First-Land Dump

Wow. I counted a whopping 94 first-land parcels introduced on to the land market today by the Lindens.

Normally, I see 8-10-12 per day in the new sims. To be sure, often only that dozen is listed, and you find if you fly by that there are others next to them somehow not listed. Stil, 94 is an awful big number for this category of land.

Of course, this *does* include some "recycled" old, used land, often on crappy sims with low FPS, remade into "first land" after being publicked, i.e. abandoned by a player, released to Gov Linden then put back out by the Lindens. Newbies and other first-time purchasers upgrading their accounts should BEWARE of first-land that has that crunchy, new green "first-land" tag on it but is often NOT in a brand-new fresh sim with fast frame-rates but in an old, worn sim with laggggg.

Also, some buyers of first-land from newbs never take the "first-land" tag off the land when they resell it, sometimes even for a low price, and a buyer can't always be sure that is actual first land they are buying.

Supposedly such an introduction of first land would be tied to new members or basic members upgrading to premium. This is more or less correlating with what Phil Linden and other Lindens have said about their land policy for the economy -- tying production of new sims to the increase in game membership.

I wonder if this dump will lower land prices in new sims in general, or prices just in the immediate new-land resale market, or if it will make even more 512-disease, the chicken-pox of bad builds and bad buy-outs and griefing that make up the usual "postage stamp" approach to chunks of new sim -- which are often in the flat middle, away from the more interesting and expensive waterfront or mountain top parcels.

Why, one lucky newb will even get "first water" instead of "first land" in the oddly-named Vaoetere, a new sim that has a fake foreign-language sounding name that maybe translates as "Water-Earth" ROFL. You know how there's that trivia question about the UN where the answer is Palau? Well don't forget Vaoetere for your SL trivia questions about sims with lots of consecutive vowels.

When Anshe is willing to take 6L/m and some change for fresh new PG, and Kurohyu Song is offering even prime mature waterfront for 7.8L/m, I think we can safely say prices are dropping across the game -- but really, we can never say that because just when you are about to say that you find 9L/m in Pero and 9.8 still on awesome views and the like -- and will there or will there not be a telehub there? Only their hairdressers know for sure.

And the Linden is going up, it was 1000L for $4.08 last time I checked. So those land barons selling large quantities of even cheaper land will still do well cashing out at the GOM, customers will see lots more cheaper and good land and will buy more Linden dollars on the GOM or more alt accounts in order to buy more land, what's not to like?

Come in, Chicken Little, do you read me?

For new sims with vowels we need to get the Lindens to borrow from Estonian.

eg : the rl islands of Saaremaa and Hiiumaa.

For new sims with consonants I favour Georgian.

eg: rl places Tskhinvali, Mtskheta (Georgian is known for its impressive consonant clusters)

I think the capital of Dagestan, Mkhchkala, has the Georgians beat. Although I see in English, people cheat and transliterate it Makhachkala.

I logged on just now and saw that some clever wit -- a member of Centre Ville Merchants which is on Open Enrollment in FIND GROUPS -- had run a "recall" election on Anshe Chung, the officer of the group.

It could be a mistake, something that can easily happen as I have found in my groups.

I believe the motion failed, garnering only 38 votes when a quorum of some 400 was needed so Anshe is still Mall Queen of SL, don't worry.

I realize how the mechanisms work, because in my groups, people who want to leave messages for the entire group including those offline sometimes use the "vote" function even if there is no true vote, like Anshe does in the Centre Ville group. They do that because groups have no other way to leave messages!

And sometimes by accident, they hit the "recall" button, and then the first name on the list of officer becomes the target of an unintended "recall" operation.

What happens when rogue members get together and recall an officer in this fashion? Could it really be that an officer like Anshe who has invested all that money in land, and has people renting and vending on her land, could then be recalled by the actions of a single angry merchant, who is able to rabble-rouse and turn members and other officers against her? It seems insane, and yet there it is, proof of the failure of SL to protect merchant and consumer rights and liberties, and to prefer to consider mainly the rights of creators (the feted) and to go for some weird utopian hippie commune notion of governance.

When TSO faced the problems of the rogue roomies who entered lots as fake innocent roomies to grief and trash lots, they instituted a system of "property leader" -- only the lot leader could then hand out building permissions and so on. I actually opposed it because it made lots of fiefdoms and people then weren't free even to chose their wallpaper. I still don't know if I support it. (Yeah, I know, Ardith, this isn't TSO, blah blah. But so what? These are the same issues in any game and the issue in general of human relations.)

If one person invests money and organizes a group and land with members, and takes on a large part of the tier and the burden, why does that person not have more protection? Why can they be recalled by mere rank-and-file members who have not even put in tier in to their land in many cases, and paid them sometimes only part of the cost of their tier? I'm trying to understand the psychology of the geeky types who came up with this utopian people's democracy idea which in fact is only the most ordinary Bolshevism and the most predictable fascism, where lumpen terrorists can hijack and destroy something a "boss" has made in their class warfare. It's evil.

Yeah, I know, because in a group you get a 10 percent bonus and other benefits, and sure, you can avoid groups and just have yourself as the sole proprietor and owner, but really, why don't groups work better?

It seems to me that group functions have to institute something like "investing officer" or "project leader" to avoid this problem of both roque members forcing recalls, and treacherous officers who sell land out from other officers.

Lots of First Land for sale is great for everybody!

1. No for-sale signs.

2. No structures, particles, light beams, floating boxes, or scripts.

3. A lot of it has pretty trees all over it.

4. If the noobs have more choices, they will be happier.

5. Empty lots sprinkled here and there make the surrounding 512m plots more livable.

6. Any land reserved for noobs isn't for sale on the open market competing with the land I'm trying to sell. (Oops, that one is why its great for ME.)

When I first arrived it took me a while to find my first plot. If I ran out of places to look without finding something I liked, I would have been unhappy. Happy noobs turn into happy residents who spend their $L and up their tiers. Makes sense that Linden wants to make sure there's always a wide variety of first land out there.

Besides, how is first land "dumped"? There are only so many noobs, and there has to be enough land available for all of them. The land isn't actually released into the economy until a noob buys it.

(Or an ALT, but hey there will always be loopholes.)

Buster

Vaoetere and several of the surrounding sims are named for Micronesian gods.
http://www.mythome.org/microg.html

Best watch your back when passing ironwood trees Prokofy. "fake foreign-language sounding" indeed!

Too bad we didn't get a sim named Warohunugamwanehaora in that batch.