Very few bids in the auctions lately?

I always forget to watch the completed auctions page, and every time I go there, I'm mildly surprised.

Has anyone noticed that a lot of folks simply aren't using the auctioning process?

Most of the bids are going unchallenged. Anshe Chung and Jauani Wu snipe at each other for a bit, and that's about as exciting as it all gets.

Some aren't even being bid on... it's one bid, and then it's snagged, for $L1/meter or the US equivilent.

Maybe the land barons simply scared off the rest of the population? I wouldn't be surprised... why lose 3 dozen times in a row against someone with very deep pockets? Why not just log off and not bother playing anymore?

Maybe the auctioning system needs another revamp, if 90% of the population isn't bothering to use it.

LF

Maybe people are sick of land, land barons,scum sucking land scanners, and the people who try to cheat, steal, and con people out of their money. It's all part of the game!

/16/68/17920/1.html


Factor in the number of land owners who have no plans to get more than their 512 m^2 and it is quite possible that the ninety percent of the population that isn't bothering to use the auctions are doing so for reasons totally independent of how well they function.

The auctions are a little confusing to new people. I have a bunch of friends who just started SL and they don't want to deal with the land that's up for auction.They don't know how the auctions work, they can't get the land they want immediately, and even if they bid there's a chance they won't win it. Much easier to buy it in world. Immediate gratification!

Want to see land use go up, Cut tier costs in Half and see what happens.

Shadow

I second that!!!

I totally agree.. 200 a month is almost a cheap car note. its a little steep for a game and i really dont think they could justify this cost.

I wouldnt mind seeing LL auction land on void-like sims. You know, 4 sims per server, 1/4th the land fees? I wouldnt mind getting 16384 m2 with my free allocation of 4096. Even if it meant I could only have 1000 prims. I'm sick of all the clutter, people building their boxy houses right next to each other, deleting all the linden trees, bleh.

SL goes out of business?

Why would you want that?

LF

Who says they would go out of bussiness do to this? they would possibly make the shortfall up with the land sales.

I support the idea of a decrease in tier fees if the Linden Lab business model allows for this. Tier fees are the limiting factor that prevents people from buying and maintaining more land, not land price. I tried to increase my land sales by lowering prices on some land, but below a certain price per sqm most people seem to care very little for price, but very much about monthly fees and location of land.

Btw, this also might explain that so few people use the auctions. Beside general decrease of land sale (in world it dropped to about half amount of sqm per week compare to one month ago) I feel that most people are happy with cheap land in world and don't care for dealing with auction process just to save cost of Burger King meal on a piece of land.

The only decrease I could see making sense is a hard limit on the amount of parcels won within a 30 day period.

Like, say, 3 parcels won. Then you can't win another bid for 30 days.

That might make it more competitive, rather than folks giving up the second they sense a land baron wandering by.

LF

Yeah but alot of those parcels are so big that the average player doesn't want them. So they get bought up by barons. If the barons weren't around, I think alot of the larger lots wouldn't get bid on at all.

great idea Eggy! that would really cut down on clutter and crowding.

again, if the teir fees were lowered, people would be able to own larger lots for a reasonable sum. builds could spread out a bit and the world would be attractive to newbies again. charting supply & demand over profit & loss is not rocket science [/me winks]. it's an excellent time for ll to examine this possiblity now that growth has leveled off a bit and the project has attracted a few small investments.

i've been assured numerous times by lindens and not lindens that it's not all about they money. the community and environment are at least as important as the profit if not more so. that only applies to profit, not the cost of doing business in the first place. if they weren't breaking even before the investments, prices won't be dropping any time soon.

What is the point of bidding on a parcel of land that starts off at 10k jumps to 40k immediatly with the first bid. NONE. Let the brokers buy it all and they can just sit on it forever for all i care. BUT I wont be buying it from them.

I agree with that sentiment Catherine. I just tried to bid on a nice one that had been sitting with 0 bids for a day. It still had 1 day and 10 hours to go. Entered my $45 usd max bid and was immediately outbid. Fuck it

That is because each and every parcel has had a "maximum" bid placed on it by someone or *ones* who are interested in purchasing it.

I was thrilled to see the overall cost of sims being reduced from 3KUSD to just under 1K; and in watching, it almost seems as if snowland can be purchased for $1L per square meter.

You mean in world not in auctions right Lynn?

if you can find any land for under 2.2 L$/m2 that is the deal of deals. as i said before, LL values land at .10 USD/m2

No Lynn you don't understand. I had watched this one sit for a day without any bids 0 zero. As soon as I placed the very first bid however it was snatched.

I'm a newbie and Sims Online refugee who decided to risk an adventure on the auction system because I saw a very beautiful parcel, in a new sim that was starting to get cluttered up with malls and ugly roads and buildings. I thought it would be interesting to try to develop the land with a project while trying to keep its pristine beauty.

The idea of spending RL dollars on pixel land is daunting, as is the concept of the carrying charges, but I rationalized to myself that I was phasing out my multiple accounts at The Sims Online and not going to A Tale in the Desert or Guild Wars so I could justify it -- at least for a few months, if it was possible to sell the land off. After about 30 days in-world, it seemed a reasonable venture, given the tools and opportunities available in SL.

I could immediately see that other than a very few stray bidders like myself, the auctions were dominated by just a few famous "land barons". Parcels were only $20 or $40 without much carrying charges, but they were going unclaimed. Other parcels of $130 or $160 with a lot of potential were also not getting bid on, and going back into the system or being simply snapped up by a few barons. If game rules enable them to do what they do, other solutions would have to be sought to prevent them scarfing up land and scattering their mall spawn and for-sale signs on little sub-plots everywhere. Indeed, for me, the huge jump in the tier fees, from $40 to $75, going from 8192 to above 16,000 acres for the 10,848 parcel I sought, was a serious obstacle.

I found a workaround by going both to other friends from TSO who came in the game and my own alt accounts in SL. We formed a group to make a land purchase, and that way, with our contributions, we were able to get a discount, have 110 percent more land, and knock down the "taxable" land amount to the $40 level, though the parcel was over 10,000 and already in the $75 level. Maybe somebody might not like this use of alts, and would be leery of trusting other players like this, but the rules permit it, and the fact is, the $40 to $75 jump seems unreasonable, with nothing in between. I'm thinking most people are not going to be willing to spend more than the equivalent of let's say double or triple their regular monthly game fee for a lot and its carrying charges -- I was willing to go further, but not much further, being new.

This took some hours of perplexing reading of group rules, working the levers repeatedly because memberships, etc. didn't take, and asking customer help, and getting Lee Linden himself, who was very helpful in working out the sequencing of how to do this. (It's actually easy for people who are better at math and rule-reading than me.)

I asked 3 players in the customer help including Linden their advice on the matter. Two were skeptical that making a group purchase of land was a viable option, because any officer in the group could leave the group and "sell the land out from under me" as they warned me. It really amounted to a question of trust. Linden talked about selling land back to myself. As I understand it, I remain owner of the whole parcel, but if other owners contribute their 512 first land parcels to me, then my tier fee is reduced. If they pull out, then my tier goes up. That's a loss, but I don't actually lose the land -- or do I? If I buy for the group, then I own my contribution, and they own their 512 portions to sell out from under me evidently -- but is that to their advantage? Also, it seems to me -- thinking in TSO terms, which I'm afraid is all I know -- if someone contributes their 512 land parcel to your land claim, they get the advantage of building on a larger parcer of land than they would have had by themselves. If they don't want to buy land themselves, and if they don't want their 512 initial stake to just sit there, it's an option that leverages up their gaming space. Wouldn't somebody trying to sell 512 out from under you be at a DISadvantage, because there'd be few buyers of a tiny patch inside a large parcel? Enlighten me on this subject.

People in TSO who have successful lots are already in groups and trust each other from running lots there, and they might be persuaded to buy as groups in SL, keeping their same TSO groups because they'd not fear loss, and wouldn't feel the sticker shock of the costs, being in a group. TSO drives you to those more social interactions through its features, which have their pluses and minuses of course.

No doubt there are groups making group purchases all over SL -- I just haven't seen them, and tend to hear about dramatic break-ups instead. Indeed, I can see it's an issue from earlier experience in SL -- you have to have some shared vision and a pre-agreement about what you'll build, etc.

Many have talked about the importance of transparent land sales. The auctions are transparent -- but only after they are over. I fail to see why identity is protected during the auction -- except perhaps to prevent in-game harassment.

The auction isn't really a true auction. It's a kind of state socialist-style land exchange for landless serfs, into which the paternalistic socialist state pours its land holdings. And the serfs -- to complete the socialism analogy -- have state-issued chits of $500 per week which they use to purchase at least those parcels available in Linden dollars. I can't complain about my socialist benefits yet LOL, but is this a land market? Hardly.

There are many mysteries in this process -- for example how decisions get made as to what goes on the auction board, and what simply gets labeled "first land" for immediate clickable sales in-game without the board. And there's the issue of WHEN the land gets released into the system. I've had my eye on a very desirable "first land" parcel for days and I'm dying to see who gets it -- will it be somebody's girlfriend with connections or a random person? Any newbie coming at this would have to wonder if there are any inside deals going on among devs and elite groups. Maybe that's reasonable to make it an interesting game?

But wouldn't it be more interesting if any of us could access the auction boards, by going to a menu to upload our land and selling it ourselves, when we want, at a price we decide? Such a public exchange system might also prevent fraud. It would also be cool if the auction board could be used by would-be group leaders to make groups and access those with their initial 512 stakes, willing to pool them.

Prokofy - once land becomes Group Land, any officer in that group can sell the entire amount of land.

So - if you contribute 8000m2, friend #1 contributes 512m2 and friend #2 contributes 512m2, the group then owns 9024m2 of land.

You and your friends will also contribute tier, but this doesn't have to be in proportion to the land you contributed (although it usually is). As long as the total tier contributions add up to 8200m2 or so, you'll have enough to support the total group land.

However, and here's the kicker - if friend #2 decides to do the dirty on you, AND they are an officer in the group, they can set the entire 9024m2 of land for sale to themselves for $0, buy it so that it is no longer group land, and then quickly sell it on to an innocent third party, cash out and leave the game with a tidy profit.

Of course, they'd have to tier up to $75/month to do that - for one month - but they'd still make a profit.

I've seen this happen time and again with night club groups where the management relationships go sour. Once land becomes "group land" it is by no means possible to guarantee the return of "your" land in the event of group dissolution.

Be careful - make sure you are the only officer in your group - and choose your friends wisely. Even if you start the group yourself, you cannot kick out an existing officer without a lengthy and tricky recall election.

I will not contribute land to groups unless I or my RL husband are the only officers in the group. I am not a trusting soul.

That's interesting news. I still think that you have to make trusted friends officers, so that they feel they have equal rights in the project. It might be that one person buys land, but another might have ideas for it or talent to build on it or make events, so it's a partnership. Of course you'd have to feel that you were dealing with honorable partners, not just someone met on the Welcome Island after 5 minutes.

You can make that distinction between members and officers, and members then will be "less trusted" and won't sell land out from under you.

It's an odd system, and I have to say there don't seem to be any instructions anywhere explaining the difference between officers and members when it comes to group land purchases. I just instinctively figured I had better ask customer service about this before plunging into it, but I suppose not everyone will realize they should do that.

I wonder if any player had the experience of having that happen to them, and then petitioning the Lindens to restore their property. It seems like kind of a big hole in the issue of ownership rights. It seems to mean that if someone only put 512 into the group, they should only be able to sell out the 512 from under the group, not sell out the entire land, even being an officer.

Over in Buying and Selling Land:



In other words, there is more land being released than there is demand for it by people who want to settle there. This is why you are currently getting auction wins by resellers with as little as one bid on them.

Also, bear in mind that when you see 1024m2 won for $10.00, the maximum bid on this lot was more likely around $20-$23, and so would have been won by the same person anyway. Land-addicted residents such as myself who get withdrawal DTs if we don't check auction results within a few minutes each day will know exactly who has placed what bid, and what their maximum is simply by comparing the times of day each bid was placed across the day's lots. Why would I bid $17.00 if I know with 95% accuracy that the bid will be immediately topped by a higher proxy bid? (Actually, there is an answer to that question, and believe me I have been tempted....)

Note that the starting bids of US$ auctions are a higher price per m2 (currently around L$2.2/m2) than L$ auctions. A US$ auction won with a single bid is yielding land that is around the cost of the cheapest in-world land. A L$ auction won with a single bid would be yielding land over twice as cheap (and is thus much less likely to be seen).

Better education is something we can do in order to increase auction participation. Better tools are something LL can do as well, but I believe education is the key here.