Starting the 15th, No more land under 16k m.sq in auctions!

To quote from Announcements:

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Mainland Regions
Second, we're converting to whole region (16 acres) auctions, with a minimum starting bid of US$1000. We will no longer parcel mainland regions in advance, except for those regions that are set aside for First Land for new residents. Buyers will still be able to parcel land and directly resell it to their fellow residents.

Auctions for mainland regions will run until the land is sold, and we'll make sure there is enough land available at any one time so interested buyers will have a choice of terrain and location.

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What do you think of these changes? Does it mean the Barons win, or do you think it's better for the economy?

I'm curious to hear what you all think!
- Sam

I am rather disappointed by this move.

Yes as far as I am concerned, LL is pandering to the need of "land barons" once again, by making land unavailable to most people by selling it at large and expensive prices.

It will also see the end of linden infrastructure, as they will not zone for roads, telehubs etc, so we can probably expect to see 16 acres split up into 128 x 512m square parcels.

whoopee </sarc>
blegh.

This move certainly bodes well for Land Barons, as it ensures the survival of the middle man. Time to load up on land?

I'm not quite sure how you got 16k m.sq out of the post



The minimum starting bid, and the "whole regions" wording implies a whole sim. However, in rl an acre is 645 square meters, so 16 is 10320 square meters. So who knows? An acre is not the best measurement to describe these big changes. Square meters is.

Not sure where you're getting your figures either. One acre equals not 645, but actually 4046.86 square meters. 16 acres equal 64,749.7 square meters. One sim equals 65,536 square meters, or 16.19 acres. The Lindens round 16.19 down to 16 for discussion purposes, quite often referring to a sim as a "16 acre region".

If you want to verify my figures, look here.

Oops, you are correct. I got them from
http://www.arrowscientific.com.au/usefulbitsmetricconv.html
which doesn't format the table correctly in Firefox anyway, showing numbers for conversions a couple of lines up.

So yes, the minimum is going to be a whole sim, not 16K.

Two more options for easy unit conversions: break out your TI-89/92/Voyager calculators, or use Google's calculator.

Whoops, yes sorry, that was a typo on my account.

16 ACRE is what I ment ----OR---- 64/65,000 sq.m

Very sorry for that mistake, glad you caught it.

- Sam

The world has become bigger.. more sims, more management, even the rate at which land is added has increased dramatically in just the last year.

If people are willing to buy, develop, and parcel.. one less thing for them to worry about.

I'll see how this one pans out before I judge it to be a good or bad thing.

When the first entire sim was auctioned it went for more than $1000 USD, as did the second and third I think.... On the upside you now have a 'baseline' you can call land costs against

I definitely have mixed feelings about this, but it's a logical move I think. It should help the exchange rate since getting a bargain on a piece of land that only a couple of people bid on won't ever happen again. All land will be priced to make sure the sim buyer makes their money back. I guess no one ever has to wonder what the official LL position on land barony is

It's a good day to be FIC with a life account.

How? Why? Your thesis is unsupported.

I have 4096sq.m. in an original core sim where I can edit land up to 45 degrees, I pay $0 a month to own this, and I get to torment the forums for the same amount of money. My Second Life is my thesis. Hahahaha.

if the problem was partioning land, they should have just used a script to make a grid of small parcels (512, 1024, 204. it's what seems to happen when land barons chop up land.

anyhow do that. and then automate them being listed in the auction.

ll could set the minimum prices still, and new residents could attempt to buy land in auction.

put up grid. push button to subdivide land, and name the parcels. and then push button to put them up for auction. cut out the middle man for little effort.

i don't see why ll made buying land in the auction impossible for the average player.

I was considering buying a small plot of land agian, this seals the deal for me.

Hint : I'm not buying any more land.

This is definitely another nail in the abstract "animal-created" sculpture that includes FIC, land barony, and absolutely overt commercialism thrust upon the SL community by the LL mis-management team.

Put another way... the more things change (and just wait, LL will certainly change something else very soon), the more they stay the same (I repeat, just wait, LL will certainly CHANGE SOMETHING ELSE real soon).

Neither I nor anyone else can plan on anything in SL any more (except of course for more misbeguided, ill-conceived and poorly thought out policy and program changes). There's no point in even trying.



(Let's see... blame problems with connectivity/loading on the customer's choice of anti-virus and/or firewall... repeatedly claim that sim server problems are not LL-caused/related but rather are client cuased creations... essentially rely upon paying customers to document the system for other users... essentially rely upon paying customers to create the product that will attract other paying customers, then take away or reduce incentives for most to do so... yep, yep, yep.... gotta love being encouraged to view oneself as a masochist in order to continue to play SL.)

I'll also wait before saying if its a bad or good idea. I'm a bit put off by it, and worried, but, we'll see.

One thing that bothers me is that theres even less of a chance that I could one day own my own sim now. The idea of having a large portion of the world, with very little bounds other than my imagination, to build whatever I want, unlimited, is a dream that hasn't been met since ActiveWorlds. I'd love to have the same model in Second Life, where I could build as much as I wanted with no barriars except my own creativity, an endless sheet of white paper if you will.

So this makes it all slightly less feasable for that dream to come true, but eh.

this change is beneficial to the growth of sl and for the end user.

the current land market sees a heavy amount of arbitage. there are 3 markets to move land across: auctions, inworld open market, and inworld liquidations. the auctions and the liquidations act as acquisition points for the land trader. the open market is the sale point. those with patience, time, money, and knowledge look to acquire land below the sellable price to turn a profit.

the current system benefits land traders for several reasons:

-the auctions cannot address the myriad and complex desires of the end users. LL doesn't have the resource or interest to micromanage the land market.

-many endusers are understandably intimidated by the auction system (although it is not as complex as it may seem).

-many more endusers are not interesting in spending time searching for a deal. since the cost of the land is negligible to the resources available to many players, the RL affluent players impatience can determine the land price for all.

-large scale land traders have the inside track on fast liquidations - once again impatient players willing to sell for less to save time and get on with having fun asap, creating a third market as mentioned earlier for land traders to arbitage.

-the current land economy is built on a LL determined level of scarcity. it is based on the active population of the game and/or growth. there ability to accurately refelct this at any given time is one factor in the unpredictable swings in land price.

what this new system will do is completely erradicate scarcity. what i understand from the email ryan sent a while back is that a sim will enter the auction as soon as it's requested and LL will reveal large swaths of land, not just land intended for upcoming auctions. this means that in an ideal market with competition, land trader margins will approximate a service cost. it will approach the minimum profit margin to sustain the land business. there will still be some degree of speculation as no land is ever equal, but what there will be is a higher degree of predictability and transparency in land prices. no longer will people have to figure out the historic auction price. the initial land cost can be looked up with a sim name (which someone out there will certainly compile a list of links for - maybe even on the history wiki).

there will be arbitage with the liquidation market, but the stability of land prices off the auction and to the open market will provide for a more informed player public, thus likely reducing the profit margin there as well to something closer to a reasonable operating cost.

this is a positive move for demystifying the land economy and to reduce it further towards a monotonous service industry, something that was initiated by the competition of the island sims.

Guess what business Jauani is in

Land barons 1 ordinary residents 0

Perhaps LL could explain why they have done this? How long can it take to chop a sim into several smaller pieces?

Choice has now been removed from the land market and despite what Jauani says, it will NOT benefit residents, but will benefit land barons who will control the land market and increase their profits.

Another nail in the coffin.

Alexa

I'm enjoying the all the chattering that this sort of policy shift always creates. I don't have an opinion on this subject and I doubt I'm going to bother to form one. I don't buy land and when I do buy land, I don't screw around with auctions.

Even so, this subject has and will continue to generate posters spitting lines and lines of unsubstantiated generalities about how land barons are oppressing the masses and how Linden Lab has once again given its "average" residents the shaft.

Truth? One half of one per cent of all of Second Life's residents really care about such a shift as this. Well, maybe two thirds.

Yes, damn these land people! Damn them, of course, for investing huge amounts of real capital in a grand, shaky experiment! The horror!

/me runs in terror as a BIG BAD LAND BARON unscrews a section of sky which comes tumbling downward

Wow, seems like I timed that private island acquisition at just the right time I don't have to care about this crazy land market anymore



I think they are trying to stabilize the market. The current auction system is hardly fair. There are a few land barons *cough* who run up the baseline price on every sim, so there are no deals to be had in auctions. Every once in a while someone wins by bidding on pure emotion for something they have to have, but for the most part the same people domination auctions. I think this is an effort on the part of LL to slow down the number of private islands and raise the land market a little, and leave the land sales to the residents, who already control it and have more time to dedicate to it than residents.


There is still a disgusting glut of land on the market, so buy up kiddies and hold tight while land is cheap.



It will take a few months to see how this all pans out.

This sorta sucks, but I suppose it was inevitable.
This will suck less once there's an API in place and anyone can run a SL sim server.

I hope Linden Lab will compensate for this windfall to Land Barons by coming up with a strict code of conduct for them to follow, that will be enforced.