Open Spaces Announcement & Talk with M and Jack Linden

As opposed to investing in "our" world, buying "our land", only to find that it is all LL's, and we can take it or leave it? Frankly, I'd just as soon not produce content that woos other people to be baited into contracts that dissolve a couple of months later.

We were baited, and then the product was switched. Period. They will probably get away with it, but every time someone suggests taking them up on some new incentive, this will always taint the decision. That's what they deserve.

If I own 8 OS can't four of them be on one server and the other 4 be on another server. Then the performance is my problem. OR am I not understanding correctly.

In any case, It does seem to me to be a compromise. not what I like or want, but it is something more to work with. I still need some more clarification though. But thanks Linden, for at least listening and trying to work with us all. And I think you are correct in getting the community involved in these type of decissions. It will still take time to gain the trust back. You are right the performance had improved, at least until you made the OS blog about the prices. Then I noticed a dramatic change in OS performance, it leads me to wonder if Linden removed resourses and performance to discourage owners of OS. Im still wondering about that.

If you don't like the "bitching" then stop reading it.

I don't think raising valid concerns as a customer is bitching. Or are you suggesting we just do as LL wishes like zombies?

ROFL

In over 2 years in SL, I don't think I've ever posted to the forums before, but I really do feel very strongly about this.

Firstly, let me say that I do not have an open space sim, nor do I have any other sim. I have a modest holding on mainland.

However, I did aspire to an openspace sim, as my business grew. In fact, I was quite close to making the move, just a couple of months ago. I held back only because of the way the world economy was going, and fears of the impact that might have on the SL economy. (in case you are wondering, yes the island would have had a small shop on it, but I had a great desire to create a natural paradise for people to enjoy - anyone who has seen my mainland land will know what I mean).

But now, I feel I cannot trust Linden Labs if I buy anything from them for which tier is due. I could have invested $295 in an openspace sim (yes, I'm European, as is the person who would have bought it for me to rent), only then to find that I cannot afford the tier just a few months afterwards, and so having to abandon it - lost time and effort, and lost $295 as well.

Linden Labs, I don't trust you anymore. You will not be seeing any more of my money for land on which tier is due, until such a time as you PROMISE never to increase tier for any products (yes, such a promise is quite reasonable - you know what Moore's law is I am sure).

May I strongly suggest to you that you consider making such a promise? You have shaken many people's faith in you, and shattered others' completely. You have to do something to restore confidence, and for your own sakes, you need to do it quickly.

I have thoroughly read your latest announcement, and I have to say it does nothing to allay my fears. Many people are still going to be out of pocket over this. It could have been me.

"Katt Linden : Get your popcorn and drinks... "

How much will that cost? ...or can we bring our own from home?

Darling Brody.

Yes I recall. And matters have deteriorated expontentially. The Residents need a voice, else I fear for the future and the sustainability of this Community.

Hey M and Jack, thank you for reading all of our comments.

However, could you guys at least consider to stick with the $95USD price per month for Homesteads instead of raising it up to $125USD coming July 2009?? This second announcement hasn't really changed anything at all. I'm sure a lot more people would be able to afford $95USD per month and wouldn't risk loosing their homes. Please take this into consideration. Thank you.

Firelight, I paid 250 to buy the one OSS if I pay another 750 then I HAVE paid them 1000.

I cant buy 3 more OSS. Cant aford it

People who have invested in good faith in estates that use open space sims as originally intended have been sold a bill of goods! The price for so called "Open Space" sims is being maintained but the number of prims is being reduced from 3750 to 750.

Everyone knows that the prim is considered the basic unit of land value in SL. This is an 80% reduction in value: cost per prim is increasing from US$ 3.3 cents per month to US $ 16.7 cents per month. For mainland, we pay US $75 per month for 3,750 prims. This is the same as the pre-increase Open Space sim prim price. Where is the equity in all of this?

BUYER BEWARE: You can expect Linden Labs to entice you with low entry fee and then jack up their prices by 80% or more once they think they have a captive audience.

When can we expect mainland Land Use Fees to increase so that they fall into line with the new Open Space / Homestead sim pricing.? If won't be very long either before Linden Labs also jack up the price on full sims. We now know what they consider to be the desirable monthly use cost per prim.IT IS 80% HIGHER THAN WHAT WE ARE ALL PAYING NOW.

TIME TO START PACKING UP YOUR GEAR FOLKS AND BEGIN THE MASS EXODUS.

SO SAD!

I don't think theres been any compromise at all. The TBD in cpu and script limits is worrying at best.
Also the new openspace limits don't really fit things like sailing regattas..1000 prims and 15 AV's might be a more appropriate price point.
I'm still annoyed that your insisting on being a full sim owner befoe you can purchase a homestead
I'm still having trouble understanding why a product with 1/5 of the avatars and 1/4 of the prims costs almost half the price.

They actually don't want regions that are near each other on the grid to be on the same physical hardware.

If there's a problem with the server or they do a rolling restart, having all your regions on the same server means that your entire area poofs instead of just one or two of the regions.

I can see why some people would want this and why others would not. Unless everybody agreed on a single method of doing this stuff, I don't think LL will change their current way.

Once again, Linden Lab refused to acknowledge to the encouraging of the use of OpenSpace SIM's for what then they were not intended for, by either lack of inspection or just plain old incompetence in its staff.

M, your so-called solution is nothing more then a slap in the face of the Second Life Community. Where is your accountability in this mess? Where is your apology for your own Linden Lab employee's using these OS Sims in the same manner, and even in a greater manner, then what the Community did? Do you think because Jack went through and quickly replaced those OS Sims that is dissolves your company of its culpability?

Refusing to Grand Father your CUSTOMERS, that you sold these products to, which were being used for HOW MANY MONTHS, in non-compliance, shows that Linden Lab was and is practicing a BAIT/SWITCH campaign. You let your customers "RENT" these OS Sims and use them as they willed, then chose, after sufficient were "RENTED", to suddenly become worried about their usage. It's a fairly SLICK campaign, and by SLICK I mean by a snack oil salesman. It's my hope now that someone chooses to drag your snaky butt into a Civil Court and tie your legal staff up until they choose you have lost enough money on this mess.

I particularly doubt you could be further from the truth when you said you were "riding a HIGH of user satisfaction" for the past months. Just WHAT residents were you listening to? Care to provide some data on that statement and not just brag about something? I mean I could brag about my big BRAIN but until I produced my standard IQ test showing I was in the upper 1/3rd of the populace, it wouldn't mean much. SO, you produce your documentation and I will too. For the past YEAR and a HALF people have constantly complained about the constant crashing with your client releases, constant inventory disappearance, LAG LAG LAG, but apparently, either you are blind and deaf, because you haven't heard or read one single word. Answer me this, why do we find MORE AND MORE AND MORE complaints concerning ALL of these issues on the Blog Comments and in the Forums if you are "RIDING a HIGH User Satisifaction"?

If you wanted to make your customers happy, you should have started your Blog Entry off with a little bit of HUMILITY, something sorely lacking in a company that can't seem to answer valid questions or concerns put forth by its Customers.

You know what, I'm tired of reading your posts, and your lies, and your bullshit, I therefore, challenge you to an open debate. You can choose when/where, the rules are simple, no bullshit. No corporate answers covering our butts, no lying, no stating fact without introducing evidence to back those facts up. The subject, "We are experiencing a HIGH User Satisfaction in recent months", PRO/CON. You take the PRO side since you seem all warm with it and I'll provide the CON. So put up or shut up, cause I'm sick and tired of Linden Lab employee's tearing down Second Life one brick at a time and telling me they are just remodeling. Don't PISS down my leg and tell me it's raining. I know better, you know better, and the Community certainly knows better. So what do you say talking head, care to put your data where your mouth has led you?

I can neither believe nor comprehend anyone considering paying 750 to trade up from a bait and switch, without expecting what they get to be switched. This is the same thing, the bait is just getting harder to glam up with the stench already on it.

First a question. If I am to Convert 3 of my OS and purchase one additional for the $250, do I get waived the firsts months tier on the new full sim? I would hope so because I need that time to be able to build it back up to make it usable and cover my costs.

This is exactly what I thought would happen with the exception that I thought you would offer the 1875 prims on the new OpenSpace, not only 750!! It seems you listened to everyone, took there thoughts and thought about how you could even make more money here. I have been and still am in agreement the OS sims (now Homestead) show be priced to reflect their value. But how do you justify a higher setup fee for these? and also a 66% increase is just too much. I can understand the raise to $95, but lets leave it there.

As I was saying this is exactly what I thought would happen a high and a low pricing model, with the vas majority falling in the middle and getting screwed either way. Also you decide to limit the Homesteads even more now and still jump the prices. I know you dont want a complex pricing structure but you still are failing to satisfy the masses. The ones like me that want 3750 prims, don't need a lot of scripts, only need 10 avatars(maybe the occasional party need a few more) but the majority of the time less than 5. Want a house or two and mostly all water. I think that is the vast majority here, and we don't abuse anything but we get screwed. Screwed because we bought into your bait and switch scheme. I really am trying to understand where you are coming from but am walking away with a very bad taste in my mouth.

You are having to many Knee jerk reactions here, here is what you need to do:

1. Forget this whole crazy idea and knee jerk reactions and keep everything the way it was before last Monday.
2. Admit LL screwed up, not the residents. First go after the so called "abusers" and crack down on them, dont punish the rest of us.
3. Provide us these so called "metrics and performance" studies that were done, stop leaving us in the dark.
4. Form some LL/Resident focus groups to really understand what people want and the direction this should go. You cant accurately do that in one week like you just tried, this needs a month or two.
5. Develop a sensible plan that can better make all people happy, and I understand this plan would possibly involve price hikes in certain areas, but not 67% hikes!!
6. Sit back and watch SL flourish and grow and your coffers grow deeper. We the residents are what makes SL the best out there, stop bending us over and giving it to us.
7. Most important...*****FIX THE DAMN TEXTURE CACHE ISSUE!!!!!******* I don't think there is a single texture that gets cached for me anymore, talk about the culprit for your increase asset server and network load, I mean come on.

I love sl and don't even want to hear the stupid openlife talk from people, but you really are making a lot of us want to leave and take our talents elsewhere.

Thank you for your time, and besides this fiasco, keep up the great work.

No! Still not fair!

I bought two Open Space sims from Linden Labs. I was clearly given 3750 prims per sim and told to use it 'lightly' for $75 a month.

I am using around half my prims per sim, running 40-50 small scripts and never have more than 3 or 4 people on one at a time.

But that is not light enough????

So now I will have to pay more to do this? I will still be 'punished' because they didn't tell us in the first place what restrictions they needed.

Not fair!

Agree 100% with this. They very much encouraged it for months and they were getting people querying it. This encouragement in turn led to estate owners converting full sims to openspaces because that's where the market was, paying to do that in the process because Linden Lab did not address the issue, instead they sold openspaces like hot cakes and now they blame the very people they encouraged.

The lack of an apology or recognising their own role in this is deeply shameful.

Punishment is a distraction. This isn't punishment. This is just a business getting a lot of money in setup fees and then changing what you set up and hoping the loss of your setup fee will keep you from leaving.

I wouldn't suggest anyone leave SL. By all means, stay. Use it like mad, rent from people willing to trust LL if you must. But if anyone asks my opinion about investing in land, i will simply reiterate all the voices I ignored in the past. I wouldn't invest in virtual real estate, it isn't real, and it isn't yours even after you buy it. I didn't think that way before this. Now I do.

Remember when you would call AOL and cancel - they kept billing you and billing you.

Thanks for bringing that with you Mark.

SAME SHIT - DIFFERENT DAY

+1

I don't see how this differs from the original announcement. We will still be paying US 50 Dollars more per month for the SAME product with the SAME amount of prims, but with a different name........what a load of crap.

You have delivered the exact same message with a different tone.

If you're going to hike the price up by 66% at least increase the prims by 50%.

I read M's blog and initially felt a wave of relief that I wouldn't have to give up my sim in January. A 20USD rise in monthly cost is manageable and not too unreasonable.

Now that a little time has passed, I feel the inevitable outcome is simply being delayed. In July, I will not pay 125USD a month since this seems like a ridiculous amount of money for what one receives. Saying that, the thought of returning to the mainland is also dire and unacceptable. What are my options? Not sure I have any......

I think you should consider setting the tier at 95USD per month beyond July '09. This seems to be a realistic 'middle ground' figure considering the history of this situation. Compromise is never easy but this value could be acceptable to Linden Labs AND the SL community.

So.... when you say that you'll be joining us throughout the day... This is what? Did you forget we were here? Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot the thousands of you were standing there waiting.

If this is going to be your new policy going forward, to blog then not respond to your own forum posts I don't see that as an improvement.

We are Lindens, we can all we want, You are a group of stupid avatars that pays our salary, but it is not important. Important thing is that we can do all we want in any case.

1. New product is Openspase Sim. Oh, you thought it was HS? No... HS is your OSs, but doesn't matter. So, you'll pay your new brand OS 1$ a 10 prims. Oh.. You have no rents for 250L/10 prims? We didn't knew that. But nevermind.. You should enjoy your 65536 m2 of water!! Oh.. you want to sail there? Noooooo!!! No scripts and not enough prims for 10 boats.. even if avatar count should be ok.

2. The old product will be Homesteads. You didn't know what is? C'mon folks, is your old OSs! Yeah, keep in mind before bying new sex bed - control script limitation or you risk to stuck in very strange pose... We really don't still know how you should control it.. But nevermind! Enjoy! Oh, yes, forgot to say, 95 bucks for now eh? So use it all! In 6 months you'll pay more than half more. Oh, no. Limits rests.

3. Full sims.. thats a stuff we like. Oh, you don't like them? For privacy? Beauty? Nevermind, you will love them as we do, just because they cost 1000$.

So folks, pay!
More resource you use and less you pay. Servers load? Oh, shit I forgot it.
Nevermind. Enjoy!!