More thoughts on the Openspace sim debate

Further to my earlier post I've had a chance to read through the announcement and have a think on it.

The new changes come into effect on the 5th of January 2009 so if you're one of the Openspace sim users you've got just on 2 months to make a decision on what you're going to do. You've got four options.

Option 1:
"Those of you who chose to use the Openspaces as intended may stay at the US$75 rate, but will need to contact the concierge team to do so." The openspace sims will be seeing their prims reduced to 750 and restricted to 10 AVs at a time. Once you put in a few trees and shrubs you won't have much primmage left for building, maybe you can put in the corner of a crumbled ruin but that's about it. Forget your skybox as well. That's less that what the original openspaces had.

Option 2:
"If you want more than an Openspace, we will offer you the choice of moving to a new product called Homesteads that is intended for light use such as low density rentals." Homesteads will effectively be what an openspace is now with 3750 prims at your disposal. However the number of AVs allowed on a Homestead will be capped at 20. So you can probably have your dogfights or your small pirate regattas but certainly no balls, fund-raisers or even large parties. To add insult to injury even though they've extended the time it will take before full increase hits, LL have decreed that on the 15th of July 2009 you will be paying US$125 a month for the new style sim (though they've backed away from the initial "no discount" for Educational users). So not only is it going up 66% in tier you will be getting even less utilisation out of it than you can now.

Option 3:
If you have 4 openspace sims, LL will consolidate them into a full sim free of charge. Possibly the only good bit of news out of this, small though it is.

Option 4:
Walk away from it all.

This sort of behaviour on the part of LL really proves that their Customer Relations department is non-existent and their staff are vastly out of touch with their user base.

My own rule has mainly been that Pearse'd & Cut pays for my SL. At this point the rent for my shops and Argylle comes out of the profits from the sale of items of P&C. While I'm hoping to get some new items out and ready for sale during the summer break of Uni my typist has, I'm not so naïve as to believe I'll suddenly be able to increase business by that amount. While my dear Lady has said she can contribute I really don't think either of us can afford the full tier increase.

I may have to chat with the Guvnah about options.