Open Spaces Announcement & Talk with M and Jack Linden

No you still only have 3750 prims, if you parcel out land it takes that amount of prims from the parcel and subtracts them from the total for the rest of the Sim.

Whoever has an Openspace sim is still being penalised in one way or another, nothing has materially changed here from the original anouncement.

Openspaces
If you had an Openspace sim for forrest/water - you now get 1/5th of the prims and an avatar and script limit for the same price you were paying before - it's costing you the same for less, which amounts to a price increase, and you're being penalised for not doing anything wrong.

Homesteads
If you had an Openspace sim for residential use and letting - you now get an avatar and script limit which is fair enough - the price increase is still 66%, but phased in over 6 months. the price increase is still far too drastic for using the prim limits originally promised.

My main issue here is still the price, it's being raised extortionately for no perceived benefit. I could accept a price increase to the January rate of $95/month but any higher is just pricing most people wanting to be land owners for private residential use out of this game. You seem to have forgotten that Homesteads will be rented on by those who can afford Regions or Islands to those of us who can't, and therefore only have this option to own a piece of land that is private and away from the Mainland.

Seems that Linden Labs have listened and decided to repackage the anouncement so it sounds better but isn't materially different. Residents will still be priced out of buying this type of land and esixisting landowners are getting screwed over with no offer of a refund on their set-up charges.



For Linden Labs:

A proposal...

Openspaces
Light use water/forest/park sims stay as they were originally sold with the same tier and set-up fee, and prim limits of 3750, but limited avatar/script useage as you've anounced but still allow for sailing etc for people who want to do that. Residents use the prims to be creative, you're limiting what they can accomplish.

Homestead sims
The new set-up fee is accepted, the tier increase is limited to the $95 in January but no higher, to fairly reflect the increase in resources used. I accept that residents should operate within the new limits for a Homestead sim that you've already anounced, but would be interested in seeing the ones as yet unannounced.


I think my proposal is fairer for all concerned, no one is losing out, those of us using an Openspace sim as a Homestead pay a little more for it. After all nothing comes for free.

the Lab comes periodicaly up with holding us under a specific stress level. That is what the mysterious Mister M meant with the sentence that we are "passionate". Even any scandal is good for them. It creates a stress-community, as we see here in example of this thread. As long as we jump on every provocation, as long they will stay in the role of smart gamblers, rolling on floor laughing about how and why and addicted to wich illusions and how with all our intelligence we're struggling with all bad or apparently good they offer. This is a stress technique wich we know from medias, politicians and last but not least: managers and advertisers, also dictators: they are all masters in creating stress-communities. It works as long as long we are agreeing to play their game while they're tickling our lowest instincts or our nicest dreams.

Any hysteria and mass-dynamic panic is perfect for them. Even this bean-counting about prims and square meters and fees wich we are doing here since all years is perfect for them. Even if we think about processors and tech speech and servers and code and blabla, is perfect for them. Most of us are thinking in background about if we maybe can squeeze our bank-accounts a bit more here and bit more there out for them. They know, we will be tired sooner or later. Every scandal has its official end with tiredness and weariness. On this they count. In this way they will win every provocation again and again and again. They have also fun, as long we're searching for workarounds. Because: wherever we would jump. On whatever system. Mainland, island, open space, small lot, pretty lot, ugly lot - all is perfect for them. All brings profit. Every decision let them sell the same low-end or high-end hardware again and again and again to us poor souls and if we leave, to new poor souls, because there are seven billion - or in european counting - seven milliards potential poor souls outside. On that fact they count.

So, we have to be smarter than them. Literally. We have to break the schemes and patterns. In ourself at first. Because we are kind of athletic trained on the patterns from childhood on. To be arena and gladiators in one, wich means: we are totaly out of any overview - wich makes us in result to a perfect panic masse for them. This is how the game works for them. They are giving us one enigma, mystery, brainteaser, one after the other. All are expensive. Because they know: we are addicted to our avatars, prims and must have lots and whatever. It is kind of mechanic.

The trick is, to just relax and let them alone. Just let them sit on their chips and bytes and bits and processors and servers. Let them beg for our money, instead that we would beg for the servers. Don't move. Stay in game. But use the whole grid. The grid is your home. Not a singular island or a lot. Make the grid your home. It is big enough. Literally. They have maybe plans in background. Maybe they like to transform the game. Big companies in or whatever. It is useless to think about. We can takeover the grid totaly without paying a single cent. Just by logging in and declaring to our imagination: the grid is my home. The grid is mine. The grid is made for us and not for whatever companies. It is made for individual dreams and brains.

There are several fully legal and non TOS touching options open, to give them mysteries, brainteaser, enigma, tiredness and weariness. We all are free, if we want, to play that game different and anticyclic and non-mainstreaming. or like Torley ever said: be creative! Ok, so let us be creative, - this will make them creative! We can do the opposite of what they expect and if they find an answer we can do the opposite again and so on. Why should we pay for stress? Let them have stress! They should think about how to make us happy. It is not our job to make them happy. We are not a company, we offer nothing, we have no idea to make them pay. They have ideas to make us pay. So, just let them struggle. Until they're coming up with some acceptable offers, full truth, totaly trasnparence of their tech, ambitions and bilances and plans, and things with wich we can plan and on wich we can count on. High end offers for low end fees. Not vice versa. And a very polite and in time service. Why should we want or take less? The best is good enough! All second best offers they can stick to themselfs wherever they want.

Otherwise this will never be our world and our imagination. Never. There is much possible. Out here are things like open office and firefox. We will also see perfect grids too. There is brain and tech enough on planet to create sucha thing for free, somehow. On a quality level. Until that we can use our grid, our world and our imagination. It is on the Lab to offer us something affordable. Let them think. It is not our job to do their job. We are in game. We go not out. But also we do not beg. This has to do with dignity!

Just to say that.

Oh that's just PEACHY, that is. So, the product is flawed too.

Vye and Micheil, chuckling at you both, I think it's true that there are quite a few people who deserve a nice free ride for a while. After all, the floodgates were opened with open registration, all those people who came in without adding anything to the community were welcomed with open arms (yes I realise many did offer something, but for this example I mean the people registering and not using, the multiple griefer avs etc.). Bots are never being addressed as they serve a purpose for making the user numbers look far greater than they are without giving any pesky humans to deal with.

Yep. I'm not being herded, nor am I intending to give up my social network here in the interim period that it takes for other worlds to grow sophisticated enough to be attractive - by the time those worlds are attractive then I'll actually have my dream I had for HERE in 2006 up and running there.

Oh and Wynochee? Perfect post. Perfect. Pretty much what I have been saying but far more eloquently

If the present proposal stands I suspect I will leave SL and the land I invested in. I bought a full sim and 16 Void Sims for a total of $8375 before LL lowered the price to what would have been $5000 had I waited. I was happy with 1875 prims per VS and total tier of $1475 per month. When LL doubled the number of prims per OS and lowered the price I felt cheated because I overpaid for what I then had and had to pay $1495 tier per month. Now that LL is going to raise the tier on my now 18 OS I feel betrayed and probably wont stay. I was prepared to just abandon all 19 sims but a friend said why don't you join 16 of the OS and sell the 5 full sims that you will have left while abandoning the 2 odd ones as nobody will buy an OS now.

If anybody is in the market for any full sims contact me inworld and if I decide to leave I will sell them much cheaper than LL will sell a new one.

Ok... so it's past "end of office hours" at Linden Lab.

Judging on past performance, we aren't going to get a squeak out of any Linden until after the weekend, so I guess we might as well go do something else.

The following excerpts are from: http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/10/16/looking-forward-to-class-5/

There has been a lot of speculation on the hardware etc that LL is currently using ie: number of sims per server, and the difference between class 4 and 5, so here is what LL had to say when class 5s were first released:



Both of the processors for class 4 and 5 are dual cores, and as to the number of sims (full prim) per server:



Which comes out to 16 OS regions per machine

Now, here is what I find very interesting - a comment regarding how LL bases their charges and what really costs them:



To me this is very interesting, considering that over the last couple of years LL has seen a huge increase in the 'free' development in terms of user supplied software patches and Q&A via the pjira, while at the same time they seem to have ignored the constant pleas for stability of the viewer and the grid in favor of adding new features (which granted some of these features are very cool, but at the same time cool is useless when you can't do anything because of constant lag or crashes). What I carry away from statements like this is that LL needs to make more money, not to cover it's harware operating costs but rather to try to fix it's software.

Granted, these quotes were from 2 years ago, however anyone in the IT industry knows that Hardware costs have continued to drop quite a bit over the past couple of years, and as there hasn't been any mention of any sim server hardware upgrades since the Class 5s went into effect in late 2006, the cost of a new server for a sim to LL is much less than what it was when they were released (probably at least 50% cheaper in terms of $)

The main problem I see is that LL is still having issues when reaching that high peak concurrency, which while it has definitely improved in terms of numbers of avs it takes to slow down the grid (heck I remember when 20k online would bring the grid to a grinding halt), there are still database issues that create bottlenecks when concurrency is high - hmmm, maybe GETTING RID OF ALL THE DAMN BOTS might help there!

In the end, it is my opinion that there is still much that LL can do to help reduce both the load on their servers and the associated costs before they try to pass on price hikes to their paying members.

I don't comment here much, but I thought I would take a look around SL tonight. It's Friday night, about midnight mountain time.

Supposedly 52000 are on line. But it took me half an hour to find a real person to talk to................Place after place is gone and some of them were the most beautiful creations SL had ever seen. I had land in some of them so I know. If a place is there at all chances are there is yellow everywhere.........

Green Dots? Yeah they are still there in some places. Bots.

This is the saddest thing I think I have ever seen.........

Almost double prices in the worst RL recession the world has seen in 75 years.
Have you looked around out there LL? Did you even come on here and see what you have caused?

Nice job................*sighs"

You want another chuckle? Here's an early Christmas present. There is one thing that hasn't been addressed here. Something that eats at me in SL as it does irl.

Now, I am not saying there is anything "wrong" with it, i.e. is morally or ethically incorrect to our fellow humans, but, well, there are different kinds of people in SL. There are people who create, and there are people who use. In both sets, there are people who want to profit. In SL, well, the people who don't create so far have been the ones that make the biggest profit.

What do they do? They buy and resell server resources. I refuse to call it land in this context. I have hung out with a lot of builders and creators in my time in SL. I have also known a lot of nice people who, well, don't create. They go and get themselves some capital, they buy themselves some mainland, or some sims, then they divvy it up and pass it on to people who don't have the capital.

Like I say, nothing wrong with that. Heck, you could even call it a public service. In SL, though, it has become something way beyond what you even see irl. Irl you can't create "server resources" out of thin air. In SL™, well, all you need is a little cash, or heck, a little credit.

What does that have to do with our current situation? A lot. Tons. Such intrepid individuals have caused SL to explode in a short couple of years into something really big, both virtually and actually. But what is it, in the end? What have they added? "Server resources".

Like I said, I know a lot of builders. Most of the builders I know, believe it or not, don't even have homes in SL. Probably half of them don't even sell what they make. The whole economic environment makes them a little ill. Does me too, honestly. But now, here is all these "server resources" undergoing an upheaval that honestly hasn't been matched so far in LL's history. Openspaces are a really, really big chunk of the SL "server resources".

But... in a month, while everyone is pissed, people are leaving, sims disappearing, LL™ is huddled off in their little covens pondering the outcome of what they have planned, those same builders are going to be out there, doing the same thing they were doing. heck, some of them may not even know this is going on.

When you invent something to be used to create something else, you've made a tool. When you invent something just to sell to someone else so they can sell it to yet, again, someone else, you've made a commodity. You don't like your "world" being treated as a commodity? Well, there's a lot of blame to go around.

Take some time out from your SL days, hit some sandboxes. Find the wierd looking avatars making spectacular things, and ponder what SL really could be. Ponder what the core interest is in all this, and what would be left if THOSE people disappeared. Then think about what you want to do with your time in SL from here on, especially those who might have considered over the last year buying "server resources" and selling them to other people.

There's more to second life than moving empty plots of land from one hand to another. If I have been vague, it's because I am a reasonably decent person who doesn't want to hurt feelings, and frankly who doesn't see anything overtly wrong with what people do in SL that isn't creative. But if you are in the business of selling things that you didn't make? Well, ponder what the value of said product really is, and you might not get burnt so bad next time.

As I said before, OS is clearly underpriced at US$75 per month compared to mainland. Do the calculation and you will know what i mean.

Linden cannot afford to lose Mainland and also the mainland auction. Still remember the days where bids went as high as US$5k.

So the only thing they can do is to raise the tier for OS, which will be known as Homestead, such that no matter how a reseller package the land and sell, it will always be at a premium when compared to Mainland.

Linden found the magic number to be US$125 per month.

Short term pain, but long term gain.

Can you explain to me why OS is clearly underpriced compared to mainland?

From a reseller of server resources to all you other resellers of server resources. *grins*

I was going to tell you Richard that a more people than you think don't own openspaces for gain. More than you might think just use and live on them. But then I got to thinking, you already know that. That's the problem really, It was cheaper for them to go straight to LL than rent from people who resell "server resources".

I guess you'd see this as a protectionist move in your favor, then, since suddenly it might be cheaper to come rent from you, right? I'll just admit it, I loved the March OS change, because it cut into SL's cottage land reseller industry. That's what my post above was about, round-aboutly.

Well, take heart, that's evidently changing. You can go on buying and selling thing you didn't make. Sleep soundly and dream of spinning for sale signs. Wake up, tie your virtual tie and get out there and sell those virtual bridges to the virtually displaced.

QFT!!! I've never sold anything I have built and I've spent tons of cash on getting hold of my own server resource to host where I build with the view that I want it to stay out for a while so I can sit back and go "I made that". Looking forward to taking my experiments here to other more welcoming places

why go? you only have to worry about people welcoming you if you care what they think. there are a lot more people than LL and the real estate people in SL.

If you cut away all the economic madness of SL, there's a nice underlayer filled with people who aren't touched by all this so much. I think that I am going to spend the rest of my SL career far more interested in what is going on in the disused basement with the squatters.

the mainland is one place i will not be going..... i will become a wandering bum before that... it just seems thats what they want.

So here's what I'm seeing:

FIRST DEAL: Raise the price by roughly 66%. No educational discounts.

SECOND DEAL: Openspace - same price as current, dropping 3k prims and hard avatar limit of 10, no educational discounts. Homestead - Same eventual price increase (just spread out) as first deal, hard avatar limit of...what was it, 20?...and same prims as current Openspaces.

I'm sorry, how is this better the 2nd time around? It sounds worse to me!

Maybe it just benefits the Lab - what benefit to THEY get by driving people away like this? They can't be THAT clueless.

what does it matter - those who have used os with a service like otherlands will never go back to the mainland whatever LL may do

We are at page 135 now with over 2000 posts, of that not even 1 hand full of Linden responses, although the Thread is called "& Talk with M and Jack Linden"

I have followed almost all the posts, its not that hard for me and many others so certainly not for Lindens to keep up.

IN those posts i think all has been said now. There is really not much need to go on like this, therefore i would like to propose the folowing to all of you here:

Let's all try to fill another 135 pages with only one word:

TALK!

its like talking to stalin. whats the point

Talk

Talk!

ok lets do the calculation.

i can buy a full manland sim and pay 195 a month
i can buy a full private sim and pay 295 a month
i can buy 4 openspaces and pay 300 a month
or i can buy 4 homesteds and pay 500 a month

OMG you are so right openspaces is a better deal then mainland..... if you have, i buy my stuff on ebay for more money then it costs new mentality.

Jini i'm sure Richard was talking about the current OS price of 75 dollars which is the same price and same prims as 1/4 of a mainland sim.

yes ok so lets do some more math then

mainland you don't need to buy full sim to own a 1/4

1/4 sim = 75

open sim your required to own a full sim to buy and openspace

1 1/4 sims = 370 a month and unlike mainland the more you buy the less you pay. its the more you buy the more you pay per sqm.


The same ammount of land on mainland for 1 and 1/4 = 270 but that facts a mute point since your not required to own anything more then the 1/4 sim.

if it where 75 and you didn't need a premium account or to own a full sim then yes it would be a bargin and there likely would have been even more sales then they currently had.

Talk

You don't dialog with us M, you just throw fancy words and pretend

Talk