Open Spaces Announcement & Talk with M and Jack Linden

Does anyone have any proof there's an FTC investigation? I sure hope so, along with an audit cause with the grid, servers, etc crashing all the time they sure aren't spending alot of the money on the infrastructure.

The FTC investigates these matters as they are made aware of them. I, personally, wouldn't report this until LL has actually changed my service. I have been informed some people already have reported it, though.

When people do, I hope they make it very clear that this isn't just a raise in prices. This is a total change in the service that was sold with a non-refundable setup fee to them between March and October. We are being offered the same service with lesser benefits, or a new service that is more expensive and lesser benefits.

Accepting a non-refundable fee for one service, then changing their service punitively, for some people only weeks or even days after purchase, is not in my opinion an act of good faith. In my opinion thousands of people were baited into a purchase that was switched to a lesser service once they were locked in, and now they are being dared to leave and lose their investment.

I don't believe anyone can look at that and not see it as bait and switch, but again, this is my opinion, not a statement of fact.

Well said. Because, to take it literal "our imagination", it is easy to imagine: the whole grid is my livingroom. All mine. Yours. And everyones. No reason to think small. No reason to shrink the self-confidence by some words of some people wich are calling themselfs managers and blabla. Ever when you log in, it's yours. Just that easy. The whole thing! Every reachable point on the grid. Millions of square meters, maybe billions, for 0 setup fees and 0 tier fees. Hahaha The biggest thing ever. It needs years to see all and if you go back to the start, is there something new and it will again need years to see all. Something goes ever.

Admitting you made a mistake- and then correcting that mistake- is not a sign of weakness, but a sign of strength. This is the first step to regaining customer trust.

It's very obvious, Linden Lab, that you have made a mistake. Your customers are telling you that you did on a massive scale. If printed out, the post in this thread, the previous one, and the JIRA would take 1400 pages to print. That's if you trim out all irrelevant words except for the actual messages, past it into notepad to remove images and table formatting, then copy/paste it into a word processor such as OpenOffice Writer.

6 average length books worth of dialogue, feelings, and feedback against your policy. In nine days. Gauging your economic figures for the month to date, you're also feeling it there as well- and it will only get worse.

Do the right thing: get rid of this new pricing scheme in its entirety. If the issue is resource use and associated costs, then you should instead look at cutting costs and developing solutions to work with resource strain. http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-8503 is an example of an acknowledged issue that would cause much, much more resource strain than openspaces. It is obvious that this should be a technology issue, not a pricing one.

Animom:

It's neither. It is a concerted effort to shift their business focus back to auctioning mainland for insane prices instead of selling servers at a standard fee. I believe they'd be tickled pink to see -5000 in the new islands column on the statistics page.

Why? Because we're just giving them hardware we bought, with a lot of extra that will help them absorb the lost tier while they make us new areas on the mainland to duke it out over at auction. Why sell a fourth of a server for 1k when you can sell 1024's for what they went for in Bay City?

Wynochee LeShelle:

Exactly. If it is really our world, our imagination, I really don't feel the necessity for paying rent on it. SOme will, I don't begrudge them. I will probably rent a little something to drop boxes in, but I intend to stay, enjoy SL, and endeavor to reduce my profit footprint to them as much as possible.


I have two blog posts regarding this called "The Middle Path", and "SL™ hates me... and would like me to buy mainland." They are there for when LL closes this and erases history here, too. I will not link them, you can find the address for my blog in the web section of my profile.

an audit would be an excellent idea to check infrastructure in place versus services provided.
and regarding leaving or staying: if I would 'own' an OS, I would wait until end of year before leaving, don't rush....
I started 'living' in SL with 1024 m2 and was quite happy there (because of my nice Austrian neighboresssssssssss, hahahahaha). I peaked with around 32K m2 and reduced that land to 20K some weeks ago. depending on several factors mostly triggered by LL and not the outside econnomy, I can imagine to reduce my 'investment' to 12K m2 or even to 4K m2.
It is very easy to reduce an investment in SL: just abandon land because you will not find any buyer.............. of course, you loose money, but you win as you pay less tier )))

This might hurt my Estate owner and his business and I am aware of that, but I see that this Estate is not even able to sell land at 1L$/m2 atm, consequently I am not very confident about SL economy at all as this Estate is not just 2 or 3 SIMs.

So, Darwinism has started here too:
1. SL economy sinks as many 'residents' don't want to spend much money here anymore or their inventories are full enough already to play the game
2. There are competitors and OpenLife does not look that bad though it is very unstable, but it might improve and offers very competitive prices (I take some looks there daily)
3. Everyone has the choice how much to invest into this game. This ranges from zero to XXXXXXX
4. The fittest will survive

Are you fit enough LL to survive?
Ok, your plans (if any) might be different to those of us 'residents' and you might be more addicted to your pay role than to SL, but I think it just would be fair to offer your OS 'owners' either
- a refund when they abandon their land to you
or
- grandfathering of the product you offered offensively

best regards, pantaiputih, the one who does not 'own' an OS neither lives on one, but feels with those who are ripped off now

I am the vestigial alt of an ex-resident, ex-sim owner, ex-builder.

I left SL for one consistent reason: lack of customer service.

It saddens me to see that nothing has changed since i left, business as usual.

This whole thing relies too much on smoke and mirrors,

the loyal/addicted userbase is still on a giant treadmill,

buying their dreams from those that promise progress for a price,

then move the scenery accordingly.

I do miss SL, not as it is, but as it might have once been.

sic transit gloria mundi

I want to make it completely clear that you do not speak for me as someone who purchases items from content creators. How much content would you have to create and sell to make fifty bucks RL? How much content would you have to make and sell to make $125 bucks RL? Some people are paying even more with VAT etc. If you weren't making any profit, in fact losing money... Would you continue? Stop taking it out on content creators. I have already seen them leaving in droves and your comments are not helping that situation.

OS sims can handle timers just fine. The original user never mentioned Zyngo game or whatever it is - there are hundreds of different games, not all of them are resource intensive.


All full sims that are fully rented out have varying degrees of lag, if you mean the property in your profile that has plenty of lag - most content was still downloading when i returned (and there are still open properties available there too ... wait till they fill up).
A current OS sim with 1/4 of that content will run MUCH faster.


Exactly. My comment was that 4 OS servers, running the SAME content as 1 full sim will perform better than that 1 full sim.

It's really obvious and not rocket science if you think about it logically. As soon as you split content over sim boundaries there is less overhead. For example while a prim in the next sim still needs to be drawn, the physics (Havok 4) overhead is not required for the prim. Thats why if you rez a prim near the border you can fall through it on the other neighboring sim. This has been corrected to some extent by sending messages across sim boundaries when there is overlap (but when the prim is clearly in the neighboring region its not required). This overhead 'culling' is one of the most important things in graphics programming - specially streaming applications like SL, and logical region boundaries break the grid into logical 'portals' to assist with that.

So by 'breaking' up the same content into 4 OS sims you are making sure your visitors SL client needs to download much less when they visit you.


Yes, we all know that. BUt still ... 4 OS regions running together and each having 1/4 of a full sims content will perform better than the full sim alone.

LL have come to realize this as a fact ... thats what all this is about. OS regions are simply giving too much value compared to full sims. Some users are getting close to half as much value from an OS than a full region.

Most of LL performance issues are not OS related as much as they'd like you to believe that, their bottleneck is their architecture (and asset servers to a certain degree). SL has grown too fast and outgrown their architecture.



Which is the reason I am so DUMBFOUNDED by this decision to reduce OS regions. If anything they should be pushing OS regions onto the market (agreed: with capping on resources so they can't be abused by some). If there were MORE OS Regions (specially with capped resources) the network traffic would be less (as each users client would only need to download 1/4 of the content when they vist that OS region than they would a denser full sim region). But I guess management don't think that far.




.

Katt,
I commend LL for being responsive to its residents and making these changes. I think in general the changes are very good. However, I would like to make a plea for those of us who bought an OS simply to live on ourselves and to have some prims to play with to create our own little world. We are not trying to make a profit by renting, selling, or having events. We simply wanted a little control, creativity and a place to call our own.

For people like us, I believe the rise in cost is too high. And, I think that it will make some of us feel that we have to have a renter or two to justify the cost. Isn't that what you are trying to discourage?

Furthermore, have you considered the effect on the SL economy? Those of us with OS sims encourage the creativity of other residents as we buy things to landscape and decorate our OS and our home there. If so many people give up their OS, that buying will stop.

It seems to me that the draws of SL have been the social interaction, the creativity, and the many interesting places to explore. I believe your changes threaten that.

The amount I pay now and the prims I have now as an OS owner with my partner is just about perfect. We can in no way afford a full sim. I can deal with a bit of an increase, but please consider those of us who ise the OS for a home only for ourselves when you plan these changes!

Month______________________Islands Owned (End of Month) Islands Added (During Month)
November 2008 - MTD____________________26311_______________-228
October 2008____________________________26539_____________1045

Again, I think they'd be delighted if that number was -5000 by the end of the month. It's free hardware for them, and in the end they don't have to service people who bought a service. They can retask that hardware to the mainland and AUCTION it back to the displaced at a much higher margin of profit.

perhaps your right, however the profit margine is 1/2 the price of openspace.

As compared to?

You describe a classical viewer lag, a situation every user can handle. Many users try the ultra settings with a 512m draw distance - this produces viewer lag, because the viewer tries to download all structures and textures in the range, even from the neighbour SIMs. The actual viewer has also some bugs, i.e. caching. Maybe next time you open the statistics bar and keep an eye on Time dilation, SIM and Physics FPS and reduce the draw distance to 128m. The SIM Performance is still good, nothing other i've said in my post.



Quod erat demonstrandum.


Test and prove it. Thats all hypotethical nothing more. If four SIM threads runs on one core you have more load as one SIM thread runs only - even if the OS have only 3750 prims (the rest is still unlimited). Thats i've tested localy with opensim.


I'm not talking about grid performance and grid stability, but i totally agree with that. But this don't change my statement, that OS haven't and can't have the same performance like a full prim SIM - without any prims, partially landscaped or full used.


mh... OS aren't bad, only the way how LL runs them. The performance would be better if only two OS runs on one core, but in this case a server with OS only wouldn't bring the full profit as with four full SIMs. But there is also a solution. There are still older class 4 SIMs on the grid. They should be full written off so LL could run them with less costs and they are good enough to handle 2 OS on one core (I'm not sure but i remember, that class-4 server have had a dualcore). The performance should be good enough for a bit more then lightuse only and LL could stay on 75, maybe also 95US$/month. I'm sure the community could live with that.

Perhaps it is time for the pages of negative posts to stop. The price changes are here to stay and there is no changing them. We do have a nice set of 3 clearly defined private land options available to us now:

OpenSpace:
For Parks, Water, Forests and Such

Homesteads:
For Living, Renting, Small Business and such

Full Sims:
For pretty much anything you want.

In group chat there was some discussion with one of the lindens that they might be open to increasing the prims on the true openspace sims back to the 1875 range (keeping the same limits on AVs and such) as with few AVs and very low scripts it would not tax the servers much more.

Perhaps if we all asked very nicely and thanked the Lindens for working with us on the changes we could see if they can put the OpenSpace sims back to the old 1875 prims and maybe if we really really asked nicely we could see if they could do that for us.

/me grins.... and maybe if we asked extra especially nicely and promised to send chocolates, tea and cookies to their office we could see if they might consider if it is possible technically to let us have 4000 prims on a Homestead Sim (as 250 extra would not make much of a difference to the server) that way everyone can agree to be nice and feel like they got a bit extra and such.

The avatar cap destroys open water uses for things like sailing races. etc. $125 is bad enough to run places like the USS into the ground, and the cap of 20 avatars negates the use of the sims anyway. You try to have a race, 10 people TP into the course in the middle, and half your contestants bump against a wall.

It is insipid to believe anything they say anyway. They were the ones that sold 3750 prims for $75. If they can take our money and lie about that, they can lie about what they "might" do later. I find it hard to believe anyone is gullible enough to think that a company like LL didn't know in March they'd be doing this in November.

If LL expects people to pay $295 a month for open water for the recreation of SL as a whole, they are overestimating our altruistic abilities. The other options don't allow adequate use for anything but "private" use. So, is it a coincidence such folks will have to move to the mainland? I don't think so.

Even though it feels like no Linden is listening, here goes.

I know a very sweet lady that owns about 12 sims. Less than a month ago, she converted a full sim to 4 openspace sims because she couldn't find tenants for the full sim. In the beginning I think she had dreams of eventually making part of her living here. In time, with various LL changes and the changing SL land market, I think this changed for her with a desire to just basically pay the expenses and make a place for friends and enjoy the things that SL offers.

The group of sims is a very nice set. She has always done well with landscaping, sim design and creating things that residents could enjoy. The openspace sims are not overloaded. They are generally residences divided between 1 to 4 tenants. At any one time, I don't think I've seen more then about 3 people on any one of them. And, all of the openspace sims exhibit less lag that most full sims.

There are many estate owners just like her. I've read their pleas in these threads.

What's up with you LL. Can't you figure out their success is your success? Why do you want to kill off these estate owners with a 67% increase?

Many have speculated that you want to push people to the mainland. I don't really think that is your goal, I think it is much simpler then that. I think you naively think that most people with pay the 67%. I don't think they will. I also don't think they'll migrate to the mainland to any large extent due to ugly ban lines and lack of covenants and control. I do give you credit for cleaning up the ad farms. But, in general, the estates are much more pleasant.

If you're truly having infrastructure problems you're having difficulty resolving, hire IBM to help you with it. IBM has a large interest in virtual worlds in general and in SL in particular. They might even make you a deal.

Since you aren't a public company, we don't know your financial situation. This may also be a last gasp to show profit to your private investors.

Whatever reasons drove you to follow this course of action, rethink it. There is just no way that this can be the right choice for the future.

And while you're at it, figure out a better way to communicate with your customers.

I know another estate owner whose major motivation seems to be to encourage people to find their own place in SL and identify what it means to them.

She has an estate plan for many, many sims. She is not out for a quick buck. In fact, the tier structure was set up to not break even until 2 years and I believe that assumed that the sims stayed fairly occupied with tenants.

I have to think the 67% increase is going to kill her plans also. Which in turn will kill off the contribution she makes to the SL community and the encouragement she provides.

Way to go LL.

Well, the new product lineup and new price structure is surely a way out of this overloaded situation. I support this idea itself basically, but the new specifications announced in the following knowledgebase will not be acceptable for the majority of residents as it is:

https://support.secondlife.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=4417&task=knowledge&questionID=5650

If the price of Openspace is more than a fourth of that of normal region, everyone will expect they can enjoy a fourth of performance compared with the normal region. The new specifications shown above page shows, however, 1/20 prims and 1/10 avatars! We cannot but suspect Linden Labs are going to run 10 Openspaces on 1 CPU and get as much money as they have got running four. The situation is the same with Homesteads. The price is about 1/3 of the normal regions but the prims are limited 1/4 and avatars 1/5. I understand they are investigating and calculating the effect of scripts or other network transactions such as streaming and it takes time, but, at the same time, I'm afraid the final figures they show us will be miserable too.

With an Openspace of these specifications, how can we enjoy creating things. All what we can do is, as Linden Labs expect, to have oceans or forests only. Are M or Jack or other staff of Linden Labs really thinking the Openspace owners who use them lightly and have accepted limitation are happy with this alteration - no, degradation?

Yes, this seems to me a service degradation or price hike for all Openspace owners. If Linden Labs offer Openspace for US$75.00, it should have 1/4 specifications of the normal region and Homestead for 125.00, 1/3. Otherwise, people will abandon all the current Openspaces and leave Second Life.

At first, when Linden Labs announced new pricing early in this year, it should expect growth of the world, but seeing the new pricing, they seems to expect shrinking of the world.

As I said at the beginning of this post, the idea of 3 levels of region is good. But the specifications of Openspace and Homestead does not match the pricing. I expect Linden Labs will reconsider the specifications and price and make the final decision that would make every resident happy.

Thanks.

By going to the mainland, where you are being herded.

I personally begin to feel a bit irritated when I feel herded. Sort of makes me want to break herd and get off the path (or grid).

They would love that, too. It erases history for them, and they will just replace you with all the other people coming in the revolving door.

There is a middle path, though. Stay, enjoy yourself on their dime, and make your profit footprint for LL as small as possible. It's "Your World, Your Imagination" after all. Up until now it has really been "Our Server Resources, Your Imagination", but we can let them let them pay for our recreation for a while.

Actually, that's how I'm thinking right now. Reduce my meager land holdings even further (I'd still like to have a place to build something) and save resources to invest in one of the opensim implementations.

With all crying about abuse I have done some counting on an OS where there are two buildings, ( a lighthouse and an "administrative office" annex museum). The sim is parceled and the buildings are in their own parcel. Now it turns out, that the primcount on the "whole sim" as seen in "about land - objects" gives a usage of 519 prims out of 3750.
but the little parcels each have 236 + 613 + somewhat more prims. And ctrl-shift-1 gives correctly a primcount total of 1344!!
So, by parceling and a faulty counting program inadvertently there is much more used of the sim than at first sight visible. In this way one can use MORE than 3750 prims if one would be unscrupulus.....or if the sim was rented out to several renters.... they would not know!

hm.... I did not see this before.....