Contributing to global climate change since 1965, Allen believes that you have a Constitutional right to his opinion. 
The First One is Free
Warning: this post might be of limited interest to my “regular” audience.
What a strange couple of days these have been for Linden Lab, the owners of Second Life™, and for its residents. Yesterday we were told that the price for so-called Openspace land would be increased after January 1, 2009. Don’t know what Openspace land is?
I’ll begin by describing, very briefly, the way land is simulated in SL. Land is divided into regions (or “sims”) of 65,536 sqare meters. A sim can accommodate around 10,000 distinct objects (primitives or “prims”) that are the building blocks of nearly everything you can see in SL. Each one of these sims is more-or-less locked to a single CPU core inside a server, so with recent technology, SL can cram four sims into a dual-CPU, dual-core server. They claim to have over 5,000 servers humming away right now. Neat, that.
Some time ago (probably before my character was born) someone came up with a grand idea: why not make “void” sims with all of the same land area but only one quarter of the prims? With four void sims (later called an Openspace sims) connected together it would be possible to build seriously large spaces suitable for flying or boating using essentially the same processing power of one normal sim.
Openspace sims were originally made available to residents who already owned a regular (full) sim with the intention that these owners would add essentially empty spaces around their current land. Additionally, regular sim owners could “convert” theirs into four Openspace sims. Neater, that. It seems to have worked for a while but the new “light” sims were popular and soon the Lab changed their rules so that anyone could purchase just one Openspace from someone who already owned one.
You know what happened next? These new Openspace owners, free to buy them one at a time — stop me if you’re already there — began using them! Yeah, shocking.
Now remember that an Openspace sim is one of four sims sharing the processing power of one processor core; if you decide to hold a party on your quarter of the CPU, you’re going to take something (computing power) away from three other Openspacers. We are being told this is happening with enough regularity that Linden Lab — the very people who encouraged single Openspace ownership — are having to crack down on this abuse. How are they cracking down? If you thought maybe they were going after the worst of the worst offenders you would be wrong. No, they’re just going to raise the price across the board for everyone. If you’re playing by the rules, too bad for you.
Dad used to tell us kids if we didn’t stop “making that racket back there” he would “stop this car.” Well, Linden Dad has stopped the car. Just like Dad, they don’t really care who is responsible for the “racket.”
It’s a racket alright. Get the kids hooked on your junk and then raise the price. The first one is free!
It is an outrage trying to trick your customers to buy a product and after a few months telling them, hey you want to keep your product, ok you will have to pay up or we will take it back. That is what Linden is doing to all the people who purchased an openspace sim from them.
October 28th, 2008 at 7:01 pmI don’t know if I’m a regular, but my Metamucil sponsorship is really paying off in fiber credits.
October 28th, 2008 at 9:49 pmI love Second Life but I cannot figure out why they went this route with users. I understand the cost of business and the bottom line but weren’t there other options to this issue other than more money? If it is truly a case of these sims using too much power why not offer sim owners a chance to bring their OpenSpace sims to within recommended guidelines?
October 29th, 2008 at 10:26 amThey can “fix” this somewhat by offering to refund setup fees and/or to offer free conversion of 4 OS sims into 1 full sim. Some have suggested that all of this was a long-term plan to scam people but we’re talking about Linden Lab here; they have no idea what a long-term plan is. I think it is more likely that Jack’s announcement is just an opening volley. They’ll come back with a less draconian offer and try to play like they’re being reasonable.
Sorta like the guy in Afghanistan whose death sentence for downloading “sacrilegious” material was commuted to just 20 short years in prison. Very reasonable, indeed.
@G2 Proto/Kyle G: I agree. I love Second Life and I’ll continue to use it for socializing and building just as I always have. I’m on a freebie account, but I pay tier on 1/4 of a private sim — contributing to their bottom line by proxy. But if push comes to shove, I’ll stop leasing altogether and meet my friends 800 meters above a Linden sandbox. I’ve already built a rezzable platform/clubhouse. They can deal with my 240 prim hair and I’ll not contribute a dime. =D
Okay, now I’m just being petty.
/me sowwy. v.v
October 29th, 2008 at 10:46 amJack has responded here.
http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/10/29/update-regarding-the-openspaces-announcement/
Translation: “Okay, you’re all really pissed off at us, aren’t you? I’m not going to say anything more right now. Just keep being pissed off at us. I’ll say something later on sometime. Keep pissing.”
October 29th, 2008 at 7:27 pmCurious there is nothing at all that i can find will SL premium accounts go up and will they take away our weekly stipend. Also any other financial changes for members of SL who are not opensim ownere
November 13th, 2008 at 11:46 am“The first one is free and then they raise the price” was intended as a tongue-in-cheek analogy. Strictly speaking, Em, neither was the first openspace sim “free.” My point was only that LL made Openspace sims insanely attractive, failed to enforce their own rules, sold buttloads of them and allowed the situation to run out of control before having a knee-jerk reaction.
I didn’t mention premium accounts, nor did I suggest reductions in stipend were in the offing. Perhaps you’re reacting to a post you imagined I wrote?
November 13th, 2008 at 12:56 pm