Open Spaces Announcement & Talk with M and Jack Linden

Totally agree Qie. I realise I am past caring and therefore past coming out with ideas but there's not much point people slagging off each other.

The in fighting i m sure will continue and thats a sad fact in all this. I have to agree to disagree with many posters here but i would never get personal with them that is so wrong imo.

The problem is its hard to negotiate with a company that is showing it doesn't give a rats arse for its customers on a daily basis since this all started.

Human beings can be such non thinkers when passions are inflamed

Of course you are right and I am sure that most are waiting and hoping.
But LL can be very sure that in december the massive dumping will take place.

And as the last change told us that sims get totally worthless, people will not even try to sell and risk another tier-month.

And we should not under estimate the impact of the number of views and posts. I would not be surpriced at all if the real concurrent number is not a true count but multiplied to try to get businesses in. If that is the case, the percentage of unhappy people is even higher then it looks now.

Um... use an OS sim like it was meant (and advertised) to be used maybe?

It seems to me that LL defining this "light use" business it totally the wrong way for LL to look at it. The simple and obvious way is to set the hard limits for the various sims - avs, scripts, prims - and it doesn't matter how they are used. E.g. you can do what you want on a 750 prim sim and put what you want on it. The limits can't be exceeded because they are coded. If you want to use the allowances for a house, furniture, a pool and some trees, it's fine. If you want to make it pure scenery, that's fine too. It seems perfectly simple and sensible to my way of thinking.

Similarly with a 3750 prim sim. If you can fit a business on it, do so. You can't exceed the limits because they are coded.

All that's needed is to set the limits for the various sims according to the sort of uses that are likely and leave it at that.

Do you really think, this forum is read by anyone at Linden Lab? I don't. There is a forum post by Katt Linden "Where to Find Updates from Linden Lab" (http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/10/31/where-to-find-updates-from-linden-lab/#comments) at the Offical Second Life Blog. This post that has a link (yes, the 1st one) to the Grid Status Page, a link that isn't working, because Katt confused "https" and "http".
Agreed, this mistake can happen to everyone. But why hasn't it been corrected for almost seven days now? Seems to me that nobody reads the comments. People told Katt in their responses to the blog entry what and where the mistake is. It's been ignored as LL ignores every mistake it does.

Maybe in-world action should become stronger again. Let's show them some more civil unrest. It doesn't seem as we would get any answers or concession from LL in the forum.

BTW: The "concession" to postpone the rise in tier to 125 US$ is tainted by telling that there are going to be yet unknown script limitations. So I pay more than before (66%) and get less (script limitation, AV limitation) when I take the poisoned homestead offer. I know this has been stated before, but nobody (and for sure not the Lindens) has the time to read all the entries, therefore I repeat in here again.

Having followed this forum closely and reading question after question it is stunning that it appears that LL has made almost no attempt to even clarify the products they are offering, let alone addressing the obvious concerns of its customers (and they are not "residents", they are revenue generating customers) or its public image. One may only look at the size and diversity of the comments here to realize that this will very soon spill well beyond the borders of SL and into a very public display of Linden Labs' weakness and rapidly dimming future. LL is a business and must make a profit to survive, but it is a business that must also attract investors, convince lenders to finance short and long term debt, and attract customers to buy the products they offer. This entire announcement has caused severe damage to LL's already fragile reputation and the longer that the its board allows this to continue the worse the problem becomes for the customers, for the future of the company, for the viability of all virtual worlds, and for the well tarnished vision with so much potential that started SL.

When you step back and look at the thing we call SL, it truly is a very complex wonder that connects people from around the globe like nothing else. It has (maybe HAD) great potential to provide a unique and cost effective way for businesses large and small to find customers, perform market research, advertise, collaborate, communicate, and experiment is a "safe" environment. It allowed people to live their dreams and to be and do what they could not in RL and to meet and become friends with other people they would never meet without the environment that was provided by SL.

Problems in such a complex entity are to be expected and are often not easy to solve or fix and it is impossible to please everyone with any product or service, however it seems that LL has managed to displease almost everyone and has somehow forgotten why the company exists at all.

It may be a case of too little too late, but LL should immediately place any changes on hold. ALL development of NEW products and services should be halted. ALL property sales from LL, of every kind, should be sold as of today with a specific statement that the product and pricing is subject to change in July of 2009.

the time between now and next summer should be used to perform a total review of LL from the janitor to the CEO with focus on making the company more efficient, flexible and responsive to its market. All technical resources should be focused on fixing what now exists by improving stability and basic function, testing and rewriting code where necessary, and realigning utilization of servers, data distribution, and technical resources.
Each existing product should be reviewed and the true cost of providing a given service should be identified, along with its technical limitations, potential for use, and impact on the world. Input from customers and outside people should be sought and listened to in order to provide a product line that meets the needs of the customer at a price point that recognizes the value of the service and is tied to actual resource utilization and company profit goals.

Re-examine your company and product offering and refocus your efforts to provide competitive services at a price that makes sense to the company and its customers and provide a service that will take the company forward as the best virtual world instead of a dying one.

In July, after this process is complete, announce new products and pricing for everything, with well thought out and explained details and a guarantee that the pricing and services will be stable for a year, allowing fair conversions and grandfathering where appropriate, and giving residents more choices, with clear limitations and controls to match their needs.
Price increases should be reasonable and backed by reasoning that the customer can understand and should be represent a price that can maintain the service, provide true value to the customer, and make a profit for the company.

One of the major issues sL has had is a perception of a lack of direction. The answers to costs, product offerings, technical problems and customer concern has always been a quick fix with a bandaide when in some cases major surgery has been required.

This is a recipe for a stable economy, stable revenues, new long term customers, all of which the company needs to survive. I know the model you are following has become common today and I am sure there is a conference table full of bankers who are pressing for higher profits for the month and only look at the bottom line and only for today, but SL has the potential and frankly the market position to break out of this trap and build a new world by using common sense and some creative thinking that matches that of the original visionaries. This is good for everyone, including those who do not look beyond the bottom line.

The first step is communication, NOW, as your customers deserve your attention and it is your responsibility to explain your reasoning and to answer questions and concerns or to tell people if you don't have the answers. If you do not have enough respect and concern for your customers to do this, everything that has been written, and the future of SL is pretty much a moot point.

This needs to happen NOW because you are loosing customers and more important reputation faster than you think and there is a finite number of available customers to fuel your business in the future. As I said in an earlier post, You seem to have forgotten that you NEED your customers far far more than they need you and to ignore that will be the demise of Linden Labs and the dream.

@Villain

Our Ops Manual at work states that if a customer has a complaint they will still have a more positive view of the company if they were able to air their complaints and feel they were listened to - even if our answer still has to be "no".

This thread doubtlessly is not being read much by the 18 moderators listed and also I am sure (from my own experience of customer complaints) they are falling on stony ground. However the people airing their views are at least getting to air them to each other. Better than feeling powerless and alone ... I've seen names listed here whom I've never seen post before.

perhaps M thinks since he has written a letter, he has spoken the last word. either that or hes talking to his lawyers.

... or getting a roasting from the Board.

This is only partly true. If you turn to the next page in company phychologics, you will find that venting only works for "rather small changes that people can adapt to".
I guess LL never red further then page one.

M, it is around 06:15 am west coast, is your alarm clock ringing? as we learned from you, you have hours to wake up ))))))))))
good morning M

Don't go bringing facts into it

I should clarify, this is the Ops manual for our Customer Services not the whole company

I would like to comment on a number of things happening and a number of things said in these forums.

Let me start with something I think is VERY positive, LL did respond to the first wave of comments and to me they show they are listening. Of course they don't have all the answers yet but LL has answered a lot of questions and they posted a number of things they think they can and will change.

"Open Space", two simple words, I don't see how anyone can mistake a sim like this for one that is intended to house a club or a mall. On the other hand, why on earth did LL allow more prims on these sims, when it was clear from the get go the sims were performing very poorly. I've built on one of these when they were clustered by four, all owned by one person. Primcount was 1875 a piece back then. They were laggy as hell to say the least as soon as a person wearing a small number of scripted objects entered one of the four. Mind you the sims were empty, so no load other than the avatars really.
I've done some simple testing, nothing scientific, but it looks like avatars affect performance about five to ten times as much as on a normal sim.
None of the comments by either LL or SL residents have really addressed this, let alone come up with suggestions to fix it. Sadly I don't know why agents are so much heavier on these sims than on normal ones, so all I can do is address it.

Back to "Open Space". LL has stated the sims (the new 750 prim ones) are not to be used as "a home", to me it is very clear what they mean by that. Open space sims are ment to be used as landscape, a nice view, a sim to walk through, not to go to. Therefor any kind of poseball, furniture, tv screen, gathering place, etc. shouldn't be on a sim like this. Also, what I call home in SL is the place in SL I use for unpacking my purchases, building and editing my own items, inviting friends to and to test scripts. All the uproar about LL not being clear on this matter is imho just looking for something to whine, sorry.

Now to people who are comparing Open Space sims to full sims and are calculating price per prim I only have one thing to say: You can't compare the two. They are not ment to be used in the same way, they do not perform in the same way. The big plus for OS is the lack of visual annoyance, no neighbours with a different idea on what looks nice. That is what you pay for. If you want cheaper prims, get a quarter of a sim on mainland or on a normal island, next to less costs you will experience better performance from the sim.

I heard they postponed the changes to july 2009, I hope someone can verify that.
This would leave people plenty of time to decide on what to do and it would make the initial costs (buying the sim) more reasonable.

But how did this start? LL must have known there were performance issues from day one. They and not the residents are responsible for letting this situation spin out of control. Throw a dog a bone.... Now LL has to repair their own mistakes and pointing the finger at "abusers" seems to be out of line to me. However, they do need to solve the performance issue. With less OS around and more restrictions on those remaining, I can see how they will make that happen.

Charging more sounds fair to me since they stacked four on a processor and they will have to spread those sims over more of them. I bet the performance issues took and still take a lot of human recources aswell, more than they anticipated.
Again, all LL´s fault it had to come to this, they should have reacted a lot sooner, in that case price increase would have been a lot lower and less people would have bought them. Making the OS available a piece instead of four was one of the dumbest decisions they made.

About LL making a ton of money from this, hmm, hard to get anywhere near the bottom of this, but yes I have to admit it sure smells fishy.

All in all the problem is lack of proper communication. LL proved once more that they noticed a problem, thought about it for a day or so, made a decision then dumped it on the residents. There is no excuse for this and I hope LL has learned from it, sadly I am not very confident about things getting on the level they should be on anytime soon. M has proved that with offending premium members, WOW, that was amazing.

Finally I can say something about my own OS. I stopped payments on it and the estate manager will use it to convert to a new full sim. The reason I had the sim was to have some more room around our main island. It was ment to be an example of what you can do with a limited number of prims. In the sky there was a small store selling the items we used to make the sim what it was. It didn´t have a lot of traffic, a couple of persons a week maybe, still both me and my partner felt we were pushing it by setting up retail.
We didn´t use more than a quarter of the sims (sim not chip, that would be 1/16th then) resources and found very nice ways to lower primcount without temp rezzers etc. I still want to sell the items, so we moved the store somewhere else. without the store and two big prim items on the sim, we only used 800 or so prims, the full area taken by land, not ocean. This proves to me 750 is plenty.

My question is: Who would buy a sim, pay tiers, build and all... just to make a landscape? Oh, look, how beautiful, I made a forrest. It useless, because we are in a virtual world, but I spent some money just to do it. Nobody cames here, awhile it is just for light use, wich means "no use"... but I am folowing the precious Linden rules and doing NOTHING with the land I bought, I am doing just because I like do throw my money away... I am just helping linden to have more money, more of MY money.

For me they are being very cynical. They made a product and sold it, and now they found a good excuse to make it more expensive, by saying it is the residents who abuse.

Hello there,

first of all must say that, at the moment, and I repeat 'at the moment', I'm not affected by this big issue, since I'm just renting some land on a private full sim.
Secondly, please forgive my post if it might contain some errors, since English is not my native tongue.
Said this, I'm totally on the side of the residents who are really pissed off by this situation, and moreover by LL attitude.

I agree with you,but, as far as it is easy to give a definition of what it might be considered an "house", I'm just wondering how LL could enforce people to abide to their new rules...
Are they going to publish a list of forbidden items that cannot be rezzed on their new OS low prim product? And then are they going to check inworld what it is rezzed on every sim? I have no clue about how they can force residents to follow their rules about what it is living on a sim or not....

Then, another consideration...I'm really worried by this lack of communication...I think that it is seriously a bad sign...even worse of a scenery where they've already made up their mind.
I truly believe that even a two line post by Katt, who is based in the UK, so she doesn't have any 'timezone' or 'office hours' excuses, just saying "Sorry guys, Jack or M or whoever, are working on it, and they are going to be back soon on this issue..." would have been better then this long lasting dead silence...Isn't she the Communication Manager? How many times has she posted here or in other forums or blogs?
I think that either they all are in really big troubles or totally panicked...neither of the twos are good for all of us.....

It would be good to hear an update from LL, given how many posts this forum has generated.

I've posted before, for me the issue is trust. It seems that massive price hikes are the norm in SL - private island tier was increased by 50% 2 years ago. Can we expect to see a similar rise in cost for full sims in the near future?

I understand that LL have had problems with the overhead for open spaces on a CPU compared to full sims and need to do something about it. People can now decide whether it is worth paying a 67% premium for getting more land and privacy (albeit reduced performance) with your prims compared to renting 25% of a full sim. But to have continued selling open space long after knowing there was a problem, and to then issue a large monthly rental increase. Quite frankly, that sort of business practice stinks. Small wonder so many people are unhappy. At the very least, you should offer refunds to people who purchased open space within the last 3 months, if they choose to abandon the sim before December. (I'm guessing you won't - with plans to go 64-bit, you won't want spare 32-bit hardware on your racks.)

It might be worth making a statement regarding planned price increases for full sims over the next 12 months. Because only fools would buy them right now, excluding the minority of users who run a profitable business within SL or simply don't care how much they spend. This announcement is making everyone nervous about what price increase will come out of nowhere next. And now is not the time to make your customers nervous, with us facing potentially the biggest and longest recession ever seen, globally. (Never before has America, Europe and Asia faced a severe recession at the same time.)

I am guessing you have never been asked to move to keep a job.

I have family. I have connections to my area. Due to medical reasons I can not drive so transportation in an area is crucial to me. I also have these little things called a lease on my appartment and other yearly contracts.

Frankly, for all the work it would be, finding another job in my area is a lot easier than just uprooting on some corporate whim. I have a life outside of work.

hey LL,

are you guys going to kick your most important and only midrange product?

the current OS is surely the best product of LL for many customers.

you do not make the point, that OS is non-replaceable?

customers need a sim, quater price, quater options (reduce agents to 25) in oposite
to expensive full sim.

in no case there is a reason to pay more for less options, also in context to a full sim!

just handle it as it is, a quater sim. (and remedy your own issues with this product)

and.....if you going to sell it separately from full sim, you would spot SL growing.

There is one huge difference, customer service complaints are a bit different then invester complaints.

We make up a group of investers that pay in a great deal revinue. We stop paying and LL is going to have some serious issues. Since well over 1/2 of the current landmass that makes up second life is currently open spaces and effected by this. i find it rather disturbing that M linden likes to play it in interviews as if only a minor land group is effected.
Since they only see dollars and not people lets see if they undestand this.


$1,125,000 a month is complaining they do not want to pay an extra $750,000 a month for less service.

There's too much hanging on the "if there is a building it's a home" - so if part of - say - a Japanese themed OS build was water surrounding cherry blossom trees, a bridge or two, a Torii gate and some kind of picturesque run down "shack" (this will make more sense to some people than others" with a shinto shrine it it ...

Is that a home or is that part of the landscaping?

If that shack is landscape but the owners TP in there to change outfits, unpack items and log on and off there, is that "living" there?

This is the central issue and until that is cast in stone then no one really knows. Not even people who are posting with THEIR OPINION of what it means as if they are authoratitive on the subject (which unless they are LL staff hiding behind alts - and if they were then it's not down to them to make announcements, academic since they aren't LL employees lol).

Oh I am not disagreeing with you in the slightest there - was just saying why people are probably still commenting is not necessarily because they think LL are listening. Most of us are all too aware that they are probably not any more. In fairness why would they be, I think they've long got the gist. If they are going to do anything to counteract the massive loss of faith is another story.

If i have a 700 prim yacht out on open water... and it has beds and chairs and a tv in it.... is it openspace or a home.

What really pisses me off is that my land in SL was in a little island full sim. For some reason, the island owner decided suddenly it was great if the island could be converted in 4 open spaces, and with no previous consult, because it could not increase out tier fees, just did it. We were 20 days homeless and now... we know it will be more expensive. I own a little square in mainland, I decided to use it for my shop and looked for a good place to have a house. Just this. I wonder how many people are in the same situation. Lindens are not affecting just directly costumers, but they renters & costumers too.

This is my call for the CEO of Linden Lab's to recognise that the handleing of this whole situation from conception to where we are right now has been a huge mistake .

As it stands now we are being ignored and this move is by way of orders from Linden Lab's CEO .

Any hope of restoring this situation to a stable outcome has well passed it's term .

I call for a move that Mark Kingdon be removed form any position he holds at Linden Lab's by share holders , If not , Resign his post for neglect of duty to his customer base .