of customers, lost credibility, trust, faith, etc, all because of the Ivory Tower.

That thing really needs to be dismantled.

They were called Voids before openspaces, are people still not giving M the full facts on what has happened here?

I still see no apology from Linden Lab for the role they have played in this. They sold like hot cakes, there was no rush to get the product to market but there did seem to be a rush for Linden Lab to sell the product.

M I'm sorry but your guys were told for months how this product was being used. To now say they should never have been used in a certain way when they were being used in this fashion when they were voids is simply disngenious. The decisions to allow them to be placed anywhere was a decision made by Linden Lab, who on earth places a forest or an open waterway in the middle of nowhere?

There is a lack of decency and dignity in Linden Lab's refusal to acknowledge their role in this fiasco. It really isn't hard to say sorry you know.

Yes you've staggered the rise, but it still amounts to a rise in a product that your guys sold and continued to sell whilst they knew how they were being used. People should be being grandfathered into this because of Linden Lab's role and if you want to see an example of Linden Lab's role I suggest you read the blog post from Zee in July where he enthused greatly about Openspaces.

Homestead. That sounds just fine to me. Good to know you did hear us after all, LL.

It's a homestead if you're using 750 or more prims or if you ever have more than 10 avatars at a time there.

Everyone please read the Knowledge Base article linked from the blog post.

Can you please indicate where grandfathered pricing fits in this scheme? i.e. will grandfathered openspace sims be able to be converted into grandfather priced homesteads? What about conversion of grandfathered full sims into homesteads? If not, will the price for openspace sims currently grandfathered end suddenly as announced previously?
Thanks.

OK, read the post and the Knowledge Base FAQ that relates to it.

I still have a few questions:

Does LL believe that a lower avatar limit (max 20) and possible script limitations will be sufficent to ensure performance on a Homestead sim that is using the full 3750 prims?

Would it not be a wise step to consider reducing the number of homestead sims assigned to a single server core, from 4, as the OS is now, to 2 or 3 per core?

Why not allow direct purchase of Homestead sims, without other sim ownership? One of the largest reasons people flocked to set up homes on OS sims was because the prim count and price point and the ability to have them disconnected from other sims made them ideal for offering some semblance of privacy. If I could purchase a Homestead sim strictly for my own personal use, and have it not connected to any other sim, so I cold disallow public access, that would be an ideal home for me, and for many in SL. Complete privacy, and no landlord other than Linden Lab. So WHY can't I just buy one direct from LL?

I support reducing actual OS sims to 10 avatars and 750 prims, You need no more than that for open water and for forests, if you aren't trying to set up homes in them.