Open Space Fraud

You can't say that unless you know the deal the person had. Was the extra going to pay the upfront costs and would be reduced once they were covered?

Indeed Chris, many of those who are calling for the product to be sold direct seem to be forgetting that it's going to cost USD$375 upfront. If you're paying that much upfront it might be worth looking at the second hand full island market and getting some friends together to share the costs.

No i can't provide numbers,just read the posts in various threads,and common sense would also tell you when there is buck to be made the unscrupulous move in.
As i said there are many good honest estate owners and i intend in no way to blemish them

Myself i would not mind the initial set up cost,with not paying estate owner profits i would get that back,not that i would actually get it back,by that i mean in the long run i would be saving because over time i would pay much more in estate owner profit if i continue to rent.
As for going in with friends for a second hand full island,i have no interest in that myself,preferring the privacy of my own island;

I suppose i should say hi Clarion,we seem to follow each others post a lot.

For some it might be, but isn't that kind of choice and price decision part of a competitive market? We don't have that choice at the moment. If I did have it though, personally I'd pay the up front and the $125 a month for the OS.

It can actually range anywhere from $115 to $125 maybe less depending on the estate owners profit,on top of that i also pay 22% exchange rate on US funds so that drives it up further,i know maybe it's not fair to include that but it adds to the total tier we pay,

It all makes sense once we know,when i first came on SL i did a lot of traveling around to various stores,my first order of business was to transform my avy into a beautiful female (after being called ugly on orientation island)
After a while i thought it would be nice to have a home base,i went all over trying to buy a little piece of land to live on,i did'nt know the first thing about it,
I found an estate with many houses for rent and the estate agent was very helpful,until then i did'nt even know "about land" and being new it did'nt make much sense anyway,i did;nt know what most of it meant
I went shopping and bought all kinds of stuff for the house.
One day the estate owner told me i had gone over my prim limit,i said to him "whats a prim limit: i did'nt have a clue
We do learn the longer we are on SL but it is easy for an unscrupulous estate owner to omit to mention some important info to those who are not yet wise to the ways of SL and how thing work

Actually it's not a gamble at all. If there is money to be made then there is money to be made, no mater if LL does it directly or lets a third party take it. Up till now Land barons were an allowed third party because LL simply didn't have the man power to invest in sales while they were trying to program an entire world, not micro manage it.

But now as that world matures and their organizational structure is more solid they can afford to run the third party out of business and make the profits themselves, which is their right to do. Land barons are basically nothing more than ticket scalpers. I'd suggest that people buy there land directly from LL whenever LL can match or beat the prices of current land owners. It's safer and you will always be made aware of exactly what you are getting.

If you are mad because you bought land and now can't sell it for as much as you paid for it then you should have thought about risk before you decided to run a business as a third party land dealer. If you are simply disappointed that the resale value lowered on land that you bought for your personal enjoyment then be comforted that the enjoyment you got out of it is the benefit you paid for.

Shame on land owners selling OS without explicitly stating that it is OS land. Anyone in business knows that certain assumptions are often made about products they are selling, and they knew full well what they were doing. They committed fraud, period.

Paradigm, that may be true for person to person rentals of full sims but land barons are still needed I think for parcel level disbursement since I think as the new LL sims seem to show the company is willing to setup sims for people to buy parcels on but I have yet to see them manage them to the point that Sarah Nerd or even <ugh> Ansche does with their sims in terms of keeping the residents happy, dealing with resident issues and essentially running a sim day to day. As long as LL sticks to the fire and forget method of private sim sales there will always be a market for private sim owners.

I think that all the "privacy" that people want has already diluted the overall experience of second life.

I'm very glad that the price of main land is going down because I'm much more interested in purchasing main land sims and sprucing them up where people can just wonder in and not have to teleport in. Unlike many homesteaders I actually like people interacting with each other and just dropping by unexpectedly or exploring. That's what SL is about.

People who want their own private virtual home where no-one is allowed to see it should just purchase a copy of 3d Studio max which is much cheaper in the long run to keep their fantasy world all to themselves on their PC, and stop littering SL with ban lines.

When is the last time anyone has been able to just go for a drive or fly a hover car without bouncing off of ban lines or being kicked/booted by a security robot? It's really sad.

There will always be a market for those who want to live in a managed or "deed restricted" sim, yes. And they will pay a premium for that service. But otherwise there is no need to purchase land from a third party, except when there is an opportunity to benefit from a discount.

There is nothing wrong with one having their own no access island,i have roads around my island,only two avys use the island,we have our motorcycles and cars we race there,a lear jet two helicopter,a beautiful garden and lovely home.
That being said we also go to clubs and dances and do lots of shopping,just because one has a private island does'nt mean they shut themselves off from the rest of sl
I do enjoy the performance of my lag free island after going out into mainland,
I had a piece of land with a house when i first came on sl,i got tired of people wondering onto my little home,even trying to take my helicopter and jet ski right in front of my nose while i was standing there,i also watched one avy going from house to house trying to get in.
As i see it that was my home,i was paying for it and should have a say who comes on my property
I was not allowed to put ban lines or deny access,but i got to the point where i had had enough and wanted privacy,thats when i got my OS

Then you use "many" without knowing what you are talking about. But it is a good scare tactic.

If it pleases you to think that ,fine

No, I just think that words mean things, and to say "many" if you have no proof of it being many is just wrong.

I can just as easily say "Many people with the number 2 in their names kick puppies." Just as valid as your statement.

Paradigm, where have you been? Apparently we didn't know what we were getting when we purchased 3750 prim Open Space Sims for $75USD/month! And go to the "Buy Land" page today. Do you see any indication of the price changes that become effective on January 1 and July 1, 2009. Sure, there is a link to the knowledge base, but honest, ethical business owners are way more transparent than that and don't hide the bad news in small print or behind hyperlinks. And not only that, but what we purchased is not what we're ending up with -- ava limits and script limits and a higher price = an entirely different and devalued product.

Not "whining" here as many say. We're sticking it out and even attempting to rent parcels as well as shops on our OSs. With the tools we have available to us, our analysis shows we're no where near exceeding any limits that were set and explicitly laid out in any TOS. In fact, when we had a time dilation issue on one of the SIMs near the completion of its development, Rodney Linden actually visited the SIM to check things out. He made no indication, nor did any other Linden, that we were abusing the resources! Hmmm, they came to our land and had the perfect opportunity to say "you are not using the SIM as it was 'intended' so we can't help you." Instead, we were informed by support that it was solely a server issue that had nothing to do with our script load or object load.

I'll stop now but could go on forever about this issue. Just thought I'd express the fact that LL appears to be no better than some unscrupulous land barons. And yes, we are completely transparent on our Estate and in the notecards that get dished out from the rental boxes about the type of land the renter is getting AND about the rate increases that will occur when the LL price hikes take effect.

And for those interested in renting . . . if you rent for the maximum 24 week rental period now, you can avoid the rate increase through that rental period . . . and at that point, if you renew for another 24 week period, you'll avoid the second increase until that rental period ends.

Peace,
Keo

I agree with nikita on this. Having my OS was a dream come true. I knew what I was purchasing because my "land baron" (hate calling her that) told me exactly what was entailed. Since my partner and I owned each an OS we decided to simply "lease" a full sim as no one really "owns" property in sl. We have estate rights and basically have all the amenities of being sim owners as we did with our OS. It was cost containment move because we looked at it as we will have 15,000 prims for just a little more money. Yes, we have lost our privacy but luckily we are in a low to no population area.



RL has its trade offs and I'm finding SL does too.

MMMMM "many" and "some" i used the word "many" and got accused of using scare tactics,not knowing what i was talking about and was demanded to back up the word "many" with facts.
Not having a go at you i agree with you there are some unscrupulous land barons i just made the mistake of saying many
I guess "some" is more acceptable as you did'nt get jumped on for saying it,must remember to use that next time

How many would "many" have to be to satisfy you?

How many is "too many"?

And which of those two numbers is larger?

I don't want a region to be an estate owner and rent out land to tenants.
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I don't want ugly land on the mainland.
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I don't want land for parties or to be commercial.
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I don't want to rent from a landlord.
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I JUST want the option to have a small house on my own open space island. But I can't unless I am also involved in some of the things above that I don't want to be involved in.
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Why? Where is the seclusion in this supposed "Second Life"? There seem to be less opportunities for that here than in the real one.

If you want a number, 69%. That is many to me. How many is too many? Simple, more than the market will support.

Its not actually possible to do this. The only way to 'sell' land is to transfer it to another estate manager and you most certainly will know that it is an Open Space region then. The whole concept of buying land any other way is false. You do not own land. People pay outrageous amounts of money for their land when in fact they have absolutely NO protection against the land owner taking back that land at a drop of the hat. They never own the land. They might get estate management rights and be able to call the land what they want, but unless they own the region then they do not own the land. All contracts in SL are false unless you have the money to go through lengthy court battles with anonymous names from other parts of the world. Perhaps now is a wake up call for that. Don't expect Heil Linden to help out on this one.

Welcome to the "Voice Of Reason" choir. Nice to have you aboard. Hard to hear us singing above all the ranting going on though.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled rants...

QFT.

The whole problem with this is the estate land sale mechanism anyway. All it does is confuse people as to whether or not they are buying land from LL or just leasing land from another player who can take back the land at the drop of a hat. Maybe this is a task for Howard Linden - to build features into the UI that will alert people as to exactly what they are doing when they "buy land."