Dropping The Ball

Excellent, well said. Phrased that way it nicely ties in to the first part of my response, the part that objects to your assertion that, in essence, users should not be paying for Second Life. If I have misread that part as well I'm open to correction.

If I may throw in a few thoughts of my own...

SecondLife appears to me to suffer (if that is the word) from the problem that the players/inhabitants have two different approaches (Warning: sweeping generalisation approaching): some are here to be part of a community and to create stuff, and are happy to pay for the priviledge; others are here to make money, and hope to end up in profit.

Personally, I am on the creative side of this. When I first joined SL (a few weeks ago now), it was when land barony was in full swing. I very nearly left the game in despair at ever being able to own a reasonable piece of land of my own. All the land seemed to have been bought up, and was being sold at extortionate prices that I could see no way of meeting. I ended up with a piece to 512m land (through the land for the landless scheme), but not much hope of getting any more.

Fortunately, LL then opened up the new land. Land prices dropped. I've now managed to buy two new sections of land, 1024 and 528, and can start creating the things that I wanted to create when I first joined SL.

Of course, I'm out of pocket. But I expected to be, and wouldn't have expected otherwise. The possibility of making a profit in SL seems astonishing, and still does. Good luck to those who try to do it.

Oh, one final comment. Congratulations to everyone involved in this thread for not letting it degenerate into a name-calling flame-war (which is what usually seems to happen with threads about buying and selling land).

It's not clearly about the 'me me me, now now now', it's about dealing with updates that can benefit everyone in general, not just an elite few who are 'allowed' to own islands (I say allowed, because even if you have the money, some people still can't get islands, for trite reasons). Instead, you fix up the Estates for them, put in a few unecessary scripting functions, and consider it a big update. We've been going through hell ever since.

Do something that the norm would actually care about, like reducing the lag on regular sims so we would actually care about buying the land, eh?

I'm obviously not sure how or why, but since these most recent updates I've seen the "usual" sim fps in some of my most-frequented sims doubling, or in one case going to four or more times its prior value. It isn't that every sim is losing its Club Delete, either: the traffic remains fairly constant.

Perhaps they are making general improvements?

No, it couldn't be!

lol Dont worry, Its not. Interesting article though: http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,65052,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_3

w00t w00t.

All students should get free accounts and acres of land!

That was an interesting article. I think SL is a wonderful teaching tool....it's great that people are recognizing that and it's absolutely amazing that LL is providing accounts and land to the students to learn on. Many kudos to LL for this!

And I'm gonna be a student (again) in January....does that mean I can have my island free?

when the flames start everyone jumps on the ban-wagon if i read correctly deklax is referring to the land market in game and his experience. his statement is in general and isnt complaining about personal gain, but rather the overall effect on the social system. you dont have to be a land barron to loose money. many replys are directed specifically to deklax about his involvement. how about looking at the market and the effects not the origional thread starters. most replies were just pointless flames. here are some facts expressed but totally ignored.

the land prices have dropped to a fraction of what they were a month ago and that isnt stable or a flux it is a crash.

anyone rather it be a 512M2 member or a barron with 10 sims of allocation stands to loose money (something i believe would tend to run off players)

this forces ANYONE not just deklax to either A) take a loss and sell so he/she can reduce land tier, or B) hold on to the land and loose money in tier cost till prices return either way anyone new or existing players who purchased land for personal gain or not has to pay LL one way or another this eliminates land as an equitable asset deminishing the market places in SL not expanding them

i know there are more then effects but these are important ones i gtg back to work :/ but dont flame deklax support a stable gaming atmosphere!

land can be added in a more efficent way

ps i know thingswere cooling down but i had to post!

hehe, i wont even bother to spend my time reading this thread all the post are as long as phone books..and i dont have the time for these goofy things.. so ill just say this.. deklax dont worry about it.. all the big boys are eventually going to ride along.. im sure with a fan base of 10k residents or whatever the latest statistic is there has to be atleast one person in that bunch that has the resources to make a game identical to this or even better.. so its only a matter of time before another game like this comes out.. and when it does.. or even before that.. thats when all the people that payed good money for there land only to have it being sold the next week for 1/2 of what it was worth the week before.

Sorry, Trifen, but I don't understand what you are trying to say.

I've currently got an amount of land that puts me in a particular tier. If in future the land prices fall again, what difference does that make to me? I still have my land, I still pay the same amount in tier cost. Where am I losing out? How can I be losing money on tier cost, when the tier cost doesn't change.

I think I am missing a key point in your argument, but can't figure out what it is.

Um; In short I think what he was attempting to say is that for the majority of people that chose to buy their land at an inflated price the equity of any land they own up until now and going into the future is completely lost, so tier fees become much significant without a naturally inflating value to counterbalance it. Prices are unlikely to increase for some months to come, so although you don't pay -more- right this moment, overall your net worth has decreased. I think though that i already covered his attempted point and many others already, except for the phisilosphical argument of the requirement for all players to pay to play these MMORPGs, which would take way too much time and energy. Trifen may decide to correct me on these points if im wrong

no its all covered about 5-6 times throughout this thread but some people seem to have a hard time grasping it,.. o well its a dead dog now


kick kick

kick poke kick

just to add more spam i get to get back on after a week of no internet i know everyone missed me and wondered where i was!



*cry*


i'm back!

Ah, I see. Thx Deklax. As it happens I disagree, but I think at this point it is all coming down to personal opinion and personal feelings about SL.

Time to stop floggin the carcass, I think.

To add to the dead dog carcass, I just want to say that thanks to all for contributing and yes,not turning it into an all out flame war. It was an interesting discussion of both views. It seems that their are two perspectives on SL that seem to operate much the same way things do in RL...lol Those that look at Life as a game and those that see it as primarly a creative experience. Both points of view have a certain validity and truth to tell, many of us have to balance out the two depending on the circumstances. That's the beauty of SL and of RL. There's not just one way of doing things... However, I believe that extremes of any system create unbalance and unhappiness in the long run. There's my 2 Lindens...

Sorry to resurrect this already top-heavy thread, but:
Well, well, well.

That's all it takes, then

(quote from article, hehe)

LOL whoa; That an amazingly .... interesting perspective. =) Hi LINDENS! =) Who really cares about L$/$ conversation rates? Whether I sell (on ige) L$5000/$25.50 or 5000/$28, or even (on gom) $1.20/250 or $1.50/250 it doesnt effect anything more than paypal fees do.

On the other hand - In case you havent noticed the addition to https://secondlife.com/land/ , Goatman, on the far right, i will mention a few of the numbers from the past couple days for you... Today as of this post Average L$/Meter Paid: 4.63; Yesterday afternoon, it was at approximately 4.82, and the day before that - 5.02. Although i don't have more due to the... newness of this feature, it is alreadythe start of a clear downward trend in land prices across the board over the last week. As each day passes the higher sales from the days before fall off and the average significantly decreases. Is this not true? I notice land pricing and/or any of the things i've mentioned here were not mentioned, and leave it to LL to use a forum like http://secondlife.blogs.com/nwn/ for themselves =)

How reassuring. Now im interested in their input here! =)

P.S. If all that is needed is to be on the top10 leaderboard to gain the ear of the lindens and be the only source for official publications like this one, why isnt that somewhere on the website? =)

Frenzied fingerpointing, indeed!

> If all that is needed is to be on the top10 leaderboard to
> gain the ear of the lindens and be the only source for
> official publications like this one, why isnt that somewhere
> on the website? =)

That's not actually how the latest NWN story came together.
New World Notes is hosted and sponsored by LL, but I am
not the "ear of the Lindens", in the sense that I have no
official role in community relations, day to day management,
or policy. The decision to write this story and to interview top
folks on the Leader Board was entirely my own, for exactly
the reasons I say in the article: when there's a sudden
market devaluation, look to what the market leaders do,
to get a accurate view of its impact. It's for exactly the same
reason why, when there's a big spike in the real world stock
market, financial journalists look into interview folks like
Warren Buffet.

That said, people here have my ear because they're writing
about an important issue in my Forum, and I am interested
in giving it some voice in NWN. (Actually, I already have at
lest one story in the works which touches on many of the
issues discussed here.)

Lol w00t! Thank you for actually replying Hamlet, I did not really expect it . I understand that you have no official role in community relations, day to day management, or policy, yet nonetheless you are a Linden and a part of the Linden community, and as such (in being the sole member specifically set apart from the rest) you are in a unique position to communicate to both the players and to the other Lindens, and in that sense, those that speak to you have more direct access to those that do control such things than they would otherwise. To me your article seems almost entirely dedicated to restoring confidence in what I see as a very shaky market at the moment, rather than expanding our collective perspective on the matter that was at the heart of it in the first place.

Im also very interested in your idea of ''rational miscalculation clashing with irrational overreaction". It reminds me eerily of a 'Catastrophic Success'. Was the rational miscalculation the flooding of the market with too many sims during a shift farther toward an extremely estate-friendly policy structure? Was it an irrational overreaction for a large group of people (regardless of what you might have me believe) to lose faith in a system that obviously was more fragile than they were lead to believe and subsequently after that my downtime rants and 'frenzied fingerpointing'? Maybe you could expand on this idea more specifically in your upcoming articles on the topic because I am (clearly) more confused after this last posting than before. If so, I for one would appreciate a perspective included (if possible) from someone other than a long standing player who has profited significantly over a long period of time due to former LL policy and/or whose opinions differ in some way from your own.

[/B]

Excellent Hamlet! Can't wait to read it, I always enjoy your stories in NWN!

Thanks!

> Was the rational miscalculation the flooding of the market
> with too many sims during a shift farther toward an
> extremely estate-friendly policy structure?

It was neither, far as this story was concerned. According
to GOM's Zeppi Schlegel, the spike in L$ value on their
site was entirely a result of the articficial manipulation by
this new GOM account holder. The "rational miscalcuation"
I referred to were the many sensible theories about the
devaluation, including a putative run on the bank by land
barons, which actually didn't turn out to be the case.

I do want to say that a lot of these concerns people are
expressing are probably better addressed to Philip Linden
at his town hall meeting this Friday. He'll be the one who
can respond to Linden policy, far as the releasing of land
and the way they price, and so on. I'll be interested in
following the reaction to what he says then, here, and
perhaps as another kernel to the upcoming NWN story
I have in mind. In debates like this, I see my role best
as relaying the community's reaction to LL policy, not the
other way around.

^_^.

Town Hall Meeting - Nice! =)

lol


"holds his tounge"