Class upgrades and class switching available February
Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008 at 2:48 PM by: Jack LindenWe’re pleased to announce that from the 1st February we will be offering the following private island services via the concierge support team.
Class Upgrade
For those island owners currently on class 4, from the start of February you will be able to request an upgrade to class 5 hardware. If you choose to upgrade, the monthly billing for that island will move to the current level of USD$295 per month, charged on the same bill date as you have currently. There will be no downgrade option I’m afraid, and this only applies to private islands.
Class Switch
For those that have both class 4 and class 5 regions, owned by the same account, you will be able to request that the class designations for the two regions be switched around - the class 4 becoming 5, and the class 5 dropping to class 4. The bill date and fees will follow the class in this case, so whatever bill date you had on the class 4 will remain the same on the new class 4 and vice versa. There will be a fee of USD$100 for each class switch.
To request either service, please log into the support portal with the island owning account and file a support ticket. From 1st February these services will appear under the ticket type of ‘Land and Region Issues’, followed by a Request type of ‘Region Change’. Your account will need to be in good standing with us to use these services.
If you have any questions, please contact the concierge team.
January 22nd, 2008 at 3:29 PM
So basicly class 4 and 5 are no different but you want to entice people to upgrade to 5 so if they are grandfathered in at 195 a month they can pay 100 dollars more a month for the same basic server…..hogwash
January 22nd, 2008 at 3:41 PM
I gotta say i read this 3 times and i am totally confused… seriously no clue.
January 22nd, 2008 at 3:43 PM
you got to be kidding,right?
January 22nd, 2008 at 3:49 PM
Question, if we stick with our current class for and if we are paying 195/month old grandfathered tier and we chose not to upgrade does this mean that we won’t need to pay the new 295/month pricing??
January 22nd, 2008 at 3:52 PM
it looks very simple. if you own a old SIM, you can switch to the class 5, with no fee, but paying the new price 295$
if you own several sims, mixed on class 4 and class 5, you may want to switch. changing a new sim you have that is not so busy or filled with scripts, into an old sim that is very busy, you pay a 100$ fee. the tier for each sim will also switch…
thats my interpretation, and it should be accurate
January 22nd, 2008 at 3:57 PM
Options are always wonderful things, and much appreciated!
I’m not sure what I’ll do quite yet, myself. But I’m glad to have the choice to consider. Well done!
Desmond Shang
Independent State of Caledon
January 22nd, 2008 at 4:23 PM
I myself have always felt that 195 / was a high price but, I would rather pay that then having to pay 295 / month, I think overall it is a really good deal, if you think about it linden lab not only hosts the machine but if the machine fails they will replace it. I have seen some hosting companies that will make you pay for a whole new machine and on top of that have to pay for the labor of the people fixing it etc. Sometimes it can be like 100-200 USD an hour in labor. I do yes think the price is high and wish it could be lower but over-all I’m very happy with the service linden lab provides me. If you also think about it linden lab helps keep the software clean from bugs as much as they can which is alot of work and a lot of research. I do hope some day that tier prices can be lowered it would really be nice but I’m not going to complain to muchs since I am still on old grandfathered tier.
January 22nd, 2008 at 4:37 PM
@hanzo: “you guys going to keep with your promise to open-source the server software”
i dont remember linden labs making a formal promise to open the source… i DO remember corey was pushing for it. i also remember corey getting canned last month due to “differences of vision”
what i dont get is why people are upset about EVERYTHING that gets announced here. you used to have to pay something like 150-200 bucks to update from a 4 to a 5. now they’re offering it free and for some reason people are unhappy… if you dont want it, don’t request it.
i think a lot of people just like to complain here… although i am surprised we’re 10 posts in & nobody’s mentioned copybot yet. maybe we’re making progress as a community…
January 22nd, 2008 at 4:48 PM
An interesting proposition but one I’m going to have to pass on.
The $1200US per year tier increase (exceeding the cost of a Class 5 hardware blade rather handily) is a poor return on investment for what amounts to a community building or hobby sim.
The option however is a good one to have available for more commercial operations perhaps, and more options are always appreciated.
Thanks!
Mako
January 22nd, 2008 at 4:54 PM
@1 only differance is 2 giga of memory. Not much differance……….Wait until the next round of cost occure with class 6 servers coming.
January 22nd, 2008 at 4:56 PM
Nice deal…not.
What if we decide we’d rather not pay 1200 more a year for a server that sucks slightly less? Will we be class 4 forever?
How about an option for an uncapped sim on it’s own CPU that might have enough overhead to be useful? I guess you would charge 1200 a month for that and a 6000$ set up fee.
Class 5 sims have been out forever. What are the plans if you ever upgrade to decent servers? Bend over the people on c5 sims for another “upgrade” fee?
Is this the new model? Charge more and more so that if you pay through the nose you might actually get decent overhead?
How about coming up with a revenue model that doesn’t hose your developers. You know..the people who make this place worth visiting.
So many questions. So little time!
This blog would have been much more attractive had it contained a red arrow pointing up.
January 22nd, 2008 at 5:03 PM
From a post on Oct. 16th of 2006: “More generally, the new servers have some future-proofing features for us, and use less electricity than previous generations.” and “Finally, there are fewer, bigger system fans, and power supply efficiency goes from 67% to 84%; power usage while running the sim process is about 175 watts, vs. 230 for a Class 4.”
Interesting how the class 5 servers are more efficient, and will end up costing LL less in the end, but they are also charging their customers a higher rate to save them money. They’ll get you coming and going, won’t they.
January 22nd, 2008 at 5:03 PM
What does Class 5 and 4 really mean anyway? I have spoken with a number of my fellows who are more IT than I and they have not a clue what this means. It si a murky definition at best.
Can you please state clearly what the advantages are? Hardware, software, better tech support, dream scape?
I like to know when I buy groceries, what’s in the bag when I leave the store.
January 22nd, 2008 at 5:08 PM
#19 I’m sure they’re referencing telecommunications standards. Class 5 switch/softswitch is a never-go-down 99.9999% up time device for connecting calls. So, I suppose it’s supposed to be the cake with icing.
January 22nd, 2008 at 5:08 PM
the switching service sounds very usefull
January 22nd, 2008 at 5:11 PM
I’d like to know the real difference between Class 4 and 5 as well. I have heard that Class 5 means you don’t have to share with as many regions. Perhaps a blog post outlining the differences would be beneficial.
I personally won’t pay the extra $100 a month if I don’t know what I’m really getting.
January 22nd, 2008 at 5:16 PM
OT, but…
Havoc 1 was, AFAIK, badly integrated into the sim server so that separation for OSS release would be very difficult.
Part of the Havoc 4 upgrade is to properly separate out these parts (ie, so the Physics engine is pluggable and hence replacable with something OSS).
LL has said both these things in more-or-less words. It sounds to me rather like they are right at this time working towards getting the server code into a state that is legally and usefully releasable when they feel it is time to do so.
Re: OpenGrid Server - it is a ground-up reimplementation that is not intended to ultimately mirror LL Grid features/function (though there will be a lot of overlap). From work-so-far I like their system a LOT more than LL’s (form what I can see from outside LL’s black box) anyway. -> Much more modular. OGS is fun to play in but still very VERY pre-release.
January 22nd, 2008 at 5:22 PM
Class 5 is simply a faster CPU, FSB, etc. (they switched from Opetrons to Xeons too I believe as Intel currently provides better bang-for-the-buck in THIS SPECIFIC APPLICATION).
‘Class’ in LL Grid context is simply a generation of server box with particular CPU/RAM/FSB/etc specs. Nothing else is different, nothing to do with comms classes or other stuff.
January 22nd, 2008 at 5:24 PM
How can I find out what Class mine are? Do I assume if I pay $295 that it must be Class 5?
January 22nd, 2008 at 5:26 PM
Class 5 servers have better hardware and are more efficient, at the same time. I can understand paying a “one-time” upgrade fee, but because of the efficiency, the extra $100 is just money in LL’s pockets.
January 22nd, 2008 at 5:30 PM
Class 5 vs Class 4 are outlined in http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/10/16/looking-forward-to-class-5/
It has nothing to do with uptime, it is strictly a Linden term.
January 22nd, 2008 at 5:37 PM
“Class 5 sims have been out forever.”
is 2 years forever??????????
Well if you have many activtive scripts occuring you still have problems as the class 4 do. “NEWER HARDWARE” should be the correct term better well 2 years is better then 3 or 4 years old right?
January 22nd, 2008 at 5:43 PM
I have both class 4 and 5 Sims and for my user load there is no discernible difference from a users standpoint. So exactly what is the benefit of upgrading my class 4 to a 5, other than the honor of paying the Lindens $100US a month more?
Perhaps you might consider upgrading your thought process around the entire concept of a “SIM” to be what everything else in Second Life already is … A virtualized service called a “SIM” or region where you provide said service and maintain the hardware in the background without hitting your customers with “Class Upgrades” and intangible benefits.
If there really are tangible benefits, please share then along with the knowledge of how, at a user level, they cane be witnessed/experienced/enjoyed. I’m sure everyone would love to know.
January 22nd, 2008 at 5:44 PM
@ 12 Killer Monkey: ” There is no reason to keep the server closed forever. Soon, either the Lindens open the code, or people will move to “alternative” grids. Hosting and bandwidth should not be $195/mo after paying $1500+ for 1/4 of a server (logical proc). ”
Hit the nail right on the head.
@13 Digital Digital: “I myself have always felt that 195 / was a high price but, I would rather pay that then having to pay 295 / month, I think overall it is a really good deal, if you think about it linden lab not only hosts the machine but if the machine fails they will replace it.”
$295 + $1,650 setup fee is the price of a new car. That’s for a blank piece of grass, and a rather small one at that. And for that, you are not put on a dedicated server box. You are stacked with three other sims, sharing common assets. That’s a total of 4 sims per server box. Official word is it takes tech between 30 minutes to an hour to set up a server. So not a lot of time involved there.
Actual LL earnings per server box:
US$1,650 setup fee x 4 = $6,000.
4 x $295 a month x 12 months = $14,160
Total 1st year subscriber fees for a single server box: $20,160.
And there are what, over 10,000 sims in operation at this time?
Just the sim fees along, ignoring installation fees, comes to 140 million dollars a year.
At that kind of profit, they can afford to replace equipment once in a while. That’s not a good deal (at least not for the customer. LL is raking it in hand over fist). That kind of pricing leaves the market wide open for a smarter and more user-friendly company to plunder. It leaves it wide open for user associations to make their own Second Life (we’re hearing more and more about the Open Sim project).
Considering the fact that even after 8 years, SL is still buggier than a roach motel, these things are going to happen whether LL wants it to or not. They can’t seem to manage their own home, so likely soon people WILL be building their own. Can’t say much for a company that can’t even get chat right.
Amazing vision, poor implimentation, at new car prices. How would you like to buy a new car that stops running several times a day, suddenly freezes in its spot and won’t move, where none of the guages give you the right information and the cell phone doesn’t work? Oh, and the car has LOUSY mileage, so the gas costs you $295 a month to drive 16 miles.
If SL were any other business and operated like it does, would they be able to stay in business? If they had direct competition, would they be able to stay in business?
That’s what Killer Monkey was pointing out. And he’s right on track. I told LL that 3 years ago. After 3 years, rather than improving, performance has worsened. At one time, private sims ran like greased lightning and group chat worked. Now it doesn’t. That’s not good, and it’s not a good deal. Customers are paying more… and receiving less.
I don’t like to or mean to slam Linden Lab or SL. I just tell it straight. When it works, I say so. When it doesn’t, I say so. I’m not a LL suckup, and I’m not an optimist when it comes to SL. SL is in trouble. They’re pulling in the bucks now… but for how long will that last? At one time Radio Shack was about the largest personal computer dealer in the world. Anyone seen a Tandy Model III lately?
Sorry, just telling it like it is. SL is heading for computer historyville.
January 22nd, 2008 at 5:51 PM
Ooops made a math blunder. Calculated from the $14,160 instead of that divided by 4. Actual calculation is the cost of 1 sim x 10,000 ,which = 35,400,000 a year. Still a sizeable chunk of cash.
Of course, I didn’t see the math blunder until the moment I hit the SUBMIT button. Murphy’s law. “The seriousness of miscaluclation is proportionally inverse to the effort required to publish.”
January 22nd, 2008 at 5:56 PM
I think you all should just wait another year or so when they phase out class 4 servers and you’ll get grandfathered into a class 5 server ANYWAY. Hopefully won’t pay a extra dime when that happens.
January 22nd, 2008 at 6:04 PM
@hugsalot
– Yeah I hope they do grandfather people in to class 5’s with out having to charge a more tier fee, would be nice! We shall see what the next years have for us!
January 22nd, 2008 at 6:17 PM
I can see one day….
Persims (personal sims) that can be run on high-grade home systems (like my media center pc) that can interconnect with other persims throughout the megametaverse. Rather than one flying from a sim to the next (unless they are stacked together on a local network) people would telehop from persim to persim.
One could easily manage a chat function that would display persims on a list like in an instant messenger allowing you to always know which persims were “online” and which weren’t.
It’s pretty simple really. Just takes some big bucks and a little drive and ambition and Second Life will be at the bottom of the list of virtual world options.
January 22nd, 2008 at 6:20 PM
[...] upgrades on Second Life seem to be another way that Linden Lab sees to screw their customers over. While upgrading from Class 4 servers to Class 5 servers, it looks like they will be able to save [...]
January 22nd, 2008 at 6:36 PM
So I can down grade from class 5 to class 4 and my tier changes to 195 per month. Does this mean the sim will be wiped clear if I down grade.
January 22nd, 2008 at 6:49 PM
Sigh, everybody thinks they just plug in a new server and your sim is up and running. Everybody calculates how much phat loot LL makes on every one. Does anybody ever figure in the cost of the asset server, the bandwidth, and all the other support costs?
I wish I could get a handle on just how much bandwidth LL has to pay for, to keep this all running. That would probably shut up all the folks saying “I can get a web server for a tenth of that!!”
January 22nd, 2008 at 6:56 PM
@ 36 Spontaneous Radio
Maybe you should read before you post?
“There will be no downgrade option I’m afraid, and this only applies to private islands.”
January 22nd, 2008 at 6:58 PM
@ Hazno Bazno
The main limitation with home-served sims is your upstream bandwidth. My present adsl2 line (I live within sight of the exchange - good; I live in Australia - bad) would support no more than 3-4 AVs simultaneously I would also hit my data-cap well before the billing month was up under more than sporadic external access!
Not that that is a bad thing for personal-use sims - I have an OpenSim instance I play with here that will hopefully by 2009 be stable enough to perform that exact role - ie, personal space to play in and invite a few friends over to. Money isn’t such an issue - what you describe availability-monitoring-wise sounds like a minor hack on any OSS IM system (and a good idea it is too, kudos!).
For high-usage/pro simulators LL (and future competitors) should have a healthy market just as web/app hosters do today.
January 22nd, 2008 at 6:59 PM
@ 37 Max Desoto
A reasonable point, but we are talking about a company with big bucks here, like large supermarket groups, don’t you think that LL can buy this stuff and bandwidth too heavily discounted?
January 22nd, 2008 at 7:07 PM
How many of the complainers about the opensource sims have even run one? They bitch about havock and voice, this shows they haven’t used a recent build, there is a basic physics engine ( not havock ) and voice is implemented, what really doesn’t work is the LSL engine.
Feel free to learn to program and contribute to the open source projects.
If you want an open sim with decent connectivity, expect to pay $400 just for rackspace and minimal transfers, you’ll have plenty of peak bandwidth, but expect to use upwards a of 1 GB of transfers per day.
This LL blog entry seems pretty straight forward.
January 22nd, 2008 at 7:12 PM
Lol… sometime i think you all lives on mars or you didn’t own different simulator to evaluate by your eyes the REAL difference b/w class4 and class5. The difference is HUGE …indeed it’s applied for a “social” land with tenth of avatar, buildings, scripts etc. I would agree there’s no difference b/w a EMPTY class4 server and a class5.
40 avatars with a relative full sim (>10k) and some average scripting and you gonna lag a class4 server… while it remain completely usable on a class5. That’s the truth.
January 22nd, 2008 at 7:15 PM
Indeed the whole design of SL is crap. One server per region is just wrong, the end result is that you either have too much power if it’s not active or it’s lagged to hell and back if it gets lots of poeple. The load should be distributed across servers transparently and scale with the number of people in an area.
But yes will be interesting to see what happens when the older C4 servers reach the point where age alone mandates an upgrade - will all current C4 people find themselves stuck with the choice of paying an extra $100 or getting the heck out? :p
January 22nd, 2008 at 7:22 PM
OpenSim complainers? In this thread the only refs to OpenSim were a few side-related mentions and my comments, which were more about home bandwidth issues in relation to grid-serving in general.
I did say OpenSim was very pre-release but that is just paraphrasing the official site! It is at 0.4.something going-on 0.5 and what you can do with it now is remarkable (and a lot of fun) but even the mainline devs stress it isn’t near production-use ready (what the OpenGrid people have to say is another matter, but they are a separate group).
And while not a coder, you will find my name on the Mantis occasionally with bugtesting comments.
%-/
When the OpenGrid et. al. gets going post-development it will be very intersting to see what their per-sim pricing is like relative to LL’s. My call is that it will be cheaper but by no where near as much as people think by extrapolating from web server costs.
January 22nd, 2008 at 7:29 PM
@ Croft (43)
Yes, that is my main issue with the way LL has implemented their grid servers and why I am not particularly fussed about seeing the LL Grid Servers opened when OpenGrid has taken a more load-balancable approach.
Of course I have no idea what is actually INSIDE LL’s black box of a Grid Server so their internal structure MAY be a lot better than I am giving it credit for here and they are just not using the full flexibility for ease-of-simulator-migration reasons (one-sim-per-core would make migrating a Sim to a different box a lot easier, I imagine, at least in the pre-x86-virtualisation era, which is where I assume the Sim code comes from).
January 22nd, 2008 at 7:42 PM
Just downloaded and installed the OpenLifeGrid and I’m giggling in my boots. I got a whole sim running right now on my desktop PC and yeah, it’s alphaware and buggy, but holy crap dudes, it gives me a huge boost in morale to know that one day I’ll have my own private island on my own hardware and able to backup my own inventory and pay my own hosting and bandwidth to my own agreeable price.
I’m just amazed I’m standing on my own personal island right now in another window that runs blazingly fast and is costing me absolutely nothing to run. A whole immense 65,536m2 sim to do with as I please.
I can hardly wait to see how well this thing progresses. Right now I paid LL $72 for a year subscription and pay them $75 a month in tier just for the pleasure of sitting on a big square of land and building things.
January 22nd, 2008 at 7:50 PM
It seems to me that LL is the only “web server hosting” company that increases the cost of hosting with them as new hardware becomes available. They sure charge a premium for the privilege of running their software on their servers.
January 22nd, 2008 at 8:07 PM
@34, 39 and 41:
What you are discussing is already an upcoming reality, called OPEN SIM. A group of users who are tired of paying SL new car prices for a piece of virtual land have taken it upon themselves to write their own system… and as someone pointed out above, it’s already in Alpha stage.
As far as what it costs to host your own sim, $400 a month for a server? Get real. Dedicated T1 servers are available all over the net, at competitive prices.
But ignoring T1, Time Warner Cable offers super-high speed internet at 10mbps and an upload at (I believe) 1mpbs… which is equivalent to and exceeds T1 speed. The price? $40 a month.
A sight better than $295 with a $1,650 setup fee.
Why we discussing all this? Because reality is about to bite LL in the butt. Open Sim isn’t the only virtual world project out there. There is also China’s HiPiHi and about 2 dozen others ready to hit the market within the next 2 years.
These are facts. The truth is the average Joe with a good cable connection will be able to run his own sim from a $500 dual-core computer, with virtually ZERO lag, for less than $50 a month. I figure it will take about a year or two for persims to settle down and debug to a decent point, but the upside is that the people involved actually CARE about performance. They’re sure not in it for the money. They’re in it for the rep, for assistance to people paying excessive VR prices, and just to be in-general nice guys. Some of them are people LL has ticked off in the past, or who LL has caused to lose a lot of money by failure at customer support, or who just generally think $295 a month is way too much to charge for VR. Most of them think LL currently has a stranglehold on the environment, and they’re simply dedicated to breaking that stranglehold so LL doesn’t become another Microsoft.
Anyone that can prevent another Microsoft fiasco… I’m all for. I sure hope the future of VR works better than Windows. LOL
January 22nd, 2008 at 8:18 PM
#48…
Kudos!
I have standard old everyday cable internet through COX Communications here in the Midwestern United States. I pay $39 per month and my DAILY bandwidth, on average, hits around 10 Gigs. PER DAY.
I’ve done this since I got the service in September, running three web sites (as registered domain names) from a cheap server box in my hallway closet.
The PC that runs it all - that $299 Linux box Wal-Mart carries.
Now, I’m in no way whatsoever comparing hardware I have with hardware LL uses. I am, however, stating that if I’m cranking a back and forth daily bandwidth of 7 to 10 gigs of data on a “cheap home connection” then there is no reason whatsoever I cannot run at least one sim open to the outside world fairly faithfully right now.
January 22nd, 2008 at 8:39 PM
#9 Gil
You are my hero. It’s exactly why I’ve said having these blogs open for comments is a waist. They really should just shut the comments off and be done with it.
January 22nd, 2008 at 8:45 PM
I assume that “Your account will need to be in good standing with us to use these services” means;
If we dislike you, we dont want your silly 100$?
Or am I mistaken? I dont have bad standings, I just find it amusing!
January 22nd, 2008 at 9:18 PM
#51…
I thought that too. If an account isn’t in good standing my experience has been the account is also suspended.
Thus a suspended account can’t own an island to even worry about all this.
January 22nd, 2008 at 9:25 PM
Personally i would like to see the main land sims upgraded some to try and help out the frigin lag on the overly bogged down main servers!
January 22nd, 2008 at 9:28 PM
I’m one of the developers at LL, and we’d dearly like to open-source the servers. And #7 is right, there are some closed-source components like Havok in our server platform. But that’s only part of the problem. The big problem is that in the current architecture, servers are trusted. Identity information, ownership information — all that is stored on the servers, and in a closed-source, behind-the-firewall environment, we can communicate between the servers securely.
But now imagine that you’ve got that expensive no-copy model of an F15 jet, and you fly it into some unknown sim. In order to render and simulate that jet, the sim has to know everything about it. What’s to prevent the sim from keeping a copy and giving it away to the next avatar that pushes the magic button?
That’s a rhetorical question, really — it’s merely a single example of the kinds of questions that we have to ask as we design the open sim platform of the future. Trust, identity, connectedness — all of these are huge problems. If you’re interested in this stuff, there are a bunch of Lindens (I’m not one of them) as well as non-Lindens who are working on these sorts of problems under the title Architecture Working Group (AWG). You can find more on the Second Life wiki.
I *am* one of the people who are working on the viewer side in areas related to open source. We’re trying to get better and better at interacting with the open source community, but as we started as a closed-source product, it sometimes takes us a while to get over our own limitations. But I believe we’re making positive progress.
January 22nd, 2008 at 9:36 PM
#54…
Thank you for the input. What you say makes complete sense. There does come the question - could someone devise a sim that would steal copies of everything that passes through it?
However, although there is “uncrackable” encryption all over, many of them free applications, then there bears the question - why are there still repeated times when “millions” of confidential bank and related accounts get hacked and stolen?
your security is only as good as the implementation by your end user. And even if you were to offer “uncrackable” security the end use will still always find a way to circumvent.
For YOUR protection as a company you must retain a sense of secrecy about the inner workings, but as an end user here - me - I just want a nice little executable I can run on my local PC to create an instant sim to play with. I’m not worried about all the complexities of backend closed-source databases and various other complexities.
I’d like to see LL continue to pursue their goal of a secure and safe environment for commercial application but also a free or low-cost downloadable private sandbox the rest of us can play in from time to time.
January 22nd, 2008 at 9:42 PM
Glad to hear your comment Q (love the name. Star Trek ref?).
Anyhow, I can understand and sympathize with problems in SL going open source. I’m one of those who actually hasn’t thought open-sourcing the main code would be a good idea… mainly for just the reasons you’ve stated. Major security issues etc.
I’ve long felt the solution is simply for LL to charge more reasonable fees for their server service, and that they offer people the option of being stacked 4 to a server box (for $X) or having a totally dedicated server box (for $XX)… but both fees more reasonable than the gut-punch $295 a month, and charging $1,650 to set up a server.
Cost of equipment setup is considered by most companies to be cost of doing business. As it is, LL is having the customers pay for everything… including their equipment… and charging out the wazoo for it.
That is what’s going to bring LL down: the simple fact that others will be able to do it far cheaper, and likely better. If LL was totally debugged (after 8 years) it might stand a chance, but with the shakey platform and disgruntled customers… how could competition be any buggier or do a worse job?
I’ve never asked LL to go open source. I’ve just asked them to do closed source right… and at REASONABLE fees.
January 22nd, 2008 at 9:43 PM
Q Linden says……….”But now imagine that you’ve got that expensive no-copy model of an F15 jet, and you fly it into some unknown sim. In order to render and simulate that jet, the sim has to know everything about it. What’s to prevent the sim from keeping a copy and giving it away to the next avatar that pushes the magic button? ”
Well thats what open source is about right? Frankly speaking there is no protection from non LL server bases that house the islands data to NOT to copy and collect data from those that enter that non LL sever right? Hence LLL takes NO Libilities its such activites…….
January 22nd, 2008 at 9:54 PM
#55: With respect to security, as you suggest, we’ve all seen the “uncrackable” thing too often for anyone to believe it completely. I’m not a security guru, but I know enough to know that you compartmentalize your information, make sure that if you crack one secret you ONLY crack one secret, trust only as much as you have to (which means that you explicitly do NOT trust the client software), and design in the open so that people can criticize before it becomes mission-critical. That’s what the AWG is about.
With respect to toy/private sandboxes that don’t connect to the main grid, well, isn’t that what OpenSim is for? It’s an interesting use, but it’s not really our business model.
The problem we’re working on is putting tens of thousands of people up simultaneously with hundreds of terabytes of active data backing it up, all of which can be accessed randomly at any time, in a connected universe that gives you the appearance of being a single large world. That’s an exciting and compelling problem, and one where we hope and expect to be competing for quite a while.
January 22nd, 2008 at 9:54 PM
@37 - For what it’s worth, Phil Rosedale way back in March 2006 in a Google TechTalk described LL’s bandwidth costs as marginal.
See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PS5zFVs488&feature=related
Obviously there are other costs involved in running such a system as SL. I think the overwhelming consensus from users is the current price structure far exceeds these costs. Sure, LL should make a profit for what they do but they risk a great deal by pricing it out of reach to all but commercial enterprises.
January 22nd, 2008 at 10:04 PM
@56: I’m not in ops, and I don’t know enough to know all our cost factors — but don’t forget when you ask for “reasonable” fees that the cost of the server hardware is only a small fraction of the costs of maintaining an operating region. We have astounding network bandwidth needs, colocation fees to store the servers in secure environments, an incredible quantity of disk space (not to mention the truly frightening growth rate of the data), and then there’s the collection of operations and support people to keep it running, not to mention the developers who are working to improve it (and to open source it!).
January 22nd, 2008 at 10:06 PM
Good to see a Q for A here.
Here is what I would like to know.
If the hardware fails on a Class 4, does Linden Lab actually go out and find the same parts to replace the parts with… or instead, do they upgrade the system with the most cost effective parts?
I ask this because there might be ‘Class 4′ servers that have morphed into ‘Class 5′ servers without anyone knowing. That must be a logistics nightmare if it wasn’t planned for in advance.
January 22nd, 2008 at 10:10 PM
#58 & #59…
Q, you are right about OpenSim… That should serve my needs for a “sandbox” so long as what I create in it I can upload into SL if I choose - which is currently not generally easy to do.
And Noisey… YES! Exactly my sole source of contention. I love SL and LL (I really do) but not enough to make a monthly car payment to them.
Last year I came within inches three times to buying my own sim through LL but you know what stopped me? Not the $295 a month.
I fell behind on my monthly tier once and after less than 2 weeks my account was suspended pending immediate payment. My entire virtual life was held hostage with everything in it.
So what happens when I shell out $1,675 for an island and pay $295 a month and for a month or two I need to cut back a little bit? You guys going to slam the shutters on my entire island? You going to hold my avatar and all my inventory hostage? You going to turn around and auction off my island and my hard work a month or two down the road when I fail to make my monthly $295 ransom payment?
These issues have yet to be discussed anywhere. What happens when I’m late on a payment? Not a work to be found anywhere. Prior experience has shown me the “solution” for my current premium style account is to simply slam the virtual door on my virtual fingers until I fork over the cash to reinstate myself.
THAT is precisely why I have decided not to buy more than 4,608m2 of land and why I’ve decided not to invest in my own private island, even though I could easily afford doing so “right now.”
January 22nd, 2008 at 10:16 PM
#62 a lot of your questions can be found in the support portal they explain what happens if you don’t pay your sim bill etc. I know a lot of it is hidden but I had some of the same questions as you and find the answers there
— Hope it helps :))
January 22nd, 2008 at 10:21 PM
Wayfinder Wishbringer:
#30: “$295 + $1,650 setup fee is the price of a new car.”
#48: “A group of users who are tired of paying SL new car prices for a piece of virtual land…”
A few of your other points have some validity, but you just make yourself look stupid when you keep bringing up such totally false nonsense. I don’t know where you reside, but you quoted “new car prices” in USD. The absolute cheapest new car you can buy right now in the US is a specially stripped version of the Chevrolet Aveo which carries a price tag of $9995. 42 years ago, in 1966, the absolute cheapest car available in the US was STILL more than today’s LL private island pricing of $1675 - it was the Volkswagen Beetle at $1995.
So, like I say, you might consider stopping your dumb rants about private island prices being equivalent to “new car prices” because you really do come off sounding pretty stupid.
January 22nd, 2008 at 10:30 PM
#64…
I got his point completely - he’s talking deposit and monthly car payment for a new car.
I paid $2,000 down and pay $325 per month right now on a brand new car.
So his points are completely valid.
January 22nd, 2008 at 10:33 PM
Squeeze us out some more!
You should get an Emmy Award for the Company who can f*ck his customers most and charge them more and more for it!
January 22nd, 2008 at 10:40 PM
[...] Second Life Blog Class upgrades and class switching available February Quote from the site - We’re pleased to announce that from the 1st February we will be offering [...]
January 22nd, 2008 at 10:42 PM
whine whine whine…
yet u come back every bloody day, there rates maybe high rite now,, but in the future i can see them dropping, yes sl has problems but its improving slowly but surely, im happy with the service rite now but yea lower tier prices would be nice.
January 22nd, 2008 at 10:47 PM
69…
You’ve obviously not got screwed…yet…
January 22nd, 2008 at 11:07 PM
i have been screwed dont worry, hows about them deleting one of my accounts with $L345,000 in it along with land i owned not to mention the HUGE inventory i had and had spent all my money and time with….
in a sense it was my fault that it got deleted, but when someone in world decided to MUG me off for a large sum of lindens and when i asked lindens for help they said thats a resident to resident problem we cant do jack shit , i took the matter into my own hands and got banned for it LOL…..
but ohwell im over that and have found my place in sl now.
January 22nd, 2008 at 11:28 PM
Linden, you might want to run your ideas for posting blogs through your PR firm. This looks simply like a company wanting to squeeze the already over charged and bilked to death community for yet more.
The fees truly are outrageous and as a educated computer literate person, class 4 and class 5 mean little unless expressly stating the difference. What a cheap mb verses a tyan? A gig of ram verses 4gig? Look, hardware has crashed to pennies on the dollar. To ask your customers to pay for updates for hardware is well, not right.
Why should the customer pay for it anyhow?
That is your responsibility.
I believe Linden owes it to their customers to upgrade the servers to the latest, or older failing hardware to the latest at their cost. The software changes and requires more power, Linden wants to charge the customer for the hardware due to the software growth.
You’re really milking it Linden and it’s quite obvious.
I have to agree with Leyla Firefly on this one.
–Tracy
January 22nd, 2008 at 11:51 PM
I find it amusing how many people think everyone should work for free - except themselves, of course.
January 22nd, 2008 at 11:57 PM
“I find it amusing how many people think everyone should work for free - except themselves, of course.”
Just because you advertise a service in RL or SL doesn’t mean you get the job or get paid. Linden gets paid no matter what.
On a good note, good work on shutting down the casino and bank scams. It’s good to see the progress in those areas.
-Tracy
January 22nd, 2008 at 11:58 PM
@64 Dallas Seaton
“A few of your other points have some validity, but you just make yourself look stupid when you keep bringing up such totally false nonsense. I don’t know where you reside, but you quoted “new car prices” in USD. The absolute cheapest new car you can buy right now in the US is a specially stripped version of the Chevrolet Aveo which carries a price tag of $9995. 42 years ago, in 1966, the absolute cheapest car available in the US was STILL more than today’s LL private island pricing of $1675 - it was the Volkswagen Beetle at $1995.
So, like I say, you might consider stopping your dumb rants about private island prices being equivalent to “new car prices” because you really do come off sounding pretty stupid.”
Dallas, when I’m talking about new car prices, I’m not talking about buying a car for cash money… any more than you can buy an SL sim outright for cash money. I’m talking about putting out a down payment… and a monthly payment to boot. You can lease many cars for $295 a month, 0 down.
Now for the record, when you call someone else stupid and claim they’re making false statements, you’re pretty much putting your own neck on the chopping block when they blow holes in YOUR rant.
So how about a little less know-it-all and a little more respect for the opinions of others, eh? Sorry you didn’t get the point, but that’s not ME being stupid, is it?
January 23rd, 2008 at 12:06 AM
An additional thought on SL charges. As pointed out above SL is pulling down some significant $$ in sim fees. $295 * 10000 sims = almost 3 million a month. Anyone here that believes LL has anywhere near 3 million a month in expenses.
Bandwidth cost is minimal (as pointed out above). Equipment cost is minimal (a quad core system can be purchased for $1000, easy, and they stack 4 sims to a server). If they’re like most businesses, their main cost is in labor (#1 cost), electricity and other utilities (#2 cost) and land/building space (#3 cost). They have a sizeable overhead to be sure, just in labor costs. But no matter how ya slice it, $295 a month for a sim is tantamount to highway robbery (oh, don’t forget they charge $350 a month to Euro sims… VAT you know…). That people are goofy enough to pay it is beyond me.
That’s the trouble with society these days. People don’t have the simple brains to say, “I’m not paying that!”
January 23rd, 2008 at 12:16 AM
Switch your simulator server class
The new deals allow you to either upgrade one non-mainland simulator from class 4 (those with lower class hardware - are there any? We don’t think so - need not apply) or two swap two simulators where one is class 4 and the other is class 5.
January 23rd, 2008 at 12:52 AM
@75 let alone those ad paying islands kickbacks they get! Can you imagen how much money they taking it?
January 23rd, 2008 at 1:07 AM
not to mention the premium memberships they rake in to ,oh and upload rates im sure that mounts up to a fair bit a month to, yea its blatently obvious to anyone the extent or cash *profits* they are making……
January 23rd, 2008 at 1:10 AM
wat they should do is upgrade the lower class sims for that one time fee and then make all class sims 195usd per month.
January 23rd, 2008 at 1:11 AM
you mean people still pay for memberships here?????????? oops i meant the sea of freebie accounts. Memberships are only a little fish in a big sea full of non paying accounts.
January 23rd, 2008 at 1:17 AM
I have no idea what the technical differences are between a 4 and a 5 but having owned both from a user point of view there was no discernable difference. the new class 5 has crashed atleast 3 times in a matter of a month the old class 4 certainly bettered that. Avatar numbers for events etc ..no difference the 5 certainly doesn’t seem anymore lag resistant when alot of avs are present.
January 23rd, 2008 at 1:19 AM
yes i hear you… but its still a significant number and really they dont have to lift a finger to recieve this extra money…
i dont know the numbers but ok we have 10million residents id estimate that around 1-3 million are premiun so do the math on that? id love to know the actuall numbers of free accounts vs premiun.
January 23rd, 2008 at 1:27 AM
id love to know the actuall numbers of free accounts vs premiun………………
They never post those number, because they are to busy telling everyone those incorrect totals.
January 23rd, 2008 at 1:31 AM
I still would say, by far the best tool that we could ever be given is a personal sandbox to build in, in which we can then upload to Second Life from. Its use as an actual tool to avoid the pesky disconnects that people so frequently have while scripting, which in turn destroys possibly hours of work would be extremely beneficial, atleast, as a work around for the current issues SL currently has when it comes to such.
But then again… I doubt thatd be implimented for years, if at all.
January 23rd, 2008 at 1:37 AM
Why does mainland whole sim tiers remain 195/month , and those are class 5?
January 23rd, 2008 at 1:38 AM
i belive with mainland sims u dont get estate managment tools this is probably why.
January 23rd, 2008 at 2:26 AM
About Open Sourcing the simulators and servers, would you work to be compatible with the OpenSimpulator project ?
January 23rd, 2008 at 3:12 AM
100 USD to switch??
When does LindenLab ever has enough money, geez..
January 23rd, 2008 at 3:39 AM
Al rants and rhetoric aside, what I am simply curious about is, how does this affect rollout of HAVOC4 ? Will the new physics engine run at least as well on the older Class 4 machines as on the Class 5 or will there be a noticible difference ?
January 23rd, 2008 at 4:49 AM
Someone give Zee a poke and ask if there’s any more development on releasing ‘low prim sims’ individually? Many people need space but not prims, and I’m quite sure you’d actually make more money by people buying land, if land was cheaper.
January 23rd, 2008 at 4:57 AM
Buying a SIM is like gambling.. you never know if they will all of a sudden raise tiers for whatever (so called legal) reason and your stuck with a sim you cannot afford anymore!
Just like with the VAT disaster, where LL over night took lots of tier dollars extra from peoples credit cards without warning them in advance or giving them time to sell their island if they couldnt pay the extra money. People who own more sims were charged hundreds of dollars extra unexpectedly…either had to pay or sell their island way below the price to get rid of the much huger tier. in both casesit means they lost lots of money. LL knew ages in advance they considered charging VAT.. but never took the effort to warn any of us even the slightest bit… they just took the money.
January 23rd, 2008 at 5:05 AM
Does this mean that as long as you remain Class 4 - you will remain grandfathered at 200USD? Or is this a preparation to increase the tier fees all around as has been planned for a while? (If I have to pay 300USD a month for class 4s I would probably expect a free upgrade to Class 5 then)
If it’s all optional, I think the 100USD fee to switch is fair enough - I’m sure there’s a labour cost to switch the server.
January 23rd, 2008 at 5:12 AM
Well done Q Linden. Fantastic to see such intelligent responses to issues raised in the blog responses from a Linden. It made it much more interesting to read the responses. Fantastic!
The object representational/sharing problem from open sourced (and non Linden controlled) servers exchanging object descriptions with Linden servers, and the associated implications is something I had not considered.
The more I think about it, the more that becomes a really fundamentally complex problem. It suggests that what is needed is an abstraction of the final object to be shared rather than the object itself or even an encrypted envelope (which will just invite brute force cracking). One only has to visit the various 10L warehouse shops to get an idea of the potentially devistating effect to commerce of a systematic cracking of object protection.
January 23rd, 2008 at 5:33 AM
You all may want to look here :
Exempt supplies
Exempt supplies are business supplies other than taxable supplies on which VAT is not charged.
Examples include:
• selling, leasing and letting land and buildings (but not lettings of garages, parking spaces or hotel and holiday accommodation). See Notice 742 Land and property;
• insurance;
• betting, gambling and lotteries (but not takings from fruit machines);
• providing credit;
• certain education and training;
• fund raising events by charities;
• subscriptions to certain membership organisations;
• the services of doctors and dentists;
• and certain services from undertakers.
This list is not exhaustive and further information regarding exempt supplies can be found in the Customs and Excise’s Notice 700 The VAT Guide.
http://www.startinbusiness.co.uk/flowchart/8flowchart_vat.htm
January 23rd, 2008 at 5:52 AM
What i like to know is were the new Sim auctions as promissed ??
January 23rd, 2008 at 6:16 AM
I’m curious… I was flying aroung the other day and came across a long string of islands called, appropriately, Galapagos. There’s like 10 or 15 sims strung together and the majority of the land was unused though it was offered for sale (though the buyer would still have to follow a very strict covenant so it’;s not really for sale).
If these sims are $295 per month then some sappy loser is paying LL up to $4,425 per month just to have a series of vacant islands. Somehow thr logic there seems, well, illogical.
Either someone is getting shafted or else someone is lying about charging $295 per sim. I think concessions are being made because no matter what one tries to tell me, you’re not going to convince me someone out there is paying over $4,000 per month for a whole series of sims and more than half of them are not in use - use for kicks and giggles.
January 23rd, 2008 at 6:35 AM
I still don’t understand the switching. Do yo uhave to have a Class 4 AND a Class 5 sim and you can SWITCH them? or Can you have one of each and have one upgraded or one downgraded? What is the point of switching a Class 4 with a Class 5? Please clarify. Thanks!
~Maddy
January 23rd, 2008 at 6:55 AM
WOW
We realy have rich people here. I will love to receive some donation at my parcel…
I realy can not figurate this very well. If you buy a island (sim) you are not buying one server just for you. One server can hold untill 4 sims.
Even if you buy 4 sims that would be the price for 3 servers at any computer store close to you. even than this hardware DOES NOT BELONGS TO YOU. You can not give up and request your hardware to be delivered to you. They will clean it up and resell for piece in one.
I would see LL in a more professionaly way if they could switch ALL SERVER TO CLASS 5 and TIE FOR US$ 150.
January 23rd, 2008 at 6:57 AM
This is to all those who feel that LL overcharges everyone, is ripping people off, providing horrible service, etc. and to those the predict the imminent demise of SL:
If it’s possible to do it better and/or cheaper, why hasn’t someone done it already? If someone has done it already, why is everyone staying here? If it’s so very lucrative and LL are raking in the cash, why doesn’t someone else set themselves up to get a piece of that pie?
Fact is, unless I am missing someone, nobody has. Why not? There’s certainly enough greed out there to go around. So the only conclusion I can draw is that either it isn’t as easy as everyone would make out, or this model isn’t a “raking in the cash” business model that can make everyone a millionaire overnight.
Sorry if this sounds harsh, but if it’s too expensive for you, you are welcome to stop paying it, and find an alternative, or just stop altogether.
If competition comes along, LL might just review its business model. Until then they are charging what they feel the market can bear. In other words, a standard business model.
January 23rd, 2008 at 7:00 AM
If later on I decide to no longer want to pay for my sim do I get to keep the server? I mean, I paid for it, right?
lol… It’s rhetorical, ok? I know someone out there is going to actually think I’m being serious.
January 23rd, 2008 at