SL: Gouging us all

[Tzaj]

To me it is a scam.

How can you buy something then pay rent on it, but when you fail to pay the rent, lose the item? When I subscribed to On Digital, I bought the box, but I rented the TV shows. If I stopped renting the TV Shows the box is still mine.

In my opinion if you bought land, but decided not to pay the rate for playing, it should become a ghost town. There but with you not in it.

Problem is a server costs money all the time. It's ongoing. Especially in these days of multi-cpu servers one sim might be 'suspended' but it's still costing electricity/maintenance as it has to run as the other cpu's are supporting sims. Your TV box you can turn off and only effect yourself.

Yeah I had been wondering about server charges and well that seems to be a bit of a con job too. Whatever you run, there is a finite cost and anything else is profit. Just how many subscribers does it take to pay for the whole room? I would say a whole lot less than what most games have. Also using 4 fractions rather than 1 fraction of the servers totality is hardly going to be 4 times as expensive in real terms.

No it the charge they can get away with, and seeing Wendy lives in the UK he is used to being part of rip off Britain. Vote with your feet m8.

[WendyG]

LL is partly backtracking but things are still a tad muddy. They have announced that you can kinda stay on an Openspace at the old price if you ask the concierge nicely and abide by certain limits: http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/11/05/a ... residents/

Here is how we are amending the price change:

1. We are going to retain the Openspaces product at its original price point and its original intended use (forest, water, etc.). We will have technical limitations to help regulate their use, initially avatar and prim limit restrictions, eventually event, classified and script limits. Those of you who chose to use the Openspaces as intended may stay at the US$75 rate, but will need to contact the concierge team to do so.

2. If you want more than an Openspace, we will offer you the choice of moving to a new product called Homesteads that is intended for light use such as low density rentals. For existing Openspace owners we will phase in the price increase for this new product over the next 6 months. Homesteads will also have technical limits for avatars and prims, and eventually script limits as well.

* January 5, 2009 – non-compliant Openspaces will transition to Homesteads and the maintenance fees will go from $75 to $95 per month. We will offer an educational discount to qualified educators on the new Homestead product. The discount amount will be the same as Private Regions, roughly 30%.

* July 2009 — the maintenance fees for Homesteads will go from $95 to $125 per month

For detailed information on these changes, please go to the Knowledge Base.

I need to read up more on what the exact limits will be though.

Wendy

[WendyG]

Well, here we are. One small house hardly lived in and one half built one do NOT qualify for OS:

If you are using your Openspace as a rental or other unapproved use, such as habitation, you are really using what we call a Homestead. You may keep your Region in its current form, but Homesteads will have specific limits.

Also:

When the new changes go into place, they will support 750 prims and only 10 avatars, and will likely place limits on scripts running in the Region, as well as being unable to use event postings and classifieds.

Wendy

[EntropyEmbrace]

so is their new policy to drive away paying customers in order to lighten their server load?

[Fionne]

The second anniversary of SkyBeam Estates is this month, and Charlene Trudeau is going to offer what she calls a "free land" sale. If any of you who are considering leaving your open space areas are curious about it, IM her for more details and a tour. She discussed it some during a meeting we had this evening, however when you have a dozen people discussion 2 dozen topics, I found it a bit difficult to carve out just the information about the land.

I can't recommend Char as an estate owner enough. She's one of the people I trust most in SL, she's fair and open and a bit crazy, too!

[Avenger]

My water sim has more than 750 prims. Nobody lives on it and very few people visit it, Jeez.

[WendyG]

I joined SL at the end of May 2005. By June I was a premium account and had a 2048 square metres allowance. A few more months and we had moved to Falcata and I started holding serious land. When we sold Falcata, I remained a premium account and we moved onto an Open Space Sim.

Linden Labs has now managed to make me do one thing: For the first time since I joined 3 and a half years ago, I am no longer a premium account holder. The OS is going to be dismantled. And with the loss of a home, my interest in SL isn't going to skyrocket. I'm going to draw out the money I had in-game and spend it on other things.

Bye bye SL. It was fun.

Wendy