You’d best re-think your strategy of where to put your money!

You’d best re-evaluate what constitutes VALUE in entertainment and discretionary spending!

You’d best get back to basics and ditch the virtual bullshit!

You’d best GET REAL
and get a f’n grip!
/
/
Linden Research will fail in 2009

Bank On It…

(that last bit was a PROTIP btw)

* The statement that it costs LL more to operate OSS than full sims appears to have no factual basis. They draw in the same amount of money per server box. For the most part, such service is automated. While the sheer number of sims may require a little more support manpower, I think at $1,200 per server box per month (16 sims to a box), they can likely afford to hire a few employees to support such a highly lucrative product.

* The above economic analysis, while technically correct, takes into consideration ONLY the pencil-to-paper economic side. Yes, at a 67% price increase Linden Lab could afford to lose 40% of its Open Space customers and still break even. That might seem like a wise move on their part. However, it fails to take into consideration the damage to their customer base overall… the the consequences of alienating thousands of customers.

* What has totally failed to be considered is the quickly-approaching competition. Thus far Second Life has been a virtual monopoly, enabling Linden Lab to pretty much charge whatever they can gouge the customer out of (and they have). But that status is quickly ending. We already have the Open Grid project. That project is in its development / infancy stage, but already it is developed enough to support avatars, inventory, building and yes, even sales. There is a lot of work yet to be done… but that work IS being done.

According to Open Grid stats, they have had a sudden recent surge in sim orders, so many in fact they’ve had trouble keeping up with them. That’s bad news for Linden Lab; it means people are starting to consider alternatives. My group would likely have waited another year or two before looking further into Open Grid. But because of LL’s Open Space fiasco– we just purchased an Open Grid sim and are preparing for migration… as are many other groups. I know of three large groups already that are preparing to migrate to Open Grid– and I by far do not know all that are planning to do so. While this may seem like a small number, trickles often become roaring rivers.

* The above analysis completely ignores potential legal consquences to Linden Lab– and the very real fact that there is already one group that is preparing to take legal action against the company. There are potentially valid claims of “bait and switch” (and yes, all the elements appear to be there, so I’d say definintely an actionable case), fraud, breach of promise and breach of contract (a verbal or sales claim can indeed = contract according to U.S. business law).

* The alienation of customers extends much wider than merely that of OSS owners (in my own group, one person owns our OS sims… but 1,600 members are affected by this decision). Alienating customers is NEVER a good idea.

So bottom line, economics are not the ONLY thing to be considered here. The damage and consequences to Linden Lab are likely to be far greater than either they or this blog has taken into consideration.

For additional reading and prediction of overal impact upon the Second Life experience:

ELF CLAN RESPONSE TO LINDEN LAB
http://elfclan.ning.com/profiles/blogs/response-to-linden-lab-oss

OPEN SPACE SIMS– THE FACTS TO DATE
http://elfclan.ning.com/profiles/blogs/open-space-sims-the-facts-to

MAJOR SECOND LIFE CODING SNAFU
http://elfclan.ning.com/profiles/blogs/major-second-life-coding-snafu

aRe YoU fUcKiNg SeRiOuS?

My brother has very funny retardation. My sister, she used to show her vagin to him, and say “You will never get this! You will never get this! La, la, la!” and he would sit in his cage and cry, and we all laugh. “You will never get this!”.

But then one time…he broke out of his cage, and he got this, and we all laugh. High five!

(PS: “You should not throw the term “retarded” around like that. You are not only insulting the open sim owners who work so hard to run their sims, you are also insulting people who suffer from mental handicaps”

Calling mentally handicapped people retarded is not insulting then?)

Your journalistic skills are terribly lacking. Your grammar is terrible. Please, try to use complete sentences when you write for publication. For example, “And this is why:” is not a complete sentence. Your overuse parenthetical expressions exposes a profound lack of understanding of the nature of parenthesis. The following sentence is downright offensive: “Well, accusing Linden Lab in the Second Life forums or blog of doing something “illegal” or “breaking the contract” or asking to “give me back my money” is simply retarded and childish.” You should not throw the term “retarded” around like that. You are not only insulting the open sim owners who work so hard to run their sims, you are also insulting people who suffer from mental handicaps, their families and anybody who works in the mental health community. I have absolutely no idea what your closing sentence is supposed to mean.

This entire article is awkwardly written and poorly thought out. To fix this problem I would recommend that you read “The Little, Brown Handbook”.

http://www.amazon.com/Little-Brown-Handbook-Ninth/dp/0321103505

Your article is also poorly researched. You should put some more effort into at least getting some basic facts straight if you can’t be bothered to study the language. I will now bullet point some factual corrections for you.

1. Jack Linden said that there are 13,000 open sims, not 10,000. This miscalculation changes all of your numbers and effects your entire argument.

Please read the Linden Labs blog at this address: http://blog.secondlife.com/ You can find the Linden Labs office hours on the following page: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Office_Hours I recommend that you attend a few meetings and check your facts before writing further on what the company is and is not doing.

2. 5,000 abandoned open sims will not free up server space for another 5,000 open sims because Linden Labs will no longer be selling open sims. You would have known this had you read the Linden Labs blogs or paid attention to this issue at all over the past few weeks.

3. 5,000 abandoned open sims will simply mean more empty servers. Empty servers does not equate to another $1000 of setup fees plus another $295 per month in tier because if there is no demand then nobody will buy them.

There is a wonderful textbook on simple economics that I would like to recommend to you so that you can fully explore this concept further. It is called “Children in the Marketplace: Lesson Plans in Economics for Grades 3 and 4″ and can be found on the following web page: http://www.amazon.com/Children-Marketplace-Lesson-Economics-Grades/dp/1561833673/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1226470783&sr=1-2

4. You gave no explanation for why you assumed that only 50% of open sims would have to be shut down as a result of this policy. Why is your conjecture not higher or lower?

5. You are begging the question by assuming that the growth of Linden Labs grid will continue as it has in the past. Your assumption seems to be that this policy will not effect the market place for new sims at all. This is simply wishful thinking and begging the question. The only reason that they connected 500 open sims a month was because of the low prices of open sims. They can no longer continue at that pace because they will no longer be selling open sims. The increase in prices will also slow adoption of new homesteads dramatically.

I would like to recommend that you read a good book titled “Asking the Right Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking”. It will help you to avoid common critical thinking pitfalls such as begging the question, wishful thinking, faulty data and so forth.

http://www.amazon.com/Asking-Right-Questions-Critical-Thinking/dp/0132203049/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1226472003&sr=1-1

6. You assume that open sim business owners are less capitalized and less professional than full sim owners. This is simply not the case. Full sim owners are less capitalized because full sims cost more money in tier. They have less business skill than the open sim business owners because they did not recognize this and purchase an open sim.

7. Your suggestion that open sim owners get together and own land together is simply not workable. The land market is notoriously riddled with what people call “drama”, making it difficult for multiple sim owners to work together like that. The egos involved in Second Life land are simply too big.

You write about Linden Labs margins as if you know what they are. If you do have access to such information then please cite it. If not then your claims about margins can and should be thrown out. If Open Life can offer 45,000 prims at $75 per month then why can’t Linden Labs do it? I doubt that Open Life is loosing money on that proposition. The obvious explanation seems to be that Linden Labs is gouging it’s residents.

There is an underlying assumption here that less sims will not hurt Second Life as a product. More sims means more content, which means that there is more to do in Second Life and more to purchase in Second Life. Every time a sim that is used closes the entire grid suffers from the lack of content. Less content will drive down the number of premium accounts further and cut down on the amount of commerce that happens in Second Life. This will cut deeply into Linden Labs margins in both the short and long run. Remember, according to Linden Labs, the problem with these sims is that they get too much traffic. This means that for every open sim that the new policy destroys more content that people use will also be destroyed.

Note, that I am not talking about ghost town sims that nobody ever uses. That might be the original intent of the open sims, but empty sims can close without effecting anybody. What I am referring to in this argument is the trafficked open sims.

In conclusion, I would like to urge you to do more homework before writing another article. If not for real journalists such as Pixeleen I would not continue to read your publication. If you take my suggestions to heart then I look forward to reading your next article.

~Bubblesort

Brink?! You must not live in the Northeast. I think it is safe to say we are well over the brink and heading toward the brink of a Depression.

You have no clue what you are talking about. Linden has filled people with their garbage about what it takes to host sims for so long they have you fooled as well. Fooled with this class4 class5 mumbo jumbo.

Linden over charges by around 1000 percent for the service they have. And there will be no articles that will suggest otherwise to me. The only reason Linden can even sell space at “ALL” in the capacity they choose to sell it is because people have a notion to profit off of Lindens service as hosting resellers. That is it for a majority.

But in terms of your presumption that it is more of a load, more resources requried etc.. for open space is plain retarted. Linden is not making “WHAT THEY CAN MAKE” is the issue and they continue to choose to run people out of SL with insisting their rates are just. They are not,

If you don’t know what your talking about in terms of hosting and resources, what is required to host simulators, you would be better off not writing articles about it. I assure you the only reason for the increase is that Linden plays a foul game. They are charging the sim leasers for all the bandwidth and resources the non users are using,
and guess what, most are non service leasers. So continue to pay for avatars coming to your sim. It will only become worse in the future.

For every avatar that joins SL and uses resources, the leasers of the space within SL will be guaranteed to pay even more. So we can only hope that Linden continues to grow. Most do not lease within SL.

For those that have other purposes besides profit in SL, good for you.

Really, who CARES about the stupid mainland!? Let the mainland ROT. It is a chaotic lagfest filled with griefers, trash, rotating ads, and patchwork-quilt parcels. Land “owners” have no real control beyond ban lines of the place.

RE: OS sims

Boo-hoo-hoo. Where was all the weeping and concern when Linden Lab unleashed these on the grid and finding a renter for a private island became near impossible?

Typical comment from prospective renter – “Why should I pay you that much when I can rent on an OS sim for 1/4 of that?”

So, cry me a river. Lindens told you it was for open space and you turned it into vast rental holdings. You don’t deserve one iota of sympathy, in my opinion.

The only mistake the Lindens made was not to limit Open Space sims to a very low number of Avatars and nip the rental empire thing in the bud before it started.