I am not going to rant about Linden's last raising of the OpenSpace prices. Because this time, it's not about running the biz wisely nor respecting the customers. It's about friends leaving second life or retreating because they cannot afford (or don't want to pay too much for) virtual land anymore. This time it's personal.
Because, that chunk of data, that grayscale image that renders into 3D mesh with ground texture, is a very personal thing.
Many newcomers into second life ask how to get land. And the answer is always the same:
You don't need land yet. You can live happily for months, even years as a nomad, exploring the grid, crashing at friend's place when needed, finding secluded spots on good-looking sims…
But eventually, you'll need land. You'll want to start a shop, or a club, or just want to have your own spot to do whatever you do. A place to call home. Place where you don't worry if you saved your last project or just left it to stay around. Place where you control the music stream, quiet spot to change the clothes or sort the inventory. Place for which you choose all the furniture or maybe which you have completely built.
Land is one's second extension into pixel-world, avatar being the first. Just as with the avatar, we build and represent ourselves with our use of the virtual land. It cannot move, but it stays there when we're logout. It's the place your friends drop by to feel you and leave the message when you're not around. It's a manifestation of our dreams and ideas. That's what this world is all about, remember?
And human mind is a very tricky mechanism. It connects the ideas. It connects people with events and events with images. So that piece of beach on the image above, right under the hill, means something to me in my sweet little heart. Because of one morning. Because of who I spent that morning with. It doesn't matter that piece of land is covered with prims now, it's there. It flashes occasionally while I am rezzing slow, like in the moment that picture is taken. It makes me smile, it makes my thoughts stray for a second. Then gray prims rezz all over it, hiding it back in safety. And that happens with prims as well. Like a freebie prim tree a friend of mine rezz wherever her home is. Trust me, sitting under that tree is a different experience.
Yes, I will agree that virtual land is just server space. But, this is not about server space. It's about what we are doing with that server space.
Beautifully said :)
That sums it up. Very nice!
/me smiles and bows
You don’t __need to leave_ Second Life because your openspace now costs more. You leave it because you lost money, because you don’t trust Linden Lab anymore, because you’re disappointed.
And right now, I can’t blame people that are disappointed – especially if they own one or more Openspace regions.
But let me think that if you’re a real friend to me, you won’t stop entering in-world just because you don’t own an Openspace region anymore.
Thank you, and very well said.
For some reason, this latest LL fuckup irritates me more than most, and I really thought I had reached the point where I wasn’t going to be surprised at the bad policy decisions coming out of there. For a bunch of people who espouse such utopian visions, they certainly fall short of playing that role in their "leadership."
yup…but for the Linden it is just a job (that they don’t do too well).
This is a wonderful post, very sentimental. A lot of sides to this event, really, and this is the most poignant. Behind the land barons who want to cash in this virtual world, there are emotions at stake too.
It’s horrible timing at something that will eventually happen. We know at the back of our heads LL will do this and that soon it won’t be just LL selling server space in SL, but many more.
Could the blow they give to us residents be any gentler? I hope they read and heed to this: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/MISC-1776
salutes you
Well said :)
being right here, selling my beloved sim right these days, I loved your considerations about virtual land.
It’s true, in the end it’s just server space and we know how much that cost. Probably the offer the Lindens make available to the public is not really shaped on everyone’s needs. In the end it’s much more easy to sell (and withold with expensive fees) so many sims and then let the owner decide how to use it then maybe put for sale "different" kinds of server space (less prims, slower connections, smaller sims, etc). Every audience has its needs and builders/producers have different needs than pure housing or clubbing or else. Then why kill the old class 4 and below server to standardize to 5? It’s the old rule of the "economies of scale". But this time what is cheaper for the "producer/service provider" is not translating to better prices (what about services?) to the final consumer.
It may be just a personal feeling of mine but with all the stress caused by the financial crisis around the globe, *this* peculiar server space, it’s really too expensive.
Opensource, you are right, one doesn’t need to cut all the contacts with friends because OpenSpace cost has gone up. But one doesn’t have to leave completely to be missed. Friends will stay around even if they are never logging in, there are social networks, IM’s, whatever. They can even login every now and then. But they will not be active and creative as before. And that’s a huge loss.
Alex…… yes, they have utopian visions. But as RightAsRain said… it’s "just a job". Pity that they do both parts (vision and job) so bad. I don’t mind if somebody’s job is making visions come true (on contrary) but in this case vision faded away long ago and job is done very bad.
Isadora, problem is that LL is the only party that sells server space. That places them in the situation they are now.
Eidur, OpenSpace sims were just what you’re reffering to: different sim for different use. What is problem here is that LL calculated bad or (more probably) got in panic about global economy so they tried to squeeze more money. They are rationalizing it by "residents who behave bad and use the sims like they were not intended to". Buit we all know that’s crap. There is limited number of prims and scripts that sim can hold. That number is defined by Lindens, not you or me. Maybe those numbers should be lower or maybe initial price needed to be higher, but raising prices for 66% and calling residents guilty for that is outrageous.
[...] after reading dande and Zippora’s posts, I noticed there was little else to add. What I whould had done in hate and [...]
I share your insight into alt realities and totally love the way you describe the emotions involved.
I’m not a land owner yet but same as you I see it as it’s an inseparable part of the overall experience.
I can offer some hope by suggesting that this hardware/hosting problem might be resolved by opening the grid and allowing private servers to host their own sims.
This way I can host my own plot of land from my own computer, similar to P2P networks. LL server/electric/bandwidth costs will be reduced significantly as all of the above will fall onto the land owners private computer/connection, furthermore, when my computer is down, then my land is down (it’s only fair) and LL needn’t reference it or take it into general grid consideration. Prim limitations and performance issues will be dependant on my PC, so from now on it becomes my problem and not LL to regulate the usage.
I really think this is the only way to go (and grow), 20K servers already, LL can’t drop these expenses on the residents, that s**t won’t fly anymore, and will only get worst using this funding method.
Yeah…well it’s a nice visionary solution but don’t get your hopes up just yet.
I’m still waiting for that SLim to work! Goddamn simple IM
Huh, that’s two big steps into the bright future.
As we see OpenSim is still in development and though it gets its momentum, it’s still behind what LL offers. But current performance and partial implementation of LSL are not the biggest problems of OpenSim. Money and assets still need to be controlled by someone who we can trust or, at least, who we can get to the court if need arises (check Problems of the OpenSim for more on this).
Your idea about P2P is interesting. Though I don’t like it in the way you describe it, I don’t want my land to be a hole in the space while my computer is down, nor do I want to be a server (sometimes I want my computer to do something else but SL) sharing assets between peers would be a great thing tech-wise (check Centralized Networks or P2P for this one). That one is not going to happen too. Once we run into P2P waters all the copyright protection is lost. Remember copybot affaire? Now multiply that by 1000. You get the picture.
wot?! you don’t have an SL-only pc?! (it’s ok I don’t one either – yet)
ok, let me properly check your links before I get back to you on this. Still, bottom line, who’s gonna pay the bill? I’m (temporarily) out of ideas
In my oppinion what LL needs to start worrying about instead of raising prices is lowering expences. I mean seriously the reason prices go up is because SL was pourly designed. Please excuse my typo’s. Second life was orriginally created to be small metaverse maybe 100 of the now over 1000 servers. The cost to maintain these is probably rediculous. And thats understandable considering all the custom made objects the world has.
There has to be a better way to store and recall these references on serverside to make it use up less resources. Less server space. If LL would concentrate on reducing the amount of servers needed then prices could go down and in turn coerce more residence to make contributions to the overall community. Look at MMO’s like SWG, they dont have customization like the building tools but they have servers that actually handle more strain than SL has ever seen. (let me say this was back in the hayday of SWG) Every character has a backpack with 80 items, main inventory with 50 items, houses with hundreds of items, items stored on space ships. All these items are in the open just like in sl. The thing is the maximum amount of online players per quad server is (each gameworld in SWG is 4 linked servers) 12000 users. Where Second life servers can barely handle 100 users per server. (to what i read 1 region = 1 single server)
This is what LL needs to work on instead of trying to build a new client. Fix the servers first, then worrry about the economics/client stability and watch your money tripple.
Sorry if my thought are jarbled.
One metaverse to consider in true comparison is There. guesswhat they dont have such a strick limit to the amount of people per region like SL does. What there is doing right does not make up for it being crap but it does show that SL can be less expensive to LL so they can then pass the savings on to us and people like OP dont have to loose friends over BS land prices.
Wow I actually got back to the topic. I know its not well saidbut its been said.
If I understand you right, you prefer SL with limited content and without building tools and possibility to create stuff? But wouldn’t that kill the essence of second life?
In all virtaul worlds mare a escape from the real world as it happens. Now you pay for it and then most in these worlds want rto be power hungry or dam rude most of the time this applys to Palace in my view and the manor is okay but dieing.
Secound Life is for con artists in my opinion as they are sick puppys alf of them as who wants to pay for avatars as easy o make them.
hope all agree a better virtual world system is needed.
better spelling/typing is needed as well.
Maybe better VW is needed, but I’d really like to hear your thoughts on how that world should look like.