Islands

Just wondering how many people would have an island ($195 a month) if it wasn't for the ridiculous 'setup fee' that Linden Labs charge.

Lewis

If I didnt have to fork out the initial fee, i'd have one again like a shot!

Why do you think the Setup fee is rediculous?

You are paying for a server, the up keep, the install, the keeping it running, all for your exclusive use.

I think the setup is fine, should be more for what you get, probally cost LL alot more then the setup fee and the 195 a month with all the service included, the hardware, giving it space, etc..

So I did not vote, as was no choice for the setup fee is fine, should even be a little more.

You're paying for nothing. The server is never "yours", you're just using it. If I bought enough plots of land on a mainland sim to eventually buy out everyone else who is on it, I wouldn't be paying a "setup" fee so the equivalent should remain. Most online games have a set monthly fee per player regardless of your usage or involvement.



If LL are selling sims "at a loss" - why are they doing it in the first place? That would prove their business model is wrong, and no wonder they aren't making a profit.



Voting is entirely optional, thank you for your response.

Lewis

The setup fee is just for the cost of the hardware, the 195/mo is for the upkeep

195/month is quite cheap considering cost of bandwidth. The costs to LL however are made up from the tier setup (Paying the highest tier in a given month even if you still dont have all that land) If you think about it... LL is getting much more than $195/month per sim, but good for them - keep them in business.

The $1295 setup may be a little high, but without knowing the hardware the server runs... $1295 for a server isn't such a bad price, even if its only for 1 specific task.

I would get a sim if there was no setup, but if there's no setup... the tier sure won't be $195/month, it would be much higher to recoup the cost of the server itself.

Its a catch-22, setup cost = less monthly cost or no setup cost = high monthly cost.

Best option IMHO would be to offer the choice - no setup but $395/month (random higher number) or pay the setup and pay 195/month

Lewis take a look at hosting services... where you lease the server. You pay setup costs, and much higher than $195/month for bandwidth costs if you want to run a webserver. Still you dont own it, but the benefit of that is free upgrades to the hardware as it becomes obsolete. Consider the LL sim cost in another respect as for managed hosting services - and the price becomes quite reasonable.

In a heartbeat. The gardens can afford the tier but are having a hard time saving up the setup fee after paying mainland tier every month. It's a wonder they didn't offer a week-long third anniversary estate deal with no setup fee. Not too late for that I suppose.

The setup fee was based on a poll that Robin Linden did at the time they were first introducing islands. The options were $1000 setup fee and $195/mo, or $100 setup fee and $295/mo.

They were probably wise to go with the model they did. Otherwise we'd have a lot more islands being set up on spec and failing when they couldn't scrape the higher monthly fee.

How many people would buy stuff if stuff was cheaper? I demand cheaper stuff! You should too.

Just based on some past posts I have seen here, I don't think they actually setup a physical server for each island. Islands run in a host which could change when a region restarts; however, it sounds like LL tries to have regoins restart on the same host whenever possible to avoid rebuildging the texture cache (and possibly other caches). Given that an island is said to run using a single processor, and that multi-processor servers are common and likely in use, it's reasonable to assume that a single physcial server hosts more than one sim.

My guess is that the setup fee contributes to the purchase of a server, should that be necessary, and maintenance of hosts across all of the servers (which includes network setup, monitoring, etc), and of course profit. There is a fair bit profit in the $195 monthly since most of it pays for bandwidth - most sims are empty most of the time and when they are occupied there are only a few people on the sim (there are exceptions of course, but the vast majority make up for the few exceptions). So, empty or nearly empty sims use less bandwidth than very busy sims, so less use results in higher profits.

Again - just my L$7 (about US$ 0.02).

-2fast

Four virtual servers per physical server = four sims per physical server.

If LL are paying US$5,000 per hardware server, even allowing for installation costs, they are paying WELL over the odds...

I'll have to get the link when I get home, but my friend was given a link to a site to show which physical server his island was on. There were only 3 on the server, and it looks like most servers have only 2-3 sims on them.

If it only has 2-3 sims on it, it's a very old server due for replacement. All the new class 4 servers run 4 sims, some I've seen with 5 sims.

I've posted this several times before, so one more time won't hurt. *lol*

http://neighbours.maxcase.info/

Well, even despite the exchange rate, $195.00 a month seems pretty ridiculous to me.

And shortly after persuading those suckers to invest another 11 mill or whatever ALL the remaining servers were updated to quad core spec - that was one of the reasons for that endless run of rolling restarts...

Is it ridiculous because you would like the luxury of having a whole sim to yourself, but you aren't willing to spend that money? Or is it ridiculous, because Linden Labs is offering something that would be much cheaper through some other method. I don't think you'll get a third of a high bandwith server with the virtual world similar to Second Life on it and premade editing tools for cheaper. I hope someone follows this post up proving me wrong. If I am wrong, then I want to know where to go.

The cost of land in SL has always seemed to me predicated on the idea that you will be taking commercial advantage from it.

i have a handful of dedicated servers online at various datacenters that are used for streaming audio/video and web hosting, i can get even some of the best dual xeon servers with no setup fee and costing roughly around 195/USD a month.

to me, its no different here, we are just leasing a server at a datacenter, except the only purpuse for this server is to host a second life island. i can setup quake, halflife, doom, or other servers for alot cheaper, so bascially, i think the setup fee is crazy high, monthly seems about right though. unless they are recycling some of the leftover 386 cpus from enron.

If I bought enough plots of land on a mainland sim to eventually buy out everyone else who is on it, I wouldn't be paying a "setup" fee

Thats just it, the 1250 or so dollars is buying the land, how much would you spend to purchase 65K of continous land on a sim somewhere? I believe that buying a sim or island is like 6k or so per 1k of land??? so the price may not be as cheap as i liked but hey a high price means that people are dedicated to sticking around and lindens dont have to put up and take down sims. reducing the price of an island is not a good answer, what about all the other people who already HAVE purchased islands, should their land value plumment? how fair is that?

No setup fee, hmmm lets see, free land, doesnt make sense
In SL you BUY Land, you pay tier
why would a private island or sim be any different, if you want a sim, buy a sim, if you cant afford a thousand dollars or so, then perhaps you shouldnt be spending 200 a month in tier either

I can't speak for anyone else, but in my case my need for 65536 sq m of land is simply because of what I have planned - a huge, spread out place of beauty for people to come and enjoy without ugly builds, casinos, lagfests, porn or advertising. Something for all to enjoy. Unless I can control the whole area, I can't stop people building just what I don't need there.

As someone else pointed out, they put 4 regions on a dual core processor - so that's $4,800 plus the $195 x 4 ($780) per month income.

Multiply that by however many islands there are ... and that is a serious amount of income. I honestly can't see that not covering the costs.

The SL code is sloppy, especially as far as cacheing goes. I mean, every time I log in, I have to wait whilst it rezzes Linden trees, the same the whole grid over. Surely it would be better to have that sort of data stored locally for the client to render rather than streaming every time? I wait for home to rez, walk 100m down the road, turn round and go back home... and it all re-loads. Huge unnecesary bandwidth consumption, multiply that by 5,000 online at a time and I'm sure there is a lot of wasteage.

Lewis

I know! We can use these freebie islands to start an anarcho-communist community and rail against the commercialization of this 'game' that is 'ruining all our fun!'

That is the biggest fault in the whole system.

Is it any coincidence that, as far as I can tell, all the "most popular" places are all complete islands, and almost every one is a casino/camping chair/dance pad/*ingo place? Obviously I can't log in right now but I think there's a non-commercial furry sim on there, which is supported by donations from its residents/visitors/supporters?

There is, without a doubt, so much untapped potential amongst the playerbase for spacious, beautiful, impressive, fun, non-commercial builds... which will never see the light of day because people simply cannot afford that amount of money per month.

Setup fee plus a month's tier is pretty much most of a month's salary for me - and that's not something I am willing to spend on entertainment through a computer game.

The non-commercial side has never been exploited in SL - and it's about time LL woke up, smelt the prim roses, and did something about it.

Lewis

Does Anshe or anyone rent out Islands ?

That would be an interesting business model -
Buy server at 1250 rent out at 300
Costs recovered in 12 months.

(although it does have the pitfall of having to stump up the initial cost and having to pay the rental if one of your tenants folded )

With that arrangement I would definitely consider renting an Island.

When I set up a web server it costs me something like $150/setup fee for a dedicated box plus between $99-299/mo depending on what-all I've asked for on the box. I'd never buy an island with a $1250 setup cost unless the box was actually mine as a result. And most islands aren't even a dedicated box. Sure, LL has to set up all the files etc, but I can't believe that that's not completely automated at this point. It's sad, I'd really like to have an island!

Regular sims (not voids) run on blade servers each supporting one or two dual core processors in racks of thirty-two. Assuming all of the new ones are dual processor, they will each operate four sims for a total of one-hundred-twenty-eight sims per rack.

Does anyone know what a colo generally charges to setup such a rack? Does anyone have any idea how many man hours go into setting up a single estate sim? Does anyone possess data that reflects the average monthly bandwidth requirements of an estate sim?

And i'd really like to have a jumbo jet, but i cant afford, No matter how many polls i will run:
"Should jumbo jets be free?
a-) yes definitely.
b-) no.
"
Maybe i can rent.