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

I hope I'll get a pony for my birthday

While your'e at it Hiro, why not hope for free land, free speech and...

However, don't hold your breath waiting for it!

I posted in the other thread before I saw this one
other thread



The auctions allowed the common people to pick up some land and try and deal in real estate. I being a simple common person does not have $1000 to play with so I will never be able to dabble in land auction purchases now. I think this is really sad and LL just cut a lot of people out of something. Another example of the Rich get Richer.

Granted the common person had to be really lucky to win land at auction - but at least they had a chance to try.

sorry for double posting - but *shrugs*

I could tell that by the typing.

yes, from a land traders perspective this really sucks

I think it has more to do with the dying asset server than anything. This move will (likely) slow the adding of sims, while maximizing SL's profits for those they do add. It means fewer builds on land, an almost contant ownership of it, and a graceful excuse when people wonder, "Why haven't they added as many sims as they did last year?"

That's my hypothesis.

sarcasm?

I am thinking it has more to do with profit than anything else tbh.

I can actually see some benefit in this move. A "baron" is going to be a lot easier to get a customized parcel from than the Lindens. While I have never tried, I highly doubt that a player could ever get the Lindens to redivide parcels to be auctioned to fit more closely with what a player wants. An intermediary will be more likely to provide that customization (not guaranteed, but more likely, as long as you aren't trying to mimic RL political districts).

Of course, you are going to pay for this priviledge to an intermediary, but if the land traders are buying up most of the auction land anyway, not really an issue (from a pricing standpoint).

So, I can see some potential benefit. The downsides relative to our current environment I'm not too sure about, scale-wise. Then there is the whole issue that this move validates in a sense (from the Lindens) the current land brokering environment, which is a loooooong thread. So, wait and see I guess, for me.

Full disclosure: I am not a land baron. I have sold land, either when I decide to move to a new sim, or to readjust my tier a bit. As for buying, I've bought from Anshe, other intermediaries, and through auctions.

A good thought Jarod. Well I will stay on my rented land and let the bloodfest begin.

Alexa

The new SL

"SL ... Your World, Your Imagination, Our Bank Account"
or

"SL where your only limitation is the size of your credit line "

or

"Anshe Lab need we say more"

I kid of course rofl

i think if linden lab figured out how to viably give infinite land away for free, some people would still figure out how to complain about it.

I can't really predict the consequences, but this does rub me the wrong way. It's just an extension of the uncomfortable feelings I already had about the land resale market. A built-in part of the price of creating content for Linden Lab in Second Life is now the unregulated profit of other "players". In theory LL is allowing people to be compensated for performing a necessary service for them (i.e. parceling and selling land). There is an important difference however between LL doing this and third parties doing this. When LL makes that profit, the money can be funneled back into the development of Second Life. This isn't necessarily true of third parties, who seem just as likely to funnel their profits into a nice vacation. How many developers can LL pay for $150,000? Again, in theory, the land resellers may perform some extra services in order to compete with each other that you could consider a form of reinvestment or development of SL. I'll just say, without meaning to reignite old debates, that I haven't seen much of that myself so far. What I've mostly seen is simply new land sprinkled with for sale signs. But like I said, I con't think I can really predict what's going to happen, so I guess we'll see.

Of course, I can always ask for infinity plus infinity. Plus 1.

The Lindens consistently farm out most of the day-to-day details of SL, including producing goods (clothing, vehicles, houses), services (long-range teleporters, instructors/mentors), and now land. This change in land auctioning is not a truly surprising move, in light of this general Linden policy, tacit or not.

I believe the Lindens are setting us up for being able to host our own sims, removal of stipends all together, and a shift toward using US$ (or any other real-world currency deemed appropriate by trading parties) instead of L$s. So, allowing what are essentially private entities, or "land barons," to take over distribution of available land makes sense, I suppose.

Now, if only the Lindens would remove some other pointless game-like "features" of SL, such as ratings and the Leader Board, maybe we could take this latest move toward a metaverse metamorphosis more seriously.

Land selling for profit appeals not one bit to me, and I don't usually own more than my lifetime-account-allowed 4096m. I'm having this urge to run out right now, tier up and buy more land... but even if I do, I don't know what I'd do with it. I have more than enough to keep me busy right now in SL with the land I own, and I'd far rather be a producer of goods (SL clothing/textures) than a seller of land.

Wow. Land barons have not only won, but now they get to dance on the graves of their opposition as well.

Prob. several reasons, i can think of, for this move:

1. Reduce setup costs for sims (parceling was done by hand), to keep costs for LL at bay
2. Change 'new land' model to fit diminishing new resident growth. (As the old model wasn't fitting the profit/cost model anymore?)
3. Create higher land prices, to stabilize L$ to US rates
4. Compensate for the 'gap' between mainland and islands, since the 'mistake' of adding deeding private islands parcels
5. Fit the 'vision' of LL to be a hosting company, basically providing serverspace. Not delivering community services or content.

All in all i think it's a bad move, because 'adding' a middle man is usually NOT going to reduce costs.
Most companies who are working with margins cut the middle man (think Dell) to increase profit, or reduce prices to increase sales. As SL is a purely virtual environment, no real distribution channels are necessary. So it would have been wiser for them to actually streamline/automate their distribution model, instead lay more in the hands of the middle man.

For the resident/consumer, every layer makes the product more expensive.

But we'll see what happens...

Beryl - I see your point, but I think land and the primitives it provides are more fundamental to the game than those things. To me this is more like if LL only auctioned off avatars in blocks of 100 and players than needed to purchase their avatar from a third party before they could play. Or if LL auctioned off inventory space one gig at a time and then third parties sold it to us in smaller pieces at a profit.

When you and I joined SL, Cadroe, land was important to the vast majority of users because they wanted to play around with building tools. I'd bet that a good portion of players who join now (and the potential players that the LL marketing department is targeting) don't build much at all, or would be just as happy renting or buying pre-made houses.

Third-party people like land barons can cater to casual, social users of SL who don't want to scour auctions for a good piece of land, then spend time bidding on it. With this system, LL has "service providers" (i.e. land barons) who will buy, parcel and distribute/sell the land and take over this hassle for them.

Quotes from the Marketing Town Hall several weeks back state that LL is going to be making a major push toward gaining new members near the end of this year; I'm betting that the people they will be targeting are going to be interested more in social interaction than creation. They're moving us closer to this goal, in some way, with this new land distribution system, methinks.

And others would still figure out how to sucker people into buying Telehub Land.

Spoken like a true land baron

This is BAD because it raises the fixed cost component of land, and reduces the number of potential bidders on such land. Whatever would be saved in opportunity cost will be eaten up by oligopoly pricing.

I agree, Beryl. This change effects one kind of player more than others. If LL started forcing "social" players to purchase avatars and inventory space from third parties making a profit, I think those players would have similar misgivings though.

I also agree that land resellers are performing a service for LL. My only concern is that perhaps the profit they make could be earned by LL instead, and the money could be used for bug fixes and new features. But don't get me wrong, I don't think it's a simple situation.

Where's the balance now?

have you ever played secondlife? i highly recommend you actually try out the game before commenting on it.