Price Increase for Islands...Poor Timing?

I bet Desmond pees himself when he sees this! He's mentioned he's in line to purchase more land

Unless a grandfathered $295/month sim becomes a selling point. I'm not a Linden basher, but something about the way they made this announcement and telegraphed another change for Q3 has me a little concerned. I still may buy another sim at the $1000 level though.

But it's still good for Second Life. What's good for Second Life is good for you.

I want to see even lower prices. I feel Second Life is overcrowded with content and more land will help to spread out the content more thinly and improve frame rates and reduce lag for everybody. People don't want their neighbors building on top of them and with lower prices we'll be able to afford to buy larger parcels to keep the neighbors at a distance.


I want a 512 draw distance on the mainland!

They must have found a load of servers that fell of the back of a truck

Or... hmmm... maybe they partnered with someone that makes server hardware, and that someone gave them a stellar deal on cheap server hardware... Now who could do that for Linden Lab... nah, that's just crazy talk.

It's got to be a reaction to less people spending less money in SL. I just wonder how bad things really are to drop prices that drastically.

In the past, when they started dumping more Mainland sims all at once, they RAISED the starting bid to $1250. The fact that they lowered it WAY down to $750 and said they are dumping ten regions a day into May tells me things are pretty bad in their profit/loss column.

Since Desmond is in it for the long haul, things like this don't affect him as much as land speculators, or the poor folk who are holding a small number of Islands or full sims that they paid $1695 or over $2000 for respectively.

If anything, moving forward it means MORE Caledon sims in our future. (just guessing)

No they haven't - You try selling a second island for $1695 when some one could buy a brand new one from LL the same price. Only people who would have gone for that is someone who needs an island in a hurry and you wanted to sell - which you still could do and sell for that price - people in a hurry will always pay above normal costs.

Good Points. Perhaps with the increase of island owners/renters and decrease in startup costs, it could increase population, which in turn increases a need for created content to buy. Same goes for mainland. In addition, when mainland is cheaper, its flipped faster between hands and neighbors will increase their tier holdings.

The new land store is going to deliver islands at time of purchase, at least that's how I read it, so getting an existing one won't be faster anymore.

"Our new Land Store is moving through testing and will be launched in April, perhaps within a week or two depending on how final testing goes. It will be cross browser compatible and will provide nearly instant delivery of a new island after completing checkout."

Ahh you are right - I missed that bit - thanks

Still it does not alter the fact that most people would have bought a new island at $1695 rather than an existing island at $1695 (especially with the risk of being scammed ever present) - ergo the existing islands were still not worth $1695 after purchase which was my main point.

Surely this does not really affect many island owners who rent out/sell their plots? Most people wont be able to afford the tier of a full island anyway regardless of the drop in price and so will still turn to the same people as always to get their land from.

Probably just a reaction to faster server hardware coming out that doesn't cost all that much more. They can probably host more SIMS on a system, and they are probably using the same technologies most big IT shops do in being able to spin up a server in no time.

Then again thats just what LL needs is MORE SIMS to crash, reboot, or not let people lot into or teleport between.

Tier needs to come down next. Full SIMs shouldn't need to be so costly per month to host. We basically give our virtual windows servers away now as our hosting costs don't rise much. Only SAN storage really costs much these days.. I woudl think a SIM doesn't take up all that much space.



It will be sad if it does not. A new crop of estate owners should be able to spin out SIMs at a lower monthly cost to their clients, forcing the old timers to drop their rates. In this economy it seems silly to have to shell out nearly $50 a month for a piece of land that has other people's huge brick buildings towering over you to the point where you can't see the sun set. The overall scale of land to building size just seems wrong, maybe this will help that too...

It won't increase population. The only thing that might entice more people would be bringing back First Land. These price changes only affect those of us already here.

Even a major network show devoted to SL didn't provide a lasting boost the economy. And no sense in advertising. They got so much free PR over the last two years that it must equal a $100 million ad campaign.

People came. They crashed. Then they left. I see rough times ahead.

Then why not just keep prices the same, dump more Mainland and pocket the profits? Or decrease prices a more modest amount?

They would be if those that paid the 1675 were guaranteed a different rate per month than the new rate. Either maintaining the 295 or having a lower rate. Its the only advantage that LL can give to us - that paid top dollar for our estates - over the new, lower cost estates.

This is a drop in the Initial cost, not a drop in the monthy cost. How exactly would a new estate owner be able to charge less tier, when their tier bill will be the same as everyone elses? I don't follow the logic.

Yep, I've always suspected that Havoc 4 and Mono was more about improving sim performance so then they could run more sims per box. and it was never about improving stability or making things move smoother.

But still, if it means cheaper sims for everybody then it's a good thing.

No point in talking about would be's - before this announcement they were not worth $1695 for the most part and now they aren't either though presumbly they are worth less than before - granted.

Have you seen the formulas used in computing monthly tier costs? They usually build in X amount over tier to cover their initial SIM cost. If you factor in the same months, it should result in a lower rate.

That, or they will keep rates the same and recoup their costs quicker. Point being that new estate owners *could* lower cost. Drop in tier would help more, obviously.

It is all speculation of course.

I think you are right about that.



I wonder about this too. If mainland prices are dropping though, and now that ad farms are at least a bit more under control, could lower prices for buying mainland make it more enticing for would-be renters therefore making the rental market more competitive. I don't know as I'm not in the biz.

Wow the blog comments must be doing wonders for Jack Linden's morale.

Well maybe that's how some calculate their tier, but certainly not everyone, myself included. If that's how some figure their tier, then no wonder they are double what I charge in some cases And no wonder they are usually half full when i'm 90-100% full.

Good or bad? *goes to see*

If you assume that LL was being truthful then $195/month for a sim is their "break-even" price and that was before they had to pay a third-party to handle voice.

There's also 90% of the population that doesn't directly pay LL anything for their use of SL (and when they do indirectly, they rent on an estate which is far less actual profit than if they owned mainland) and the last semi-official word (admittingly months back now) was that the LindeX was costing money rather than making money due to large-scale fraud so the only way to make that work is if true land owners (those who pay LL directly) not only pay for their land and their own access but for all the costs incurred by all the free accounts as well.

You can't just focus on how much it costs for a sim/server to sit in a colocation because that's not all your tier is used for.

I like Jack, I really do but this announcement is just unbelievable. LL seem to be treating this as if islands were a one time purchase, in which case, heck your island from a year or two ago is old fashioned.

However that's not the way it works here, we pay monthly fees. The whole estate land model has been undermined.