Open Spaces Announcement & Talk with M and Jack Linden

Every thing has been said, this does not add up...

I love my SL and its residents... Creativity at his best, international sociability...

I hate LL and its technical and price policies.... Crash are so frequent its not funny... Your price increase is just not acceptable...

So sad, well maybe that will cure my addiction.....

No, we don't know that at all. We can probably guess how much raw servers and hosting costs them, but that's not counting all the support costs by any means.
$6.00 per month plus a one-time payment of maybe $20.00 for land (much of which you can get back when you sell... and you may even make a gross profit on it) is "way out of pocket"? That's the entry level cost for "owning land" in SL. If you don't want to "own land" (and most people don't) it's even cheaper... all the way down to free. For the first six months in SL I was paying around $20 a month (which seems typical for MMOs) and that gave me more disposable income in SL than most people... so I suspect most people in SL are paying less than they are in most MMOs.

Now, if you want to do large scale building, it costs a lot more than that, and it *can* becomes pretty expensive, but when you compare it with something like Entropia, you're getting a whole lot more for your money.

That's what I'm talking about. There's no point me getting a couple of thousand square metres of land because a) you can only build so much, spacewise and primwise, and b) you are likely to end up with crappy neighbours that make your land worthless and unsellable anyway.

I have dreams, as others have said in this thread, that could easily have used an 'openspace' type sim *as originally advertised* but those costs for what is essentially a game (to those that aren't looking at commercial activity) is just plain silly.

There needs to be at the very least an acknowledgement from LL that they realise that not everyone coming into SL is doing so to make money through some means, but some are just here to create and have fun.

Dear J and M Linden

I do not agree with your steps made in this, but that is another discussion.

As one of the few left rental coompanies that uses open spaces and that now must make the choice between OS or convert to sim I need to know a few more things to try to create a middle-longterm business plan, just like you should have made yours.

1) The script limitation, it could affect of course how I could operate my company in SL. You said you will let us know before january 5th. I would like to ask if you could clarify more in the next week, as transferring a business to a sim takes time to, I respect my customers.

2) Will LL in 2008 or 2009 put new limitations to usage of normal sims?

2) Will LL in 2008 or 2009 change the current tier of 295U$ for private sims (195 US$ Mainland sims)?

3) Will LL in 2008 or 2009 change the current grandfather tier on normal private sims.

4) Will LL in 2008 or 2009 change the rules, so Homesteads can be bought by people not owning a normal sim?


After previous and this sudden announcement, the credibility of Linden Lab to do business with a resident of the Second Life has lowered to a point where it becomes impossible to write any businessplan and I think making a commitment on maintenance fees and descissions regarding the use of private sims, for 2009, could give at least me, but I think many of us, more confidence.

Regards
SNBSpecial Jun

(Text partly copied from bo Heartsdale)

well a rough guess of open sims alone 15,000 x 250 =3,750,000 in intial payment and an additional 1,125,000 a month assuming they are running 4 sims per core 4 cores per cpu 4 cpu per server that means they are running 64 openspaces per server means they got paid 3,750,000 initially and 1,125,000 a month to maintain 235 servers. Average 4 cpu quad core blade server is around 5,000 each so out of the 3,750,000 it cost them 1,175,000 to buy the servers leaving them a measly 2,575,000 to pay the installation guys to put it in......


current costs btw,
i could go on but whats the point

Quote: "We believe this is fair."

You are joking, aren't you?

For themed RP-Playing, Mainland is unusable. These new OS are unusable for ANYONE and anything. And 125USD for nearly nothing is just a joke.
I'm not talking about a use for doinf some commercial stuff, just about Sims that are used for the RP-Community.

It's not just RP communities that are affected, it's basically anyone that isn't interested in commercial activities; it requires a massive up-front investment as well as massive ongoing costs - all of which falls on the shoulders of one person as the 'billing contact', even if 50 people are contributing towards the costs; if someone drops out the rest have to cover their share, and that's a position I certainly wouldn't be willing - or even financially able - to find $125 a month if the rest of the group suddenly decided to disappear; neither would I be willing to trust strangers over the net not to run off with the money.

Mainland is unusable for anyone that doesn't want to run a sex club for newbies.

Can a Linden PLEASE comment regarding this insane notion that limiting prims limits an open-space's impact? I have said several times now since this craziness began that there are very real, very viable solutions which can be used to solve the problem of open-space "abuse" by ensuring they cannot use more than 25% of a processor, 1/16th of RAM, 1/16th of bandwidth etc., the solution is called virtual machines.

Why in the hell isn't LL using them? The issue isn't that a sim has too many prims, or that it has too many scripts, but that it is using too much of the server's real, physical hardware resources. Adding stupid software limits won't solve anything, as I guarantee that if you limit a simulator to one prim and one script, someone will still find a way to bring it to its knees.

What we need is a REAL solution, not vague hand-outs and pitiful diversions that don't really address the problem at all.

LL created a piece of software, but the SL Residents created the world so many of us consider home. We aren't the users of Second Life, we ARE Second Life.

LL would be smart to remember this. This "update" is even worse than the original announcement. How can LL be so blind as to not see what a community killer this is?


1/20th the content of a full sim for a cost of 1/4 sim? That's not even close to a reasonable solution. LL apparently had no problem at all when openspaces had 1875 prims, and if they did then raising the limit to 3750 is completely negligent. 1875 prims is 1/8th of a normal sim. 1/8th of the cost of a normal sim is $37.50. Bump that up to $50/month and you'll be selling them at a 33% premium, and you'll have a lot of happy customers.

Actually, they'd still be disillusioned customers, but they'd still be customers. At this point, to get happy customers, you're going to have to provide a written guarantee that the tier won't go up for a year, or that all future price increases will be grandfathered for existing sims. Before the announcement last week, I was making some offers to buy multisim estates. Now I'm too wary of a full sim tier increase that I wouldn't take a free sim from somebody even if they were paying the transfer fee and guaranteeing the rentals for 3 months.

Jack & M



1) This is not soon enough! To make a reasoned decision on whether to stay or ditch we need this information (or at least your best guess) before the end of November.

2) If you do not already have an idea of the script and memory data then how can you assert that current OS sims are being overused !!

This should be stapled to M's butt.

So M, What are the unstated Prim Limits you are proposing?

Do you expect us all to say "Oh well done, we are happy" when we don't even know what you are offering us?

And if the reason for OpenSpaces was for ocean and forest (my last remaining OpenSpace is forest) then why did the Lab allow them to be seperated from the parent estate and bought in singles?

Lastly, surely if they are being abused the abuse stays ont he server, affecting only the other 15 OpenSpaces, in that case, who really cares? Surely your Abuse Reporting system can handle that as it does for a myriad other things.

Sorry M, NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

Mainland is unusable for people wanting to run a sex club for newbies. LOL.

and LOLOL again

Oh come on. The bit about prims is just lure, surely, cos we all want more prims right. Right?

Like 45,000 per region

Some of those who are upset are those who don't make a penny profit from their OS Sim. My partner and I have one each...no income from them at all. An expensive luxury...now an impossibly expensive luxury.

A lot of this has been addressed at the 'land barons' making a profit, forgetting about the little people who just wanted a place of their own. Homesteads at $125+markup are just too expensive.

So now we have to go back to half a shared SIM, with no privacy, no control over land texturing, etc.

Mainlands good for open spaces.

trees and water (not boating flying or any form of events mind you)

Just don't move and you will be just fine.

This is the real face of it. I've not made a penny in SL in all my time here ... I've made a loss on the land, and cashed out later than I should have (if I'd not bought mainland in the summer I'd have come away with a much less bloody nose).

SL fostered this greed in the first place.

@jini are you kidding? mainland good for open spaces? or do you mean access? Yeah used to love flying years ago before it became an exercise in futility

It really did feel like a brave new world once.

LL take note especially the last sentance of the article!


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7698973.stm

'nuff said!

LMAO how true

Exactly. SPECIALLY on point two there.

Don't mind snowflake, she is a mainland slumlord and avid forum troll... all she sees is profit coming her way and is gitty and loves to poke at peoples wounds with profound statements about how its everyones fault but LL. IE genuanly not a very nice or caring person, IE she only cares about her own pocketboot ... kinda like LL.

whaaaa did my sacasm show that clearly LOL

Ok well done you have started to listen....i love that the linden's are provessional in the way they speak to us....can Kat please tell us to have a 10 min break every hour aswell as our popcorn and drink...we dont want blindness

Now the homestead package wow well done....we are smart and yes took advantage of opensims it appears but you should have known that....
75usd for 750 prims is alot...and 125usd for 3750 still ouch but your learning....

you should offer the opensims at a sensible 50usd as you have restricted prims harshly and avs who sail the boats///first of a frigate takes a fair few prims and needs 4 avs to each ship.....so a few peep will be a bit bothered...
also i myself will pay 125usd if you be so good to give me a few hundred more prims and cut 20 avs down to 10.

look at it how many prims does each av carry on them.....hundreds apon hundreds...now my sim see's no more than 5 peep at a time and never likely more...its a home simple as that...not rental and not clubbing ect.....

give me more prims and knock amount of avs on my sim and i pay you 125 happilly

We build our dreams here and many live on these new homesteads amongst our builds...we leave our sim to go to full ones to party and what not.....

come on more prims less avs...give us a chance.....we tell you we want 10 av limit and you give us an extra amount of prims.......that amount would be better as avs carry more so you have less burden.......

keep options flowing if people dont understand what they are buying then boo who to them....learn to friggin read.........options keep people happy otherwise we all be driving white cars and turning left all the time