When are full mainland sims coming back?

In December, Jack Linden said they would resume auctioning full mainland sims in January. The month is a third over and so far, no full sims. Perhaps the the base of L$8.4 per meter for plots 512 or larger is still considered a bargain for LL and the are not ready to drive prices down yet. I think the answer is, the fewer mainland sims available, the more people will turn to Islands for full sim ownership, fetching more tier for our friends in San Fran.

Thoughts?

Also, what will Louisville be like in 2012?

Do islands bring in higher tier? It depends on the proportion of the (main)land held by owners of more than 1/4 sim, since the tier rate per square metre for a 16k owner is higher than for islands. Do we have access to the information needed to work that out?

I believe you are correct, a divided mainland sim will bring more tier. Perhaps this is why they are auctioning so many partial sims but no full ones.

They want to auction off the abandoned parcels first. They get revenue from that without having to put up any extra servers plus clean up the mainland a bit.

They are clearing up abandoned land, which is a very good idea and something that should hopefully mean they stay on top of abandoned land.

Some of this is good, I recently saw a whole load of 16M ad plots were now Governor Linden owned, hopefully he doesn't sell them as 16M plots but the land they are next to is devalued by their existence even if no ads are on them.

The downside of this is that mainland prices are creeping right up again.

You're a bit grumpy today, my friend.

I think we can all agree that very, very few sims are owned by a single person or group. Most mainland sims are owned by anywhere from a handful to hundreds of owners. I am making this up, but if we assume an average SIM is owned by 16 people holding 4096 sqm each, LL would make:

16 x $6/month premium = $96
16 x $25/month land fee = $400

That's a heckuva lot more than the tier fees on a private sim. I seriously doubt that private SIMs generate more revenue for LL. I suspect mainland SIMs generate more revenue, but also more headaches with bickering neighbors.

That said, it will be interesting to see full sims fall into the queue again. I just bought an old mainland SIM - a full sim with no ads! Can you believe it? It's lovely to see the SIMs from back in the day when thought when into cranking them out. Steamboat is a lovely snow sim with a nice cliff to a linden river and an interesting stone wall/road running through. I doubt we'll see any sims of that quality, even if full sims do drop back in the queue.

I personally will not be buying anything from LL auction system for quite some time unless it is very, very special. The whole automatic debit for payment coupled with no option to buy for group simply makes it unappealing. I will wait to buy off others who don't mind missing the group tier bonus.

i believe they actually sold all the 16s to the landbots
how that for forward thinking.

Ah, but Jack didn't say they would, he said they may. No promises. Here's the direct quote from the blog: "In January 2008 we may begin to auction whole regions once more." He also said "We want to keep pushing hard on getting as much of this abandoned land back into use and generally cleaned up, so expect to see more L$ auctions being posted to the auction pages through January." My guess is, they're still busy pushing all that abandoned mainland. There's still plenty around that hasn't gone up for auction yet.

Source: http://blog.secondlife.com/category/land/

Louisville is already a wasteland. We would give it to Indiana, but they don't want it either. One of my favorite movie scenes is when Louisville gets nuked at the end of "Return of the Living Dead".

Do you think they would package small parcels together if they were adjacent, ie if four 16m parcels where in a line would they ever think of auctioning it as 64m plot, ok so it would be long shape, 4 x 16, or even attach a 16m plot to 512m plot making it 528m?

Funny you should mention this - I just now submitted a support ticket asking this question about a lot that's upcoming for auction in Disl (auction number assigned, but not yet listed) - it borders an adfarm, and there are five 16 sq.m. lots abandoned to Gov. Linden that are adjacent to the larger lot that will be auctioned. They didn't combine the lots, so I'm asking them if they will do it and suggesting that they considering doing this in the future, because it's a great way to get those pesky tiny parcels back on the tier rolls for non-ad purposes.

I suggest that if you see any lots like this, ask the Lindens if they'll combine them before they auction them off. It can't hurt, and maybe they'll think it's a good idea and adopt it grid-wide. Hey, I can be optimistic once in a while, can't I?

You are not wrong.... This variation in availability certainly can benefit them, not only committing people to island purchases during times like this, but when there are a lot of new mainland sims coming, they also get to "double-dip" on the mainland tier side as people frantically move around. The new auction system certainly changes things, though, making the incentive to put out full sims less a priority for the movement aspect, but also performs a service to Residents who've been coveting the abandoned lots nearby.

For anyone who may remember that I "anti land griefed" my neighbour's parcel in Black Art to prevent a pile up of garbage on their land (I created a small Japanese village, successfully obscuring the garbage that had already been left)... that land was just auctioned, bought by a baby-landbaron-wannabe (no way it's a baron from the old school) who is now trying to flip it.

Are we going to see a rise in landbaronism for a little while again? Although I hardly think these parcels are really worth playing the game with. I still see a lot of yellow on the map in parts.

Huh?

Not likely. There is very little profit in it anymore, unless you are a landbot runner. Otherwise, you have to have a reputation that sends people directly to you when they want to sell their land so you get it before it ends up on the for sale list.

I think it might be worth LL waiting a little for the dust to settle on the banking ban before dropping more mainland:

a) the more honourable banks may be offloading land investments to cover their obligations - this might push land prices down anyway. Any artificial push down on prices from LL is not going to help either such banks or their investors.

b) some relied on such investments to help support their tiers, and some may lose or be at risk of losing investments. Those in such a position (whatever your opinion of their wisdom), will be unlikely to be looking to expand their land (and in general their investment in SL per se) but will probably be thinking about the exact opposite.

Matthew

It's been almost a year since I've come to SL, and I must say, I've never seen an "organization" or "institution" (I use the terms loosely) shift and respond to stimuli so quickly. The heyday of Landbarons, BIAB, ad farms, camping, gambling etc. ... all comes and goes so rapidly or changes form. It's really quite fascinating to watch. The only thing stable is the sex industry.

The impression I've gathered from a couple of office hours this week is that LL has enough abandoned etc. land to keep them, and the auction block, busy thru february. And that they very much want that land to be returned to active use.

However, no one asked if new full sims would ALSO be coming up.

Incidently, they also showed consciousness of ad farm issues, seems they are discussing various solutions inhouse. Mentioned both muting and zoning; I have an impression a decision on that will not be coming soon, but it seems to be under active discussion. They may come back to the community for more feedback before making any decisions.

Glad to see you are getting some inside scoop. Thanks for the info!

They've auctioned off something like 18 sims worth of recovered land. There's no rush to be launching full mainland sims whilst there is so much abandoned land around.

Actually, there was one full sim auctioned the other day. However, I believe it was a full sim owned by one person that must have gone into default on their payments. I don't think it was a "new" sim.

That being said I still believe the Lindens are creating artificial boom/bust land cycles deliberately. At least there has been a pattern that has gone through a few cycles now where there is a period of huge land supply at very low prices--followed by a tightening of supply to cause a price rise. This gives people who own land the illusion that virtual property has value and could be considered an "investment". It also give people the chance to sell if they want and make a tidy profit.

The only thing I can see that could complicate this cycle are three things. The first is LL could choose to either raise or lower tier charges. The second is the future ability for outside servers to patch into the network. Perhaps a third is the oft discussed "competition" which has yet to materialize in any meaningful form.

I love playing with land in SL, but I always try to keep in mind that LL could have a thousand servers ready to patch in should they choose to.

A far cry from when they were dumping 8-16 sims a day for weeks on end. I'm in no rush to see that happening. I just when people talk land.