Open Spaces Announcement & Talk with M and Jack Linden

Being someone who sells items in game, I can tell you that you never want your customers to be upset... even if just temporarily. If that is their plan it is even worse than I had suspected.

I was frankly shocked when they doubled the prims. It was more than I needed but I was not going to complain about it.

The much anticipated response by the Lindens to the firestorm that has raged across the landscape of Second Life for more than a week was sadly disappointing. True, there were a couple of minor concessions. But those concessions do not begin to compensate for what has been lost by both estate owners and their tenants and do little to counter the widespread suspicion that all along this was little more than a bait-and-switch scheme designed to increase revenue without increasing value or service.

Establishment of a transitional 27% increase in the maintenance fee on open space sims (now renamed homesteads) for six months before the originally announced 67% increase takes effect of course will reduce the immediate impact of the rate hike. But I fear the difference simply will be a slow lingering death rather than a speedy death both for numerous island estates and for the dreams and enjoyment of many SL residents who are already struggling to maintain tier payments on their homesites.

Also, of course, allowing conversion (euphemistically called an “upgrade”) of four openspace/homestead sims to a full 15000 prim sim without extra charge will be of benefit to those who feel they must to this to survive. This was an easy concession for the Lindens to make, for to have done otherwise would indeed have been adding insult to injury.

But today’s announcement leaves the fundamental question of “why” still unanswered. The original announcement last week indicated that the problem the Lindens sought to address was the excessive demand on computer resources caused by people placing heavy use on those sims. As many have recommended in the thousands of posts to the blog in recent days, today’s announcement set out some specific limitations such as the number of AVs allowed on the sim at any one time, and said additional specific limitations would be forthcoming on other resource consuming factors such as scripts. Yet while the new homestead sims will have only 25% of the prims on a full sim and will allow only 20% of the AVs allowed on a full sim, in January the purchase price on homestead sims will be 38% that of the full sims and in midyear the monthly maintenance fee on homesteads will be 67% that on full sims.

If the price increase is truly justified by costs rather than simply a way of squeezing more money out of estate owners and residents, it would appear that the land area itself must represent ongoing cost to the SL management, even after all other variables are controlled. If that is the case, why has it not been explained?

And why in today’s announcement was there no mention of the numerous suggestions on the blog in favor of creating a category for heavier use than can be accommodated with 3750 prims but that do not need the 15000 prims of a full sim? From many conversations I have had with both prospective buyers and current residents of our openspace sims (I own more than 50 of them), there would definitely appear to be a market for a middle category with 7500 prims that could fit two to a server. Even if for some technical reason that would not be feasible, the suggestion at least deserves an answer.

I am sure the Lindens realize that to a very considerable extent they have a captive customer base. Unlike the customers of a typical retail vendor or of computer services such as ISPs, many residents have literally become addicted to SL. Because of friendships, romantic relationships, creative endeavors, business activities, etc., many of us are quite reluctant to consider leaving SL even though we quickly would have taken our business elsewhere had we faced this kind of huge price increase and cavalier treatment in almost any other matter affecting our personal finances. But the Lindens should realize that our tolerance for accepting such things is not limitless, especially when they come without explanation or apparent justification.

Apart from the original blog has M posted in here?

Am I mistaken in my understanding that Jack Linden hasn't replied in several hours too?

Why is the blog called "Talk with M and Jack" if they aren't here to answer us?

Surely it doesn't take this long to compose answers to some of our basic questions?

I was hoping they would have learned a lesson from the last blog and forum fiasco but alas it appears not.

No more arguments?
Mono works fine, IF the scriptcode is optimized for mono. Sure you can simple recompile the scripts to mono, but this isn't the same. Consult the wiki for more informations how to optimize scripts for mono - and, btw, mono is perfect for movable objects, like cars, bikes, boats, planes, elevators and many other things.

And yes, it tooks time, because mono is a complete different virtual machine for scripts and it should work properly. It isn't that easy like windows, a doubleclick installs your software and you're done.

Dear M,

Thanks responding to all our concerns and questions. While I don’t really care for your solution, it’s still better than that what you were offering before… hats off. While I totally understand why you are doing, I don’t think you understand how betrayed your user based felt after the original announcement. A “We are sorry” title would have gone a long ways for this is blog entry.

Your user base is smart, most likely smarter than most companies have, and still feel insulted by the whole thing. I completely understand the motives and limitations on computing… but it really does seem to your residents, that you encouraged the activity that lead to this situation. You increased the prim limit from 1800, to 3000, you sold sims that were not next to other sims (did you expect them to place oceans, parks or forest in the middle of nowhere?), and your sales went through the roof. Since I started http://Gridaverse.com 6 months ago, you increased the number of sims in Second life by over 13,000. That’s like a 50% increase in like 10% of your life span.

While I am sure most people understand the different reasons you are doing this, a lot of people feel you had this planned all of a long, because it is the perfect money making scheme. And while I am sure this is not the case, several people feel tricked by you and really don’t like it, especially when it hits their wallets. This is where that “We are sorry” title would have went a long ways in convincing people that is not true.

You mentioned in your blog entry, that you were going to start including the community more. While I think this is a great idea, it does bring in some concern with a solution even. For example, if news of this would have leaked out prior to the announcement, it would have really disrupted the markets. People that would have heard about it, would dump their open space sims faster than a mouse in Mexico, leaving the uninformed holding the bag. If you are going to bring in the community more, might I suggest that you bring in the whole community. Maybe even something like Slashdot does. You drop the idea out there for all to read or comment on, and then let trusted users vote on best points or solutions brought up in the comments. I think this would help a bunch, give you insight into the Real Second Life user head, let everyone have a chance to comment, or suggest, and raises the most insightful comment or suggestion to your attention without having to read through everything. (like M is going to read this).

Well, that’s about it. Overall, I think you are all headed in the right direction to keep Second Life the best Metaverse. I love the ideas from FJ, and you should give him anything he wants to move forward with them

Skidz Tweak

The documentation indicates 2/3 of LSL now, assuming the doc is correct.

And, you are definitely on the edge of the frontier there. But to some, there is an attraction in that.

Sculpty trees only need 1-2 prims per tree.

Actually, if your vehicles are mostly using the Linden vehicle code and only using short LSL sequences for control, you won't see much if any difference from mono. With Mehve, I'm seeing worse sim crossing behavior from mono, so I've left it running the LSL2 code.

This announcement is worse than the last episode of the Sopranos. And I'd be much happier if I was just plain out whacked mob style and shaken down for the envelope of cash in my pocket.

Well dear I have and do spend a lot of money here, not lindens, and there comes a time when logical analysis becomes a requirement. After all no one is forcing any one to be here or use the facility's. I have been ardent in my Criticism of the lab for many varied topics over my 4 years here.

This one seems to have culminated in a usable format. But, then you can not satisfy all the people all the time. Think that's called life

And who knows what I know ))

Do u think having mono is impossible to other viewer?
Wake up... not everybody are so greedy like LL

Not really impressed by the new announcement as in the end, the nearly unimaginable price hike is still there. The only good thing related to that is that they will take a look at something like only putting 3 homesteads on a core instead of 4. Seems to me that should happen prior to raising the price.

I still think that the $75 openspace is too expensive if all you can use it for is scenery.

Giving some consideration back to the educational institutions is good also.

Thanks M and Jack Linden for the reply.

Well, I've slowly read your news and I feel very disappointed. You only delayed the increase but it will happend the next July.

Let's see, if we want to keep our present Openspaces as "real" OpenSpaces with no price change, we must send a ticket and decrease the used prim amount to no more than 750. Why must we pay 75 USD for a OpenSpace with 750 prims?, the old OpenSpaces had a price of 50 USD and more prims than 750 (please correct me if I were wrong in that).

We have the chance to move to that new funny thing called "Homestead" (allowed abuse openspance?). 95 USD (75 USD for OpenSpace owners) until next July. And later, the increase of Homestead to 125 USD.

It looks the same, only seven months delayed.

I definitively leave my OpenSpace.

(/me copies & pastes from her own mini-thread on this, just in case LL doesn't read those.)

Wow..

Well, I gotta say this is less than I'd hoped for..

It sounds like the original plan is basically still on though it's pushed back a ways. The extra time is certainly a good thing but paying 40% the cost of a full private island for a homestead when you get only 25% of the prims and 25% of the processing seems pretty harsh.

The hold on pricing for 'valid' openspace sims is a good thing but.. uh.. 750 prims? 750 prims??? That's 25% the cost of a full private island but with only 5% of the prims (5%!!!) and 25% of the processing power. A year ago, people with this product could use twice that many prims.

This really seems like a big step backwards in terms of what people get for their money, Jack & M.

Sorry but I don't buy it. The monthly per prim cost of these revised products is absolutely out of line. You can package it in any kind of wrapper you want but it still wont make it taste good. If the monthly cost of Private Full Prim Sims was equivalent to mainland ($195.00) per month there would be no need for any other products. I've never really understood the justification of 15,000 prims mainland being $195 a month and 15,000 Prims of private island being $295 per month. NOW YOU WANT TO CHARGE $500 A MONTH ON HOMESTEAD SIMS FOR 15,000 Prims???. If you can prove to me that your actual maintenance costs for a homestead sim are 2.5 times your maintenance costs of a mainframe sim I'll send you $500 cash and you can keep your new product.

Duke

I just realized talking to my partner that the avatar limit will likely mean we are going to need to ban underwater girl. She seems to have taken our sim as her home at some point - stands there for hours, occasionally changes clothes, I guess IMing. Doing no harm except that she, standing peacefully underwater, is using up one of the either 10 or 20 avatar slots we will have available for us and for people sailing through under the new regime.

Good luck on the mainland, hapless underwater girl!

Such simplified dis-information!

Actually Argent, it depends. Straylight has some really nice trees in it and they're a minimum of 8 prims. But they're really, REALLY nice trees of various sizes. Of course the need for more than one prim per tree would be dealt with if LL did something with that SpeedTree license.

Lileigh Cazalet, if you aren't aware, it's late in North America. Well past quitting time for most jobs. Surprise, Linden Labs doesn't maintain a full staff 24/7. They'll be back tomorrow to read through the hundreds of posts and possibly be caught up by lunch time.

I won't even consider OpenLife for now. So many people complain about SL (if only to complain), and yet the biggest whiners take the SL platform and try to make their own grid with it? wtf? Make your own system if you don't like the one LL wrought!



I do have to agree with the many people in these 50 some odd pages though that are calling the price hike a bit unfair (the rest of you who are complaining about a bait and switch, I point you to the knowledge base and the initial postings about open spaces (void sims) and will jam your noses collectively at the sentences that state they were intended for light use only, NOT residential or commercial use). It's just too inefficient price to prim wise. Some discussion needs to be made on what a fair price is for how many prims. I'd recommend a residential council of 50-100 people nominated by the people who would be able to bring points up to LL on a closer to 10:1 ratio.

Also, the Key Metrics docs on the economic stats page only go up to August. An update to those would be great, please.

Great, please try to rezz one hundred of those sculpted trees in a OpenSpace and see what happends. Half hour to see all correctly rezzed.

Well looks lime my Open Space will now be classed as a homestead fair enough at the 95usd rate i feel is a reasonable extra even 100 usd for the space it allows but 125usd it becomes harder to justify making use of this when i could have so many more prims for that price on a portion of a Full SIM :/

I cant imagine there will be too many "homesteads" left by the time this price hike comes through as it is simply a pointless and valueless product at that price.

Id also echo those wondering why the prim limits were doubled from 1875 to 3750 when anything over 750 is apparently an abuse?
I believe residents at the least deserve an apology for this misleading action on your part.

I do applaud LL for at least softening the blow but please think hard about the new price of 125usd its overbaord in regards to value for money and i think it will make this SIM class moot by the time july comes around so whats the point in the first place? Ofcourse maybe thats what you want.

Not true )) we make some very nice 1 prim sculpted 3D trees that's a lot of trees at 1 prim each

Maybe y'all could start a new thread on this or something.. This one is hard enough to follow already.

There are some really clever scripters about who can probably answer any questions (or make good gueses) about how these tools work and how they compare vs estate tools. Maybe try the resident answers or scripting tips forums.

So what exactly has changed?

Nothing at all.

Personally, I can not believe it took a week to come up with this band-aid solution. This was nothing but lip service from LL. LL sold US open space sims which ‘will’ hold 3750 prims, and was recommended to have no more then 20 agents on the sim at one time. That was the conditions of the sim which we purchased and signed up for. Obviously the popularity of these sims and use of these sims has been a gross oversight by no one but LL. The ones paying for this gross oversight are US (residents who purchased the sims under the above conditions).

To think you could sell a sim that holds 3750 prims and expect us to use 700 of them for trees. What are you smoking over there?

Basically this is LL’s stuff up underselling the sims in the first place with the current specifications. It was LL that made them popular, now they want to jack up the prices.

I for one will not be paying 125$ a month for an open space sims.

I hope LL isn’t going to charge us to convert the sims back to normal space sims.

Try again LL, this isn’t a good enough solution.