No More Private Island Reservations

I and a friend got two different answers from live support this morning, and there have been no blog announcements or changes on the FAQ. Here's the support responses:

#1
Rheya: Hello Celty_Westwick, how may I help you today?
Celty_Westwick: hi there , a friend told me yesterday that reservations for private islands on the land store will no longer be possible, is that true?
Rheya: Hi Celty
Rheya: Let me check
Rheya: checking...
Rheya: Ok it seems you can still reserve private islands on the land store
Celty_Westwick: ah, so a false rumor, ok, thanks
Rheya: sure no problem

#2
Celty_Westwick: Hi there. I am trying to get a definitive answer in regard to being able to do reservations for spaces in the land store. I asked earlier and was told yes. My friend just ask, and was told no, that reservations are no longer being done on.
Data: Reservations don't excist anymore
Celty_Westwick: Should this not be announced and stated in the FAQ?
Data: It has been changed recently, we are currently updating the FAQ
Celty_Westwick: Rheya: Hello Celty_Westwick, how may I help you today? Celty_Westwick: hi there , a friend told me yesterday that reservations for private islands on the land store will no longer be possible, is that true? Rheya: Hi Celty Rheya: Let me check Rheya: checking... Rheya: Ok it seems you can still reserve private islands on the land store Celty_Westwick: ah, so a false rumor, ok, thanks Rheya: sure no problem
Celty_Westwick: also live chat told me this morning
Celty_Westwick: so there is conflicting information be relayed by support
Data: I am sorry that you have been misinformed

That a friend was not able to make a reservation seems to confirm the latter. This is a big change. Seems very odd no communication has been made on this.

Are you sure there was no communication about this? Because I totally remember reading it on the blog within the last month. I'll search for it and post if I can find it.


ETA: Here you go...

http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/09/12/introducing-the-new-second-life-auction-system/

"Under the new system, we are no longer supporting these reservations. For Residents who have unconverted reserved land, we will honor the reservation for a three month period (the maximum a single reservation auction runs without renewal) from the launch date.

After the three month period, all unconverted reservations will be allowed to lapse. This does not alter the reserved area inherent around all regions automatically, and we still will not allow regions to be impinged upon nor allow “blocking” by others."

Ahhh, apparently the support system people missed it too! That long ago and the FAQ still does not reflect the change either.

Yes, LL isn't very good about communicating major policy changes to their support people.

Maybe LL should just shut down this experiment. They seem really unable to handle any aspect of it.

lol what kinda hippy dippy outfit are they running out there?


-------------------

Here at LL we sell X and Y

We sell X using methods 1 and 2.

method 1 has been discontinued. Sorry we forgot to tell you, even though you work 35 feet from us.

Can I expose my ignorance and ask: Does this just mean you can't set space aside, and that if you want that space in the future and there's no room for it, you would just have to get your island(s) moved?

What are the negative ramifications of this, for those are us who are unfamiliar?

My friend did this for her second sim.

Its sort of like a pre-order que. You reserve the sim then after a certain point you can buy it.

I'm less amazed they are getting rid of it than I am the didn't tell the people who have direct access to the customers.

The reservation system has been a way to reserve a grid space for a future private island sim. This allowed people to buy a sim now, but also reserve the adjoining spaces for future expansion. This has been important to people in being able to form contiguous development and build large areas that have a common ownership or common theme, such as elf lands, a futuristic area, a residential only area, etc.

Now the only way to insure building multi-area sims will be to have the money upfront for all the sims you want at once. Seems like the result may be fewer nice areas developed along a particular idea or concept.

I, for one and glad they are discountinueing this service, I have been approached several times via IM by people who have bought reservations around my sims effectively blocking me in and wanting 300-500USD per reservation slot... it was a well meaning service, that unfortunately started to become a form of extortion

I was under the impression that you could just get the sims moved. There was a discussion of this a long time ago where people were answering that worrying about getting blocked, etc. was "a non-issue."

...or their customers...or their FAQs....or the Knowledge Base...

Admittedly I did see the Blog post in which they mentioned that reservations were going away. But I was in the land store a few days ago and they still mention Reservations all over the place in there, like nothing's changed. So I looked in the FAQ and saw it hadn't been changed in a long, long time.

So even having read the blog when it came out and knowing that reservations were supposed to be going away, after visiting the land store I was left confused and wondering if reservations had been done-away with and they just hadn't updated anything, or if the blog was premature and refering to maybe removing reservations sometime in the distant future.

-Atashi

Absolutely. I've got a few horror stories of my own, but luckily saw this coming and managed to sidestep most of the nonsense.

Automated systems are the first to be gamed.

One *can* get sims moved for free if you buy another - rather than preventing the buy, the Company will move your sim group.

But the problem with that is, your location's persistence is important. Move sims, and many people will think that you have just disappeared or gone out of business.

* * * * *

It still boggles my mind how corrupt things can get on the grid, and such practises with reservations are kidstuff by comparison.

Most of us know what happened with the famous SL 'bank' scam, which even got itself listed on a so-called SL better business bureau.

Well, the money disappearing was bad enough, but the icing on the cake was this: there wasn't even a red-flag warning on the bureau when the money took a walk.

Last I looked it was quietly delisted from the customer list as if it was never there. Just amazing.

Actually, it wouldn't surprise me if out-of-office Liasons (most of them haven't ever even seen LL I think?) read about policy changes on the blog just like we do .

Well this definitely sounds like an issue!

Still they should email (at least) the people who speak for them.

They jump in feet first a lot. However I think this is worth persevering with, they just seem to be like excited kids at time who can't wait for Christmas. They don't take time to test systems before wanting to unleash them.