new attitude about owning land

Blake -

SecondLife welcomes you to its first annual recreation of the USA Frontier-West culture, circa 1860! Few rules, no regulatory bodies, catch-as-catch-can, and screw the limits!

Oh, and above all else: Caveat Emptor!

..Anyone need some Laudanum? Snake-oil? Tonic? I've got everythin' here to cure what ails ya!

Take care,

--Noel "HB" Wade
(Tread Whiplash)

hmmm, may have a job offer for ya at Pocket Bullets coming soon

Casinos are a dime a dozen.. What you need are SportsBooks... Let folks place bets on Footballs Games, Baseball, Hockey, Political Elections, etc....

We had a sportsbook at the beginning of the football season. Not too many people seemed interested so it went out of business around week four.

You can probably search for the announcements that were made in the forums back then.

- T -

Just make sure you have a big enough bankroll to cover winning streaks & jackpots. There have some weeks I have positively lost my ass. But after re-reading your post, perhaps you were implying you would make the odds so low that players couldnt win. I geuss that would work, but you wont get much repeat business.

-AP

I disagree. Such stuff gets lukewarm response at best in SL.

I am pretty sure I know what the next direction for-profit gaming systems in SL need to take, and I am on the job making it happen

-AP

These are the factors that make old players tier down:

1. The Linden has dropped against the dollar and continues to sink and not rise up substantially for many months.

2. The Lindens keep rolling out new land because it satisfies customer demand for freshly-baked good-looking sims.

3. A fair number of creative and technical intelligentsia players with big areas and activities have become bitter about mechanical problems in the game and are curbing their projects so they don't need big parcels.

4. The cumulative experience of more and more people moving away from ugly builds drives the Linden fresh-sim-baking and land baron business but it also gives new people and "midbies" real pause. Why own land under these volatile conditions, where my desire for fresh-baked sims seems to be ruthlessly exploited by both land barons and the Lindens (both feed the other, which is why it's unfair to portray either buyer/player or baron/Linden as "evil".

5. Some people find enough to do just hanging around and puttering in sandboxes or on group land already established.

6. More people rent as apartment buildings and rental groups have become more established.

Maybe its time to bring the Racetrack back...

I would love to see it back never won once but it was a fun social gathering as well as activity that involved the thrill of gambling...

I'd recommend doing it.
-AP

I am tiering down. I have been situations where I am unable to sell the lands I have w/o selling them at a loss. And I am not interested in owning land where I will lose $$$ to get rid of it ('cause ugly starts building next to me). I dont hold land for the primary purpose of making $$$. I just dont want to lose either.

From the Linden perspective, however, its to their advantange to add more sims. A lot of the land gets into "private ownership" via auctions, which means operating income (and bills paid) in the form of USD paid to Linden. So I understand why they do it. I do question if such a strategy is harmful to the overall ecomony of SL, an ecomony at adds to the excitement of playing in SL.

I'm no economist but it seems to me the value of LD has to be maintained to help maintain some of the enjoyment of SL--and stable land prices have to be a part maintaining the value of the LD. I would think the Lindens would be concerned about it as well. If land doesnt hold its value, because of the availablity of new land, then the perceived value of the LD falls. At some point, the incentive to own land, to make products (clothes), operate clubs, etc...will go away, and so will demand for SL.

For example, you chose to make and sell clothes because you want to, but also because that inflow of LD can help you aquire land. If land can be had simply from the stipend (because land prices fell so far), then the incentives to do all of the other things diminish.

I know its not as simple as that. But it still concerns me that land value is falling.

I think you are seeing a couple of different things happening at the same time that are causing players to tier down. I have honestly considered it myself. I think the ongoing technical problems that have plagued SL for nearly 6 months have made a lot of players who were spending a lot of money rethink what they are spending.

The result of the glut of shopping areas has made it far less necessary to own land to be in business. Why pay land tier fees when you can have a small shop in a popular mall? For me, the answer is control - I prefer having my stores on land I own, but a lot of people don't care or can't afford to own land to support their stores.

I also think that you are seeing the net result of people being tired of paying the same tier fees month after month for what seems to be less service. You also have the boredom factor setting in with long time, established players who have spent a lot of money and in turn made a lot of money. There doesn't seem to be much left to "do". We desperately need more upgrades like version 1.1 and 1.4, which redefined our entire SL experiences. Those kind of upgrades inspire people to try new things, and make them more forgiving of problems and the slow pace of change. It is ironic that a system with so much dynamic content can at times feel stagnant.

I think it is a cycle that will swing back around eventually, though I think many long time players who are tiering down probably won't tier back up fully. Instead, you will see the next wave of players start to tier up. Great question, Khamon.

OMG I think I had an idea...lol...wether its a good one or not, you'll have to judge.

I think the Lindens need to start a "sim rebeautifcation project". They offer land holders in old sims the option of trading their land for equal size plots in a new, freshly baked sim. Evict the few stubborn ones 'cause their trouble anyways ;=) Then, once all of the land owners are gone, the sim comes down for a rebake. After a rebake, the land goes back up for auction.

The total land mass in SL stays mostly constant but players get chances at getting fresh land to play with.

It is a nice idea, the only problem I see with it is that many players, myself included, have fairly large builds that would be difficult to move to a new plot. It is not the case with all of my land, but some of the builds are also built to adhere to the land underneath them, so they would not work in another location.

I actually teired up about a month ago to 75US/mo. I wanted a large enough place to build a park that I've wanted to do for along time. However, I will not be going higher than this. I am comfortable with what I have and its more than enough. I just hope that I can continue to pay the 75 US per month lol. I was fortunate enough to find a great sim also with great neighbors. Even my neighboring Sims have great neighbors. Maybe its because its PG and the sounds of birds just does something to ya.

I'm sorry to hear that people are teiring down and giving up on something they really enjoy because someone came and destroyed their surroundings.

Huggerz,
MJ

I'd be in a similar situation (and was, once, somewhat unintentially). I *try* to build using the land as it is....lol. I would chaulk that up as the cost of getting a new sim to play in. Speaking for myself, I enjoy building. Giving up a very nice piece of work is hard but I would get over it for a "free" chance at toiling in some new lands.

MY problem is I hate the land tier fees... I need about 8000/m2 of land because of the prim counts.. Lemme crunch some numbers...

while your crunching why dont you talk to my in world tonight or send me a PM. I jsut might have that kind of land available for use

Many of these people who are "Tiering Down" are lifetime subscribers. Their base-level tier is something like 4096m². That's still a lot -- 8 times my 512m² first-land plot. So these people can still buy/sell significant plots within their 4096m² free tier.

The best way to lower our costs (membership fees, tier fees, etc.) is to tax SIN.

That's what the government does. So I propose a 5% tax on all gambling winnings, cigarettes, and sex of every kind, shape, form.

Then LL will be able to pay ME for participating in SL.

Humbly Yours,
BB

What's the Rent like?

I'll drop you a line...

Good luck enforcing it....

You'd just turn around and spend it on gambling, cigarettes, and sex

Maybe people should stop treating this as a money making venture and more like a game?

The unregulated free market is one of the things I like least about SL. Hopefully they will realise they are not going to get rich and leave the land for people who actually want to make interesting content. It's the drive to make money at all costs that leads to such predictable, unimaginative builds.

I rent not buy as I don't have the real life money and credit to spend on this thing. If I could pay land tiers with linden dollars it would be a different matter.

I have seen a sharp increase in the number of people who want to rent, and for at least two months now, my tier has been used 80% for apartments, 15% for my "fun" land and 5% for land for sale.

I have no problem with the change of attitude! I won't be tiering down, simply because I am madly in love with over half the land I currently own!