October 27, 2008 by Sarah Nerd
I would have liked to of named this blog entry "FUCK YOU LINDEN LABS" because thats how I feel at the moment, but that's probably not great for the front page of Y2P. You see I'm only moments away from learning that on January 1st the tier on my open space estates will increase from $75usd a month to $125usd. If I did my math correctly that's a 67% increase. A 67% increase right when our real life economy is in the shitter. So why, why are they doing this..
Lets check out the BLOG.
According to them it's because people are using the land. Yea go figure right? No one wanted to pay estate tier just to look at a pretty empty sim. People actually used the allowed prim limit and made homes, business, and likewise.
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We need to therefore take some steps to improve their performance
and better reflect their actual usage levels in our pricing so that we
can maintain the best performance level for everyone. As a result, we
will be implementing a pricing change effective January 1st along with
some policy changes effective immediately.
Beginning 1st January 2009
We will increase the monthly maintenance fee from USD$75 to USD$125
per month. This price increase will apply to all owners of Openspaces
on January 1st as well as new purchases after that date. There will be
no grandfathering of Openspace maintenance pricing.
For anyone owning class 4 Openspaces on January 1st, they will be
upgraded to class 5 by end of January, to further improve the
experience people have on those regions.
At the same time, we will be increasing the upfront fee for brand new Openspaces from USD$250 to USD$375.
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Re: Linden Lands Screws Us Over Once Again.
I have to question those who think this is a bad move by LL. Isn't it true that LL will now be collecting $2000/month in fees on a single network server that host these open space islands? That they are making $6000/sim on auctions of their landscaped mainland properties? That's pretty amazing business planning and their investors must be doing very well. The arbitrage is extraordinary. If they're not making boatloads of money I don't think they ever will.
Land Shepherd
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Re: Linden Lands Screws Us Over Once Again.
being the other) where LL have chosen policy changes to solve technical
problems. It'll be no surprise that I think if openspaces are abusing
resources then the solution is to just limit what they can do with
technical means. Reduce the prim limit, restrict the avatar limit and
lower script performance further. It seems so simple. Then all you have
to deal with is the other excessive cost of openspaces. Openspaces
surely use up more than their fair share of Concierge resources. I'm
sure complaints about performance on OpenSpaces waste a lot of
support's time with pointless investigations.
We have 15
openspaces right now and about 1.5 sims worth are empty. I'm not
totally sure how this will affect us. It seems my risk analysis has
always been different from everyone elses and as a result we were
prepared to absorb a shock like this pretty well, probably even without
raising the rent on existing renters. I think new renters will still
willingly pay the new rates since it still works out to be a great
deal. Frankly this move could be a great win for what I would call
responsibly run estates. Anyone charging L$7000 or less per week is
going to take a massive blow and hopefully some of those estates
renting openspaces out at close to cost will go bankrupt driving their
customers to the rest of us. All in all, land mass will decrease but
population probably won't which is a big win for Estate owners who can
rebound from a short period of 50-60% occupancy.
Additionally,
mainland prices should experience a nice bounce from this and since a
lot of people have fingers in both pies that's only going to be good.
Finally,
let's be honest, these sorts of unpredictable shocks are what working
in SL land is all about. We can't run around acting surprised something
absurd happens every 6 months. Frankly, I think it helps business
owners because it weeds out all the "competition" that is just giving
away land for fun or trying to undercut the rest of us by ridiculously
risky amounts. Serious, smart land managers (and that includes you
Sarah) are just going to have to roll with the punches and continue
running their business as best they can.
Re: Linden Lands Screws Us Over Once Again.
Sarah, I'm curious (and don't get me wrong, I'm pissed and I don't even own one piece of land or pay LL a cent... I find this to be a bait and switch)...
are you pissed because the prices were raised? or because you'll have to do a lot of work and retooling to gear up for profits after January? Like, what I'm driving at here, is I'm guessing when voidsims became available, lots of people jumped in with business plans involved, accounting sorted out, etc.... now, because of the price increase, whatever the biz plan in the void sims was going to be has to be adjusted, or even scrapped....
So, I'm curious, are you pissed that LL raised the price? Or pissed that between now and January you'll have to work hard to adjust to the new rates?
Re: Linden Lands Screws Us Over Once Again.
Changing a bunch of tier boxes doesn't bother me one bit, and would only take a day oir two if that even. I'm upset because rentals are already slow, and I don't think many renters will stick around for a 67% increase. It will result in me taking sims off the grid just to avoid paying out of pocket tier. I'm just very tired of Linden labs throwing one thing like this after another at us.
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[...] Your2ndPlace: Linden Lands Screws Us Over Once Again [...]
Nobody Fugazi post on the forums...
Available here.
familiarity breeds contempt - the kind that changes pricing at whim.
I am thankful that I no longer own a simulator or an open space
simulator. Since someone is allegedly going to read this and perhaps
even respond to it (doubtful), here are my points.
(1) Open Space simulators were given prim limits and a vague definition
of what was permissible. This is a clear variance in expectations
between Linden Lab and it's customers (the people who pay for a
service).
(2) Linden Lab did not put failsafes on open space simulators,
apparently, so that there are issues with the network when people use
the open space simulators in ways that are not permitted. Perhaps
someone should have said, "Throttle" at that internal Linden Lab
meeting? Or perhaps the person who did was completely ignored in the
defense of expediency? Who knows?
(3) Banning people who are angry over this, such as Sarah Nerd (or so I
have heard) only reinforces the thought that Linden Lab has dropped the
'Y' out of "Your World".
I could wax poetic on offtopic things. I won't. It's that I don't take
Linden Lab seriously anymore - there's just no point on spending money
in a virtual world where at a moment's notice the owner of the virtual
world (not the users, despite the advertising) can just screw people
out of real hard cash. This demonstrates either a callous attitude
toward users or poor planning... or both.
Better luck in the future. If you have one.
Re: Linden Lands Screws Us Over Once Again.
Whoa! Sarah, I just read you got banned.
Re: Linden Lands Screws Us Over Once Again.
Well, I see you're back.
Re: Linden Lands Screws Us Over Once Again.
Yea I was banned for saying "FUCK YOU LL" in a group chat, but the ban was lifted. I'm still upset at the whole situation.
Re: Linden Lands Screws Us Over Once Again.
content and traffic, the majority are being rented out to residents
looking for a place to live. Because they were never intended for that
level of load this is causing problems. For some people this has meant
a less than great experience with performance fluctuations. The overuse
of Openspaces has also put additional strain on some of our network and
database infrastructure at a much higher ratio than is reflected in the
current pricing. So higher traffic to and from the servers along with
heavier demands on the asset server, both of which impact the overall
experience people have inworld...
Not for nothing, but... who the heck wants an empty sim that you can't use anything with? It isn't like you can use the prims from an Open Space Sim anywhere else... what did they think people would do? Look across a sim border and say, "Wow, what a nice open area!"
DUH.
Re: Linden Lands Screws Us Over Once Again.
Sarah you are my (and plenty of other people's) hero if you really said fuck you in Concierge chat which is the rumor that's going aroudn right now. As a former tenant of yours (albeit for a short time) when I heard about this you were literally teh first name I thought of being hit by this (well you and Prok but I have no sympathy for Prok) and feel bad that they did this to you especially since after their last change you already ended up having to consolidate your sims since not all of them were filling up.