Land Store Experiences

I'm posting this just in the hope it will be useful to others.


Having begun the expansion of my now 'micro continent' Caledon, I went to the Land Store to select a sim.


It was ridiculously fast and easy. Simply click on a square, name the region and estate, hit 'pay' and... there you go. Sim on the way in 1 to 2 weeks, it says.

Unlike my last sim purchase, the 1250 USD was billed immediately. Click click, that was it. If you are liberal with your Second Life password, you may want to re-think such a policy IMMEDIATELY! You are just a few mouseclicks away from potentially tens of thousands in charges now. Or whatever your credit card will hold. I suppose LindeX is similar, but this was soooo easy, and I didn't see any purchase limits.

With regard to region and estate names, there were asterisks by these but I had forgotten the precise 'rules' that governed such. I presumed that 'region' was multiple sims and 'estate' was one sim; we shall see I suppose.



I'd written to the concierge (and then spoke to Lee Linden on the phone) about moving my original isle, Caledon, out to be next to this first one for general expansion purposes. Once I got through, it was a very good call and Lee was wonderfully helpful. My original sim will be moving out to the Western Sea soon.


Overall, the Land Store 'beta' was very 'non-beta' in the sense that it seems to be working flawlessly. The most helpful part: an 'order status' indicator that gives a sense of when your sim is almost ready for delivery (this is available after a purchase). Feedback like this is invaluable, when you have over a dozen people and all their friends, partners and social circles wanting to know what is going on, and when to move in.



I still don't like the sim reservation/auction concept, and I would immediately surrender my freedom to place the small nation of Caledon wherever I wanted in turn for a more cohesive, beautiful grid.

I'm not planning on reserving any 'void sims' due to my philosophic disagreement with the concept. But other than this difference in philosophy, I have to say the Land Store is pretty darn good.

It was easy, and I agree too easy, but no more than LineX, so watch your CC.

Although I was order number 3 and there has been 2 islands in place for the past couple of days, I was hoping it would speed up the creation(as in the old system you didn't pay till the island was up) so I'm out of pocket... Although waiting with baited breath and deep excitement!!!!

I think more and more people will use this tool.. better get the next batch of squares ready, it looks like there are plenty!


Luv ya

x

Hi. I was order #6 and agree the process was just a bit too easy. After reading through the island FAQ and talking to several people the instant charging of your CC was a bit of a shock, of course I was thinking this would mean my island would be served up in a few days versus weeks per the FAQ but that apparently isn't the case.

Anyway, I hope this will allow more people to branch out and create even more beautiful islands because they are by far the best places on the grid (my own limited experience please don't flame!).

I personally didn't mind the immediate charge much, as I run my financing conservatively enough that it doesn't matter. No cash flow issues here.

Yes it would have been nice to have a few more weeks of $L income converted, but in the end it doesn't really matter unless the sim isn't delivered.

But we are doing business in good faith; I've had decent sim delivery before and thus would expect more of the same. In my short experience I have no reason to think otherwise.

I agree, SL makes it way too easy to typo yourself a big charge on your credit card. My funding is through a paypal account that doesn't have anything like $1250 in it... there's never more in that account than I'm willing to risk losing... but, damn...

I mean, when I buy a song on the iTunes Music Store it tells me it's about to charge my credit card and lets me cancel the transaction. And that's only for 99 cents.

I'm occasionally tempted to go in and terminate my Paypal agreements with LL and only re-enable them when I know I'm buying something, because they make it too easy to abuse.

Yes, the shopping cart aspect of the land store is very good and gives us some interesting insight on the commitment that LL has made towards the future.

The reservation aspect though .. well, it was very unfortunate that they released that alongside and tarnished what otherwise was a great improvement.

I know people are complaining about the reservation portion of the Land Store but I think it is a good idea it just needs to be tweaked a little bit. Only the person who owns a particular sim should be able to reserve anything within say... 10 square units around their boundries. If that would give them 100 square units (sims) to expand and even Ansche(sp) hasn't been that explosive in her continent growth.

I have this beautiful dream of a cohesive world, with perhaps great lakes, seas, a sky above and an underworld below: a compelling world.

I would attempt to blend my own sims into it if I could, or allow the Company to help me in that endeavour.

The Atoll made my heart leap when I first realised the grand scale of it; the Greater Grid unfolding throughout the 21st Century as an infinite plain of possibility.

To see it boxed in this week... that was very, very hard. If *any* project needs room to grow, and a loving, guiding hand, it's the mainland.

I still dream of ocean between the isles, too.

I just wish they'd finish the mainland.

All the void between the old continent and Atoll, finish the grand curve of Atoll and connect it up with mainland.

New sims down the edge of the Cliffs of Inanity between the mainland and the pseudo-mainland, bringing them gently to sea level.

Tidy up the mess down in the south.

And new void sims all around the edge, to allow free sea travel around the whole of the mainland.

The only problem with that Argent is that the Linden Estate is a loss leader for them. They're going to have to leave the cliffs in the south and a half finished continent in the south sea because their already accumulating more unwanted land than they can afford to hold.

It'll be far more intelligent and businesslike for them to stop adding sims to their own estate and start doing everything they can to encourage the other estate owners to expand. As people migrate, LL can reduce the size of thier estate and shift the balance of the employees to working on productive, money making areas rather than chasing residents tails as liasons and land maangers.

I don't see any inherent relationship between "this land is contiguous" and "this land is part of the same estate".

They have already got two big chunks of pseudo-mainland off in the east, there's no reason they couldn't let people set up estates on the mainland, or even let them take mainland sims over lock, stock and estate tools if they own the whole thing. I think it'd be great, for example, if Dreamland and the Atoll continent could grow together, or if Lusk and Perry could become the Luskwood Estate.

Well yeah that would work. I think instead that they're offering people who own whole regions on the Linden Estate the option of trading those sims for the setup cost of an equal number of private sims complete with everything, including the raw files, migrated by LL.

LL automatically undercuts the tier cost of full sim ownership by not offering other estate managers bulk discounts. All they have to do to is allow their direct sim owners full access to the estate tools. Unofrtunately, that flies in the face of the silly one world dream so it'll never happen.

Ergo, we're back to square one which is simply that the Lindens imposing their one world dream makes their estate non-profitable for them. At the very least, they should stop expanding it to staunch the growth of the wound as much as possible. It's going to grow bit by bit anyway as they continue to accumulate land unless they have the good sense to start retiring sims, as they accumulate them, and take them off the map.

There I go being all practical and no fun again. Sorry, didn't mean to rain on the parade.

Joy! Joy! Growth and Properity ~ Features! Features! Everybody Sing ~

For a brief time, the Land Store FAQ stated that the island would be ready in up to 3 days - but they removed that pretty darn quick!

I was order number 22. Order placed Monday afternoon (eastern USA time). They immediately took the $1250 from my account. It was very quick and easy to do.

I wonder why LL cannot have more islands in a ready-to-move-in state. They have tons of new sims just added to both the southern area (the Korean islands), and the mainland area too. Since we are being charged immediately, we should immediately get to move in, don't you think?

Alternatively, they could turn them into void sims. They can run multiple void sims (all 'Governor Linden' owned, no building anywhere) on a single server and they're doing that for a lot of the ocean sims.

They could also use new void sims with a mix of land and sea to tidy up the nasty edges of the map along the south and east sides, as well as filling in the gaps between the continents.

Got my island today : area 51

and i experienced a nice bug : i paid the island... twice ...
Linden warned, bug report filled, mail sent to billing.

If you find any alien technology I didn't get a chance to clean up before I crashed, sorry about that.