Open Spaces Announcement & Talk with M and Jack Linden

This is all just smoke and mirrors.

Offer a product, up the prims, lower the price, rush it to market, get lots of customers. Then strip out the functionality for those that want the advertised price or ramp up the price for those who want the advertised function.

I hope no one falls for this.

Except that attachments are phantom.

The Open Space regions that are already poofed - are you going to set them back up at no charge?

Interesting.

I'm never thrilled with any increase, but the change will be more gradual and I think I can adjust in time.

I would like to suggest one thing though .... as long as we are going to have a tier increase to "Homestead" lots ... how about two Homesteads per cpu now? That would be terrific!!!!

Thanks!

Why not sims with only 1 plywood cube? That'd be nice & easy for the Lindens to sell and they'd have no worries at all.

That's what they were supposed to be in the first place. People need to read before they buy things...

Read it again. A few months later than originally announced you'll still be paying almost half the cost of a full sim for 1/4 the prims.

Daya.

I can't BELIEVE people in this thread are nodding at this as if it's a decent proposal..

"Homesteads" are still going to be US$125, *AND* they're going to have more script limits and capped to 20 avatars...

Resume:

- The OS were 1750 prims and they were working good: none complained about abuses (neither linden lab), none about the price, everything were running smooth... to smooth, too calm in the LL childish vision;

So let's move the (OS) water!

- They increased the prim count, started to sell em in pieces, unlinked by the main SIM and accepting to assign the ownership to users that were different to payors! Indeed they collected a lot of new land-customers....

The trap:

- After some months, it's time to collect these fruits! Let's increase the price so much that almost anyone on second life (even those without OS) will see the scandal.

- Wait a bit, and let em believe you are soo good that you will open to accept their requests, so the s*it will look like gold and:

[DA DAAAA]

- Mantain the price hike you decided intially (125$).

- Non only this: put even another restriction with avatar limits a scripts (potentially), and do NOT increase the performance of the product (the region will remain 4 per core).

- Offer another product that is less than half (700 vs 1750) that its original that were working without problems (see above).

Let me resume: anyone here we have to pay $125 in the end (so they accomplished to their plan fooling you TWO TIMES!); anyone that believes to accept the $75/m fees probably didn't read the new enforcement: 10 avatars, 700 prims, poor script performance. You can use it really JUST FOR SEA OR FOREST, and in many cases neither for that: imagine to have a regatta with more than 10av ? Or imagine to have your forest near to your full region, what if more than 10 avs would like to visit it?

Fooled one time, and double the second... bravo Linden!

Someone just pointed out to me what I discovered myself only a few minutes ago: in M's letter to residents, there is a link to a Knowledge Base article that contains much more detail and answers to questions, one of them being the waiver of service fees for the conversion.

Those of you who, like me, missed that one reference to the article, go back and read it. My question was answered there. Maybe yours will be, too.

I want to say I appreciate the waiver of the fee between now and January. Thank for for that!

Thank you guys for coming to a final decision, I understand it is really hard for a company do that I do value the fact that you did listen to everyone. I am also happy that it is now going to be written in stone what the sims are meant for so people won't be buying them for the wrong reasons. I still feel like I'm in the same boat feel a little bit used and tossed around but hey companies change their decisions and have to re evaluate things for the good of the company and of course running costs otherwise Second Life wouldn't be a business.

Thanks again for the announcement, I will still be giving back the remainder of my Open spaces because as I said I would still be in the same boat and don't want to pay that price increase, Already has put a big hole in my pocket for the loss of my residents.

M, you are a businessman. For your suitability in that role, in leading a business to make money, I have no doubt. Unfortunately, Second Life is unlike anything you have ever grasped before, and unless you very quickly learn that maximising profit at the expense of customer happiness and creative ability, then you will be the last CEO of that small San Francisco based company that people vaguely remembered before it crashed spectacularly. You know the old saying about not putting all your eggs in one basket... SL is LL's only product to date, and you have nothing else to fall back on when all your valued members who contribute a great deal to your success have finally had enough and stop logging on - and all will be left are bots, land swoopers, clueless noobs that give up after 5 minutes, and a desolate wasteland with the odd plywood box scattered around.


To the same 'M' - this is so true !!!!!!!

*WOOT* now I understand it *SIGHTS*
750 prims/cheap OS = 20 cheap OS on 1 QUAD CPU ..............= 20 x 75$ = 1500 $/cpu

nice business strategy + margin !

xxx
wildcat

Argent, the problem is that lots of the VERY primmy boats are "worn," so they can enter the sim. Then the person wearing the boat crashes, or gets caught crossing the sim boundary and suddenly you have several hundred prims of boat hanging around until you return objects ... and a sim that maybe no one else can enter until the cleaning up is done.

We have an open space (formerly a void ... we have had it a long time) and keep about 800 prims free for just that reason. We had no problems working with the original 1800 prims allowance and in fact probably have no more than that out now. Obviously we are going to have to move up to a "homestead," however, since our island has a house on it. This is even though we get perhaps one hour a week use of our sim while many other people sail through enjoying it every day.

You may need only water to sail, but "only water" is boring to look at. One of the things that makes the sailing sims so enjoyable is the scenery ... seeing the interesting and beautiful things people have done with their sims. Additionally, a proper sailing experience also requires many sims, something a single estate owner simply cannot afford. When OS were used for light residential (as ours has been for ... I think 18 months now?), the "owners" could have a little house to enjoy while simultaneously helping to maintain the estate's network of sims for use by hundreds of visitors (many of whom are not even residents of one of the sailing estates).

Unfortunately, I doubt people will be willing to pay $75 to fund an empty (boring) sim only for others to sail through and the six months grandfathering of the homestead tier just draws the crisis out. How will things be different in July than they will be in January?

So where does this leave those of us who have less than 4 OSS and cannot afford to pay 750 more to covert to full sim and the extra 295 per month for the full sim?

I cant afford 125USD for the increased tiers on homestead either.....where is my option???

Seems we are left out in the cold

Thumbs down from me as well.

For the same price, a sim drops down to 750 prims an 10 avatars from the current. So anyone who wants to keep the same price (and price is really a deciding factor for a number of residents) has to have severe restrictions placed on their land.

If those of us who live and have small rentals on our land want to keep *the same quality and prim limit* our price is still going to rise by $50 a month over time.

This doesn't seem fair to me. It's a massive money-grab.

Here's the price-per-prim breakdown:

Full sim: US$295/15000 = US$0.0197 per prim per month.
Openspaces (current): US$75/3750 = US$0.020 per prim per month.

Homestead (after full increase): US$125/3750 = US$0.033 per prim per month. (an increase of 167%.

Openspaces (new) US$75/750 = $0.10 per prim per month (a whopping 508% increase)

This is a major money grab on the part of Linden Labs, and on a price-efficiency basis, is pricing me out of their marketplace.

If Linden Labs really were on our side as Residents, they would offer the following:

Full sim: US$295/month for 15000 prims
Homestead Sim: US$160/month for 7500 prims and some limits.
Openspaces Sim: US$30/month for 750 prims and strict limits.

That's a far more reasonable pricing structure which incorporates the same pricing structure for full sims.

OpenLife is still calling to me - 45000 prims for $75/month with a $145 setup fee on a 256x256 sim.

Gee, I wonder which place understands cost efficiency?

I don't get it.. I rent half an open spaced sim.. use little over half of the prims available and spend a little time there (maybe 4 hrs a week) only with 1 friend. Also the home is in a skybox due to privacy reasons. Many of us live at such a sim for that reason.
My island itsself is hardly built on.
Still I am going to have to pay much more.. I am hardly a threat to open space view nor to the servers. Oh yes.. there are scripts.. but jeezz..
If price goes up I will have to give up my island and not buying other one in return.
I think reducing prim usage is a much better idea

Do you all know what would happen to us here in SL if WE did business like LL does??? yep..you guessed it.. we would be banned!

This seems do-able, although I'd like to see hard numbers on things like the number of scripts, etc, and hard dates on everything.

And I think that LL has to say "And this is how it will be until JAN 2010 at a minimum."

The Big Takeaway? I hope that LL has learned a thing or two about engineering analysis, business analysis, communications, public relations and THEIR CUSTOMER BASE after this fiasco.

Nope that about sums it up, and yet so many sheep to the slaughter are here. Crazy, all i see is 6 months i pay a little more, and then the end of june, adios to my sims, including my 5 full sims.

what will be the limits set on homesteads?

"Effective Immediately We will no longer allow the Owner of an Openspace to be changed to a different resident than the Payor. "

I didn't see anything about this in the followup posting.

We have a sim owner who is leaving SL and shutting down his estate. The residents association for that region managed to save 4 of the 20 sims.

One of the sims being shut down is an OpenSpace sim. The resident of that OpenSpace sim would like to save it. Can it be transferred to the people who are saving the sims (i.e. the new owners?)

I think LL tried to aim this policy to two categories of OS users, large estates who used the voids as filler and residents who used them as private homes. There is still a big unanswered question in my mind about about script limits but I have a couple of questions for my fellow residents.

First, to those who use the OS sims as voids, sailing communities, large estates, Nautilus, etc: is 750 prims enough? If it is then I believe this is a price cut from the original void sims with the added restriction of fewer prims and avatars. Will this work for your purposes?

To those who use the OS sims a private homes as I do: are you willing to pay an extra $20 a month for 6 months (and then a huge jump) to have your own island without neighbors or ugly builds? I still haven't decided my answer to that yet. I might stick out the first 6 months but I know $50 is too much so in the end I will probably give up the island.

To the rest of the users: this is a big jump in cost. I think LL wants to price those who split up the sims or have clubs or shops out of this particular market. And I think with the follow on price increase in 6 months they want the single residences to migrate away as well.

What I See here is everyone applauding lindens for not just increasing their tier by 66%....but for reducing their prim count by over 3/4 for the same price....but if you want what they USED to offer you for 75 a month, its STILL gonna cost you 66% more. The low prim sim offer is a) blaming prims for lag, when LL themselves admitted in their own tech article that its TEXTURES, not prims....b) plaing a 10 avatar restriction on those sims...Both of these points make SL sailing almost completely unviable. We regularly run races with more than 10 racers in it...and the sims invariably have someone touring with 4 of their buddies on their boat...so we start a race, and half the field hits a brick wall. We get this, even though we are compliant with LLs overview of the sims intended purpose....

Bottom line is, for sailing to exist, we need to upgrade almost every sim to a homestead. 66% increase in tier..unviable...

Hello...Lindens....You acclaim the SL Sailing organisation for being adherent to the requirements.... you applaud them as a great attraction to SL.... Then why the hell arent you listening... HELLLOOO?????

/me can feel another 100 boat protest run at Santa Cruz....totally overloading their openspaces just because the lindens are trying to reword their price rip off.

Lets see this for the reality of what it REALLY is....its not a fix...its not a repsonse in the customers interest...anyone that believes that is crazy...... the price rise is still there.... its STILL THERE.... They have just glossed it over by introducing a new product at a hugely inflated price. 750 prims for 75 USD a month.... Whats the tier on 4000M of land? thats over 1000 prims, and under half the monthly tier cost. Lets all wake up and stop thinking Lindens are doing us a favor here....The price rise is STILL THERE.