I'd like to take a moment to study the real details of what has been announced by LL, and also to express why I suspect they will pull back from this decision. (warning note: Sudane has been wrong before, but........)
As Pat has said, LL announced last night that primarily because of "misuse of openspace sims", and the accompanying performance problems and increased support time that this causes, they are taking the following steps, some immediately and others on January 1.
1. Openspace prices and fees change on the 1st January with no grandfathering. (Setup goes from US$250 to US$375, and tier goes from US$75 (or US$50 in some cases) to US125)(Grandfathering means that the fee would not change for those sims already paying a certain fee... i.e. we pay only US$195/month for NFS and CN despite the fact that all new sims cost their owners US$295/month. NFS and CN are "grandfathered" at the old rates. The new policy would NOT grandfather the old rates on existing void sims... their tier will go up too).
2. Class 4 Openspaces will be upgraded to class 5 in January. (This is why some openspaces will go from US$50 to US$125... the $50 ones are on the old Class 4 servers).
3. Educator discount is no longer available for Openspaces.
4. No Owner switching for Openspaces unless it’s a full transfer of Payor. (This issue affects no one that I'm aware of... its not a common policy)
5. More proactive education by support staff to prevent unfair resource use by Openspace regions.
When void sims (openspace is the term used by LL) were first invented in the era of US$195/month Class 4 sims, they were intended to be "light use", open water or natural land areas. Four of them were attached to a single computer CPU (when CPU's had only one "core" processor). You had to buy all four together, meaning that "your" 4 voids were all on the same CPU, and the fee was the same as a full sim, $195/month.
When this began, LL was clearly uncertain how this all would work, so they made a drastically conservative policy. Instead of the 4 sims sharing the 15,000 prims normally, allowing 3750 prims for each void, they allowed only HALF that number, or 1875 prims for each void.
Following months of experience with this situation... [void sims, purchase only 4 at a time, 1875 prims on each].... LL appears to have concluded that void sims were a successful experiment. They introduced new policies last spring allowing owners to buy ANY number of void sims, AND, most importantly, they increased the allowable number of prims on a void to the full 3750, or one quarter of a full sim's prims. These changes greatly increased the value of void sims.
Well... now it appears that they have changed their collective mind. Now their big concern is that voids are being misused... that people are not only using the increased number of prims, but they are also loading up those sims with resource-using scripts and attachments. Here's what I'm guessing they observe.
We all know that a sim comes with a limited number of prims: 15,000. Since there are 4 voids to a full sim, each void has one quarter of that, or 3750 prims available. LL has coded into the system that more than that number of prims cannot exist on a sim.
But... prims are only ONE of the many CPU resource users. LL has never coded in limits on any of the other resource users that its possible to use in any sim, voids included. Principal among these resources are scripts and attachments. There is no limit to the number of scripts or attached prims that can be run in a sim, and, since even a lightly loaded void sim can have hundreds of scripts running, and the avatars in it be wearing literally *thousands*!! of prims (many of the "hair pieces" that I wear have well over 200 prims each!), it becomes very easy to see how sim misuse could happen. A void sim might have only one quarter of a full sim's prims rezzed on it, but it easily might have a full sims work of scripts and attachments also supported on it.
And for the Lindens, this means complaints about how the sim performs. It becomes clearly burdened with much more load than it was intended to support.
Let's leave aside the question: "Why didn't LL see this problem last spring... having had voids in place for well over a year, when they increased the prim capacity to 3750??" Or leave aside the question: "Why did LL disconnect the requirement of purchase of 4 sims, so that while previously one owner owned all four sims sharing a single resource and only they were affected by their use policies, now 4 owners might own the 4 sims sharing one CPU, thus completely removing any ability to assign responsibility?"
Lets just look at the economics, and the impact of the announced changes on the announced problem.
Policy #2 makes complete sense. If we are having performance problems with voids on Class 4 servers, then require upgrades to Class 5 servers (with the concommitant price increases). We already have this option with full sims. If there's a serious problem with void sims, then requiring the upgrade makes sense.
Policy #3 seems to have no relation to the announced problem.
Policy #4 is not a system that we in the CDS would ever use. If this is happening, I can well understand why LL would wish to put an end to it. The EO pays the monthly tier bill... period.
Policy #5 seems very reasonable, although perhaps not expected to be very effective given the "independent" nature of SL residents.
But... Policy #1. Policy #1 does NOTHING to address the announced problem. What it does ONLY is to prevent voids from existing in the first place. Here are the economics of it.
The existence of voids (and, in addition, the feature called "prim multiplying") have driven home the fact that the tier we pay in SL is NOT based on how much land we have to use... its based on how many prims we get to use. As described above, these are "special" prims... the free-standing prims we use to build things. They are what we really pay for... while the prims we wear as attachments are free (as are the scripts we run in either kind of prim).
A full sim comes with the capacity for 15,000 prims. Since tier for that sim is US$295/month, each of those prims cost us 2 cents per month. This is regardless of the prim multiplier we use. And, nowadays, its a price that also applies to the "4 void sims equals one full sim". Voids have 3750 prims, also costing us 2 cents per month.
Before last spring, voids only allowed 1875 prims. This meant that voids prims cost 4 cents per month (since the actual tier price was the same). Voids were NOT good deals then, but people liked them cause they had the open space, and the price was still $75/month.
What's happening now under Policy #1 is simply that LL is raising the price... by a wopping 67%! This means that the prims will now be 3.333 cents per prim per month. So someone trying to keep their costs about the same will have to split the sim... use only portions of it, thus having fewer prims available again... AND only a portion of the land area.
Honestly, this destroys the economic viability of the void sim. In many areas (SLNE included) only one resident occupies each void sim. The luxury of a void sim is VERY expensive as it is now, and something that only the "better off" citizens of this world can afford. Raising the price by 67% makes it completely unaffordable. I have heard of policies by some void owners to divide their sim into quarters, or even eighths. This allows a VERY small number of prims for each resident, and completely invites the problems that LL bemoans. Yet, only by pursuing this policy does an owner even stand a chance of keeping a void sim going. A COMPLETE opposite result than the one that LL announces that it intends.
There are clearly fundamental economic business issues raised by this action, which I suspect that LL has not fully considered. I feel there is a strong liklihood that Policy #1 will be altered before it is imposed. therefore, I feel we should not immediately jump to any conclusions about our future... but rather keep our eyes and ears open to upcoming developments.
I'd be happy to be around if anyone wants to discuss this further.
Sudane................................................
