Open Spaces Announcement & Talk with M and Jack Linden

I am disappointed in the price of the open spaces... At $75 a month they are just not viable unless you make some income from them. I would like to see a true openspace at $25 a month. It can be as little as 256 prims and a 10 avatar limit, I don't care. I just want to be able to have some distance and water at a rate that is actually affordable to just let it lay there as water or a field with a few trees etc...

$50 maybe, but $75 is just too costly.

Samantha

750 prim limit not enough for a good garden.

I use my 4 openspaces as a garden and sea with islands. Each has about 1,500 prims on. They would be a fairly featureless garden with only 750 prims.

I bought them on the basis of 3750 prims per openspace, for the light use i have put them to. I feel it is very unfair to reduce the prim count so drastically. I would be happy enough with the 1,875 prims that openspaces originally were. But 750 is too few.



xx

Euterpe

You miss the point. Abandoning IS a statement worth more then the 50 US$ you might get for a sim.
Also do you really think there are estates that will buy these sims? Estates are dieing or just stopping as it is impossible to write a healthy business-plan with a "partner" like LL.

How about a L$20 one time fee to upload a sculpt texture and surface texture for a 256x256 megaprim?

That's where people are going to go instead of OpenSpaces.

Have a look at the sim "Aggro" for what's possible.

LL is making a profit from them... they just don't want you to.

Greed. LL doesn't want to be popular, they just want your money, they don't care if you make a profit thats not their concern at all, they only want to line their own pockets. this time i think its going to cost them dearly.

This is a very good and true point Imogen - in fact, the residents of SL have magnitudes more business, PR, techical, advertising, and human relations experience than all of the staff of LL will ever have (not to say that there aren't at least some incredibly talented people at LL, unfortunately they are not the ones making the decisions)

If you look at the number of long, well written, and well thought out posts in these threads, it is obvious that not only are the residents of SL passionate, but many are also very intelligent and thoughtful. Sure, M Linden and company may run the show, but in the end it is the customers who determine if a company fails or succeeds, and the company that doesn't listen to it's customers is fated to fall into the fails category.

Just to remind Linden Labs (from their own materials):

If you don't crash (i do cause my pc at home)... how can OS are making all this truble to Lindens? I charge you more cause your use of the sim is making me problems... that was on day one. Now i charge you more (and i give you less) cause my system is so great?

I am missing something... maybe it is my english but... i do not know.

I've paid way more than that to provide a service to others at no gain to myself ...

In the knowledge base it says:

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On January 5th, what action do I have to take to determine if my Openspace becomes a Homestead Region or remains an Openspace?

Before January 5th, your Openspace will become a Homestead and be billed at that rate unless you take the following steps:
...
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Is it on 5th or before 5th? Or 9th? On next bill date? This is so confusing. Can I know exactly what I will be billed and when?

And I personally think this is worse than Jack's announcement. I'm getting sick, I think.

Yanik

I JUST DOWNLOAD THE OPENLIFE!!! Starting to leave secondlife!!!
The sims are cheappers...

We are going to start a new world for us

Exactly! LL, fix these outstanding issues, then discuss load and proportionate cost with us. How can you actually sit there and say that your numbers are accurate when they are obviously skewed and affected by this outstanding texture issue, and many other outstanding issues. We as residents can't even accurately monitor our own load/lag if we are set up to fail by a faulty/buggy Viewer. You cannot claim you are concerned about load when you have done nothing to resolve the issues causing/adding to it, other than to raise the rent. If your landlord tells you they are raising your rent because there is a leak in your roof, ... would you not ask they attempt to fix the roof first? Probably not the best comparison, but I'm so frustrated that LL claims they want a stable environment, but then let issues such as the one mentioned above, continue.

Very lovely sim Imdy, I do agree with you that some of us cannot afford a full sim and there is no reason why LL can't give us a reasonable prices for 1/4, 1/2 or 3/4 sims

On the contrary. Claiming beforehand you might possibly sometime in the future change something doesn't shield you from being guilty of bait and switch. If that were the case every business could simply print "price subject to change" on their sale papers and make the sale end 10 minutes after they open. This was longer than 10 minutes, sure, but I think anyone would admit a couple of months is not a reasonable expectation of use for a land purchase, virtual or otherwise.

We have laws which set forth circumstances for particular wrongdoing. I can't make a tenant contract that says "The roof could fall in on your head and kill you in your sleep", and indemnify myself. The fact is, they advertised a service and a significantly discounted price with double prims, and then changed it to something far less desirable after they had accepted a great deal of money in setup fees.

In MY OPINION, that is bait and switch. We shall see what the appropriate authorities feel about it once it becomes more than a plan and they have actually committed the act. There can be little doubt in my mind, and I think a lot of people's minds, that it warrants a good looking at, especially in lieu of all the other past "Who, us??" legal situations with gambling and banking, for instance.


"Sales of the advertised merchandise do not preclude the existence of a bait and switch scheme. It has been determined that, on occasions, this is a mere incidental byproduct of the fundamental plan and is intended to provide an aura of legitimacy to the overall operation."

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/guides/baitads-gd.htm

...

Is anyone starting to think that being ruth and walking like a duck might not be so bad anymore?


What i just am incredulous about is that LL does not know, acknowledge, believe, want to admit that SL revolves around land.

sigh.... im so dejected

No sugar coating here, we had to wait over a week for you to come up with this and this is the best that you could do? I'll let others argue how poor your decisions really are as it's no longer even worth my time.

M Linden you have more than proven how detrimental you are to the future of the SL community with your deliberate attempt to rape it's residents. You have shown us all that you are in no way concerned with our bottom lines, investments, profit, or losses but only your own.

From this day forward I will never bring another cent of outside money into SL for any reason. I will never again buy a sim directly from you at auction or from the land store.

LL, how many people have you already turned off from investing money here with your callous approach to customer service? How many people like me will tell many more not to join, invest, or even step foot into this poorly run virtual world? No wonder all the BS blog post hype to find new residents (suckers).

I wish nothing but the best for the residents of SL and only the worst for all of LL's executives!!!!!

Screw you M Linden and the rest of your pathetic board of so called executives!!!!!

It is my opinion that Linden knew all along what they were doing. They know how attached people become to their creations. I don't have the entire history and all the facts so, please excuse me if I speak in error. However, if they intended the Openspace sims to only have 750 prims (which is what they are calling a Homestead now) then why wasn't that the limit in the first place? Oh no - they gave us LOTS of prims to create a place we would fall in love with. And we did. Didn't we? And now, there are those of us who have created a place we love, a private place, at a price we could afford. But that was the bait. And now we have the switch. So wrong. So unethical. Is this really how you prefer to do business, Lindens? You knew EXACTLY what you were doing all along. And what about the Mentors, who volunteer their time and energy to, in essence, bring you more avatars who will spend their money on Second Life? The Mentors who day in and day out spend their time helping people have a better SL experience. You offer them NOTHING. Not even a discount. They bring you more business and give them nothing. You know, Lindens, I must say, it's brilliant. Your letter to the residents dated Nov 5 at 11:37 am is not a workable solution. And, as some have said before me, you offer no apologies. Shameful. You are clearly taking advantage of those people who have become attached to their creations. I imagine it is only a matter of time before one of these artists seeks legal consult or government assistance in this matter. I bet it is already happening. So wrong, Lindens, so very, very wrong. Take my advice - Go back to the drawing board, Lindens. Think some more. This is wrong and you need to make it right.

LL comes in high, then offers an equally outrageous solution. First round of negotiations. Now it’s time to tell them this is what we will pay or we will all walk, and tell the press and your venture capital peps.

It’s like Jack you noob, you don’t hit on women until you read their profile. Maybe you should see how things work here before you make a total ass of yourself and kill off ½ of SL in first 6 months. Your job is to grow SL not get the wrath of every pioneer in the virtual game world.

Jack it’s not numbers, it’s sales. Every bad referral counteracts 10 good ones. We understand you are under pressure to make your bonus, so go for it for one year. Next year you will be so behind the ball you will never catch up.

Raising prices is not "bait and switch". Bait and switch is when a business fraudulantly advertises a product or service at a very low price then tells the potential customer that the product is no longer available so they can then try and sell a more expensive product in its place.

You know what guys? I'm not an OpenSpace owner. I have no convincing reason to care about this. I own a private island, and I don't know anyone in my circle of friends who has any stock in an OpenSpace. But when the original price hike announcement hit, I was with you guys 100%, with my pitchfork, with my flag displaying an SL emblem giving the finger, demanding an explanation on Linden's customer service sims. I felt a great injustice had been served to a great number of people, and even though it didn't impact me, I was motivated and duty-bound to make sure my voice of dissent was heard.

I'd even contemplated shutting down Envision island -- denying Linden Lab the profit of my private island, and denying my poor residents the benefits of living there -- just to prove the point that Linden was being unreasonable.

Guess what? We threw a fit, and now Linden Lab is giving you a break. They are no longer telling you, It's my way or the highway. They are telling you, This is what it's really going to cost us for the different demands each use case has; put your money where your mouth is.

Linden Lab has very reasonably compromised. They have backed down from their unreasonable position, to one where you now have alternatives. Alternatives are good, even if the end result for the carnival-on-an-OpenSpace owners is the same.

Look... the only people who know how much it costs to operate a heavily-loaded sim are the IT department managers and operations people who work Linden's data centers. We don't know the exact numbers, and I doubt we have any reason to be privy to those exact figures. Those of you saying that prices should be lower have absolutely no grounds for your claims; you are simply using Linden's compromising position to knock them back even further.

What if Linden would have to take a monetary loss when you guys start pegging openspace servers, in order to stabilise their performance? Hm? What if they had to split OpenSpaces so dramatically that there are only two OpenSpaces per server, in order that they remain stable? At $75/month, that's hardly fair to us Private Island owners, much less Linden.

Fact: The technology behind the hardware and the software is what it is. The technology can and will be improved at both a hardware and software level, but pricing cannot be set on predicted outcomes of future R&D. R&D is the single most unpredictable activity that businesses pay for, and it is the most expensive for Linden Lab.

Fact: It's entirely possible that, finally, Linden is setting price points which better reflect their costs. This is particularly compelling when you consider that a heavily loaded sim - be it an OpenSpace, Mainland, or Private Island - must be run with fewer other sims on the same server if it hogs resources. That means Linden needs more servers to handle that load.

Fact: You now have options you didn't have before. Consider them, make up your mind, and stick with it. Even if you choose a Homestead, you're still paying way! less than a Private Island, and you're getting lots of value.

Fact: This is not smoke and mirrors. There are real changes being made in terms of technical restrictions to ensure the stability of the entire grid. These restrictions will prevent the sort of sprawl that originated this problem.

Fact: Now that the policy on what is "intended" for each sim class is clear, we can also very explicitly define the term "abuse" for each sim class. Also, abuse may become less possible with the technical restrictions. So if you are given a certain number of scripts, go ahead and use them, and Linden can't call it abuse, because that's what they're restricting you to. You all complained that they gave you X and wanted you to use X/4; now they're giving you X and if you use X, they're happy. How is that bad?

My conclusion? This change has swayed me from the column of dissident to the column of Linden supporter. I now have a renewed belief that Linden Lab is a reasonable company, staffed by people who are sensitive to the reactions of their customers, and who are willing to take profit cuts and hire more staff in order to satisfy their angry customers.

To be angry at them still, at this point, is folly. So please calm down, think about these changes, and start planning for the future of your land.

Cordially,

Tiyuk Quellmalz

The new solution is much closer to bait and switch than the original one. I really don't like this legal talk because I doubt anyone here is a legal eagle but an openspace now only supports 750 prims, that's not the product someone purchased yesterday.

Like, for instance, pushing openspaces with twice the prims at half the price, then after they collect a ton of setup fees, deciding it would be better as 750 prims, or a higher price, and less use in terms of avatars and scripts eventually.

Are you even reading your arguments?

I agree with post #764. It is indeed a bait and switch to sell a product (in this case prim limit) at a given price and then downgrade the product once the user has purchased it. You must honour existing land owners with the prim limit they agreed to pay for. However, new owners could be charged based on the new pricing structure. Either that or you'd have to refund a portion of the setup fee.

You can't be serious. Just what has changed? To have an openspace product you need to have less prims on your sim than the old voids supported. How the bloody hell is this compromise? Read what has been proposed, it is the same stinging price hike dressed up in marketing spiel that is easily seen through.

I dunno. $100 a month is just barely tolerable for what you get from what is called the homestead now. $125 isn't. I can easily afford the cost, but I just don't think it's worth it. I'm not running a business, just want my own darn place to fool around with. I owned mainland once (a fair chunk of a region, in fact), and am not going back to that again.

Mind you that $125 a month is a significant fraction of what most people's real life mortgages are (well, outside of California.) And this is a piece of imaginary property that can disappear in a puff of digital smoke.

Prim limit - fine, that's what I signed up for. Avatar limit - more then what I need, but I'll happy take 20 for the extremely rare occasion that I have that many people around. But scripts...

Well, that scripting limit really needs to be spelled out in detail, the earlier, the better. I would want to know exactly how it's accounted. Is it just going to consider scripts on objects rezzed in the sim, or is it also going to include scripts on objects attached to avatars? Some avatars can get very -expensive- with script time, and there are no real good tools to finger out the offender, because the region/estate tool only lists scripts of objects rezzed in the sim.

Hmm, that's an idea, throw in a switch that lets the estate owner turn off the scripts on avatar attachments, but still let the sim's scripts run. At least then you can establish a baseline QOS. Certainly the script engine's scheduler can be modified easily to distinguish where scripts originate?

Anyways, $100 a month is something I can put up with while watching where things go. At least for a while, or until my patience finally wears out.

That's all I have to say, for now.

Tschuss!

Hodie mihi, cras tibi. After the OpenSims are eliminated LL will come gunning with price hikes for the PrivateIslandSims to drive you to Nautilus or the mainland. Just you wait, 'Enry 'Iggins, just you wait...!