Open Spaces Announcement & Talk with M and Jack Linden

Hi Jini,

I can't speak for financials (I'm a systems administrator at Linden Lab), but as for your calculations, you based them on a machine running 4 regions per core, 4 cores per CPU and 4 CPUs per server. At present, we don't have any simulator machines with 16 cores, sadly

Hiya Neuro!! Welcome to the forums!

Can I have a bear?

Sadly, I think you've now established yourself up as an expert on all this and will be flooded with IMs and notes and emails.

(also, I think you wanted "can't" in that first line, wrt financials.

Ooh! A virgin Linden on first post! *pounce*

Thanks Kwakkelde that was my point entirely. The other point to Mephistopheles was in a different post - and my point there was checking if he had been around to see what had happened. Mephistopheles, sorry to hear you needed to take a break and glad all is sorted out for you. If you had a break you probably missed a few things

1) residents did not "abuse" the prim limit you ballyhooed when you uped prims to 3750 from 1800. The used the prims they payed for.

2) apparently LL screwed up in offering them. Period.

3) All your new categories do is postpone the 125$ tier till july 9 and reduce the old OS sims to 750prim, a rediculously unuseable number.

People manage to have homes for far less on mainland and a small plot (to play devil's advocate).

I want my 45,000 potential prims even though with 3/4 of a mainland sim I still had well over 6000 prims spare ...

117 prims, if I recall correctly, on a First Land.

That many potential prims can produce a collapse in the quantum vacuum, releasing untold quantities of Zero Prim energy, and completely overloading the Grey Goo Fence. We're talking Chaos, Anarchy, Dogs and Cats living together... wait a second, that already happened.

You better reduce your Prim Potential anyway. Just in case.

LOL - it won't be here. The irony is that I will be running pretty much at OS - I will even be using my terrain file from my island that I made with my own fair hands. Mainly it will be water and landscaping with a skybox away from wondering wonderous eyes (and no naughty animations probably). The cost will be the same in real terms, except I'll have that plus THREE SIMS of open water. And I have so much patience, and I am a pioneer. Ha!

Nothing change ! Yes, you cannot !

What should be clever is :

- to keep the actual OS fees for Homesteads (not more than 75$)
- to make the OS with a lower price (50$)...

because these sims are very limited for all.

I think your new sims policy is just to make more money from people who have not.

Actually, you didn't understood what people need in that game : not paying more.
For two reasons : if it's just a leisure, it couldn't be a monthly investment, if it's just a business, they work very very hard, give a lot of money, with a lot of social sacrifices, for almost nothing back...
And you want them paying more ??
Do you really want to ruin SL by make them leave the game ?

Please, leave sometime the vituality to learn about the situation of our real world. Try to understand who are your customers, what they do with the game, what they can pay, what they cannot pay...

What will you say tomorrow if SL fall down ? It was just because you wanted more money ?

Well, at least the quantum prim collapse will be limited to an unpopulated grid. With lots of "wubba wubba wubba" sound effects.

By the way, if you're using depleted patience I recommend regular radiation screening.

You know one thing that would really, really help right now to get over the shock of prim reduction on opensims and soften the blow?

Allow megaprim construction as part of client, removing the 10m limit.

If you want a 60x60 paved area normally, that's 36 prims wasted. One megaprim could do that easy, but the 'hacked megaprims' that are available you can never get in exactly the size you want.

People use megaprims already, so the grid and software can certainly cope, it puts the load from server to client, and one of the major problems is then solved.

Jack, M, anyone care to respond?

Thx Chaos

Yes Mr M... where are you? Quit running to the bank with all the easy money your pillaging and talk to your very upset customers...

I've taken some time to think about this new proposal before posting my full thoughts.

I am not an estate owner, nor do I own an OS sim, though I do rent space on one for a little cottage, a move that was necessitated by continual dissatisfaction with owning land on the mainland. But this issue has been of great interest to me.

Why?

Because while I do not have these things now, I had planned to in the near future, once I had saved the money. I have been saving now for several months to by a full sim, not an openspace, a full sim, on which to build an artists' colony, -- a colony that would have included bringing new members to the grid as many of those interested in the project when I have spoken to them of it are not current customers. But would have joined in order to be a part of what I proposed.

I speak in the past tense because I have decided, in light of how this has been handled, to find another venue when the time comes. I cannot do business with or ask anyone to become the customer of a company in which I have no faith and cannot trust to do business fairly.

I had written before that I thought what most of us wanted was simply for Linden Labs to treat it's customer base with fairness and honesty. I think the majority of people here can agree that if there is a serious need, technical or fiscal, a *small* price increase across the board (mainland, OS, full sim) to offset the costs of badly needed upgrades or what have you would be fair and reasonable.

But that is not what Linden labs did. The initial proposal was a 67% increase on only the 'popular' land type, with zero allowances or breaks for the people who were suddenly looking at almost doubling their fees, many of which were not insubstantial to begin with.

True, the issue was opened for discussion and feedback, (of which there has been an over-whelming amount). By implied agreement, Linden Labs says, opening discussion this way, 'we want to work *with* you to make this the best situation for all of us'. Unfortunately, for those of us who haven't been here for that long and had little of the history our peers with longer terms of residence in Second Life have seen with the company, we took you at your word, both implied and stated. We believed our feedback could make a bad situation at least a little more tolerable.

I say unfortunately because this 'new' deal has destroyed any faith I and others like me might have had in Linden Labs.

The feedback you received was that a price increase of that magnitude was more than your product you were offering was worth, more than many would be willing to pay for what they were getting.

You claimed to be listening to that feedback and doing something to mitigate the situation in a way that would be beneficial to all, allowing for fairness to the users of your service as well as easing the technical burdens you have given as the reason for this 'necessary increase'. A resolution was promised, one that you again claimed incorporated the feedback of the community you serve.

What you gave us was a slap in the face, to put it baldly. Instead of one product not worth it's price for the capabilities provided, you gave us two. Rather than provide more value in the product or bring the price to a level justified by the value in product, you have provided less value and asked for more money.

I hear the words of some saying "if you don't like it, go to the mainland". But, Linden Labs has alienated mainland residents as well, who must be Premium Account holders to buy land there and have recently been labeled "immaterial" to Linden Labs overall business.

Yes, I understand that statement by the CEO of the company was not meant as it was worded. Or so Linden Labs has claimed after the fact. But, let's be honest, it was either the grossest PR mistake in speaking ever, or the truth despite the spin and backpedaling on the statement after. No matter which is the fact, that statement angered the very people that would purchase land on the mainland. (And, to be honest, many of us don't want to live there anyway when there is absolutely no management of it and we're forced to either deal with the griefers and generally rude neighbors or move again.)

Had the service provider I work for ever acted this way, I can guarantee we would be out of business. If my customer support team had ever announced something like this on the website without prior direct notice to the individual users affected, our CEO would be out for our blood and promising our customers there would be disciplinary action -- not alienating customers further and making excuses for poor communication skills.

The fact of the matter is, no matter what the truth behind this situation is found to be, and I firmly believe in the old saying "There's three sides to every story: yours, mine, and the truth somewhere between", Linden Labs has lost the trust of its user base, it's customers. We may stay on for awhile, yes. As I've said before, we don't really *want* to leave the world where we've built businesses, communities, and lives. But, the quality of those lives here is never going to be the same and eventually, many of us *will* want to or not.

Many of the lands we love are disappearing. These lands are, for some of us, what brought us to Second Life and keeps us here.

The communities we have built are being torn apart. Again, communities which brought us here and keep us here.

More than a few have expressed intentions to remain, but spend no further money on any Linden Lab product, including L$. This means the content creators are looking at less income as well and may be forced to leave simply to make ends meat.

One less reason for the rest of us to login.

Your decision has undermined the fundamental basis of your service and priced a good chunk of your customers right out of being your customers. And, while I would hope there might still be further chances at change between now and January, I have lost all faith that it will happen.

I sincerely doubt I am the only one, or even one of a small minority.

And there is the truth. Remember guys this is a business. As far as M Linden and the shareholders are concerned it's about the bottom line.

Second Life is not only a bussines, is a live community and residents are not customers, are investors and content creator. The list of content creators that had left SL is huge enough and you are forcing lot of us to take the same way and go to one of the alternate virtual worlds that those people, that once were SL residents, are growing just now.

You only provide the space and rules and without us you are nothing, don't forget this and don't forget the tale about the chicken and the golden eggs... The world economics situation at RL is not the best to have bad advertising, sales of our own created content have decreased in a very significant way, inworld and at web pages. This can be the end of SL.
Sorry, but the new CEO selection was not a good one. This is not WoW. Only the new Ceo dimisssion would bring to me some faith at SL again.

I can't believe you post you didn't imposed limits to openspaces "because imposing limits require that we hire staff to enforce them". Unacceptable.
I saw the first openspace at beginnig of 2007, at Otherland, when i arrived to SL, and after, lot of them from any landowner, and all were rented for that you say now is not the allowed usage. Did you allowed this for 2 years at least, because you haven't enough staff? Yuo really didn't know the way residents were using Openspaces? You didn't feel shame posting that? Unacceptable.

I can't believe you only worry about openspace usage abuse. What about abusing at full regions, specially at mainland? A parcel can be overloaded the same way and affects all parcels at same region the same way openspace do with the other regions that share CPU wiht it. Who takes care of this at mainland? your overloaded short staff? At least at private regions estate managers have some limited tools to take care of lag, thought region tool must be implemented with more features to do it in a proper way, and that's the reason for lot of people to move from mainland to private.
But i'm sure nobody has abused at privated, estate owners and their hired state managers take care of this at private regions, full or opensims, not as in mainland, where you can see abussing only taking a walk, and nobody stops them. Unacceptable.

I rented my openspace at february 2008 because i wanted to be state manager and have the region tool working, to know my scripts how laggy they were, i don't know any other way to check msec of a single running script. It has been a bad bussiness for me, only pay to you, but always consider it as an investiment. Since then many creators have come to my sim to test their scripts, but they must ask me for the results, so when you make the openspaces more atractive they got their own.
When you increased number of prims and let them be purchased only one, not 4 as before and lower the price and delivering them in some hours, you were telling us: Hey folks, you can use openspace in a heavier usage way that you are been doing till now! That's what all residents understood... And you didn't say: Hey, but remember they are to be void!
Again: you can't say you didn't know the way the people was using openspaces from the beginning. Unacceptable.

My sim was one of the 500 regions havock4 beta testers, ans was not the only openspace at this program, and till havock4 was finally deployed to the whole grid many content creators come here to check their stuff, and some of your overloaded staff. This was a not allowed usage also?

And now comes the worst part: You've posted that payor and owner must be the same! Why? what's the reason? What's difference between openspace divided into 2 parcels or only one? what will this improve? First you post that those that actually are owner, but not payor, will be maintained, but now the first condition for the sim going on as openspace is: REMOVE ALL RENTERS!!! And ridiculous 750 prims! if at least they were the same 1875 prims they have when we purchased them... UNACCEPTABLE.
YOU are breaking the contract, not me.

You are saying all the small content creators like me, that need to have the control of a whole region at an affordable price, that you have no room for us, your are kicking us away in the most harassing way i ever seen. I think you are conducting against your own ToS. Again

UNACCEPTABLE.

So, farewell Second Life, goodbye Linden Labs, i can't trust you anymore nor wait till you post a reasonable decission. I'm tired and heavily dissapointed and very annoyed. But i don't say goodbye to residents, becuse i'm sure we'll meet at other virtual world soon, one that doesn't seem a banana republic with Linden Labs as the banana company.
I'm not going to invest a single dollar or a min of my work here no more.

I'm sorry, but is your fault, not mine

Kindly
Loco Rau

PS: and for all of you that have posted that is a great decission and will solve all the problems, simply think it carefully, not all that seems to bring some profit to you is a good idea.

I don't think there are many people saying that..

If they had dropped openspace prim counts by half, back to what it was a year ago, instead of dropping them to less than half of what they were a year ago, this would have gone a lot better.

And I still don't see any reason why a group of 4 homestead sims running on one core will be any better than an 'overloaded' group of 4 openspace sims. If they are actually overloaded and they're trying to fix that, this new plan doesn't seem to do it. Maybe there are technical tricks that are still unannounced..

I don't think I can recall ANYONE saying that.

I'm sorry you're unhappy, but as far as I can tell it doesn't seem like there was any good way for LL to deal with this. Based on what I've seen in-world and what they posted, without the self-serving 'abuse' fog, they'd massively oversold the product without realizing it, and when they discovered the problems there were far too many OpenSpaces in use to grandfather them all. I don't think they handled it well, and I don't think they have come up with the best possible solution, but I can't see ANY solution they came up with being much more acceptable.

They mentioned they're likely to end up running them three to a core.

I, too, very much wish that "megaprim liberation" were a priority.

But FWIW, builders do have quite a lot of "standard issue" megaprims available now. To the specific example, I happen to have a 60x60x0.5 in inventory that would make dandy pavement. Also 60x60x20, x50, and x60, all native (not yet cut or dimpled) sizes that might be useful over and around that 60x60 platform.

Still wish I could just make 'em in the Editor, though, at least up to 256**3.

The quote I see is...


/me doesn't see the word 'likely' in there.

Hmmm... wants to take a look under the hood... LOL..

Only running 4 x duel cores Xeon's or only a two CPU's server? I cant imagine a data center like LL's not running 4 x cpu's so i am guessing duel core Xeon's. either way it basicly doubles the machine count ....unless its even worse then I am thinking still LOL


The financials does not change other then initial cost of machines. Its all speculative any way based on numbers posted and personal experiance from building many many data centers and Class C network sites.

All sim hosts have two dual-core processors on them.

edit: the latest hardware (that LL has talked about) is a class 5 which got deployed about 2 years ago.

http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/10/16/looking-forward-to-class-5/


Don't forget the power and cooling bills...

If (as suggested in other comments) memory or memory *access* is a bottleneck, going to more than 4 cores per server is not necessarily an optimum strategy.