I've been thinking... <watches everyone run screaming into the night> No! Wait! It's ok! The drugs are working now!
<Waits for people to come back, coaxing them in with offers of hot chocolate and dougnuts.> It's ok. Little closer. Here you go!
GOTCHA!
Now, for my discussion on the future value of land in SL.
<Waits for groaning to end.>
Ok. Here we go!
First, there seems to be two main methods of getting land: Buying it outright and paying tier to the lindens, or renting from someone who already does this and playing a bit more to not have to pay for a premium account.
Now, many people have talked about the idea the renting just puts more money in the pockets of the land-barons, but I think the answer is more complex than that.
Truth is, it seems that LL is eventually going to want to distribute the server software out so that companies and individuals can run thier own sims and regions. The client will connect to regions using some form of 'mapping' software.
What does this mean? Well, seems to me the islands they are selling would be a test of how this would work in the future. They are renting servers to see if a market for renting space of a SL server can be profitable.
All well and good. Let's think about it then.
If we equate the sim software to a web server software package, then the idea of renting out space on a server using it makes sense: You have to watch each person on the server to make sure they do not use more than their fair share, etc...
In fact, we will all go to renting land on an island somewhere when this happens.
My question is this though: What will be the bandwidth costs for running such a server, and is their ANY real chance that you could ever make it profitable? For that matter, how does LL pay for the bandwidth being used in SL from it's tier? If a sim is $200 a month, and it's running on a server with basic upkeep, then we are probably seeing the lowest price for a sim that will ever BE seen right now. When this goes public, smaller groups of sims will not be able to charge so little to pay for what the bandwidth costs will be.
Sorry if this was not as articulate as I would have liked, but I'm a bit tired... Slows me down.