Open Spaces Announcement & Talk with M and Jack Linden

I think i see the reason this happens over and over. This decision does not show they have listened. This decision basically results in LESS product for the same amount in the original change. The VAST majority of OS users will have to upgrade to homesteads which will be SURPRISE 125 usd....what they said before. What really means an extension on their heavy handed increase of a product they baited us with is essentially putting another name on it and actually RESTRICTING IT. A minority of people using what will be the new OS will have their price stay the same..good for them BUT they wont be able to rent it. VERY VERY FEW in this category.

What strikes me is there are people applauding this. And as you read the pages go by, the eyes are widening and going.....OOOOOOOOOHHHHHH. grrrr pfftttt, no way.

You see folks- They will keep doing this as long as their are people that buy their dress ups and comb overs.

There were SOOOO many contructive comments about how LL could actually make more profit, make people happy AND have a creative, well performing grid. They took all this time to simply, as one said, put lipstick on it.

I'm flabbergasted. And Jack and M....in june when we are faced with what you wanted to thrust on us in January...what about conversions then? You will make a ton off them in June won't you?

But ..heh.... how many more of these changes will be endure b/t now and June??

Floored, flabbergasted, shocked I'm surprised.

Hello M. Linden:

You wrote:

"2. If you want more than an Openspace, we will offer you the choice of moving to a new product called Homesteads that is intended for light use such as low density rentals. For existing Openspace owners we will phase in the price increase for this new product over the next 6 months. Homesteads will also have technical limits for avatars and prims, and eventually script limits as well.

* January 5, 2009 – non-compliant Openspaces will transition to Homesteads and the maintenance fees will go from $75 to $95 per month.

* July 2009 — the maintenance fees for Homesteads will go from $95 to $125 per month"


How is this different from the way the OS sims are currently being used that have residences on them, for example. I don't see a change except you will be raising the cost of each OS "Homesteads" sim from $75 USD/month to $125 USD/month but now you are going to impose technical limits on avatars, sims resources and prims?

Initially you said the fee increases were necessary to allow LL to play technical "catch up" with the way the OS sims were being used to mitigate the strain on server performance.

So do the limits mean that each OS Homesteads sim is 1/4 of a regular full resource 15000 prim "island" sim and will receive a 1/4 allocation of a regular sim, i.e. are you simply going to divide total prims, resources and number of avatars of a regular island sim by four and apply those allocatoin limits to each OS Homesteads sim?

Can you specifically define what you mean by "light use " and "low density rentals?"

Thank you.

Seems LL wants you to only have 750 prims, fewer scripts and less than 10 avatars.

This would be acceptable. Still expensive, but acceptable.

sorry, but i am tired reading senseless comments like this one.

1st: a few months ago we have bought a product (OS) with its definid regulations (all
what you can do in your region control, size,prims,avatars..and so on...)
i cannot keep it as the same price!

2nd:does really someone make profit with an OS? tell me...i dont belive!
stop blaming customers for using their purchased products.

3rd: sure, LL do not have to make everybody happy, LL have to take care at their
customers and products, to keep them running and stable, improve their
services. if i like to invest money and of course a lot work into a project, i need
to trust the conditions. if i learn that these conditions are not worth the "virtual"
paper it's written on, then i will monitor my investments.

about the twinkies: what do you think about reducing Sim Prims from 15k to 5k?

Best regards

In the same boat. I shutdown all of my sims, OS and regular and canceled my premier account. The only way to get their attention is with my pocketbook. LL is out over $31,000 in yearly tiers from me.

Much more reasonable pricing structure from a business analysis point of view, if you want to grow your customer base.

never mind, they are not listening anyway.

Is this like the putting lipstick on a pig and it is still a pig theng?

Jack, M...

This is still bait and switch.

$75/mo with a severe reduction to 750 prims, 10 avatars, and a TBD on script count or performance. Why would anyone want to pay you tier on a TBD? This conversion ends up with people having less than they started with the original ocean SIMs (1875 prims). Why should anyone trust you ever again? Even the homestead regions have a TBD on that slippery complience factor but certainly no TBD on what people have to pay you. This is onerous and unfair. You have not even acknowledged your SL viewers play a major role in this problem. In fact, NO further action has taken place with the bug report.

It's your show, fine, but I want a refund - your company has not performed.

P.S. I used to test your software for free. No longer.

It's obvious from reading the posts that there are three distinctly different points of view:

1. Those who want an OS to use like a full regular sim at a cute rate price and aren't going to be happy no matter what the proposed solution is if they don't get their way on prim count, residents allowed and scripts. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that this group of residents were probably the worst and most egregious abusers of the original OS product which precipitated this whole debacle. I see these residents screaming about how they're going to other VW's and I wish them luck and happiness in their solitude. SL is lonely enough, I can't begin to imagine how lonely a VW is when concurrency is in the hundreds instead of 10's of thousands. Regardless, I'm sure they'll find something to annoy them there.

2. Those who want a cut rate OS for their home or workshop and recognize that $125 for 3750 prims is acceptable although in many eyes less than equitable (debatable), and these will now be called Homesteads. Even at $125/mo these are probably viable and will likely become very popular eventually.

3. Those who want open water for sailing or forest for small group RPing who need an OS for a bargain basement price, and they've been offered the original OS or to keep their original OS albeit with dramatically lower prim counts and other restrictions. This will likely work for them.

/me goes back to lurking.

I hope the issue with the Statistics Bar not displaying information correctly for OpenSpace sims gets corrected soon (see bug #SVC-2755)... especially in regards to script time. Isn't script time one of the biggest factors in determining how/when a sim begins to be overloaded? I am disappointed that the new Script Limits and CPU Ratios for OpenSpaces and Homesteads are TBD at the time of this announcement. It seems to me that this information would be VERY important for a sim owner to evaluate the full scope of this policy change!

LL lies go on: The openspaces where used before they could be bought sperate and free floating and with the double prims, exactly as they are now used for at least 90% of the people. ONLY LL themselves used these sims as open water or a park with just trees.
So the "original intent" was known by LL before they where upgraded. And upgrading to 3750 prims is totally contradictory to what LL says now.
This is mentioned a zillion times in the Blog.

Again nothing is made clearer about WHAT light use is and what the limitation will be.
As far as I can see it, the openspace sims are (with their 3750 prims and limited avatars before they start lagging) already light use and they have always been.

And please stop calling us a "passioned group". Passion is the building and creatively all those thousends of people build and now are loosing because of too high prices. this is not passion. This is pure anger on what LL is pulling and especially anger about the total lost of being able to trust LL next steps.

Basically LL only's offer is a 6 month delay of getting the price to 125 US$ told in a lot of words.

In short like another quoted: Not good enough

I have skinned over this plan and see it as a benefit. However, I do have questions...
1. How will it be monitored if estate owners CLAIM to want light use and do NOT make changes? 2. What will the benefits be for the new mid-grade regions?
I come out of this with a good feeling knowing that you have listened to the thousands of residents who have put their hearts into Second Life.
Bravo M and Jack. Now lets make sure LL displays the new guidelines so they can be followed and understood clearly by all.
EC~

Yep! I hear ya there, you are a great creator in SL, I really enjoyed your sims It's going to be sad knowing they are not around, for those of you that didn't know Serious he is an awesome guy and had some gorgeous sims!

Talk to you later my friend
*waves*

I see we're at nine+ pages of responses already, so let me try to answer some of the questions asked so far.

First of all, the limits are in the knowledgebase article which is linked from the blog post itself. We still have some work to do around script limits, more on that soon.

@Meade: To begin with Homesteads will be running 4 per CPU, but as we now work on ways to improve performance one of the options we'll be looking at is to change that ratio to 3 per CPU. That gives more memory headroom and is obviously less load on the CPU. It may not be the route we take, but it's one possibility.

@Sedary @Kris and others: I think it's clear that prim limits needed to be revisited in light of our change to two products rather than one. A product that is truly going to remain for light use such as water or forest doesn't require as many prims as the Homestead product. We need to clearly define these two as different products for different purposes hence that lower prim limit for Openspaces.

Jazz: Your questions on conversion are covered in the knowledgebase article. So yes, we will convert up from Openspaces to full regions for free, at least until January 09. If you have less than 4 Openspaces, then you can pay USD$250 for each missing one to convert up. So if you only had one Openspace, you would have to pay USD$750 (3 x USD$250) to convert.

@Yumi: We understand your concern about removing renters from Openspaces, but in order for us to be able to offer that product it does mean that owners will have to abide by the intended use. So unfortunately that does mean that we'll have to ask people to scale down if they wish to be classed as Openspaces rather than Homesteads.


More responses as I read further..

Sorry given all the rapid replies in one place I may have missed this. Are the script limits going to be announced in time to be able to make this decision of what to do with the OS.

Still feeling totally miffed and betrayed over this whole thing. We had built up a great community on our estate and it is now destroyed with our own 8 OS being returned for conversion to full - bang goes the scenery, and not sure at this point what will happen with the additional 4 we have rented out. Not quite at the point of giving up totally but it's close. This is not a game - it's a way of life with friends and somewhere to call home. Messing with peoples homes get's them very annoyed. Now off to break the news to our 4 friends for whom we rent out an OS (1 each) for a single home with scenery. Stupidly I feel we have let them down

Openspaces

Availability: Now
Size: 65536m
Prims: 750
Avatars: 10
Setup fee: US$250
Monthly Maintenance: US$75
Educational Discount: No
Script Limits: TBD
CPU Ratios : TBD
Events & Classifieds: No
Trade up to full Region: Yes (free of conversion fee until Jan 09)


Homesteads

Availability: January 5, 2009
Size: 65536m
Prims: 3750
Avatars: 20
Setup fee: US$375
Monthly Maintenance: US$95 (Q1/09) US$125(Q3/09)
Educational Discount: Yes
Script Limits: TBD
CPU Ratios : TBD
Events & Classifieds: Yes
Trade up to full Region: Yes (free of conversion fee until Jan 09)

This is exactly the same plan that Jack originally announced. Only difference is they are staging the price hike in 2 steps and offering a lower prim region for open space decoration.

Don't see anything here to get excited about.

I totally disagree with this. 75 USD is far too much to pay for only 750 Prims and 10 avatar access, no event listings or classifieds. Seems this worse not better. 20 avatars is more acceptable and for this amount of prims, the price should not be higher than 50 USD .. but honestly give them back their 1800 prims for 75 USD. This is "fair" not this ridiculous proposal.

As for the new Homestead product, at least 40 avartars and for that price.. certainly FAR less restrictions.

I agree with the gradual price increase and the continued discount for educators but all else seems to far short of the line of acceptance.

Me thinks the reference in the blog to the knowledge base article should be in red BIGGER AND BOLDER.

How can that be good if the orginal OS for light use (water,forest) get a price incease of 80%!!! as they are offering now for the same price only 750 prims compared to 3.750 before.

So they increase the price by 67% for using them as residential and for light use by 80%, how is that a good solution??

Oh I just don't care any more. Truly.

I made a maze in my opensim. It isn't a huge primhog at all. We also have two of us living in the sim. We use maybe half the prims, since we want things to run smoothly when boaters use our area for fun.

Make the voidsims 1500 prims and the homesteads 4500 prims. Also make clear that 5 homes is the limit on homesteads - communications seems to be one of your weaknesses so make clear the difference between 75$ parcels and 125$ ones. And make it so the expensive ones can support a few sparse homes and visitors.

I, however, do not trust you to not jack with the voidsims anymore. So I'm leaving it. Period. No doubt you'll redeclare every one of them as a homestead if there is but one blade of grass on it sometime in the future. Hey, you just did the bait and switch on us just now; why should I think you won't do it again? The only way you will regain my trust and the trust of many others is by just selling a product, maintaining the grid, taking our money and giving us what we paid for. I want to see LL succeed, truly I do. But shafting your customers because you can get away with it... very bad business strategy. And it has crystalized many of us to find alternatives to you and your mercurial management practices.

You want to regain my trust? Set a price for the product and leave it the he** alone! Or offer incentives for people to do what you like, like a "Best Mainland" competition which gives a free month tier to the most inventive parcel you find. Calling me names when I'm doing my best to build something fun for everyone else at my own danged expense and then trying to jack up prices just because you can does NOT make me want to cheer for you anymore. I have, till now, been a SL fanboi. Congratulations, you have succeeded in convincing me that the problems in SL are not technical at their root - they are managerial. And until you guys wake up and realize that we are paying top dollar to play with your magic legos that we can live in with our friends, you will repeat these kinds of mistakes again and again and again.

Sooooooo, I can have less prims, less scripts and less avatars on my homestead/open sim and for this i have to pay 66 percent more, only in two steps? I will definatly join the ranks of nonepaying homeless parasites after this one, tnx!