What's the consensus on openspace over-subdividing?

Yes but theres no commute time in SL.

And people are no longer into the whole neighbor thing- RL has conditioned most people out of that years ago.

People who do want a community will look for a themed build like your stuff or a few others.

for those people who dont care about community -

Heck you can afford WAY more relative privacy on an openspace sim.

The issue is economic. The margins on openspaces are low, henceforth an estate owner isn't likely to be able to subsidise his estate with openspaces, so if openspaces dig too deeply into the general estate market something is going to have to give, either openspaces will have to increase their tier prices or there are going to be a few tales of woe on the forums from homeless residents.

Well I can only talk from experience but I've got a few people who bring their SL friends/family with them. They expand or rent other plots.

Or LL will just do the smart thing and let anyone own an openspace without needing to own a full sim.

It's rather silly to have go through a third party to get one and being able to get one from LL directly removes all the inherent risk of going through someone else.

It would also cause quite a bloodbath when you consider how many openspaces there are on the grid, that would be really ugly.

A bloodbath how?

Because people would abandon an openspace they're in renting in favour of getting one from LL? That's not LL's problem and I don't really see it happening, there's always a big market for pure rentals with nothing upfront.

Getting an openspace from LL isn't a rash thing to do either: their top resale value is $75 so buying one from LL would mean that you're fine with never recuperating the purchase price.

I can see literally thousands of people paying 295/mo per region immediately downgrading to 75/mo, if openspaces were available to everyone.

There are a lot of region owners that will think: 15k prims, or get by with 3.75k prims... and use the rest for a new car payment!

Anyone with over 1/4 region of mainland will find them rather compelling as well.

Finally, people with over 1/4 region on private estates will find them attractive too.


Perfect storm: thousands of (295 - 75 USD) tier downgrades, the mainland emptying, and land barons paying incredibly huge, stable annual amounts (over 89,000 USD annually in my case) losing all tier advantage on openspaces. Plus our standard regions will empty like the mainland.

If you were the Company, would this be a smart move? It would rock the inworld economy *hard* in one day, with deeply lasting effects. Prediction: we'd see mainland shrink within months, as much of it would turn into a vast desolate wasteland. The mainland is the biggest private estate out there, really - and survives just like the rest of ours.

It's like gasoline. As long as it's the only game in town, record profits are to be made from keeping the price of gasoline high. And one is likely to become quickly addicted to the profits.

Only when there is a viable alternative does it make sense to downshift to the Walmart strategy of cheap-as-dirt regions, low performance but high volume.

* * * * *

Ultimately I see the day when starter quantities of land will be literally free (heh, I'll be offering that myself in September to new users) - and competition will drive down the cost of tier to the point that land barony will cease being worthwhile for anybody.

But that day won't come in 2008, and not for a while I think.

QFT

If I could get an openspace sim for $250 down and $75 per month without having to own a full island, I'd jump off the mainland ship in a heartbeat. And, believe me, I know a lot of others who would too.

Yeah, I could go and rent one today but I'd be living under that ever present threat of estate owner suddenly pulling the plug or suffering some RL setback that causes me to lose my home without warning. Thanks, but no thanks.

It they were to open up openspace sims to anyone that wants one, the mainland would be deserted in no time flat and, I'm sure, most of the private estates to, as Desmond said.

Desmond always is...

I wonder how much of the mainland breaks down into areas that own more than 1/4 sim, though.


I'm curious what people in the category are currently paying for tier. In particular if you're under the US$75/month 1/4 sim tier.

At present, I am at the $40 US 1/8 sim tier but I just tiered down from full sim tier last month due to gasoline/oil prices in RL. However, I could do the $75/month if the land was available in my current home sim.

I didn't own the entire sim I was in before but I did have most of it and over 12,000 prims. But, even with my home area fully built out, I used only a fraction of those prims. I could easily live alone, with my partner, on an openspace sim and enjoy the benefits of the privacy.

I've seen OpenSpace sims huuuurting... the time dilation ballooning all day on a completely empty region and nothing the owner could do about it...

They could do that today already. I honestly can't imagine someone paying $220 extra every month just for the privilege of being able to "own" a sim rather than rent one.

It's the same amount of tier so there's no cost difference and there's no difference in server costs.

If they found it that attractive they'd get one today already and it's always better if people are paying LL directly rather than going through a intermediary.

And again, getting an openspace from LL would mean paying $250 without ever getting it back because openspaces have barely any resale value and there's still going to be a large market for true rentals and openspaces aren't suited for everything or everyone.

If people were to flee the mainland en masse and make it an utterly abandoned wasteland then that would be because the mainland no longer has a future and it wouldn't be what people are looking for. The same for your fear of tenants fleeing private sims.

There would be some shifting around, but overall everything would just remain relatively stable.introducing it.

I guess even SL needs its slums...

Hmm, that's news to me - I was under the impression that you had to have at least one standard region to have any openspace ones.

If you just mean 'renting' - then yeah, there are lots of people who dumped their own regions, then got openspaces from friends who let them pay the flat 75/mo exactly at cost. Often in conjunction with evasion of VAT payment. Exactly how they avoid VAT with $L purchases I'm not really sure.

I also know a whole raft of people whose at-cost-rental 'friends' up and vanished, sticking them with tier and no explanations. Why do I know? Because people in that predicament tend to ask me how I handle it when someone vanishes without paying, especially a friend.

Of course I don't really know the future. But I do know that the mere offering of light use regions to established region owners has already rocked the land market pretty good.

Probably a lot of surprises ahead.

* * * * *

Oh, and if time dilation goes crazy on an openspace, just restart the thing. Never seen that fail to restore td .99 and FPS 45. Rare to have trouble, but I've definitely seen a few instances in the last few months.

This is telling, isn't it?

Perhaps people are being overcharged for their privacy.

Avoidance not evasion subtle difference.

I'm not sure how many of your customers are European but there are thresholds on when you should charge VAT and I doubt many business owners in Second Life meet those thresholds.

This is a very interesting question indeed. I don't take paypal or cash.


EU citizens pay VAT when they buy $L with Euro, as I understand it.

Wouldn't it be double-taxation if they paid VAT again on the $L transactions done with the very $L they just bought?


For example, should a $L 100 shirt be $L 117 for Euro folk, or $L 114 or whatever depending on their member state?

How would the SL shirt vendor even know? "Shirt Vending Object: Umlaut detected in chat text. Price adjusted!"

Would Inspector Clouseau from the EU come to his United States home?

I could have this completely wrong - it's a long time since I bought any Linden Dollars, and I may have misunderstood what you're saying, but I think we pay VAT on the transaction fee, not on the Linden Dollars themselves, if that makes sense? We also pay VAT on the premium and land tier fees.

Back to the openspace thread - have LL ever used them as part of the mainland? I could imagine a swampy/bayou area of them, with different rules applying (no parcels less than 1/4 region, no terraforming, that sort of thing). Well, it's nice to dream ...

Surty ..

for swamp lands check out the wastelands in search.

I regulary trade with L$ and never had any VAT to pay on that, obviusly you don't pay VAT on the L$ themself because you buy from other residents and private sales do not have to charge VAT, the comision is a service cost and may or may not fall under the VAT rules but so far LL doesn't charge VAT on that.

paying in L$ you can never be charged any taxes, income sale or vat because L$ is not a real currency.

Because of the VAT there will always be a demand for open space sims and in a smaller degree regular sims trough others tho there other reasons for going trough an estate owner, the better once give better suport then LL does, I'm always willing to give advice on sim managment and help with landscaping.

Hi Abigail - I wasn't clear from Desmond's post whether he thought we paid it on Linden Dollars - your post clarifies that we definitely don't.

According to LL:

"What are the items for which Linden Lab charges VAT?

Anything that you pay Linden Lab for will have VAT applied. This includes:

* Premium account registration
* Purchases from the Land Store
* Land use fees (tier)
* Private Region fees
* Land auctions
* LindeX transaction fees
"

cheers,
Surty ..

It's one of those "it's subject to VAT, except not really" thingies .

LL says the LindeX transaction fees are indeed subject to VAT but they decided to "eat the cost" in that particular case and European residents have the same fees as the rest of the world so for all pratical purposes you can treat it as not subject to VAT since they're the same for everyone.

Thanks Kitty - hopefully it wasn't an oversight that they're now fixing

And thanks for the pointer to the wastelands, Dekka - not quite what I had in mind, but fascinating nonetheless.

cheers
Surty ..