Land maintenance costs and SIMS

I am a new user on this forum and new to SL. Well, okay, I have spent about 20 hours in SL during my first two days of membership so even though I'm technically new, I feel quite old right now. Yes, I also need sleep

I am in the process of starting my SL entrepreneurial endeavors and I have a question with a comment and then a second question:

1. I understand the obvious overhead that LL incurs with running SL--servers, bandwidth costs, RL employees, etc. However, what I don't understand is why their is such a hefty monthly fee for land ownership. After your upfront cost of US$1250 for an island, you are charged $195 per month for "maintenance." And if you choose the 4x island it costs 4x as much per month (US$780). Why such a hefty fee? Yes, I understand the need for profit corporations to actually do just. But charging US$195/month (US$2340 per year) seems to indicate that you truly do not own your own land. Does it cost that much for LL to maintain an island?

From an economic model to prosper, the risks and rewards must be properly aligned. If I buy an island for a certain amount, I do not expect to pay almost twice that each year in taxes! Either increase the island purchase cost or decrease the monthly fee structure.

Also, there is absolutely zero incentive for a user to buy the larger, 4x island since the cost is simply 4x the purchase cost and monthly fees of the one square island. How about some quantity discounts!

2. What exactly is a SIM? Is it a 65,536 square meter parcel of land--i.e., an island? Is it a real-word server or server space solely dedicated to running a given parcel of land?

Any help and comments would be appreciated.

Bloop

You have already achieved enlightenment!

u dont really own land in RL either

try not paying ur taxes and see how long u keep it.

Welcome to SL!



Remember that SL uses a massive amount of bandwidth. Also keep in mind that the vast majority of players do not pay LL one cent. It is the land owner's financial burden in SL to pay for all the user's costs. Initially this may not seem to be fair, but it does seem to work.


A zero sum gain for the user.


This has always baffled me as well. Until recently, LL offered a DI Award, which essentially helped defer some of the costs associated with owning alot of land that people visited. Since the removal of this incentive I have scaled back to just 4 islands (down from 10).



Yes.

Thanks for the answers, Schwanson. They all make sense. Of course, like you, I do think that a bulk rate should be offered as an incentive.

Ravenous, there are differences between land taxes and severe gouging..and of course I do realize it is not "real land" but it does have real value.

Argent, yeah, that happened decades ago

for that monthly fee I can actually rent a student flat in RL and no need for $1200 upfront

But you can't fly.

$200 a month for a fully managed (Dedicated) server, is actually a pretty good deal. Granted, with most solutions you pay for the server bandwidth etc, and the maintenace seperately, and it then ususally comes out to $200-$500 a month. The only fee I would say that seems outrageous, is the setup fee, perhaps LL fears or suffers from relatively high turnover, so they want to cover their expenses as quickly as possible.

Could some one please answer the SIM question? I am interest in it as well. Thanks.

The thing is, as a land owner, it is YOUR job to subsidize all of the people that LL gives free access (and free money, but this is another discussion) to. SOMEONE has to pay the freight for all of the basic users who aren't paying a nickel, and as a land owner, that someone is you. In other words, as a land owner, you pay your access fee plus a portion of the access fees that most residents choose not to pay.

If everyone who used the system paid even the smallest $10/mo access fee, land ownership costs could (if they would is another matter, but COULD) probably come way down.

ZATZAi is correct. I have a dedicated server in the RW that I pay US$250/month for. I receive 4TB (yes, that's right), 4 terabytes of throughput per month for that price.

Tiger, I think that a SIM is what I originally suggested and Schwanson confirmed. It appears to be a full 256 meter x 256 meter virtual space (65536 sq. m) which runs on a single, dedicated server in the RW. Therefore, each new island purchased is run on a new, dedicated server. A given island SIM is located on a single server and nothing else shares the space. That is why it requires the hefty monthly fee.

If that is incorrect, please let me know.

Shaun, I hear you. Of course, I guess if you have modest success, your revenue will be greater than your fees. But it would be nice to have some additional help from LL as all of us VE's (virtual entrepreneurs) help them build their successful business model

There's actually been quite a bit of discussion about LL CLAIMING that a private SIM has a dedicated server, but actually running two or more sims per server at times, usually until they get caught. (Disclaimer; I have no direct evidence or knowledge of these claims or anything related to them, I refer to others who have made these accusations in previous threads)

To answer the question, yes, if you buy a SIM you are supposed to have a dedicated server.

Thanks, Eric! That helps to clarify the issue..and of course raise another issue.

As a new player who after deciding he wanted to spend time in SL and became a premium member so he could receive 500 Lindens per week I don't know why any serious player wouldn't become a premium member. I paid $72 for a full year. I will receive 52 times 500 or 26,000 Lindens in that year. 26,000 divided by $72 equals 361 lindens per $1. Where can you get an exchange rate like that?

Does anyone know if private islands suffer the same crashes as the mainland? In another thread someone implied that the private islands don't go down when the main grid crashes.

like with the outage now, private islands are closed as well

I was on a private island and was kicked out when the grid went down

Svar,

There lies the problem. As I mentioned on another post, LL takes your 72 usd and book that as revenue in the real world. You receive 26000 L$. Well there's more L$ in SL now. And if you buy 26000 L$ worth of goods and the seller wants to take that money out of SL, Who is going to be there to buy it from him? NO ONE!!

That's why L$ is going down. And the more successful LL is in terms of signing up new users, the faster the L$ goes down. Now how did the original designer of SL think this will work out?

I would like to hear P. Linden's take on this.


--Tiger.

Tiger,

I read some of your other posts on the economy and couldn't agree with you more.
You sound very intelligent about economics. I should introduce to my RL daughter who just joined SL. She has an MBA you two could talk for hours about what is wrong about this economic model.

Depends. Self replicating prims usually dont affect the islands; and estate owners have much greater power to remove them if they do.

But, when the DB server dies under the heavy load of the mainland being infested by self replicators, the islands do lose anyting that they were relying on the DB server for (which is usually quite a bit.).

Actually Linden Labs classifies its servers into class 1 to class 4 type, a class 4 server can support upto 4 sims / or islands. Load changes, as in the sim i reside in was the only one on a server, recently another sim and an island have been added to 'my' server - without a performance issue from my point of view.

There is a web site where you can type in the sim/island name and you get the class of server and if its shared with other sims, or islands:

http://neighbours.maxcase.info/

Adam, thanks for the reply and info.

elmoono, thanks for the info and weblink.

As I recall, LL at one point did claim that each sim got a dedicated server. Some people have found old literature to support that. However, they have since moved on to class, 2, 3, and 4 servers, and their wording has changed, to one sim per CPU. This can of course be interpreted a couple ways, but Linden Labs interprets it as meaing one sim per CPU core, so the class 4 servers, which have 4 core CPUs, have 4 sims on them.



Damn! Where did you get that deal?

Okay a quick tangent to the thread here to answer ZATZAi's question....

I'm hosted through DreamHost.com. Check out http://www.dreamhost.com/dedicated/. They are currently in the process of overhauling their server farmer so they are not accepting new dedicated server clients. But when they're finished, it may be something you want to look into.

I could not believe it when they announced a while back that everyone's hard disk space would be quadrupled and everyone's monthly bandwidth would be octupled. I started with 500MB of throughput per month and ended up with 4TB/month with no additional monthly fees. And I thought 500MB/month was great!

Thanks elmoono and ZATZAi for the info. So, it is safe to say that if you own a 512 x 512 island/continent--what the SL website calls a large island (http://secondlife.com/community/land-islands.php)--then you are on a dedicated sever without anyone else around.

I suggest that the word SIM should be defined to mean a dedicated processor with dedicated memory and dedicated bandwidth. If it does not have dedicated memory or bandwidth then the resource use of someone else's island realm may compromise your island's performance.

Or, a SIM could be a dedicated server period. Island owners could pay more to have a server with additional processors and memory. That way they could provide a better in-world experience for their guests.

So, if you own an island that is not on a dedicated server it would be a partial SIM--say a half SIM or quarter SIM depending on the number of processors that are shared.

Thanks Svar,

I have been in SL for a few days now and my interest so far is mostly acedemic. It's interesting to look at SL as a microcosm of the RL. And some of the pitfalls of the RL is glaringly present here.

Social engineering is very hard. If LL wants to be the only one making decisions in SL, it in effect becomes a dictator, whether benevelent or not. There need to be serious rethinking of the way SL is governed. And now they have a new round of financing from some well known names, maybe they could afford to think about these issues. As the SL community grows larger, the conflict of interest will be greater. Already we are seeing difference of opinion from different interest group in the case of L$. If LL drags their feet, the solution in the future will have to be more radical, controversial and costly.

I would be happy to discuss these types of issue with anyone. Just IM me.

---Tiger