Island Cost Changes and non business people

The only way LL can grow its userbase is by dropping the price of land. They want to compete with WoW's X million paid subscriber figures, stuff like that. The more paid subscribers, the more money they'll get in IPO or other liquidity event. The land values are irrelevant in this regard.

for the people who think tech gets cheaper let's figure this out.
technology is stuff that's made in bulk and sits around in warehouses and NEEDS to be sold to recoup costs. CPUs, memory, mb, hard drives, all that...
Companies make faster hardware to replace things in the market and do not lower the price on the faster hardware but lower the price on old hardware to sell it off the shelves.

all the logic about tech getting cheaper and islands is flawed because you can't compare them. Islands aren't bulk made and sit on a shelf to sell. They are not inventory like tech. if the money to run islands lowers you make islands better by increasing what it can do or you offer several types, the noob 1000k level, the more advanced 1695 isle, etc...

Sorry to disagree, what you are buying and selling IS bandwidth, hosting and a specific application running. Those costs are only going down. The fact that YOU don't resale your hosting or bandwidth does not mean that others don't do it... there are whole business setup around reselling bandwidth and hosting.

The problem comes from the expectations we bring to SL from our experiences in RL. Like Cristalle said, there is risk in all business in rl. Translating that risk when the assets are virtual can be very difficult. Particularly if we don't really have a good grasp on what the asset exactly is...

.d

why would they do that instead of hosting another sim or 2 on the same server to increase profit?

they could do that to but that's not a good way of showing a customer you care.

they care a whole lot more about the bottom line than about what you think of their policy decisions

they are decreasing the bottom line by lowering island prices.....

This might make sense if LL couldn't make new land at the press of a button. RL land increases in value, because the supply of it is limited. Just like RL money is now less valuable because the Fed has flooded the supply and creates it at the press of a button, so your SL land is less valuable.

Well don't be sorry for disagreeing, it would be boring as hell here if we all agreed

The hosting reselling packages I see around are generally 1 year subscription to allow me to resell, indeed one of the biggest in the industry charges around a month's tier to allow you to do this. When the year is up therefore I either renew the deal or it's gone. There's no return on my initial investment and nor is any expected, that's quite a different model of business to the one we're discussing here. That's more akin to someone paying me a year's worth of rent to use my land.



I've invested what I'm prepared to lose, for all I know LL could be in the middle of a financial crisis and go belly up tomorrow. The risks here are high. The reason many don't have a really good grasp of what the asset exactly is, is because LL have never been clear on that. In light of this week's events, they should be crystal clear on it.

only thing i can say on this is:

lmao

Proof positive that you can't please everyone.

Look, Trolane...there IS competition coming. It's not here yet, but I bet it will be, within 8 to 12 months. LL wants to be the biggest virtual world around when that happens, to keep their #1 position. That means the world has to get bigger.

Which brings us to our second point: In the real world, land appreciates because there are always more people, competing for the same amount of land. As the saying goes, "they ain't making any more of it". But in SL, they ARE. LL can make as much land as they want. This means that "land" in SL is unlikely to appreciate over the long term, because it is NOT a "scarce commodity".

Annnnd, point three: As the internet improves, with more bandwidth, more pipelines, faster servers and faster terminals, the cost of running a graphically based network environment like SL is going to go down. While LL might be tempted to keep the extra money as profit, it's not likely...because of the competitors I mentioned in Point One. LL wants Second Life to be seen as the preeminent virtual world, so as to keep and grow its user base. One way to do that is to keep SL affordable for the masses. And that, too, means lower prices.

Instead of griping about "losing" $700, why not rejoice that you'll be able to expand your little island empire for a third less cost than you could last week?

The tier pricing model is the issue that will determine if SL lives or dies, not the land pricing model.

Linden finally did something right in their plan to lower the price on lands. This new price of 1k is still high but it's a decent effort on their part although, I'm seeing this as the calm before the storm.

Those who paid more back then can't complain about the price now being slashed. It's just crazy seeing complaints of, get this, a price decrease. Basically, this is what this is and it's nuts.

Yes, people won't buy from someone if they can get it for less from anyone else, not just Linden. So, you paid more back then. It was your choice to do so as that was the price at the time.

What sounds even worse and is becoming more common is seeing complaints from sim owners who say they stand to lose money if they ever were to sell their lands because of this new price. They're losing sleep over "If" they were to sell their lands. If. In reality, this is something that hasn't happened, may not ever happen to them and in all likelyhood was something that had never even been considered, selling, before now.

In the event they needed to sell then they'd have to take the best price offered them. You can't dwell on changes that are made. Just keep moving forward.

linden will lose to competition not on pricing but on service quality if anything is going to be fought over. Sure it miht be up alot but you can't res things allot of the time or buy stuff.
people who have alot invested in SL aren't gonna just leave because something opens up. they may do that too but they aren't going to quit SL.

If you buy something as an investment, you need to treat it like an investment, not your own personal playground. You should analyze each investment individually, on its own merits, and do whatever research is necessary to find a way to make that investment reach its full potential. If you had done that, you would have realized what a terrible investment SL land is from the standpoint of appreciation. It's always been bad. If you want to make money off of it, you need to find a way to compete in the land rental business. If you want an island to be your own personal domain, then there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But expecting it to also be an investment is not reasonable.

SL has the potential to be an excellent business training device because the bar to entry is set so low. It allows people who have no clue about business or economics to start a business and learn the hard way. The hard way in this case is a hell of a lot cheaper and quicker than a business degree or working your way up in an established business while you learn. I wish people would take advantage of that opportunity, really think hard about their successes and failures in SL and learn from them instead of blaming LL or others on those failures.

when you can rent a complete sim for only $75 a month... that really makes you wonder
no economy or inventory (let alone lsl) but it even had me really thinking for a good hour or so if not to just get a region there and be settled in when essentials are added

Trout, I love you.

Just sayin'.

who said anything about treating it as an investment?
i dont expect money profit. I was expecting if it ever happened i would be able to sell it back for close to what i payed for it, not a $700 loss. like people say this isnt the stock market....

if you are renting a whole sim for $75 a month you are renting a void sim with limited prims. no one in their right mind unless renting to a friend would rent a whole sim for less than the tier, unless they had good sources of other income on the land to.

not in sl but in openlife

you can own a sim there for just $75 a month

no economy, inventory, asset transfer or coding yet tho but give them a couple of months to a year...

You did. Just because you don't treat it as a business venture doesn't mean you are not viewing it as an investment. Anytime one starts talking about recouping monies paid into an asset they are talking about investment as opposed to a mere luxury item.

Personally I don't see why anyone would buy a used estate island at the old value even if LL did not reduce the price. What possible advantage is there over securely purchasing a new estate island from LL unless there is going to be a significant discount from the LL price or you are selling a developed business with a proven track record of success that comes with the estate island?

You could have researched until you were blue in the face, there was no precedent. Even better open sims, the pricing and structure has changed twice in a month, how could anyone research that? Now of course people know it's flaky, a precedent has been set, but it wasn't there before.



In RL when companies go belly up, people lose jobs and economies go into recession people always blame someone, someone else, usually the party not in government will say how they would have managed it differently and how they would have avoided the issue. Blaming LL is not really so different from RL as you're trying to imply.

You are severly deluded if you think LL should just keep making higher and higher profits from customers as technology makes their hardware cheaper so some older residents don't lose out, people would be happy to pay $1700 for every $100 server for the next 5 years just so they don't "lose" money on the first one they brought. I guess they would think their $1700 sim will still be worth that when the world is empty and they pull the plug in 10 years, everyone having left to $100 sims with the competition.

No login, no rezzing, no performance....

In a few months it will be significant I expect. To be honest I am incredibly unlikely to ever pay money to any of the existing "SL hosting" firms; when a reliable web host starts offering the service, I might.

Yep they are progressing fast and not afraid to deviate to better systems of avatar mesh etc, they aren'y held back by not wanting to break existing content to add the best & latest or worrying about crashing/balancing an economy or taking the world down for half a day to add/fix things.