Osgiliath roleplay area deleted without warning.

Hi Im a lurker i confess and i probably should continue being one but yesterday something happened that got me so frustrated and angry that i just got to have some response. Osgiliath and the surrounding Tolkien roleplay sims were sold and deleted without warning.

So since this is a question forum heres my question. How can this happen? For me the behavoiur of those responsible is so shocking that i cant believe it.

http://www.massively.com/2008/05/28/osgiliath-lost/

Maybe whoever owned those sims desperately needed to raise funds and sold them. The new owners may want to do something completely different with the land, as is their right.

Of course it is a shame for those who have played there, but ultimately, they aren't the ones shelling out the dough to LL.

Ouch, looked amazing from the pic.

No way to tell though. If the 6 sims had one owner...that owner has the right to sell them. Beyond that there is too much you don't know.

Was the 10k expense all absorbed by that one guy, did he somehow get shafted, did he offer to sell them to the group, was the group unprepared to buy them, etc etc etc....personal dynamics and disputes and such as well ?

No matter the reason, owner has the right to sell, which was part of the risk for the group. A waste, looks like an awful lot of detailed work...but 6 sims is a lot of monthly cost.

Well i understand the need to be responsible with money its the without warning part that i find so respectless. And there were no warning no explaination nothing ....

From an ethical point of view it's plain wrong for a estate owner to sell his sims wihtout letting the tennants at least know about it.
From a bussenis point of view it's silly to boot exsisting tennants unless you already have better paying tennants.
From a legal point of view, the new and old estate owners can do anything they want, Luckely most estate owners look at the ethical point of view first.

why did they lease the sims from a resident rather than buying sims?

This is a good reason why such a large project should not be put in the hands of someone who can make a decision like this. Sad...very sad.

These kind of actions only makes me wonder: why people keep making threads about camp, alts, boots etc etc and don't complain and argue and post about these actions? LL should stop acting as if they only concern about just a few RL issues and act as a true government instead of give the appearence of working to help some lobbies (I'm remembering the prices of Bay City just as an example)

In RL even if we rented a place if the owner decided to destroy it it would have to advise and in some cases it would have to give indemnity to the tenants (at least in Europe all rights are preserved, I don't know what happen on Uncle Sam's land)... that gives me another question, why LL still allow the word "sale/sell" on private estates with it's only a rent/lease act?

Acting to help some lobbies at the expense of everyone else is what governments do best. So your wish has been granted.

Not sure what you expect the Lindens to do because a guy sold sims he owned ?

Again, you have no way to see what his perspective is from a financial view in rl and emergencies happen. Or even if not, I mean wasn't that part of the risk in not owning the sims themselves ?

I feel bad for the people who put such apparently loving work into it, but, I mean the guy sold what he owned for some reason no one knows. I am not sure where the Lindens could be expected to do anything. More people would be upset if you had to go through a Linden board of review before selling the land you are paying real money tier for, and again 6 sims is a hefty monthly cost.

What I read from the article, is that the sims were rented, and the landlord decided to sell them without notice. That does of course make the landlord a huge @ss.

Nevertheless, renting always is a risk. Myself, I rent my parcel from a rather trustworthy landlord, but it can happen that he decides to leave SL. Now I am pretty sure he will give a notice though, but that does not make it any safer.

On the other hand, it is cheaper then owning land. My rent is lower then my tier (with VAT) would be, and I did not have to pay upfront. When there is trouble, I can address Estate Managers who respond faster then Linden Labs do.

So in the end, I would either make contact with a long-term sim-owner to rent you the sims, or buy them yourselves. Since the latter might be tricky for a group, the first option seems quite smart. They might have the cash to fork over for the purchase, and might be happy to be sure that the sims are rented long-term. Apparantly your landlord was not in SL for the long run...

Addition to my last post:
Maybe you should contact either Desmond Chang or Steve Mahfouz, both trustworthy sim owners who, if not intersted themselves, might know trustworthy people to help you guys out.

Like others have voiced, why spend $10k USD on leased property? It was just a totally risky proposition. I feel bad for them, but the money would have been better spent buying the sims...and I say this as someone who leases a sim.

With the amount of money being spent and human effort that went into
this project; it puzzles me why some kind of a legal contract wasn't
created. Like the standard, humane, 30-day notice or something like
that.

Thinking about this a little more; I wouldn't be surprised if this rash
act was the result of something personal.

See...there I go again imagining things!

-i

This seems to be the big question for me, too. Or if not bought outright, then as Infrared notes, at least protected by a RL legal contract. The massively article leaves way too many questions unanswered.

If it really turns out that the land was sold out from under a paid-up tenant--that is, another case of "Estate owner gone wild"--then, yeah, it sucks.

But at this late date, would anyone really risk a serious (US$10K) endeavor to an Estate lease?

The pic looks breathtaking. Though the estate owner had the right to sell the islands, it is no doubt a terrible loss. I'm sorry this happened.

Lets face it we have no idea why what happened has happened. We can offer opinions but really we can never know if the original owner doesnt say why.
We can guess but we dont know. So I cant say the original owner was the bad guy. Lets try to remember we are hearing only one side of a story here.

It was an incredible beautiful and detailed work that supposedly took 18 months to build.. and ive heard that its not recoverable.

As for there not being a contract could it be that the owner and the renter is the same person?

It could be, but then you would be paying yourself rent and selling the sims to screw yourself over, while profiting from your own misery.

Too much below the surface in this one, just a shame at the loss of clearly loving work.

also the first thing that popped in to my head after reading the OP and article.

I'm the builder.

We originally sold the Romenna sims to the new owner to add a void sim, since we couldn't afford another and they all needed to be in one name.

I've not had contact with him for a month, having been travelling. Bottom line is that financially it was $700 US a month, and he had issues with money due to LL decisions and family concerns. I don't know why the sale took place without warning, but it did.

It took me 18 months to build it when it was my land. The new void took 2 months, maybe more.

Seems like a total loss at this point.

Nick

Hi...
I spent a lot of time there and was there attempting to save what I could when they wiped the last of it....
We had no warning, we were given three months to make it break even or better and were on the brink of doing just that.
IF WE HAD BEEN WARNED we would have bought them instantly, there is little or no question of that. We were not warned however, and a stunning amount of work is destroyed and Second Life has lost something amazing and beautiful. What you see in most of the pictures is the surface, nearly the entire place was also filled with a complete sewer system and an amazing network of caves and caverns.
I dont know the man who sold them, and hes not talking to us as far as I know at this point.. Im sure he had his reasons but if he happens to get in front of me someday I will have my own reasons for what I say to him.
I will let others who know more about why he owned them explain that if they want too... for now Im going to a sandbox.

There are various plans being floated about at the moment as to whats next so we will see where this goes.... I for one am all for a rebuild.

All I can say about this is think of the person above you with the deepest suspicion, people in Second Life can be as untrustworthy as people in real life. And its a lot harder to spit in their eye in Second Life.


Hope for the best!

Cheers,
Digitus Camel

Really naive question here: couldn't LL rollback these sims to some other location for a few days while the builders box-up the builds into something that could be rezzed on a new site?

(Don't know how the terraforming was done--perhaps it's all in RAW files on hand, but even if not... at least the builds could be preserved and restored someday.)

I was wondering that myself... I would hope it'd be possible, it's a shame to lose so much work. I don't understand how someone could destroy all that without even a thought... even if I was pissed off or desperate for cash, I'd want to at least notify the builders and let them come and pack it all up, I'd feel horrible if I just deleted it all. I just can't comprehend that.

It's really terrible that this has happened. I remember seeing early photos of this place, and marveling at the detail and the beauty of it all. Best of luck to the builders.... it was an amazing place, I'd love to see it come back.

One suggestion, just a thought: maybe set up something for donations to go to land for the rebuild? That's what was put in place for Crimson Falls, and I for one am always happy to toss a little in the pot whenever I can, because I miss that place. I'll bet this would get an equally passionate response.

I'm pretty sure the Company might be able to open them for a little while just so people could get their stuff. Cadroe Murphy's terrain bot could easily grab the terrains - not an issue, just go to spinmass.com I think it was and get it. It's easy. Just a google away.


Something to learn from this:

Business model first, $L up front.

Period.

I won't even add on Caledon's last three regions without confirmed profitability. Well, okay, I've pretty much got that, but you get the idea. That should say plenty right there.