October 28, 2008

Divide and Conquer

I have spent the past 24 hours reading comments and stories from residents. Jack Linden has certainly succeeded nicely in spreading hate and dissention among residents, dividing them up to decrease the pressure on the Company.
What I am reading is about MANY people who were sold a bill of goods by the same company. They were sold "new, improved" openspace sims. The primary sales pitch was that for a smaller upfront "investment" in setup fees, individuals could own an entire sim sized space with 3750 prims upon it - double the previous prim limits. THAT was the sales pitch.
So needless to say, many, many residents asked for these. And have spent the ensuing months setting up homes, shops, forests, parks, etc. with the 3750 prims they were provided.
NOW when many, many other economic forces are coming to bear on the Grid, suddenly it is announced that all those vague, unspecified "abusers" have been unclearly and undefinedly "abusing" the again undefined and unclear "light use" limits (3750 prims?) on these parcels - without any feedback to date from LL until now. And a solution that makes no sense whatsoever in addressing the problem as defined by Jack Linden. Current OS owners and renters who are under the prim limits are suddenly demonized and scapegoated for the poor performance of LL's servers, and have no idea if they are "abusing" the light use limits. They cannot even define today what those limits are supposed to be - how can they allege "abuse"?
In my mind we should completely discount the obvious eyewash that Jack Linden is giving for this decision. They obviously have other fish to fry here. And turning residents against each other, scapegoating the customers they were pushing OS sims to a few months ago is part of their spin doctoring. PLEASE do not buy into this and either blame your neighbors for perfomance problems or feel guilty that you have been "abusing". This is just designed to shift blame and make whatever "solution" they offer more palatable to residents. Jack Linden even mentions a "light use" product being possible - HUH? Isn't that what they are saying the OS sims were? Maybe they will offer another "product" for a small setup fee....
One of the posts calculated a conservative figure of 4 million dollars US (NOT Lindens) collected just in setup fees for the OS sims they were selling earlier this year, not tier, just setup fees. And now that you can't rent the ones you bought and setup, you can convert them back to full sims for an additional fee....or just walk away. WOW.....just WOW.
*disclaimer* I do not own an OS, but I have many friends who will be out a lot of "setup" money and more importanly a lot of love they have invested.
It may be legal, but it is most certainly unethical and Bad Faith.

1 comment:

Baron K. Wulfenbach said...

Frau Volare,

Although I do not disagree with your indignation, I would like to offer a partial clarification on the 'light use' comments. The number of prims is not the source of the referenced problems - more, the script load and avatar load on the openspaces has been abused by many placing inappropriate businesses on these lands.

Imagine, if you will, the meeting at Oxbridge - with people wearing radars, bling, scripted shoes and hair, dancing using chimera devices to rotating lights. Imagine that as a normal state of operations. That is the sort of abuse, that and full-scaled shopping areas (scripted vendors, traffic), which will lag the openspace's invisible neighbours immensely and generate complaints about which the first-level support agents could do nothing.

This, of course, does not answer why those in compliance must be punished simultaneously with those abusing the concept of the openspace.

Yrs.,

Klaus Wulfenbach