SLUniverse Forums

Khamon

I asked Jack, during his office hour, for the rationale behind requiring us to own an expensive estate in order to purchase an Openspace. His answer was "openspaces were provided as a perk for island owners so that they could have the same forms of ocean as Linden Lab has on its estate. The idea was that if we can do that, we should allow island owners to do so to be fair to them."

That may have been their original intention, but it's not a valid explanation for what happened, namely that estate owners lost loads of equity and are having to radically retool their business models at a substantial loss, and people are popping singular Openspaces onto the grid with no attachment to continental estates.

Jarod tells me I'm being deliberately obtuse and refusing to see the logic behind the complexities of the societal forces that Linden Lab are dealing with. Am I?

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Malachi

Error, phrase does not parse: "logic" and "Linden Lab" are incompatible terms.

Dnate Mars

I think it is because LL knows that if people can just buy openspace sims without owning an island most of the land market will collapse.

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What the...

Joshua Nightshade

Well they can buy them without an island. There's another hoop to jump but it's not difficult.

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Joshua Nightshade

Well what do you mean by full rights?

I have total control over my sim, up to being able to create other estate managers and upload my own raw files and terrain textures.

Only thing I couldn't do would be totally sell the sim to someone else.

Joshua Nightshade

Yes, billing is still attached to the person who owns the original full island. It's more than being granted rights to the estate tools though because an estate owner, which I am, has higher abilities than an appointed estate manager.

There's a degree of risk involved but that's why I did mine through an established company who's been around renting land for a while and someone I trust.

Sarah Nerd

How would I as an estate owner give someone greater rights than an estate manager? Hows it happen?

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Joshua Nightshade

You can't, there can only be one estate owner.

Daman

So how does it work then, becoming estate owner of an OpenSpace billed to someone else? Just wondering since I've been considering that maybe I should get one myself once I get a fulltime job and can afford stuff again (very happy with the OpenSpace I share with Rosie and don't plan to stop living there, but a place for experimenting and blowing up stuff would be fun - it could be my own crazy laboratory).

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ZATZAi

Oh boy lot's of questions let me see if I can answer some of them...

What we now call OpenSpace sims, previously referred to as Void sims, were created originally by Linden Lab for empty spaces. They commononly used them to add oceans to the mainland though frequently those sims had the full use of 15,000 prims they were still 16 simulators on one server as OpenSpace sims are now (Regular sims are 4 per server).

Several people were pushing for Linden Lab to let Estate owners buy void sims. The primary person pushing for this was Marktwain White of Hollywood and creator of the United Sailing Sims. Originally the idea was exactly as stated above, a place for open water sims as LL had been doing with voids on the mainland. Mark was the first person to aquire void sims, back before they were available even by concierge ticket (A test case). Later on they became available through the support ticket system by estate owners, the system was not at all automated and it could take a while to get your sims.

Of course once these things came out people immediately wanted more, they wanted to be able to use them for home, not have to have them attached and all that. I think the reason they initially required an order of four and to be attached was because it was jury-rigged, the entire thing was done manually compared to regular sims. Of course now you can order them in singles and have them wherever you want, even have different estate owners than the estate biller (The person that pays for the sim even if not listed as owner) if you make a request by the support system (Which was possible before with full sims).

Still you can't order an openspace sim without owning a full island. And why not? Some people think it's because it would hurt the market too much and that's probably true but I suspect there is another reason why. I think it is because of support, because island owners get a different, higher, level of support than those on the mainland even if you own several sims worth of land on the mainland. Openspace sims have access to the same tools and same support that a full sim does, and I don't think LL has the ability nor desire to provide estate level support to potentially thousands of openspace owners.

Having the system the way it is now provides a filter. As long as openspace sims are leased out by estate owners they will be the first line of support, not Linden Lab. The estate owners can address and fix issues without having to involve LL and only call on them for the worst of situations.

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Joshua Nightshade

It has to be done through a support ticket, you can't buy it off the land store and get it instantly like others who have an established island.

ZAT's post is good too.

Eata

OpenSpaces make beautiful private sandboxes for island owners. Absolutely perfect for working on things and doing large builds.

It's a shame people ignore the fact that putting more than five avatars in one is a bad idea.

Joshua Nightshade

It depends on a lot of things. I had a party on mine with about 30 people before the sim started getting really, really bad.

The Museum of Robots ceremony was on an openspace and had about 50 people on it for an hour.

Delicious Demar

Hey Sarah

You can send a ticket into LL asking them to make someone else an "owner" of the sim. The tier still rests with you, but the other person will be given owner rights. As far as I know - the only major difference is that owners can upload terrain files - so it really doesn't make much difference. The account that pays the tier still controls the ultimate fate of the sim - is the only one, for example that could transfer or abandon it...

dd

Daman

We've had guests over many times.

I think the main problem is not avatars, it's scripts.

I do disable my Mystitool when there are many people though.

Daman

Thanks to you both. I'll keep that in mind when I get ready to get an OpenSpace.

Khamon

They make beautiful private sandboxes for Mainland sim owners as well; or they would; if paying full sim tier qualified us to purchased them. Is that a reasonable compromise? Or do I still sound like a land market hating support mongering prim baby killer?

DJQuad

I don't think it would at all. They're 1/4th of the price but they're also 1/4th of the prims and server hardware. There would just be a shitload more of em than regular sims.

What it would do though is really drag down the established estate companies, but LL obviously doesn't have them in mind.

Ray Figtree

The popularity of openspace sims (as shown in this thread: Openspaces nearly half of all Estate Sims) proves that it WOULD hurt the market if anyone could have one. I, for one, would never rent on another Estate, or buy mainland again if LL made openspace sims available tomorrow.

I know it is possible to work around the rules right now with the support ticket method, but very few people know about that.

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Wildefire Walcott

Yeah, the lab doesn't give two squirts about current estate owners' livelihoods, but they DO like having estate owners field support requests for them. Things like the region tools and Abuse Report forwarding are things that relieve some of LL's support burden.

I can think of a number of other valid reasons why LL wouldn't want to open them up to all, but the support issue is the major thing, I think.

Really that's the only thing that scares me about the topic. If they opened openspace ownership to all, do all those people now become concierge residents? Is the 3 weeks I currently have to wait for an island transfer or move request now going to be 6 weeks or longer? I think 3 weeks is absolutely fucking shameful, by the way. I'd tear every last one of my hairs out if the SLA got any worse.

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Khamon

Y'all refer, all through the forums, to estate transfers and moves like you're requesting them daily. Is it remotely possible that the current estate rental business models are being overly demanding of the service and that's why it's slow?

Mecha Dinosaur

Poop.

Sims are the equivalent of virtual servers being rented by the data center known as Linden Lab(SSSS). Other data centers will have virtual or dedicated servers to their customers within 24 hours of request, charge a large factor less, and expect even heavier use then what Linden Lab(SSSSSSssSSS) expects.

Anyway, I wonder when Linden Lab(SSSsSSSssSSSsSSsssssss) will start doing an item shop like korean free to play MMOs do?

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