Does Philip know that large tier customers use less bandwidth (on average)?

Ya thoink? Then get ready, because I feel some big ol' 'jackass eatin briars' smiles coming on....

(Gee, I think I had too much coffee this morning... Hah! Tried to post and had 'too many images'... dang it. )

Some people have large amounts of land for neither reason. (not to sell, and not to rent.) There's a universal presumption that anyone who holds large amounts of land or uses the 10% bonus, is reselling or renting land.

Some people are just using it.

Hehe, that's the only part that gives me some pause. That being said it's a bit nutty and premature to freak out about something that's nothing more than a "maybe" at this point and hasn't been fleshed out with any detail. The discounts for the upper tiers are insanely good deals compared to the lowest tiers. The bottom tier is about a penny a meter. The full sim tier and the same rate per meter would cost $650. There's no way in hell they'd do that to the top tier payers. I could see them raising the full sim tier to $250 tops, using that to figure the per meter rate, and making 1024 or 2048 the lowest land tiers. I am, of course, completely talking out of my ass (just like everyone else).

Phillip has historically never said much at any town hall....and for some reason he always has to run . The serious questions usually get a responce of "I'm not sure I'll have to check on that" or Email me and I'll see if I can get the info.

If you are the head of a company and you call for a town hall meeting you should be prepared to answer the questions and to be on hand for a while to make sure you can answer questions.

My question would have been who the hell is running your economic data and why haven't you fired them yet? Seeing as Phillip doesnt think that mainland parcel prices will rise if only a handfull will be able to dish out the $1K to buy the whole sim....oh but wait....your $1K doesn't buy the whole sim just 90% because there will still be Linden owned land. So basically it could all crash as well....it is very doubbtfull there will be a middle ground.

One way or another the bubble is gonna burst resulting in much less money for LL and many disatisfied customers.......But it could have a bright side and WalMart could do a hostile takeover and when we log in our splash screen will be a big smily face that says Welcome Walmart customers

I for one want to be ready for this. I'll put on a Wal-Mart happy face Robin Hood av and sneak around the grid rolling back the prices on all the land I want. And tier.

The problem is that vague notices like this can make it impossible to sell out to someone in this market, because you'd be crazy to buy someone elses sim business with this kind of sword hanging over your head.

And if you have 40K in sims and then this actually does come true.. well then you're just completely toast at that point.

So, 'freaking out' isn't that hard to imagine.

I am guessing it's because this is an incredibly healthy economy. Data found here

What exactly is a "sim business" and who's selling them? This will be a boon for people who want to deal in buying and selling entire sims.

blaze, i believe your initial assumption is unfounded. one large tier holding does not necessarily result in less bandwidth use. prominent examples that contradicts this is anshe's grid or ravenglass rentals.

schwan, my initial thought on what a raised tier would mean is higher land prices and demand destruction. did you mean land would become worthless as people got frustrated trying to acquire land and quit SL?

it's not just a matter of self preservation or panic. LL's upcoming land auction system rely's on land traders to properly distribute new land to player community. lessening the tier discount at high levels would undermine competition in land trading and increase land prices. the move to sim auctions and the musing on raising large tier payments seems entirely contradictory to me

in any event, LL can always change things back if they don't work as intended so it's not world threatening.

If calculating tier prices is "REALLY hard coding" what does that make rampant, chronic inventory lossage and other egregious bugs? REALLY REALLY REALLY hard coding?

Put less facetiously, why in Kernighan's name would this be anything other than a data table lookup? You have this much land, that equates to this much charge; return charge;

I posted the direct question in Hotline:
10% Group land bonus

Exactly a trickle down affect will happen.

Yes, Hiro, that's what I was referring to. I'm not familiar at all with the rental market, maybe you could shed some light on how this would affect renters (besides the obvious rate increase)?

yea, but where's the data for the last month and a half? some people are suspicious that the graph doesn't look so good since then and that's why the data is missing. (I believe the story that they're too busy, but you do have to wonder.)

Buster

Well, that's an interesting point. Have you been to anshe's grid? It's not as cluttered as the mainland, so I assume that from a bandwidth perspective it must be less onerous. Plus fewer flybys. Certainly it's less dense from a land owner perspective so there is definitely less support headaches for LL.

I'd like to see some real #s before I comment too much further about the rental grids, but for the moment, they make up a very small percentage of the entire grid.

Blaze, sorry, but this is 100% supposition and conjecture - you have no hard figures to actually base this on, yet you were very definite in your original statement and questioned Philip's understanding. Maybe, just maybe, Philip and others do know the truth on that and take that, along with many other things, into consideration when policy decisions are made.

If you're going to make such a direct, pointed statement, presented as fact, please be prepared to back it up with hard, factual figures. Anything less just doesn't cut it I'm afraid.

Ah yes.... the they are hiding something from us theory.... nevermind that this world is expanding so rapidly, that maybe releasing those figures is low on the list....

But never fear... I take a reading once an hour of the figures from the homepage (Pop, Inworld, Transaction)... and I've been doing it from almost the start of those stats appearing.

Looking at the numbers, things are looking healthy. I put Population Growth for June 2005 at 8%. 8% per month!!! Think compound interest... we'll get to 1 million as planned.

Mind you, one months worth of data isn't much. It doesn't take into account seasonality and a whole host of other trends. But it's still fun to look at, and I'll keep trying to provide a monthly report.

Here is the graph for June's Pop growth (not including last night and today's figures).

You mean maybe the only people who actually have the numbers have a better handle on things than the Gawkers in the forums? Brilliant! I hope this thought spreads through the metaverse like a virus.

Raises Hand /*** waves

I'm one of those that just wants some land of my own to create things on. I also use the group tier bonus because my husband creates things too (when he's not screaming about lag or LL scripting language).

I would hate to see it go away, but the best I can do is just wait and see what happens. If the price for being in SL goes up, I have to evaluate at that time whether or not there is value in remaining.

Things are always going to change -the best I can do is decide to live with the changes or not.

For now we know there is going to be no change to the group bonus. And, again, Philip did say "... in principle it is great to have an incentive to work on group projects." He just also (and rightly so, IMHO) said that right now it's not doing "exactly what it is supposed to."

To me, I interpret this as PERHAPS it will change and PERHAPS if it does, it will still allow the bonus to groups, but PERHAPS it will only allow the bonus to legitimate groups, and not just "me and my two alts own half the grid so "we" get an extra x amount to rent out at no additional charge" situations.

MAYBE that's not what it means, but none of us knows for sure right now, and until we do, all we can do is wait for clarification straight from the horse's mouth, as it were. So, thank you, actually for posting in the Hotline forum, Catherine.

It might happen, it might not. But might as well let LL know what we think one way or the other before they make their decisions. Happily, LL employees look to the forums for feedback.

Cute graph except it doesn't have anything to do with the proposed changes nor does the link.....check back after these changes take place and see if the economic data is the same as Phillip suggests it will be.

Higher tier costs would mean people tier down, and sell off their land.

A flat per meter rate for tier would destroy all the rental sims business models. Causing the owner's of those sims to sell them, flooding the market w/ private sims.

We would then have an unprecedented glut of land making the option of buying a new gridded sim from auction a non profit venture. Even with the current land glut I am not so sure it is worth buying a sim from the new auctions, considering that there will no longer be a limit as to how much land is brought into the world.

All of this would cause the $L to fall further against the USD. Which would mean businesses that sustain their tier via the sale of $L would have to tier down further, dumping more land into an already saturated market.

A tier increase is not what I am opposed to, though I think this would be a disastorous time to impose one. My problem is with a flat per m2 tier structure that gives absolutely no incentive to be a major land holder in SL.

absolutly agree Schwan.

I will... stay tuned... my point was really, that the economist are doing a good job so far. I suspect all the FUD you guys are whipping up will cause a brief drop in the economy in mid July, and it will be recovered by the end of August.

I also realize your talking about the tier pricing, and not the changes coming in July... we'll see when it happens...

BTW, being that economics is a hobby of mine (as in studying economies, not trying to get uber rich off SL), I asked Robin Linden who thier economist was last night. Specifically I asked if they were getting Economic advice from Edward Castronova. Robin told me they bring in lots of people for advice, and Castronova was one of them.

Town Hall with SL's Economists anyone?