Land Business crisis ?

Governor Linden remains the estate owner even if you purchase a mainland sim. Why? Because if you sell some of it, or abandon it, it has to go somewhere. It's mainland, and as an estate owner you can't just abandon it - you'd have to abandon the whole island and it's not as simple.

Hi Wilhelm,

Island, versus mainland...

Maybe another thread I recently started may be interesting for you...

Island, versus mainland...

You will find that via my name.

Disagree............our community is uniting

I'll believe it when I see it, and I don't. There's pockets of good areas, and always the threat that someone sells and the next owner cuts it into 16 m2 plots.

.co.uk domains were less than that a few years ago

I think we're at crossed purposes here, my main argument against land ownership is the high cost of tier, I don't think the upfront cost of the parcel is the key issue. Which is why I don't think a cheaper parcel is that important, nor that it will see people running to own land.

I'm not sure land barony will come to an end anytime soon. From my perspective I'd welcome lower running costs, I don't think it would effect my business model much at all in terms of rental space but if it did then lower tier costs just mean I can take my time unloading my land rather than having to panic. I still think many people will want to try before they buy and that's where land owners will be able to rent space.

Funny that you mention Google though, I think they're coming anyway. Changes to search, being able to search from outside SL and talk of searching profiles from outside the game engine all point to google. I know I'm going off on a tangent here.

LL will still have to carry the Asset servers, the login servers, the IM and group load, presence ....

Hihhih,

This is funny. We seem to go totally off topic.
Initial Question was, has the land business experience a crisis lately.
If yes, why

However, answers have reached us quiet clear I think a few pages back.

Thanks to you Raymond.

A momentum of uniting is something one feels, not sees

So in other words that's why you can't use the covenant part for mainland. I figured there was some explanation and since governor linden is not intending to set a covenant anytime soon mainland will remain unregulated as a result.

this always happens otherwise threads would just "stop" but since everyone said its a bubble and the bubble burst (or something similar to that) now we are talking about other stuff

... and recover cost of development, support, G&A, etc., from some collection of revenue streams. I've never understood the expectation that hosting one's own server would reduce cost of having a grid-connected sim: it really only saves LL an outsourced hosting fee--a hyper-competitive, low-margin business that would account for but a tiny fraction of current tier charges.

I don't see sim open sourcing making grid-connected land any more of a commodity than it is already because I don't see grid connection fees being appreciably lower per sim than tier is now. (In fact, for some time, LL could do good business with an interconnect fee substantially *higher* than tier per sim: consider who might pay handsomely right now to choose the hardware and corporate network on which their sims run.)

yep. And they charge for support if you want it, for all that. That's what you pay for with a premium account.

I can totally see it eventually that they may limit assets on basic accounts. They are already talking of charging groups for voice chat. And like Network Solutions selling server space for people who just want to buy it all at once, webspace registration name and all, they will still sell sims. But it will be much cheaper for them to expand the grid quickly to greater size, with other companies buying hardware and hosting and maintaining it themselves, and just hooking up to the grid.

I dont think that's going to happen, I hear the next generation of the sim platform should be able to host more sims than they currently can now. The costs are more likely to come down than up overall. LL isn't making their main money from selling sims. They're making it from collecting tier. Collecting tier without major hardware assets to maintain is a whole lot more gravy than having to source all that hardware themselves.

But I agree... I don't think this is going to kill land barony. It's going to change it, in a big way though. Those who can't make the transition to a server based land model may find themselves in a bind. People will have more choices in which to buy from, and it's likely going to really kill the lower end of the land business.

I'm slightly afraid that the Company will 'Lineage2' themselves.

That is, come out with a great world that can be pirated to private servers - thousands upon thousands of them - easily.

But never get to really be good by that method - in fact, the result was that a Lineage2 in private hands is typically just another overused toy.

Never interconnected to other worlds, beyond-terrible uptime and support, many features constantly broken, and never on the same revision.

That's what happened to Lineage2 in private, low budget hands - although admittedly it wasn't lawful to have one of these servers, it seems less than cost-effective to go after the scofflaws and there are still tons out there.

All they did was parasite a bit off the core, diluting the original Lineage2 world and being horrific for Joe Average as corrupt GM's everywhere made the official version seem like relative paradise.

A horrific tragedy of the commons - while it was great for the absolute lowest common denominator, the de-facto open sourcing drove anyone seriously interested in that kind of thing to Lineage2's competition more than anything else.

The last batch of mainland for auction was on the 4th Sep 2007.

Until now, 9th Sep 2007, Linden has not released any mainland for auction. According to what they mentioned on the blog, they are behind the schedule by 40 mainlands.

Meanwhile price has moved up slightly from under 6 to about 6.1-6.3 L$/sqm. Price will likely to move up as long as Linden stop releasing land.

I believe Linden will again reduce the release of mainland for auction to 6 per day when they review their land supply on 15 Sep 2007.

My understanding is that Lindens will slow down the release of new sims and they will not try to catch up the missing 40 sims from the previous 5 days. The reason is simply because they understood that they overdid it.

When they started pre-announce the rythm of new land releases they announce 10 sims per day. For 1st -15 th of September they said "down to no more than 8 regions per day from ".
There is a difference there. No more than 8 means that 0 is also an option.

The reason for this slow down has been that what they watch might not be what we as residents see in the search function known as market bottom. They look the indicator in their economic statistics page , "Avg L$ Paid Per Square Meter" in Land Sales by residents. This was well above 7l/meter during July, then it dropped at 7 at the end of August and the first days of September fell to 6,5. My guess is that they would like to keep this indicator above 7 and below 8. Unfortunately for all of us and for them, this indicator hasn't suceed to make it over 7. in few days it dropped more than 0,5 lindens/meter.

As for the land market as a whole. I have gathered data from all auctions in SL from early 2004 to our days. I present some analysis on these data on my site.

http://www.brazilcomet.com/br/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=34

There you can see the history of land prices , and all the ups and down we had till now.
We can easily see that current costs of land in auction are very near the historic low end and all these without taking into consideration the introduce of different tier private estates back in November of 2006.
All these tell me that Lindens would like cheap land in mainland to increase the number of premiums, but on the other hand they would like to keep selling private estates at high rate since they get 295 U$ from each one of them. So for me the only way to stabilize things would be for Lindens to reduce a bit land supply till avergae prices/meter get over 7l/meter again.

You are right. "No more than 8 regions per day from 10 per day currently."

So they can stop or release a max of 8 regions per day from 1st to 15th Sep. In that case, we are likely to see an increase in land price from the current 6.1 to 6.3 L$/sqm.

Will be increasing to see what they said for 16th to 30th Sep. Probably the same "No more than 8 regions per day".

I dont think this can be compaired to Lineage 2. That thing was a mess before it hit release because of zero foresight and private servers are never actualy up to date anyhow. Second life is attempting to be an opensource toy anyhow and are trying to make a kind of internet in 3D style so its entire reason for existance is now to create a basic operating platform for servers (like say linux and windows only for 3D websites) and the client with hosts taking it on. I suppose I could run a server here in my office and I do in fact intend to try one but with the amount of power they need a decent server set up would be with a host of some sort even if its a dedicated one. Content is already all made by the players not the company so there is nothing there that will get stolen. I also have no idea what sort of hardware is needed for the datat storage this is a different server altogether anyhow. Yes there will be mini second life versions in people's basements but they would never run as well as one with proper power and on high end servers that you would have hosted by some company.

The land system was done and dealt with ages ago in reality. There isnt the business there as there used to be last year, and certainly dealing in land is difficult. I still see lots of plots for sale at OVER L$20sqm and it hasnt sold for 6 months...... but at the same time they wont lower the cost as " they paid that much". Land is cheap at the moment and i cant really see it making a huge comeback in price as a lot of users just buy it direct without having it go through the hands of a land seller.. plus its a saturated market as EVERYONE thinks its easy without the need for creative talents.

I would advise to hold what ya got and hope for better times..... or learn photoshop

I dont want to be Anshe. But I wouldn't mind turning back the clock to last November. Good times in the good ole pre-landbot, no sims to auction for a month days.

Still no new sims to auction. So they are taking a week off. Interesting.

I have to admit, I've been watching the drop in land prices with some measure of happiness. Since owning land is the only reliable way to gain space to build anything in SL (sandboxes are simply griefer-magnets, and those that aren't are usually filled to the brim with people constructing mega-builds), buying a plot is the only option for someone looking to create certain kinds of content.
In order to have a decent home/workshop/whatever AND enough leftover prims to use for building/modelling, you need at least a 1024 plot - which kicks you up to the next tier level.

Since you have to have a premium membership just to *buy* the land - getting bumped to the next payment level for an additional 512m is a real aggravation. SL simply costs too much...that's it, plain and simple. Whatever enjoyment you get from your land ownership gets drained away when you realize you own nothing more substantial than a dry popcorn fart.

Mainland land ownership is nothing more than a gigantic crapshoot. With very little control or option over the kind of horrid nastiness a neighbor can decide to erect (pun intended) right next to your parcel. So...build a skybox...and look at all the rest of the floating skyboxes surrounding your own, and realize that even the sky gets crowded with other people's cr*p.

Most landowners and landlords (not ALL, mind you...but MOST, IMHO), simply exist to suck money out of the environment, and provide nothing creative in return. Looking to score a return on investment, in-world, and waving around copies of dog-eared treatesies by Adam Smith about how the rising tide of lassez-faire capitalism lifts all ships.

But SL isn't the real world, is it? Wasn't it supposed to be different? Wasn't it supposed to be a bit more enjoyable?

Because if it's nothing more than a re-hash of the cr*p I have to deal with in the real world, then it sucks.

Land ownership in SL should not be an expensive proposition. Land barons should not be able to control the price at market - and yeah, there should be caps on the prices associated with land. Screw investment in "virtual real estate"...I could give less than a plugged rat's *ss about someone trying to flip a profit in SL. Go build something cool, script something cool, or design something cool if you want to "make money" in SL. Just because you decided to plunk down a wad of cash for a sim doesn't mean squat to me.

As soon as I can wrap my head around it, I'll trot off to plug myself into my own solipsistic magrathean sim off the grid. Screw SL and its membership for the time being. If they ever decide to take steps to make a premium account worth having again, maybe I'll buy one. But not for what they're charging, now...and certainly not for the "priviledge" of paying some *sshat "virtual realtor" for a parcel of pathetic prims.

my gosh you are soo depressive. if SL makes you feel so bad i think your in the wrong game. but your talkin apsolute rubbish realy. for a start. land barons do not control the market, LL do. secondly, there are loads a stunning places on mainland that look fantastic and loads of peeps enjoy, i thinkyour just hoping to get a bargain at base price that is highley desirable and quite frankly although good deals come about all the time, you usualy pay for what you get. so stop being such a tight fisted skinflint and spend a couple of extra dollars on a nice piece of land that suites your needs.

either that or stick to myspace

Maybe they're still detoxing from Chicago?

Ahhhhh. Another voice of the Glorious People's Republic of Second Life Revolution calling for the end of capitalism. Do worry my friends, your mostly flat moonrock 1024 ...identical to everyone else's, is coming.