There's been a lot of turmoil due to the announcement about Open Space sims, but I'm not sure what else LL could've done (aside from anticipating the problem, which would've saved everyone a lot of grief). Honestly, disregarding the people who misrepresented the OS sims when renting them out, or those who ran businesses on them, it was probably a lovely but brief period when some were able to have a blank canvas to create their own place on the grid. I can hear the raspberries from here when I say that, though, but the pragmatic part of me can only shrug and say, "Well, if they are not feasible they just have to go - at least you had them for a while."

It's easy for me to say that, though, as I have nothing to do with them. Certainly a lot of people sound angry, depressed, or heart-broken; for god's sake BUCK UP and stop being so resistant to change. Where people become unreasonable is when they are shifting large sums of money, though. With my antique Premium membership and a whole $5.00 in additional tier I'm never going to be worth much to LL, but I will preserve my sanity. I have to admit I'm out of patience with the bazillion hard luck OS stories on the forum: ZOMGSTFU >:[ As if there were just ONE way to be happy, or that, had OS sims never happened restless souls would've wandered the earth for all eternity seeking fulfillment in vain.

There's a funny relationship between LL and us that encompasses extreme fanboi/grrls, mild contempt (i.e. "marginal" R Us, suffering in our bad weather and faulty regimes), a distinct lack of trust on the part of customers for the company providing the service, a batten-down-the-hatches attitude on the part of the vastly outnumbered company people, customers believing the worst and in some cases inventing scenarios that would be absolutely diabolical if true, the company operating in, as it were, a full complement of dimensions while the customer is left outside the looking glass, and so on. Since this is new ground everything is subject to misapprehension and even beyond that has to be continually reworked and recreated on the fly in the most difficult of ways (with a pitchfork-and-torch wielding mob outside the door for them regardless of what they do, and an unresponsive customer service, distinct lack of communication, + world class lousiness of timing* as the offerings presented to the customers).

One would think that for any customer with enough OS sims to fill out one full server (or more) they should just be able to keep their own company, as it were. Like the sailing sims, for instance, which are something like 180 sims. Although that may not be feasible it certainly SEEMS like it should be ;-D That wouldn't address bandwidth, so maybe it wouldn't help.

A sim that can be terraformed and nothing else? That would be useful for sailing as long as scripts in boats could run. Would need to be very cheap.

I can see a fixed resource sim being sold, too, where the sims arrives with trees and prims and scripts, and to add anything the owner must first delete something. Again, might very well not be possible (not knowing anything means I can propose anything).

In truth I love Second Life, and I know many, many others do, too. I don't think a company focused just on making money would even attempt to deal with the things LL has chosen to deal with. We have created an amazing culture, but all the ways people have used things in unexpected ways (i.e. hoochie hair** and temp rezzing McMansions and 1024x1024 textures***) have made immense technical problems, I'd imagine. And we rarely - maybe this is the only time - have been told to rein our profligacy in.

Added: THIS is the first thread I saw regarding Open Space sims, written back in August.

*6.6.06 being the day the account floodgates opened, and 11 September 06 the day the forums were gelded, for two.
** LOD was a response to that type of thing, I think, as someone in 500 tortured tori could walk by and make everyone's FPS drop to a fraction. Things did look better, before, though, I think, like round things and things that now pop in and out of their highest LOD. I have everything on the highest settings - maybe it's less noticeable on middle settings. I vaguely remember a wedding dress that could crash a sim (different problem, but fulfills the wry adage, "Nothing exceeds like excess.").
*** Occlusion culling was a great advance as before that everything within draw distance was downloaded, even if one couldn't see it.
I suppose that was a reining in, as it was 2048x2048 originally, which was so superhuge (except, maybe, for texture maps) that it was ridiculous.

Labels: Dept. of This Will Not End Well