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

I agree that this seems logical and likely driven by the Lindens need to divest themselves of responsibilities and work. It is very bad news for some friends of mine though. There are a lot of regular players that do land speculation that will lose their shirts in the short term IMO.

For instance land prices are low right now and more likely to go down than up on this news. Anyone that owns tons of land but is not up to land baron status (ie is not making money at it yet), is in a tight spot. They cant liquify without losing out, they no longer can buy any more land (except from Anshe), and the near term prospects are grim. It also seems unlikely that anyone else will make that jump to land baron in the future if one cannot ever buy land except off of one of the land barons themselves. This can only further stratify the land ownership situation and lead to what in RL would be a "class system" with no-one owning more than a few bits of land unless they are in the "Baron class". People will likely have to bind together in groups more to even be able to compete with those folks.

Overall however, I find that I tend to freak out about announcements like this (many of us do) and then realise later that it was perhaps a good thing, so I reserve judgment also (for now), but it sure seem like this move really lacks a silver lining for any non-linden non-land baron type players.

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Try as I might I cannot see the positive side of this yet. There will be a trickle down affect and everyone is going to feel the crunch. Sorry but YET AGAIN. Why is it that every change that is made seems to screw the average player? Which is more than obvious to me at least.

from what i understand LL plans to show huge swaths of the map to players. players can request any sim to be brought to auction with the initial baseline bid in place. this means that if any player is outbid they have the option of rebidding, or requesting a new sim to be brought to auction. the outcome is that their is no supply limit. endusers can bid directly if they want a whole sim or to share with some associates, or alternatively, land resellers will compete for these sims.

with a limitless supply, with increase in buyers, wholesale land costs will approach the baseline bid (not accounting for fluctuations in the particulars of the specific sim - hubs, rivers, waterfront). if someone is outbid, rather than participating on a bidding war in competition, the player can request a new sim and try to purchase one with limited competition.

as i mentioned earlier historical wholesale prices will be easy to track under this new system. while 16 m2 was the micro measure for land, 1 sim is the macro measurement. parcels were neither of these and the ability to cut and join made it very difficult for players to search for the wholesale price if they so wished. this insures a certain degree of transparency to the land market.

what infinite supply and demystification means for land sellers is that their customers are more informed and savy. and also in control. land resellers margins will approach the minimal operating cost that would justify the enterprise. anything above that would lose business to competitors. anything below that would make the operation a failure.

i am not sarcastic when i say as a land trader this sucks. land trading is going to be a "would you like fries with that" operation that anybody with 1000$ and some simple business acumen can feasably run - increased competition. as a player i think this is great. i've never believed it is LL's job to artificially maintain an imbalance for me to profit off of. i can be open minded of the change even if it doesn't benefit my little operation.

some other land traders have argued that land values is what makes sl compelling. i think that is bs put forth to maintain the status quo that benefits land traders. content and interaction make sl compelling. for sustainabilty, land must cost the minimum of hardware, setup, and preperation. but to limit the cost of lands hindrance on growth, it should cost no more than that. this new system is a step in that direction.

Sometimes I wonder if the time has come to vote with my feet so to speak, and say good by to my sl freinds and play GW until NWN 2 comes out. This is a big step closer to that point.

Is the link to the virus in your sig real?
If it is really code for a SL virus I think it is a real stupid idea, and I am offended as well.
Please remove it.



PS - If it is fake, the joke is not so obvious, you might want to revise.

The economic arena has been thrown wide open to anyone who wants to commit thousands of USD.

Correlating policy-making and implementation are still in the hands of the Shrouded Few. No doubt the more USD a person commits to the SL economy, the more voice that person can summon.

*shrugs.

Brave New Virtual World, eh? Welcome to New York City in 1893.

then they need to rename this First Life. com

This has never been the case. I get the same customer service as anyone, and have been one of the top 10 landholders for well over a year. LL does not make exceptions or special deals with large land holders, trust me, I have tried.

I think LL is responding to the need of LL, not "pandering" to anybody.

It is very important to all of us that LL grow, be financially stable, turn a profit and attract capital. Otherwise they won't be around very long. I certainly hope that they would focus on what it takes to get people who have money to give that money to LL. That's what businesses do. Changes like this are driven by RL economics, not by in-world politics.

The fact that they continue to offer $9.95 one-time accounts (at a loss) is amazingly charitable. (Of course, that's their loss-leader pool of future upgraders. So it makes business sense.)

I would expect LL to pander to the needs of people who are providing the hard currency needed to pay their office rent, salaries, hardware and communications expenses. LL isn't a charity, so the needs of the penniless are not high on the agenda, nor could they be.

Buster

Not a fake.
I never understood why someone would do that.

When did SL stop growing? From everything I have heard and read they are doing fantastic even better than expected.

Cat

If that's the case, Schwanson, then it flies in the face of human nature, and 5000 years of human civilization. You'll understand why I'm a bit skeptical.

I have no doubt that LL does not, as a rule, overtly favor those who commit thousands of USD to their product. But I think that the appearance of favortism, the influence of money on corporate perspectives, and the inherent tendency to build policy to support those whose investments pay your bills may create a similar problem.

In RL, there are counterbalances to such influences. We have no such counterbalances here. Nor did they in NYC in 1893.

I couldn't beleive it either. But for me at least, that has been the case.

I know in my RL business, I know who my top 20 customers are, and treat them like gold. I kiss their asses, and will continue to do so. They pay my bills.

The concierge program seemed to be an attempt to correct this, I haven't seen that to be the case.

***shrugs***

Like others, I want to see this plan in action before I make up my mind whether it is a good move or not for SL as a whole. I see well thought out opinions on both sides of the issue. My mind just cannot make a decision right now on where it stands.

I just hope this doesn't affect me continuing to try and buy small pieces of land in Sistiana (where the majority of my land is). That is the only sim I really want to keep trying to buy land in. Other land I'll be renting anyway.

However, alot of folks come here to get away from real life economic issues. To put those worries and stresses behind them. And LL is surviving and growing just fine without this change....



How is the one time account fee user a loss?? Certainly a good percentage of those basic account people end up going to premium to buy land. Certainly alot of those basic account members hit up GOM from time to time. Certainly many of those basic account holders create content that makes SL more attractive to others, and helps drive up the worth of L$. And many of those basic account holders tell their friends, some of which come in as basic account holders and some of which end up paying high tier fees.

If the basic account really was a drain to LL, it would have been dropped long ago. We've seen plenty of evidence that they do indeed think like a business and worry about profit.




But there is a fine line here. If you only pander to the percentage that pays the most, then you risk losing the vast majority that pay medium to low amounts of $.

Because it was there to do. Because if Second Life is "the metaverse," then people with less respect than me will be thinking of these kinds of things, and showing off my code is about the best way I know to get people thinking about security in-world.

The fact you don't understand is the problem.

Yes, it's a real link. You can click on it and evreything.

Glad to know where you stand on the freedom of speech. Your attempt to censor my hacking offends me; please STFU.

I have been for this idea for some time now... since I had a conversation with Khamon about the topic. My theory in coming to this side of the fence (I was originally opposed to this idea) is the likelihood that this will lead to more themed sims, communities, and less ghettos. It also makes the job of Land Baron require a lot more skill. You won't just be able to buy low, sell high, and mark up... because if you stick to that model, you will soon be faced with:

- land speculators who develop an entire mainland sim or sims for specific purposes, IE: only people with the intent to build residentially will be sold to;
- less of a chance of an entire simulator being rendered uninhabitable by one idiot with a 512 meter plot, thus making is harder to sell plots is such sims when more desirable real estate is available;
- less of these USELESS, 512 meter plots which quickly become plywood ghettos in sims where lag is the accepted norm;

I can see this leading to land speculators actually doing some WORK for their money to outdo

The other thing I'd like to see Linden Lab do is make the minimum parcel size of the future 2048, and require parcel sizes to be a multiple of 2048 from here on out (it would be hard to retrofit). 512 meter plots should be provided to all new comers in designated "first land only" sims for their trial period, for free, to test their building skills. Plots smaller than 2048 and mid-range sizes are not tier-friendly, and can lead to someone owning 16 square meters in a sim and lagging the entire thing (then, perhaps, selling it for L$1600!).

Just some thoughts. We'll see how it pans out. Don't believe the typical "THE SKY IS FALLING!" hype.



-Flip

Becased he's Jarod, and there's NO KNOWN CURE.

Everything depends on what this rather vague passage really means. Will potential buyers be able to ask for new sims to be placed on auction on demand? If so, only unusually interesting or valuable sims will go for more than the initial price. This sounds perfectly reasonable, since by those terms a neighborhood group could organize and buy a sim without the time pressure and competition forced by the old auction system. If this is the case, I applaud this move as it encourages people to cooperate and make friends.

If it is simply a case of the old auction system cutting out the small-time buyers, this is a horrible move as it continues the cutthroat profiteering and eliminates any chance of new players getting started in the land game without a huge initial investment.

Anyone care to clarify this at the town hall?

My thinking is along the same lines as yours Flip. This will go a long way towards eliminating fly by night resellers because the buy in cost to be one is now going to be pretty high. With lots of their own money at stake and other serious resellers as their competition, they're going to have to be more careful about providing real service and giving people what they want... at least for new land. I guess the small fry will still be able to work the second hand land market.

I think this will make land prices go up some but won't change things much for the end user unless competition is such that resellers are trying to beat each other on value and service. It's hard to imagine how that can be a bad thing. We shall see. I'm not worried about it. You can bet that if bad things happen as a result LL will reevaluate this strategy.

ananda,
there was an email from ryan linden in the winter that foreshadowed these changes. in it he mentioned that sims would be put on auction upon request. i think someone posted that email to the land forum.

what i'm surprised is the short warning. LL always maintains they will give ample warning, but two weeks seems like a really short time when one considers many players have thousands of dollars tied up in land. on the other hand, as tiger and schwan pointed out in the other thread, linden lab is affectively putting the bottom for land prices at about 5 L$/m2 so it does potentially safeguard peoples equity to some degree. finally alby and blaze got their answer.

the second hand land market is the real big money!

I think everyone is handling this very well. It's a lot to digest on such short notice. I think most like me are on the fence on this one.

What the hell else can we do but wait and see.

Cat

Probably true. I wonder though if a lot more resellers will start renting plots instead of actually selling them. I could see that being a bad thing.