Open Spaces Announcement & Talk with M and Jack Linden

I've got plenty of bad experiences dealing with companies that have WAY more hostile customer relations than Linden Labs. Really. Linden Labs are pussycats compared to even a lot of companies that have a GOOD reputation.

I'm not even talking RIAA members here, or Walmart, or Bungie. I'm talking about companies like Palm and Apple.

Companies, in general, are not nice "people".

This new proposal is rather insulting. So, we still pay more than originally contracted, with the promise to pay even more in July. What an offer!!!

All I see here is a lot of in fighting among the posters there are definitely two camps in this foray.

I am not sure how many actually own OSS they are the ones who deserve the space to voice their opinions so the lab can get a better handle about their intents.

All the rest is just filler and most is boring.

Just an observation and since I released my OSS back to my estate manager for conversion I shall make no more entry's here.

One word of advice before I leave It is better to be thought a fool rather than open your mouth and remove all doubt. Take that as you will

Byee))

Especially when they have shareholders. Which SL thankfully does not.

What is to say that those of us swallow either a move to a homestead (not that we appear to have a choice) or indeed upgrade to full sims aren't going to get screwed over again next month?

What's to say a full sim isn't going to cost $1500 to purchase and $500 a month in rental from february 2009? How can we trust Linden if they tell us that it isn't? We know the Openspace limitations and price of a full sim at the moment, but as is CLEARLY being demonstrated here that can change in a heartbeat. Going by the logic if the new Homestead represents the 1/4 of the resource usage of a full sim and what it costs to provide it then we are going to get a corresponding price rise on the price of a full sim. QED, you have stated that that's what's needed for true 4:1 sim to server ratio, therefore by the same arguement the prices of FULL sims which have 4 times the available resource must fall into line with that pricing.

So, when do we expect the second announcement, the one where full sims go up in price?

Openspace as they stood were nice, they gave real added value to an estate but quite frankly the larger implication is a LOT more scary.

Also, how many of the servers that Openspaces are currently running on does Linden Labs have earmarked to be changed over to run full mainland regions? You're going to have to do something with all those empty servers right? What reassurance do we have that they aren't going to be used to flood SL with lots of cheap mainland therefore further hurting people who run estates in SL?

Of course, nobody from LL will answer that. Besides, the answer is evident and we can see that none of us have any real choice in the matter. We have but three choices, swallow it, leave sl and / or take legal action.

In fairness to OLG, Lazarus, they don't promise anything of the sort.

They've put their plans through next July down on paper, so you won't be screwed until then.
It might. Full sim owners don't have as good a price guarantee as you do. However, you're making a false assumption in the following:
It doesn't. They've already said that it's got MORE than 1/4 the resource usage of a full sim, closer to half. That's the point of this whole debacle... they badly underestimated the resources it would take, and they're trying to adjust to reality.

Sorry, its been a long couple of days and the old brain is most likely not working as it should.

I've read the post. I've read the wiki article. Both a few times.

I'm still not quite getting it...

An OS is being "abused" by my friend and I because we live there with 85% prim usage and at most 4 avs (happened just the once I think in the last 3 months).

Ok, I think that I get it so far (the argument, not the logic).

But call it a Homestead and make it more expensive and the hardware and current set-up can suddenly cope better?

*looks perplexed and scratches her head

I'm really not trying to be facetious (well, maybe a tiny bit)...I'm seriously missing some information or logic (seems to be afk from one or two corners at the mo anyway), so forgive me if I'm genuinely being stupid. If anyone wants to help clear me up on this, then please feel free, thanks! (although in a nice way please..no need to call me any names - Amelie...your comments about personal attacks seem a bit rich considering your wording on pg 8.

Jack, you know we cannot believe you when your competition which is fast clsoing on your heels charges less then half your rates, in many cases less then a third.

furthermore allot of your customers either work in tech or know people that do and can see right though the smoke and mirrors whether you're attempting to deceive us, or just yourselves.
Alternatively if you really believe this is a good deal, go look at opengrid, openspace, 3rd rock grid or any of another half dozen of the competing grids. Cause if you think 75$ for an 750 prims is reasonable, you are way way out of touch with any sort of realistic business sense. when for 75$ I can get 45,000 thats FOURTY FIVE THOUSAND prims for that price on another grid.

You have destroyed so far 8 communities I love so far. With the Openspace sims alone that have been returned/abandoned or are set to be this week from those eight communities alone you've lost approximately 180x75 = $13,500 a month that's $162,000 a year.

Is LL really able to withstand that kind of loss jack? Even if it is, is it WILLING to accept those kinds of losses? Please tell me.


Take a look at the alternative proposals issues by me or many of my fellow residents and pick one to enact. Either that or resign. Before you put a company we love out of business with this craziness.

They put their original plans for a price change for openspaces in a blog announcement not so long ago. They've changed, so don't kid yourself that the price of full sims can't either.

See...this is why I'm so confused I think...my understanding is that a Homestead is just a new name for the OS. What's been "created" here?

What are you understanding Amilie, that I'm not?

Ahhhhh......now I see. So you think Jasper Tizzy/Frank Corsi is or is connected to Count Avatar/Mercier who actually owns Avatar Hangout?????

here's something for you to read http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/other-grids-virtual-worlds/17148-legal-action-against-frank-corsi-2.html

Yeah I didn't think so.

a new way to milk an old cow

Other grids are coming online, options are good but here in Second Life we have a superior product. People do have choices but you need to keep your eyes wide open.

If you are trying to make me look stupid to save your own ego works out for you then be my guest. Next time read the posted information before coming here and whining. No matter how you look at it, a conversion is a conversion, up or down, back or front, so on down the line. You switch one product for another. Get over yourself.

Guy's ... LL want us all to fight eachother and fallout and in the end stop posting ... Your playing into LL's hands .

If someone is making a comment you doint like ... Scroll past em ( its fun .. try it )

Stick a little to the subject matter ... make you comment's and make em over and over in as may ways as you can spin it ... But to take the bate of people who don't agree is just pushing you away from the subject ... LL know this ... and want it .


Remember .. This is supposed to be US " Talking " with M and Jack .... Its more like us all fighting eachother and Jack and M saying " Talk to the hand idiot's "

If people are FOR the policy to go ahead then good ! ..let em ... LL will stick a knife in them one day and all the people who opose this policy will be long gone and they will have no one to back them up .

If your AGAINST this policy .....make your voice herd and count ...Even if LL are playing mind games ..... we are playing by the rules ... and for that alone we can be proud that we made a stand .


Ok Back on Topic ..


Thanks

a year ago when the gas prices went up around 99 cent / liter, people gone crazy but since there is no other way to run the cars ..etc so we kept buying it. later on prices kept going up and it reached $1.35 / liter here where i live, NOW after the oil prices is going down and we started to see the gas price is back to the same price a year ago 99 cents / liter you can hear people saying oh great this is cheap lol.
so SL is playing the same game... so they will keep making it worse and worse everytime they post a new announcement about this issue, until we start begging them to get what they offered on the first post lol. funny but sad

Would you mind reading what I actually wrote, please?

She's talking about moving an openspace, not converting it to a full sim. Linden Lab haven't said they will do free moves, just free conversions.

Are you really that unaware of the difference between moving a single sim and converting 4 to one and moving them? You should of put a... SO THERE in there too.


Wow is all ill say. Not really sure there is a link I could post for you to read up on the 150 charge they impose to move A sim..ANY sim which told to me last night was still going through. Again-not a conversion. Not a switch either. Just wanna move it back where it was. Already paid to move it once. I think you are doing the looking ignorant thing just fine on your own.

I guess we are all Homesteaders now. Who in there right minds would pay that much money for only 750 Prims. Open sims will cease to exist. If they were reasonably priced at say $50 start up and $30 month, i would put some open water with small forest islands around my 'Homestead'. It would also be reasonable if such a steep price increase for 'Homesteads' included more prim so prims per dollar are the same as full regions.

Up to you Freddy. If you think Frank is not involved you are entitled to that. Good luck with it all.

I'll restate my opinion- Given what I know about Central Grid having been part ownership. Given what I know about the players involved and where they are now, I personally would not go to avatarhangout.com nor would I suggest my worst enemy go there either. Now, I do not know count mercer who is the imo front man of AH so I'm not saying anything about him personally. Anyone here who knows me knows my reputation is beyond reproach. So take my advice or don't. But I know stuff.

read that link to find out what those involved with accuse me of...fun stuff..... Difference is i never scammed anyone!

I did. But these would be the same plans that openspace were on. I'm suggesting that linden have already changed one lot of plans so they can easily change another and that we can no longer trust that they won't change other plans too if it suits them.

In other words what's on paper today is not necessarily what's on paper tomorrow. Those plans assume that they aren't going to lose large amounts of revenue due to this change, so they by their very definition have to be flexible. Where do they make up that lost revenue?

Linden must have a deal for hosting these servers en masse, I doubt they can reduce that commitment as easily as they can pull a change on us. So, they are probably committed to x amount of rack space and y amount of bandwidth over z amount of time. It doesn't take much to imagine the ways that they will make up any loss of revenue when they can't lower their expense. They don't exactly have many products to make up the loss with.

Anyone who just wants an ocean will pay for it. The whole idea of charging based on prims is how the whole rental market was set up by the residents. LL does not base fees on prim count.

Well what do you know. There ARE Second Life users who are able to do simple math. But more importantly... able to open their eyes and see the writing on the wall.

LOL Jini, you nailed it. On my blogs, I did exactly the same math you did here and came to the exact same results. LL is talking about all the "extra support" required for these sims. Just how much "extra support" can they buy for some $2.5 million?

This whole "we just GOTTA have more $$$ for Open Space Sims" is laughable. Comparative evidence:

ELF CLAN just purchased a full sim on the Open Sim project (not to be confused with LL's obvious rip-off "Open Space" name). Cost us $240 setup fee and that included the first month's tier. We pay $75 a month tier for 45,000 prims. That's right, 45,000 prims for $75 a month. Not only that, but on the Open Sim Project we can use MEGAPRIMS to our heart's content. I'm talking REAL megaprims, totally resizable, moddable and manipulatable up to 256m.

I can tell you that cuts down on prim overhead, especially in the creation of large buildings. So that 45,000 prims goes a looooooong way. (side note: So that pretty much blows away the LL "old wives tale" that megaprims cause problems. LOL. It's nice when reality stomps false claims into the ground.)

Now people might argue that 45,000 prims will overburden the server. NO, IT WON'T. Prim rezzing is client side. Even IF sheer number of prims causes lag client side, you simply stick 25,000 prims on the ground, then another 20,000 up in the air at about 1000m and viola! No client overload.

Now agreed, Open Sim is in its infancy stage. There is a lot of stuff not yet implemented and there is a lot of stuff that's buggy. But LOL, SL is buggy and it's been online 5 years. Open Sim: 1 year. Yet in that 1 year I can create and store avatars, I can build and store inventory, I can chat with my friends, and in the server I'm using there are already as many sims as were on SL when I first joined 4 years ago. So yes, Open Sim isn't everything SL can claim to be... yet. Elf Clan is sure going to help it get there.

MAIN POINT HERE is that if OPEN SIM can charge $75 for a FULL BORE SIM with 45,000 prims... it's kind of hard to swallow that Linden Lab can't provide a simple Open Space sim with 3,750 prims for the same price. I'm a logical person. I don't expect LL to start selling full bore 15,000 prim sims for $75 a month any time soon. But at the same time... I don't expect them to monopolistically price-gouge me on an agreement already made.

I would think that the BOD at Linden Lab would be logical and intelligent enough to realize that their "monopoly" is quickly coming to an end. Rather poor time to be further alienating their customers with yet more price-gouging, profiteering tactics. Because with this move, they have drawn the line in the dirt. I can assure them that Elf Clan isn't the only major group making hard decisions right now.