The Incredible Shrinking Land
Second Life Map, originally uploaded by Nexeus Fatale.
Today was taking a look at the Economic Statistics in the Second Life Web and saw the negative tendency in Resident Owned Islands (or Private Islands) keep going.
| Islands Added | ||
| Month | Islands Owned (End of Month) |
Islands Added (During Month) |
| December 2008 – MTD | 23104 | -1458 |
| November 2008 | 24562 | -1977 |
This means around 12% of the private islands disappeared in the last 50 days.
But the fun think is the note Linden Lab linked to that statistics:
Please be aware that the Islands Added figures are not currently an accurate reflection of short term change and are therefore misleading. This is because of the way in which they are calculated and will tend to cause the figures to look significantly worse than they actually are (either by overcounting in some cases or under counting in others). In addition, the many Openspace conversions will significantly drop the total island count exaggerating the change in numbers. We are looking at changing this page to provide more accurate data soon.
I’m terrible at “diplomatic” language, but it seems to mean something like “Oh, don’t worry, actually is not that bad as it seems!!! Is just a small adjustment, we are strong and stuff, blah, blah, blah… Anyway we will adjust the system so it will look like things are not so bad. Kthxbai”, right?
Anyway, I still think Linden Lab made a terribly wrong marketing decision with the question about Openspaces and their change on products and prices, and we are all paying the consequences. I wonder what Linden Lab is doing with all that empty servers right now, don’t think they are improving performance.
Letter from Santa Claus
Today just recieved this letter from Santa!!! 
I’m so excited!!!
Wanted to be sure about the gift from Santa this next Christmas… but well, it seems there will be some problems with it.
Anyway, i’m sure Santa will find the perfect gift even if the one i asked for is not “available” anymore. 
Disclaimer: This is a joke, right now i don’t want an Linden Lab Openspace sim. 
The solution to Openspace sims question, or something like that…
Finally it seems Linden Lab reacted to all the protest of Residents about the Openspace sims price hike. M Linden wrote a post in the Official Linden Blog explaining what is the solution they found.
As you may know, some days ago Jack Linden posted about a plan to increase on a 65% rate the tier on Openspace sims due the “overuse of resources” by the residents and owners of that kind of sims. The protest started, in so many and imaginative ways, from strikes and protests at the Concierge Office inworld to groups on Flickr. Residents were angry and very creative, making even videos like this one by Kyotta Spitteler:
Finally, Linden Lab reacted changing the plans. A part of the blogpost of M there is some more information about the changes in the Knowledge Base. Basically they are changing the kinds of Private Islands:
- Full Regions: The typical big ones, 15000 prims, 100 agents, same price (for the moment).
- Homesteads: The actual Openspace sims, 3750 prims, 20 agents, will increase the fee from 75 US$ to 95 US$ in January and to 125 US$ in July.
- Openspaces: The new kind with the same price, 750 prims, 10 agents, fee of 75 US$.
I think is a good solution, goes directly to the performance issue and gives options to the sim owners. But, Linden Lab shown us a really bad PR work with this issue, as i said in another post, Katt Linden possibly was on holidays or working in other stuff. Anyway, do you think is a good solution?
I just hope this issue to push Linden Lab to improve the ways of communication with the Residents.
UPDATE 06NOV08:
Reading this post again i think i was not clear enough about my point of view. I think this is a “better” solution than the original one, but is not the best one. The performance problem of the Openspaces was due bad settings made by Linden Lab themselves and now they are making Residents pay their mistake, with money or with hard use limitations.
Anyway, about this issue we all have different point of view, take a look at Vint Falken’s blog, she expresses there her point of view and has some interesting links.
Openspace sims, another Linden mistake
After all that time, after all the mistakes, i think we never will get used to the “weird” commercial policy and crappy customer service of Linden Lab.
Yesterday Jack Linden posted some “small” changes on Openspace sims pricing and policies, you should go and read it, basically it says some stuff about how Openspaces are technically set, then he says people are using them in ways Linden Lab didn’t expected (or “overusing” them), then says the prices will be increased on a 65% from next January.
Well, i think Jack is right and some people is using Openspaces in the way not planned by Linden Lab. I remember a conversation in Torley’s office hours when he said (Torley i mean) that one of the most fascinating things in Second Life is that the Lindens can’t plan what will be the use of features because they are always unexpected… maybe that is the problem.
Maybe Jack (and Linden Lab) is right but what means overuse? If they sell a sim with 3500 prims (is just an example) and i’m using 3000. am i overusing? No, that is not overuse. Of course some people is overusing Openspaces with “temp-rezzers”, that is a real overuse and a quite silly thing due the incredible lag it produces.
Under my point of view what happened here is that Linden Lab just was wrong with the technical configuration of Openspaces and now that mistake is causing performance issues, so the solution for the Lab is just to increase prices… sorry but this is just stupid and wrong. The Lab is making the residents pay a Lab mistake.
I think banning “temp-rezzers” would be a solution, i would support Linden Lab if that was the solution proposed, but no, just treating bad their customers seems to be the way Linden Lab works. “CUSTOOMER SERVIZE… UR DOIN IT WRONG”.
Some residents are trying to find ways to protest about this, there is a JIRA issue, a Flickr group, Vint Falken has an interesting post and seems she is trying to list all the actions.
Image in the post: edition of an image originally made by Vint Falken, protected under a Creative Commons license.
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