Socially|Mundane

If you are already aware of the changes to Openspaces recently announced in the Linden Lab blog, please disregard this email.
In March of this year, we announced improvements to our light use land product that we call Openspaces. As a result we have seen tremendous demand for Openspaces - with many thousands of them being. We're delighted that so many of you have found them to be a useful addition to your estates.

Openspaces were made available for light use as countryside or ocean. Openspaces differ from normal regions in one particularly significant way; unlike normal regions that effectively get a CPU to themselves on the server, there can be up to four Openspaces on a single CPU, sharing the resource (hence them being "light use").

So Openspaces have been incredibly popular as a perk for estate owners, but sadly there is a twist - unfortunately most of the Openspaces are being used for much more than light use. Based on analysis performed in August and September, Openspaces are being used about twice as much as we expected, in other words being loaded with double the content/avatar load than we'd expect for a region that is supposed to be light use.

Rather than being employed as open areas like ocean with little or no content and traffic, the majority are being rented out to residents looking for a place to live and because they were never intended for that level of load this is causing problems. For some people this has meant a less than great experience with performance fluctuations. The overuse of Openspaces has also put additional strain on some of our core services at a much higher ratio than is reflected in the current pricing.

We need to therefore take some steps to improve their performance and better reflect their actual usage levels in our pricing so that we can maintain the best performance level for everyone. As a result, we will no longer offer an educational or non-profit discount for new Openspaces. As mentioned earlier, this is due to the increased back end resource required for us to support Openspaces in the way that they are now being used.

As announced by our CEO, Mark Kingdon on November 5th (http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/11/05/a-letter-to-second-life-residents/), we will be making some changes to the current products offered, starting January 5th, 2009.

All current Openspaces will be converted to the new "Homestead" islands as of January 5th. Prim limits will stay the same (3750 prims), a maximum of 20 avatars can be on the island at once, and some script limiting will likely be introduced. In January 2009 your billing will move to $95/month. In July 2009 next year it will move to $125/month. New Homesteads will have a setup fee of US$375.

If you are using your Openspace(s) for very low impact usage (park, ocean, occasional sailing events, etc), you can apply to opt out of the conversion to Homestead islands. These regions will have their prim limits lowered to 750 prims, and can hold a maximum of 10 avatars after January 5th. They will remain at US$75/month.

If you would like to convert your Openspace(s) to Full Regions, please open a support ticket to that effect at secondlife.com/support . 4 Openspaces equate to one Region, and we are not charging a conversion fee, at least until the pricing change comes into effect in January 2009. If you own less than 4 Openspaces you can make up the difference at $250 per Openspace (therefore if you own 2 Openspaces you can covert for the two Openspaces + USD$500). The current monthly fee for a Full Region will then apply.

Please see the Knowledgebase article here for more information: http://support.secondlife.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=4417&task=knowledge&questionID=5650

Please let us know if we can answer any of your questions by contacting Concierge support at http://secondlife.com/support.

Linden Lab Concierge Team