Lindens are gonna buy back telehub land at L$10/m -- Fair?

I wonder if any of this has to do with the rumored recent meeting between telehub land owners and Philip. Does anyone know if this did in fact occur?

Upon first seeing this, I wondered two things 1) how many will take the offer, and 2) could LL actually be self-defeating enough to allow this buyback to allow land holders to tier down?

The time window of compensation is pretty narrow, which seems that it would therefore affect some fraction of former hub-land holders. Moreover, assuming the former-hub landholders wish to continue holding land, is this really sufficient motivation to cause them to sell at place X and purchase anew at place Y? Moving a business interest is non-trivial, and now that there are no artificial traffic bottlenecks why should a former-hub holder want to move?

The announcement said nothing about requiring repatriation; it was simply a buyout offer. I've seen some rather ill-conceived actions by LL but could they actually be offering hub holders a free-and-clear out to the detriment of LL revenue? At best, this offer is remarkably unpopular with the playerbase, at worst they could well let some of the most commerce driven players split.

I really cannot tell whether this is a non-event as there will be few takers or if it is a colossal blunder. At least they keep things interesting on a policy level.

I can't keep all that crap straight, and you can't make me!

So it was Anshee, hmm, or was it perhaps that Prokofy asked Hamlet to intervene on his behalf?

Well, at any rate, the consequence of this will be - some people will be better off, some worse, most people won't be able to tell any difference. Is that about right?

Except that people with perceived grievances who want financial compensation, such as fro inventory loss, might have a better footing, if it was possible to use "Linden Lab" and "consistent" together in the same well-formed sentence.

Ditto.

What in Heaven name is LL thinking of...ANYONE buy land its a gamble...who bloody cares if its telehub or not....anyone who sells at a loss should get reimbursed not just those around the telehubs...IN OTHER WORDS BUY AND SELL AT YOUR OWN DAMN RISK...LL you didnt owe anyoen but caved to whiners..how quaint...WHINE loud everyone

I'm amazed LL is doing this. Now a precedent has been set for 'resident damages caused by LL actions'. This won't end the complaining.... this only opens the door to MORE.

Travis, are you sure you even fall in that window of - what was it, August-December that you bought your land?

I think this is nice. I think it largely because I remember that girl, somebody or other, a rather new player, it seemed like, who had JUST spent a bunch of money on telehub land when this happened.

coco

Yeah we want compensation...

for all they hours of game downtime
for all the days of miscalculated dwell/traffic
for lost revenue from permissions bugs/"features"
for monies lost on land sales as LL continually cranked out new sims
for monies lost do to griefer attacks LL would not punish

shall we see who can whine now?

thats the can of worms that has been opened with this

hope you like fried worms sandwiches LL

Now makes one wonder theya re removing DI Award....why because of it not being used as they intended...makes one wonder with buy back following if its not take one to save to pay another...............and the plot thickens....

've never been involved in an MMO that wasn't susceptible to bending to whiners. AC2 was awful that way, but even there as long as I wasn't getting gimped (or having to reassign all my exp for the tenth time) I never really cared. No different here. Doesn't effect me. LL could take the equivelant amount of L$ and throw them in the street and let people scramble for them and the effect on me would be exactly the same... zilch. I can't summon outrage about it. It's more of a distracted "that's nice, dear." *shrug* Now if they were taking $10 a meter away from me and giving it to someone else, that would merit some outrage!

Not a chance, it will just be bellyaching about something else, perhaps from different people.

Holy Crap. Well I get an F today for reading comprehension.

Considering I purchased the land in November of 2004, no, we're most definately not eligable.

I've been working on a big long post in response to Suesanne (which I think I'll post anyway), and didn't even bother reading it again.

Hrmph. Well all I can say is - that blows. But for the recent buyers, who were probably the most caught off guard, better than nothing, I guess.

Well...

Our current Tier level is $75. Previously, that was covered by an average of $72.25/month in developer incentive, which is going away.

If we dump 2500m of land, that will take us down into the $40/month bracket. That will reduce our tier nearly in half.

Additionally, we ran a small money machine that gave out approxomately L$300 a day to random newbies. That's been taken permanantly offline.

With those two savings, and if I'm doing my math right - we'll need to pull in about L$2700 a week in donations to cover the costs of our Tier, and our events.

We've also had several extremely generous spontaneous benefactors over the past 15 months that have gotten us throw some rough spots. I'd *love* to mention their name here, but I have a feeling that they'd rather remain anonymous.

The 4 of you know who you are, and know that your help has been deeply appreciated

Thanks for asking, Sue. Every time I have to ask for help, it feels, well.... icky. But the Shelter wouldn't be the Shelter if we weren't supported by the community. I try to run things like we're a virtual charity for a virtual cause, and the opportunity to coordinate something like that is my reason for being in Second Life.

So there it is.

Life is change; even tomorrow is different from today.

I suppose the post office/couriers should be paid compensation because of the Internet and email. How about music stores being paid compensation because a person can buy music online? How about owners of local stores being paid compensation because a Wall mart has taken away their business. What about people whom own pay phones? The list is endless.

Wish that people with land close to telehubs will stop crying and take the change, as an adult should!

They actually force you to pay tier fee for a memorial, Lecktor? Big shame on them!!!

Makes me wonder... Is it Philip or Uncle Scrooge who really runs LL?

Hey, you *worked* it... so, 50%!

Can anyone say they're really surprised?

LL has a spectacularly bad track record when it comes to making smart decisions and this is just another stellar example.

LL can't find it's collective ass with both of it's (virtual) hands most days.

It wouldn't surprise me one bit, if this whole refund thing is the result of threatened legal action.

I'm starting to come to the conclusion that SL is doomed.

Sorry - I was in-world when most of the thread went down. Just want to make sure I'm responding to everything

No, we aren't planning on moving. Actually, after P2P was first announced, I had originally planned on purchasing *more* land. I figured I'd make the most of the situation, and fill the rest of my spare tier and buy the Plush Mall across from me on the cheap (not), flatten it & plant some trees, and hopefully reap the lag-reduction benefits.

I was himming & hawwing over what to do there, and then the other shoe dropped - the DI is going away. So those plans were scuttled, and instead of going up I had to start thinking about going down.

I don't *want* to sell of land, but its probably the fiscally responsible thing to do.

One distinction I see about the hub situation is that LL itself marketed the land as telehub land and set the minimum auction bid higher for lots, and later sims, located in a telehub sim.

LL charged more for the land at auction because it was hub land, thereby setting the resale price higher and establishing the value for the land. In addition, the price for hub land was paid in dollars, not Linden, and LL profited in real cash by selling the hub land at a premium in auction.

Legally, yes I know you guys really dont like to hear that word, but legally this is called DETRIMENTAL RELIANCE in contract law. The buyers of the telehub land relied upon the factors, and benefits set into place by LL to their detriment. This is a legitimate financial loss that constitutes legally measurable damages. In addtion, the action creating the measurable loss was an intentional breach.

The hub buy back situation is truly distinguishable from land devalued as a result of general market forces and also from bug related losses. It does not set a legal precedent for those other situaitons, however, each time I see someone selling copyable versions of Cristianos dances for 10L each, or even including them in freebie boxes, I do conclude that there is a measurable loss in that situation related to LL negligence. If that were me I would have pursued that matter.

You are preaching to the choir brother. Sorry if I came across obtuse.

Again, you are so contrarian predictable it's sweet.

If they do nothing they have one group of people yelling at them and calling them incompetent boobs. If they go the other way they get a different group of people calling them something equally unkind. They're damned if they do and damned if they don't. Personally I don't see the constant bellyaching about this or that to be indicative of LL being inept... I see it more as another indication that SL has a rather whiny user base. Personally I can't seem to summon any outrage over this. The closest I can get is more like "that's nice dear." *shrug*

LL is doing something nice for some people they kinda pulled the rug out from under. Those bastards!

How nice for you.

Man, what horseshit.

It's like reverse eminent domain.

It just doesn't make any sense, and sets a precedent that if LL does something to ruin your business plan, then by god, you deserve compensation!

Oh indeed, you seem to be a minority in this particular argument love.