Hugsy Penguin

If after reading that, you think that LL was perfect OK with people renting out OS land for people to live on, well, that's just daft.

--Hugsy

Cocoanut Koala

It's okay, it's okay, it's okay. To give up your beach, if you have to.

It broke my heart to give up my beach on Azure Islands, which is not an open sim, but is owned by Adam (and I presume, still, Nexus) who own a HUMONGOUS AMOUNT of open sims. Or more accurately, I thought it would break my heart. Once it was gone and I no longer had to pay that extra tier, all of a sudden it wasn't breaking my heart at all. My heart was relieved.

(I had to give it up because it was stupid to pay them for tier when I was already paying LL for more tier than I was using, once I upped my shop land.)

And now I'm wondering what are Nexus and Adam going to do, since they own all those open sims. (And, I think, basically pioneered them, hand-in-hand with LL.) Since their open sims ARE mostly all nothing but trees, I wonder, too, if the increase will apply to them.

From this experience (heart-breaking that wasn't really), I now realize that it won't break my heart that much no matter what LL forces me to give up in the future. Which I imagine they will.

Because it turns out most of the "heart-breaking" and grieving part seems to come BEFORE, not after, you accept your losses and giveup. It turns out to be lots easier to take one's losses and turn one's back on things than I thought it would be.

coco

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Beebo Brink

And if you think LL wasn't providing a deliberate nudge-nudge-wink-wink you are naive.

If LL truly didn't want to increase the appeal of OSS to pump up sales, the wording would have been explicit.

"Open Space sims should not be used for residential living."

Instead they chose a wording that said, "You can do what you want, but we won't bail you out if you do."

And people took them at their word.

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Quantum Destiny

But Linden Lab continued selling them in the hundreds - fully aware of how they were being used. If the OS sim use was being 'abused', they should have either come down on the 'abusers', or offered a higher tier level for anything more than 'light' use, ages ago. I mean how long has this been going on? It must be near enough two years now? I can't recall, but it's certainly more than a few months.

MoxZ Mokeev

If you plan to stay in SL, don't let this scare you away from renting on estates. Just do your homework. Go with someone trustworthy like Sarah Nerd or Cove Islands. There are a LOT of good land owners out there still who will let you know if you're renting an OS or a regular estate sim. I personally prefer the estate because for me they're less laggy, they're better teraformed and you're less likely to have someone build something fugly next to you. There are many pros and cons for both estate and mainland.

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Wipe your mouth, there's still a tiny bit of bullshit around your lips.

Cindy Claveau

Rule #1 for Virtual World Developers: If you offer the users/residents/players a desireable feature, they will exploit it beyond any limitations you have imagined.

Corollary 1: Verbal or written limitations are insufficient. Physical or programmatic limitations are the only practical way to enforce limits.

In other words, whatever you imagined your residents not doing, they will find a way to do unless you program it otherwise.

I have a hard time believing that they couldn't have set up these void sims with hard limits on script processing and texture load so that the resident got a warning when they were within 20% (for example) of the limit, and the OS shut down if the limit was exceeded.

It would have saved a lot of grief for those of us who aren't loading the OS's but now have to be punished along with the businesses and apartment complexes someone threw up on a void sim.

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Sometimes, "I hit it with my axe" is the best solution.

Beebo Brink

Interesting, that's exactly how it turned out for me when I gave up my mainland parcel (well, most of it, rented out the rest).

I'd been paying tier on the property for over a year, and this last spring I found myself bending over backward to keep it even though it was a poor fit for my store and I'd actually been living elsewhere for months.

Giving it up was very hard, but just like you describe, aftewards it didn't hurt nearly as much as I had expected. When I look back on all the different properties I've held, and enjoyed, I can safely say that moving forward was always for the best.

Cocoanut Koala

Did it always say that?

coco

Hugsy Penguin

I believe so:

Information about Openspaces (void regions) « Official Second Life Blog

--Hugsy

Beebo Brink

To the best of my recollection, that was the description that stood from the time that OSS were more restricted and more difficult to purchase. LL announced, with great fanfare, all the ways in which OSS were being upgraded and the old CYA in the Knowledge Base didn't change.

But if we went by what is in the KB, people would still be trying to get 3 residents together to form a group. LL has never maintained the KB sufficiently for any seasoned resident to consider it to be a reliable source.

Hugsy Penguin

So ok, people were using OSs for things they shoud not be used for, LL lays the smack down, and noone's upset with those who misused them. Personally, I'm not surprised LL is putting a stop to the misuse, but kinda surprised it's so harsh.

--Hugsy

Khamon

These don't apply exclusively to virtual worlds but are fundamental tenets of Computer Science Systems Analysis courses and the Management Information Systems classes all Business majors take.

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But of bliss and glad life there is little to be said, before it ends; as works fair and wonderful, while still they endure for eyes to see, are their own record, and only when they are in peril or broken for ever do they pass into song. - Quenta Silmarillion

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Hugsy Penguin

I totally agree with all of the above.

--Hugsy

caroline ra

This is what puddles my limited understanding of this issue.....
IF they were just meant for parks and sailing water why did LL need to increase prims to 3750? You cant sail anything with more than about 30 prims I think the script wont wear it.

Again if it was just meant to sail in or as a park, why did they make them stand-alone.
And a parkland of trees in the middle of nowhere that you can just sit and look at, whats the point of that?

The thing that also makes me laugh is when people say...LL dont know what theyre doing...
Well ya know what, I think LL know EXACTLY what theyre doing when it comes to raking in money because every policy change theyve made has ended up fucking the residents in the arse and LL has benefited each time. So no, I think when it comes to squeezing every last $ out of ppls love for SL that they know exactly what theyre doing.

Im standing by my original decision to shut down each of my OS's when they become vacant and Im not even interested in joining them into another full prim sim or selling them on (even if anyone wanted them)...cause you know what, in another 6 months theyll do something else to arse fuck land renters and Im having trouble sitting comfortably as it is.

Cindy Claveau

That's where I got it (well, that and years playing MMOs).

Which makes me wonder if anyone at LL has been exposed to any such course?

Khamon

This particularly affects Azure because they pioneered by incorporating openspaces in the middle of their landmasses as empty, explorable mountain ranges and such. To close them now would mean realigning their entire continental structure.

But I'm sure LL is convinced that they'll just pay the extra monthly fees. It is Second Life after all; what else are they gonna do with their time and money?

Besides, their going to be enjoying an optimal experience beginning in January. That's gotta be worth a several hundred a month.

Quantum Destiny

That seems to me to be one of the biggest holes in LL's position.

Brenda Connolly

When I quit SL in April, it was a Cold Turkey, on fell swoop move. I didn't want to bother trying to sell my 4096 island space, I didn't even bother logging in to collect my stuff or formally abandon it. I just cancelled my account from the website, and let the landlort just take it back. Not having that monthly charge anymore felt great, as some months I was only going there just to pay my tier.

Quantum Destiny

/fixed

Rosie Barthelmess

LL offered conversion to people who were renting their full sims for residential use, at the rate of four open space sims to one full sim.

If you think that LL truly believed virtual landlords were going to trade in their residential, income-generating sims for four chunks of open water scattered in the middle of the Linden ocean, you're daft.

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Humps

You know what the sad part about all this is? If six months ago LL had actually put some thought into this and offered OSS's even on the tier they are suggesting now, and promoted them as a mini sim, better than an standard OS, not as good as a full sim but a decent value for money product that sat in-between, they would have still sold faster than LL could process them.

There would be no uproar now either because people would have known what they were buying into and would not feel like LL deceived them or missold them anything. The lab would not be trying to avoid a PR and customer relations disaster and customers would not be disillusioned and seriously looking for alternatives. All for the want of a little thought in the first place. It was all so appallingly simple and yet true to form LL jumped in and made what could have been a positive and progressive move into a shambolic mess.

Whatever people end up with now they will consider they have been duped by LL. It will never be what they feel they were originally sold or promised. What they would have been happy to buy like ice cream on a hot day will now only ever be something they were tricked into buying, if of course they even bother to retain what they have.

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Hugsy Penguin

The knowledge base articles have a last modified date so you can see how old the information is. If there were any questions on whether or not particular parts of the article were still relevant, LL should have been contacted directly.

--Hugsy

Rosie Barthelmess

A few of us who have openspaces through the same resident, used as individual residences, are waiting to see what they're going to do as far as concessions for trading up or giving credit on setup fees towards something else. None of us can afford to keep our OS's at the tier we have now without setting up some kind of business on them in order to try to help them make the tier, which is 100% against the reason why we bought them anyway. Sigh.

So now we're trying to see if they'll be doing anything for up-conversion for people with fewer than four OS's, since the resident who technically is the owner of ours has three, and we might cover the rest of the gap and move into a full sim with the four of us each taking a corner of it for 3750 prims and $75/mo. At least then we still know who our neighbors are and that the landscape won't be destroyed, plus it'll be similar primage.

But I do not for a moment expect them to budge on $125 being the minimum for anything other than an open water sim. I can see them maybe giving in to a concession for the sailing community or something else, but I reckon they will say ANYTHING with any kind of build on it will start at $125 which both on principle and practicality is not possible for me.

BJ Tunwarm

You are being ripped off and your landloard is one of the douchebags. Most other OS are at most 4 renters. Full sim 16 lots, OS 4 lots. Go look for land on a full sim since you aren't bothered by having neighbors.

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"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Whole sims on fire off with griefer particle spam off the shoulder of Nautilus . I watched bling glitter in the shadows of Kristen Viewer. All these moments will be lost in time, like posts on an IM chat... Time to log off.“ Botrunner.

Rosie Barthelmess

It's pretty obvious to me that you aren't caught up to date on the spin that's coming from LL now about the openspaces and their use, as they are now not claiming that they were abused but that they were used in new, exciting and creative ways and that we are getting more value out of them than the pricepoint, so they are trying to close that gap.

I understand this is a pretty easy button to poke with a stick since so many of us are going to be affected, but you may want to catch up on the current party line coming out of LL rather than depending on an outdated knowledgebase article from February or March for your facts and figures.