The End Of Public Land

this is an untrue statement. One, the scripts couldn't scoop it up. At best, they can alert a person to scoop it up. Two, I can say for sure that the people with the scripts were not scooping all of it up because I've seen it on the map. But most importantly, the people who did use scripts were re-selling it cheap, much cheaper than you'll get it through auction now. If you want to buy this land, you will pay more because of this change. I guarantee it.

Once again, you are correct Shack.

To boot, auctioned land sells for USD, so goodbye money sink.

People seem to be going about everyone have equal access. Well that is a double edge sword. Under the old system, if see land you like for sale.....you buy it. Now, you wait and wait and wait for it, and maybe comes up for auction. Bidding on it does not mean you will get it.

I said it a hundred times before and I will say it again, LL is now holding land in their own tier to resell and not in paying tier. It's the crest of the slippery GOM slope of competing with it's own residents.

It is indeed. Equal access means that Anshe is bidding against you. I say that not because there's anything wrong going on, but it's a fact that the large traders look at the auctions much closer than they do the general land market.



I think you're overstating it here. I mean, LL has been doing this forever, but badly. For example, they still haven't put up all the telehub land from the buyback. If LL doesn't improve their process it will only hurt them and the people who need the land because it's the only land left in the sim to buy.

But I don't see anything GOM-like here.

LL would have liked to leave this alone, but in the end they were unwilling to implement controls on foreign scripts or similar measures to limit land scanning. Instead, they found it preferrable to swallow this pill. So be it. The people asked for it and they get exactly what they paid for.

I do.

Now to most, this may be a biased statement, so allow me to shed some light on my opinion for a moment.

LL is in the business of collecting revenues for land tiers. Service fees for Island creation, sim moving are just that, they are not revenue streams. Likewise the 10 dollar a month membership is not a revenue stream, but a subsidy for stipends and dwell.

LL will only succeed, if tier payments are maintained. LL vows in its advertising that it invites business, not snub it. Likewise they purport to not compete with it's residents.

I realize, there was only a handful of active land scanners out there, but these residents pay for tier in order to accomodate abandoned land. By having abandoned land revert into the governor's tier gives appearance of self subsidy. Nobody gains a thing while LL holds land within it's own tier. They got something for nothing, whereas residents paid a nominal fee to buy the land and pay a monthly tier to support the land.

Managing abandoned land is no bed of roses. 90% of the lots are < than 512 and more in the range of 16, 32 and 48 sq m plots. Most of these plots are in undesirable areas, under blue signs, cliffs, sim voids etc. In some cases they make good prim or hosting plots.

Average auction price for land is around $4/sq m, so a 16m plot equates to about 16 cents USD. Having LL staff manage, auction and administer plots like these makes absolutely no sense, whatsoever. They are short staffed as it is. Would you rather have LL employees autoreturning and terraforming junk lots or working on priority issues? Any reasonable resident would opt for the latter.

They were getting this service for free, from it's residents. At the end of the month, with tier paid, revenues amount to mimimum wage. Now they took that that away.

I will agree however about the ramapant use of bad scripts and unethical business practices. But in this case they bit of their nose, to spite their face.

Where did you read this? Most of the current parcel auctions are for lindens, so they would be a sink. Is that changing?

Take a closer look, they sell in both. USD for large and L for small lots.

So there might be a net gain in terms of a money sink, cause the auctions will fetch at least 3-4 times 1L/sm

Well, damn!

That WAS a win-win situation.

coco

Hey - I don't see any reason TO limit land scanning in the first place!

And it does look like a clear case of GOM'ed to me.

But here's my question: Seems to me a while back that the Lindens said only land the size of a whole sim would be auctioned. Now they are changing that?

coco

New land is sim size. Old land is whatever it happens to be.In the olden days land that did not sell at auction would become public land. I wonder what they will do with land that does not sell at auction.

Parcel auctions have been rolling off the active list with no bids for the past few months.

Then I guess it just sits there forever. How wonderful.

coco

I really think this is the reason for the change...much to the dismay of some who see everything as negative.

In a fit of depression two weeks ago, a person I had sold land to abandoned 14k m². A big build he was doing with friends. He told me he was doing this early of a Sunday morning and I flew in and started buying for $L1. Someone else was doing the same thing and we each got about 7k m². She landed, I explained the problem, and she sold me hers (very generous of her!) for what she paid for it. Later, when the "abandoner's" friends came on line, I explained what had happened. They bought it from me for the $L1 that evening.

Had this "rule" been in effect then, LL would have had the land in its own "kitty" and been able to return it. I think that would have been better -- and that they would. Mistakes happen. This solves it.

I hope you're right.

Many people have encountered this situation. A month or so ago a couple had a fight. They each owned land individually in the same sim and one of them released 8K of land in response. I ended up with the land and the next day they explained the situation to me and I returned it for $1/m2.

But released land is not the only problem. There's also group-owned land and deceitful officers who sell the land for cheap without the permission of the owner. I just encountered this situation this week. And as far as I know, LL is unwilling to intervene in these cases. The new group management functions that are coming will help. In this case, I was able to give some of the land back to the original owner for free, but the owner couldn't afford to just buy all of it back at cost because I had bought it at $5/m2.

In fact, I don't see everything as negative. Quite the contrary, I have a lot of faith in the players of SeccondLife. Most people, when faced with a situation like we're describing will do as much as they can to help the original owner.

I'm a little more negative towards Linden Lab, not because there's anything wrong with Linden Lab, but because in the past they haven't responded to these situations well, even when it was in their power to do so. They aren't equipped to deal with these situations on the scale that they are happening and at our current rate of growth. At least that's the way it seems to me.

From Philip Linden's town hall yesterday:

Looks like all the ones that have finished in the last 24 hours have finished with at least 1 bid.

And just what is this moronic post supposed to do? What's your damn point?

Gee, Portugal -- English is obviously _NOT_ your native language. Maybe you should take some classes...

Oh good! We can all rest easy now knowing that everything's gonna be alright.

There's that damn phrase again - "money sink" - which is nonsense.

MONEY JUST DOESN'T DISAPPEAR, WHETHER IT'S USD OR LD. Either the price of the land goes into the last owner's pocket or into LL's kitty of available Lindens (considering they went to the trouble of _creating_ the currency, I kinda doubt they'd waste it).

Evidently, LL twigged to the people using scripts to gobble up available public land at rock-bottom prices and "flipping" it. As this is somewhat unfair to the people who are new and have no idea how such scripts work or that you could even _do_ this, LL seems to have decided to even the playing field.

This kind of "public land" disappearing is fine by me -- I would like to see a permanent zoning type established, which could _NEVER_ be sold...

This land kept in the center of each sim for "green space" -- and developed either as:
-- local parks (designed by volunteer terraformers, chosen from applications to LL for each sim's PL space),
-- community gathering areas (kinda like the Welcome Area for newbies, but laid out for people to sit and talk with friends, with tables, benches, gazebos, etc) OR
-- small local sandboxes which were wiped every 3 or 6 hours.

That way, the sims would not be so crowded with builds that you had no open space, and there would be many small sandbox areas -- so many that everyone has room to build stuff, and griefers would not be able to find so many "targets" at the big sandboxes for their stupid games.

It's true. The process of creating new Lindens is extremely long and labor intensive. I think that's probably why we keep hearing rumors from various Lindens about the introduction of printing press chairs in release 1.9.3. The idea being that new currency could be produced more cheaply if we could leverage the dwell generated during the process.

No reason to get snarky. It looks like the auctions are getting bidders. Just a statement of fact. Settle down there sporto.

LL advertises and boasts "Come to SL and make real money"

Start a business, making real money...LL takes it away.

I can't imagine that all that land will keep selling at $4 per sq m. But who knows, maybe the market is unlimited. Maybe everyone will upgrade to premium. Maybe everyone will want to rent a mansion. I dunno.

But, just iffin a lot never sold, would LL hold it forever? Maybe convert it to protected land? That would be fine for rivers and such, but what about those dinky little lots that break up the landscape so badly?

I'd just like to know what will happen to land that receives no bid. It seems to be that the old public land thing took care of empty land pretty quick.

I would imagine they would put it up for auction again. If they have a lot that won't go at 4, they will lower the reserve to 3 per sm.

Well, here is one that didn't sell--

Heaton (63,109) PG 3600m Parcel


So we can keep an eye on it and see what happens. It's a snowy hillside, so I wouldn't pay $4 per for it myself.