Sky really is falling?

Yes I got that the first time.

Mainland is still higher overhead than a private island for LL.

Especially once they change over to Estate level governance. Although a private island is largely self governed anyway.

Perhaps its worth it to get those extra fees you describe - but its still higher overhead.

Yep, it could be better. It could also be worse - look back a couple more months to the June/July numbers. Also, Meta said in her last entry (or maybe the one before) that LL has been doing more cleanup of expired accounts which has contributed to the decline in the premium report. Yes, they're not good-looking numbers but I'm not sure they're highly disturbing (to me) yet.

I don't think first land will come back. If they can hold the land market fairly steady, an bump in the L$ sign-up bonus would be just as good...

In terms of trickle-up economics, it's right .. but everything you do in SL has that impact because a certain % of everything you spend goes to the seller's tier, which goes to LL. It's like when I buy a magazine, and the sales tax goes to the government, that can be seen as an act of supporting the state. But to me that is fundamentally different from actually buying something from the state and paying the state directly. Indirect/direct is still to be distinguished in terms of the privity with the state entity, it seems to me.

But anyway, premium does seem like a waste -- there doesnt seem to be enough benefit to justify the cost.

Sindy, I did not make this observation about the July-August drop because I understood that they were cleaning house. How much more house cleaning do they need to do after that? No, without a published explanation to attribute the cause, the net of 454 premiums - something not seen since they opened SL to all for free - has to be cause for concern.

Congrats on your first post Scarlet.
First land was discontinued about a year ago. Essentially, if you were a Premium member you were allowed a special deal on 512 m for $L1 per m. First Land was only available once to each new member. Unfortunately some people created alts for the express purpose of obtaining First Land and then selling it for profit as the going price for 512 m was as high as $L10000 at one point. LL discontinued it which made a lot of people who had gone premium to get First Land very very unhappy.

As far as the missing part of the continent goes, I prefer to think of it as being in some other dimension but many will tell you that the land mass has just been left unfinished.

Compared to the growth of SL, premium accounts have been dropping (relatively speaking) for some time.

Didn't say it wasn't cause for concern - just that it wasn't "highly disturbing" to me yet..

I have no idea how much house cleaning they did, if it's done or when it finished, or, maybe more important, how much the pre-june numbers were inflated because of the lack of cleaning. I do think that the numbers from early this year and late last year were inflated, maybe a lot, by first land flippers, though. (and this is in no way pointing fingers at Meta)

So.. Concerned but not ready to declare pieces of the sky falling yet.

Thanks I usually haunt the forums, but all my questions are usually answered without needing to post. Yay! I'm up to 2 now!

And thank you for answering my question, I always read about First Land, but had no clue what it was. Too bad the 512 for L$1 was taken so advantage of, that would encourage me to upgrade in a heartbeat. The thought of renting isn't very appealing since at any time the landlord can pull the rug up from under you, as I've read happen to people in many a post. I would love to own my own land, but the premium plus the cost of land for such a little piece with such a small amount of prims, hardly seems worth it to me at the present time.

Another reason I'm not premium yet is I'm putting off upgrading until things seem more stable. Not economics wise, but SL itself. I can't see putting rl money into something that is still so shaky. Constant crashing and freezing, stuck marching in place, getting ruthed (ugh), it still seems so unstable.

Awww, dang, Scarlet, it's not THAT bad! And welcome!

Today I am homeless and haven't been homeless since my first day in SL. I have always been a paid account.

I have never cared much about watching the Real Estate market. I didn't join SL to make a killing. I joined SL to play and to create a nice place to live and if I decided to sell anything I would do it when I had some confidence that SL was going to stick around.

I bought a small parcel on a island and as time went on I kept adding to the lot size as people moved out, - till I had 35,136m with a 150 a month tier to the estate owner. Buying a full sim seemed to be more then I needed. At one time I had stores in numerous malls and had limited success, Every big Mall I had a store in in--nice malls BTW would all close down. and the lag was usually horrible, even when they went to Class 5 servers.

Each Mall became a ghost town. quickly as some other place with higher camping chair payouts would knock them off the Popular Places list.

My land was a nature park and people would tell me how they loved wandering around on it. it was very pretty and took lots of work. It had a real nature feel to it and as long as I paid attention to cleaning, up litter and subversive objects and watching for griefers it was okay. I had no major ambitions to become a Land Baron.

So...as time went on I decided I wanted to do a non-profit project. Many people on the sim had left SL, most all my original friends from all over SL also left SL.

Not exactly inspiring confidence in me to buy my own island or get serious.

Then after my first estate owner passed away in real life and a new owner eventually had to cut his SL time way down due to real life issues, a new owner took over, who apparently has a thriving Land business. Soon, the sim only had 3 other residents all living on small parcels and I had more then half the sim and the rest was up for sale. One big tenent on the sim left so I bought that parcel.

Then I found the new owner had changed the zoning from residential to commercial so I thought I'd take a chance on putting up a tall skyscraper to do my project. Afterall there was no more then 3-4 people who would be loggin onto the sim and I knew them and they spent all their time indoors with indoor activities and wouldn't really care. There were 4 other, mostly empty island sims in the far distance. Rarely would I see more then 2-3 green blips on the other sims indicating anyone was home.

So to make a short story, long, a manager today came and told me they had complaints about my skyscraper from a far off sim. I said, "Why do they care? I can't even see the Skyscraper from the other edge of the sim and the skyscraper was positioned on an edge in such a way that no view of any sort was really obstructed and there were no island in that direction. The manager asked me what my draw distance is...I was only set to 128. After all, are other distant Island sims any of my my business? He said "try the draw distance at 512." I switched it to 512 and yes I could see the far off sims. Big deal.

So in a few momemts I decide to pack up and leave--all that year and a half of work making the nature park, beautiful, was going down the drain. I asked the manager if they wanted to buy the land back...They offered me 4L per meter (ha ha) I accepted because i wanted to get it over with and I returned all my objects, they flattened the land and that was that. Goodbye to all that time and effort due to a covenent that in reality only provides for newbie sexcapades and dog and pony shows, if you know what I mean. So goodbye my home of a year and a half.

So I spent the next 4 hours looking at land using the Land Search--the mainland was a joke. Tiny parcels full of ad farms and then on the estates I saw all "low prim" resdiential land with covenents, over priced half sims etc. 7-8 dollars a Meter. That is the first time I did any serious land searching. How lame. Large parcels that support less then a 1000 prims. "Low Prim" parcels are useless to my needs.

I saw one person advertising a low priced sim with a "old tier" price and thats about all I could find unless I want to buy my own new island on a better server. My lag scanner was shouting BAD!

While I was searching I said to myself---why in the world does anyone need a premium account unless they want to be a land baron? So I can rent out land to all those turnaround, hidden enclaves of newbie, social dog and pony shows?

Instead of buying anything, I sold all my Lindens. Next maybe I need to dump that 9.95 a month, and sell my ginko bonds (ha ha). Maybe I should just stay among the ranks of the homeless, maybe find some sucker to put me up or go the way of a wandering escort or monkish mendicant? Afterall I have all the newbie scripts too. Maybe I can get some strange avatars and do weird things.

So as an estate leasee the covenent is a double edged sword and SL is a place for scammers and pony shows. No room for anything high minded.

Yeah, one of the few advantages of mainland is the lack of void borders. You can sail from my tropical sim to the adjoining ones with just one mini hiccup as you cross sim borders. And there's no spinning ads either. If this sounds like an ad, it is. I only own one rental sim and I ain't got no stinking waiting list.