Please Auction Iris In Small Parcels

Yesterday I visited Iris because I got a note from a land trader that the telehub had opened in the Moth Temple. At first it seemed that water was preserved all around for a thousand meters, but when I descended into the drink, I saw that the land between the atoll-style boardwalks was purple.

That means the land has been set aside to be sold on the Linden auction, turned a purple colour, and is slated for sale.

I vehemently oppose the campaign to stop the auctioning of Iris. I propose that it merely not be auctioned in the usual giant plots that encourage mall barons but instead be auctioned so as to encourage small business. Smaller parcels with less prims will mean less tall buildings and reduce the chance the temple will be dwarfed.

I'm willing to entertain a proposal to have telehubs in the game surrounded by many square meters of unimpeded water or meadow or forest, as a kind of Linden-sponsored "national parks" program to reduce congestion at telehubs. That could be discussed.

But that's not what is happening now. The Lindens already announced the land is for sale. For them to claw back land they put out and marked for auction *is a terrible precedent in this game based on land values*. It means that the nanny state, when faced with the clamouring of a few individuals, will withdraw land or change construction plans to suit a utopian vision.

I suspect that the Lindens planned all along to have the Sacred Moth Temple be a telehub site. Xenon Linden simply matter-of-factly told us it was definitely coming during his talk last week, even as other Lindens were feigning to heed "public opinion polls" about the matter in which "2/3 of the community voted against the telehubs" or "only 2 landowners told Robin they wanted a telehub," making many believe there was so much "community sentiment" (I put paid to that by quickly organizing 7 landowners on the new continent at random who happened to be online and getting them into a group to lobby for telehubs, the New Continent Pioneers).

The people who scream the loudest for no telehubs are people who don't own large amounts of land, and often don't even own any land at all and play in the sandboxes, or else sit on their free-4096 as oldbies. They resent the commercialization of the game, the land auction prominence in the economy, the conversion to dollars on the GOM. They scream the loudest and often use their privileged position with the Lindens as mentors or oldbies to demand that the Lindens keep SL a pastoral utopia (often with some of the restrictive ideologies of the 19th century that indulged in this utopianism). One person screams that road construction be halted in Hamlin because it offends their pastoralist vision; others who bought on the auction thinking they'd be next to the Linden road are now screwed (get that road going again!)

Many people hate blight at telehubs. The answer to that is to allow and encourage more competition, not less, and to create some alternatives to monopolistic buy-ups of telehubs by oligarchic mall owners, etc. through incentives like building contests, other types of awards besides dwellopers, different parceling, whatever. My answer to sprawling blight at telehubs is to hire an architect like SuLuMor Romulus and have malls that are nicer to look at and easier to fly in without having your av trapped in a rezzing nightmare, and to provide lower prices for more people to enter the market, especially newbies. Other people try to "turn around telehubs" with landmark buildings such as Brownlee and Hamlin.

Telehubs are vital to the commerce of this game. The hatred of them is spawned by a few who have the ear of the Lindens and the space on these forums, which is read by few players. The love of them is demonstrated by numerous vendors and shoppers at these bustling centers of business and entertainment.

Alternatives might be considered, like parceling up the auction pieces into so many tiny bits (encouraging only junks and stalls by the boardwalks) that no big mall baron will be able to seize all the tiny bits. This might be an excellent way to encourage small businessmen who have often 0 chance of entering this market. Imagine a huge auction list, each of 256 or 512 pieces suitable for a boat or a booth. Of course, the mall barons might bully them and buy them out using all the usual nasty telehub tactics that occur in this business, but at least the Lindens will have done due diligence to give everyone a fighting chance.

The answer is NEVER to undo a decision to auction land, however. The Lindens don't work for free, whatever their "equal salaries". They have to cover their manufacturing costs and labor and R&D.

People who want to see large swathes of nature (Nature As Conceived By Eric Linden LOL) have got to put their money where their mouths are! There are people like Sudane Erato who have done this by creating beautiful areas such as in Moraine or Shack Dougall in Alviso. People who have not spent money or tried anything or rallied others successfully to get wilderness patches in this game need to take a step back and ask why they are failing to do so, before they rant on the Lindens to undo a decision they already made.

i hoped they would auction half the land with double prims as they did the nova albion sims. that would be totally cool.

I am opposed to the auctioning of land in Iris. Any builds of any size will detract from the beauty and mystery of Iris as it stands today. My opposition is to the "gateway" to the region being destroyed. There is no reason to have user builds right in the vicinity of the temple and the stilt village there. The residents of this region ought to embrace the beauty and mystery of it and see it for what it is.

The size of the auction plots wont matter, the ones that want a lot of land there will get it. Business will thrive in the bordering sims, Im sure.

There is already commerce in the new region up north and more will come, it doesnt have to be right in a travellers face upon arriving in the wildest regions of SL. I imagine that the initial thought was that the land in the region will use the atolls to their benefit and enhance the existing ruins. I just dont see that happening. I hope the community proves me wrong.

The land is not on the auction block, so its not a done deal. If you follow land sales then you know things often change before they actually hit the auction block. If they were already up for bid I would not want to seem jerked out from underneath a potential buyer, but is not for sale yet.

Chances are its a done deal anyway, we will just have to wait and see how the area matures.

Linden Labs is not in the business of creating large tracts of land with beauty and mystery. They are actually a relatively small company, from what I gather, not the size of TSO or EQ, and their MO has been to have the players produce content. So if players want large tracts of land with beauty and mystery, they need to buy the space on the server, and install beauty and mystery and forest themselves. Asking them to put this in and pay for it themselves is a kind of socialism that can't last for long because there is no one to pay for it, even if attempted on the backs of an unwilling public -- precisely because it's a subscription service.

The stilt village looks like it is staying, but if for some reason it doesn't stay, the Lindens put the same atoll materials inside the library folder, and any player could buy the land and put those same villages up. The Lindens in a sense provide a pencil sketch here, and the readers have to fill in the blanks.

I personally have bought lots of land in the New Continent to try to preserve beauty, mystery, legend, etc. too. Maybe no one likes some of the things I have commissioned or some of the things I do myself, which are very experimental, but at least I buy land and try to make content and make a business, rather than clamouring for the Lindens to do everything for me. If someone can make better content and better mystery, they will still have done it by spending their own money, and applying their own labour, which I fully respect.

Even without any sales of land around the Sacred Temple where I, too, worship the Great Moth and all the other Moths, to be sure, we will find a way to bring commerce to the new world. But to put in a telehub and not allow commercial activity around it is to undermine the purchases of everyone up to this point, most of whom made their purchases assuming that LL would perform as they always have in the old sims.

Jesus Christ overturned the tables of the money-lenders and indulgence-sellers and drove them out of the temple. Ever since, a mistaken allergy to commerce has reigned in the Judaeo-Christan civilizations and their imitators. But the whole reason that money-lenders and indulgence-sellers could appear in a temple is that temples come from big boring hierarchical paternalistic structures that people find hard to maintain and which need to be paid for. And Jesus Christ Himself went on to change a lot of the way the whole temple business was run in His day. Today, whether at a mosque or a cathedral, it's at least allowed to have small businesses at least selling prayer cards or prayer beads or rosaries. So it wouldn't attract even from our Moth religion if at least some kind of commerce could be tolerated there.

By spacing the parcels out in small boats/booths/stalls which are unlikely to be more than a storey tall, nothing will be "in your face".

The land is coloured purple and slated for auction. If the Lindens now heed the clamouring of a few, even a fake "2/3 majority on the forums," they are setting a really dangerous precedent in this game. It means they are willing to use this highly flawed and dubious "democracy system" they've installed to undermean even their own rational business planning, and the rational business decisions of thousands of customers who pay money for land instead of demanding a subsidized national parks system.

The land is for sale. It is coloured purple. That means it is in the queue to go in the auction the next few days. To make the Lindens stop that process means that any and all transactions on what was an honest, reliable system of land auctioning can now be hijacked by the sentiments of a few.

LL is in the business of providing us a world to play in, or work in, whatever the case may be. There are currently sims that they own that get no use at all, Plum and Lime, for example. And, for arguements sake, all the "void" sims that allow us to fly freely through places that were once simply non-existant sims that we had to go around.

I see your point about land needing to be for sale, but its simply not true that every square meter needs to be for sale for the Lindens to profit. I am simply suggestiong that Iris remain a mystery and be a gateway to the rest of the region. I dont see Iris as a great natural resource or national park that needs to be preserved, rather a historical landmark that should be preserved for the good of the rest of the region that is served by it as a hub and gateway.

I see your point, but I dont understand your arguement here. What real difference does it make to you if land is for sale there or not? What is wrong with a little bit of pristine area before reaching the bordering sales outlets? As a pioneer of this new region yourself, it seems like you would embrace any measure that would make the region unique and attractive for your guests and consumers.

The land is colored purple, but it is not on the auction block. My experience with the Hidden Lakes region showed me that land is not ready to go until it is on the auction block. I watched plot shapes change and change again before they went to auction. I saw perfect plots I wanted turn into huge plots I had no hope of owning. I saw others sliced down to sizes I did not want to mess with. Nothing is final til it hits the auction block, never has been.

Loki,

Making the land around Iris a big expanse of no-man's land might seem like the creation of a wilderness of mystery, but the reality is that it just creates an expanse of more fly-over time and annoyance.

Most people even though flying to their friends' homes, are just going to be annoyed by having to fly more and have nothing under neath them.

The land is purple, not red. That means it is slated for auction.

If the Lindens have fewer telehubs out here, that might make an interesting continent with more wilderness and wildness. But I'm going to bet that wears off a bit after awhile and people will simply complain that they have to fly too much, and fly over sim seams, which, if they are wearing attachments, make trouble for them.

I'm not for awarding a big windfall contract for transportation to the Home Depot business managers who also happened to get Purple long ago and run a "public interest" public transportation scheme there. Why should that business be favorted above others? Such public transporation coming from the old land to the new might even benefit my business in Columbia and Calletta more, as those are gateway sims for overland transportation. But I'm just not for giving landfall contracts to old players or those who accidently got some proximate land. I'm for auctioning it fairly on the auction to the highest bidder. That's what is far in a capitalist vs. socialist protectionist patronage system.

I'm not for awarding a sudden big windfall contractor to whoever scrambles and gets Modest land (is that why some wag named it Modest?) which is the first mainland you'd reach if you did leave Iris all "pristine".

I'm for Lindens ending this climate of speculation and player conflicts and anger by announcing their telehub locations and policies clearly for the New Continent.

People buying there had a reasonable expectation that like any new area of a dozen sims or so, it would have 3 telehubs, or whatever.

If they are changing that policy, they should announce it clearly, and explain their thinking, and not just play to clamoring landless minorities among the socialist elite.

If they depart from the policy they established for businesses elsewhere who are their customers, they need to justify it, or lose those customers.

They don't have to be annoyed at all, in fact, they can just go to Purple and use the transport system there. It's easy! Just click on the transport ball, choose your location from the map on the ground, and transport to ANY SIM IN THE NEW CONTINENT in less than a minute. No need to be bothered by flying anywhere!

As far as a big windfall contract, surely you jest. Two points of clarification.

First, I have never contacted the Lindens about any such thing and have no plans too. The transport system there was player made. I didn't know you were in charge of that. I must have missed that memo!

Second, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I separated the island so that we could keep the transport system separate. I am pleased to report about our HUGE windfall. There have been 58 users of the transportation system, creating a current dwell of 113, resulting in a windfall of $3L on Saturday and $4L on Friday. *Runs straight to GOM screaming OMG I am rich.....* PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Prokofy,

Gimme a break. Fly time from Iris hub to Istar is four seconds. Fly time to Bella is seven seconds. It takes me about 20 seconds to just rez the builds neighboring the Janus hub. It is not going to hurt anything if one, uniquely developed, hub sim is preserved.

We obviously have two fundamentally different views. I think you are wrong about this and, Im sorry, but I think your arguing just for the sake of it now. Its really hard for me to believe that you believe so strongly in your arguements. But, differing views is what makes SL so interesting, right?

Just keep in mind, this is not about David and Goliath. Its about choosing to have a nicely manicured lawn and a welcome mat at your door or having a trailer house with a gravel yard and forgotten christmas lights strung up all year long.

I hereby agree to disagree.

(Follwing was in reply to Loki's "Please do not auction Iris" Thread)

Finally, a Hub in the New Continent, i.e., NW. The Lindens should find some way of providing Landing Points devoid, repeat DEVOID, of big, ugly malls, etc. This would keep the NW decidedly residential yet more easily accessible to owners, visitors, et al.

Bob 'The Exaulted" Bravo

Loki, I hereby disagree with you, too. And I really to believe what I'm writing because my experience is different!

Seconds? But that's not the case! Maybe technically some seconds, but every second counts when you are not just cruising around and looking at scenery, but trying to get customers!

Yesterday I flew the path from Iris to Burns, where I will have some boutique stores, and found that it was really quite a long journey. Then I flew even further to Columbia where I have a mall, and it was really a journey of 1,000 steps.

It does take a long time. It's a nuisance. If they have a railroad, that might provide some fun and scenery that takes away that sense of flying endlessly over big tracts.

I think telehubs are legitimate engines of commerce. I have grown to understand this, while I hated them at first. I still hate the squat, stubby, inconvenient and stupid buildings they've built in the old world. Finally, they have something both easy to get out of and interesting to look at. May they have more of them.

Excuse me, but I don't jest, and I'm afraid you're going to find me like a dog with a bone on this one.

I don't care if you only made one penny of dwell. You have a *public system of transportation on your land.* My God! Don't you get it? You've HIJACKED the public's NEED and RIGHT to transportation on to PRIVATE LAND!!!

You are COLLECTING THE DWELL -- despite your grandiose claims that you were going to "give this to Prokofy to give to charity" or some tripe like that.

If there are only 58 users, so what? The continent isn't sold yet. It's just getting started. There will be 5800 in 2 weeks or 6 weeks. I don't get why one player gets to put in public transportation on land they happened to seize near the gateway of the new continent and collect dwell.

The right thing to do would make that dwell distribute to every single member of the group Explorers. Then we could all benefit. Are you doing that? Of course officers would get more dwell, and as tier-payers, would not be eligible to get the dwelloper award.

So Mash is going to get a RL dollar dwelloper award in 3 months just because of my need or my customers' need to go to the new continent? Huh? And people think I'm a heartless cut-throat capitalist? Not when it comes to public matters like public transporttion!

I'm glad you aren't having a beta-test- love-fest with the Lindens having your two railroads meet. But...you will! And...the public should be right there witnessing that! And you need to do the right thing to avoid the appearance of favoritism.

Your railroad might even benefit my Columbia business more than the Northern telehub does. But I stand by my right to raise the problem of private players putting public transporation on their private land and picking up the dwell and the recognition and the reputation. Not to mention the TRAFFIC to their nearby Home Depot store! Geez!

I don't think anyone really thinks you support capitalism, Prokofy. Nor are you a socialist. You adopt whatever ideology will help you best at the time, and then cast it aside the moment it's no longer convenient.



Favoritism? Like demanding that the Lindens parcel a public sim to your specification?

And you will never get it!!

I have hijacked nothing. They don't have to use the transport system in purple! It's there for their convenience...IF they CHOOSE to use it. KEYWORD: CHOOSE Same way they could CHOOSE to visit your land (mall) in the new continent. It is not the only way to get there! I do recall something about a new teleport there. Geez...that same 58 users could have selected your mall in the new continent if they had wanted to.

AND FOR THE LAST TIME : READ THIS PROKFY! I DO NOT OWN THE RAILROAD OR THE LAND IT SITS ON>>GET OVER IT >>TAKE OFF YOUR SELECTIVE READING OF POSTS!!!

And as far as traffic to the Home Depoz store, its probably about the same as your strategically placed mall just inside the entry to the new continent. But with any store, regardless of where you are, traffic really means nothing ...unless you have something that consumers feel is worth spending their lindens on when they get there.

Have a great day!

Mash, if you provide public transportation of the only kind there is, on land where you have access and others don't, with customers as hostages, and somebody who is providing you that access -- your friend? your business partner? -- gets all the dwell, it is right and proper for people to raise questions.

If you don't own the railraod or the land it sits on, I'm sorry, there was something not made clear (others kept point to you, evidently as the creator), but you still are benefitting if your friends or partners or group gets all the dwell. You are saying that you are not in a group that owns this land. But what is your connection to the group that owns the land then?

If I've misunderstood something about this, fine, but I still don't get it. You are saying you built this railroad, that is now housed on land someone else owns? Is that it? But...what is your relationship to you?

THey get the dwell, for public transportation??? These are the same people that told us all to cap services at $2 or we couldn't come on their land??? Huh?

Traffic does mean something, because it means that people can see those items they wish to buy.

It's right to raise questions about people who impose "public" transportation in the game that they themselves or their friends benefit from.

What does Burns and Columbia have to do with this? Istar and Bella are the sims that border Iris and it does take less than ten seconds to reach them from the hub. I am talking about a buffer, free of builds, preserving the uniquely built hub in Iris. A ten second inconvience, that keeps the hub unique, without a 20 story WalMart right next to it. Thats it.

I will even compromise. Just save the inner atoll directly adjoining the hub. Attached is a pic of the mini map and the area I feel should should be preserved. My line borders the existing atoll walkways.

I have no problems with whatever gets built outside of the protected zone, this is not an anti-commerce drive. It is simply about preserving something special and making the experience to the region unique.

I like the Sacred Moth Temple area too. It's nice. But the temple itself takes up a fair amount of space, and you can have all the aesthetic/religious/spiritual/special experience you need just rezzing up inside that temple.

What we have are big swathes of water with boardwalk. It's kinda dead. Not much will happen there. I go out there a lot just to hang because I love it -- and I hardly ever see anybody. It's just out there. And who pays for it? It's a lot to support, even if you just put in that bit you are outlining.

I guess I picture life here. like in a real city, some kind of Asian city with lots of junks (little boats), lanterns swaying, little stalls, bustling, marketplace, LIFE. Otherwise, it's just a dead monument with nothing to make people stick for long. Why not auction off smaller pieces to encourage the appearance of smaller businesses?

In fact, the Lindens themselves could put in the builds they then auction or lottery off as they did in Luna.

The only reason I mentioned Burns and Columbia is that's where I have malls and flying from the telehub to them is ways.

There's the principle of the thing too here -- that the Lindens put up something for auction, but a small, vocal number of players can have it taken down. That worries me.

I guess I don't like all this dismay about telehubs. The challenge of them, as Elle Pollack said in her thread, is how to take the reality of their need, and the reality of commerce in this game being a driving force for many, and "redeem" it if possible, i.e. make it less ugly and laggy. Suppressing it is not the answer.

The Lindens are a small minority of people as well and, they make mistakes. The road you mentioned earlier, that sim has road the full lenght of it but it ends at the sim because Lindens have no land in the neighboring sim to continue it. Looks like an oversight to me, a mistake. It happens.

You and I both have the right to voice our opinions. We are both minority factions. I think it is a mistake to sell the land right next to the hub in Iris. The land is slated for auction, but it is not on the block and no ones plans are ruined, yet. If the land was actually on the table, I would not have anything to say about it.

The sad thing is, if the Lindens do in fact change their mind, you will see it as a victory for the FIC or something and it will fuel your drive to stereotype players and actions well into the future. I agree with you on many things, but I in this case, I think its a big mistake to sell the land right next to this particular hub.

You have me painted as some FIC Oldbie that always gets his way. Its simply not the case. I have had many times occur that my requests go ignored and I honestly cant think of a single time that my single suggestion was accepted due to any favoritism. I do not loathe business, I pay monthly fees, and even though we do different things, we are just the same, single residents of SL. I am older than you and that is like being born, we have no choice in the matter, I got here first, thats all. I think through your relentless pursuit of topics that you embrace you have a more powerful vocal pull than me. SL develops from suggestions from the community.

We have really talked it to death. You see it one way and I see it another. There is nothing wrong with that. Im sure you will have more to say about it, possibly, but I really cant find more to add to the debate. It is probably too late anyway and the land will eventually be put to use by residents. I hope when that happens they follow your plan to enhance the region rather than blight it. I got some pics of the area now, we will have to revive this thread in six months and compare the before and after see how they look.

Your decent at debate in this forum format and its tough for me to stay out of this, but I really dont know what more I can add. Your guilty of snarky jabs at me in this thread just as you accuse others of the same behaviors, but we have basically kept the debate civil. I have talked to you a couple of times in world and I like you just fine, maybe if we were to get to know each other better, you would see I am not a stereotype. I am an individual, just like you.

My final word on the matter, I dont want to see any land directly next to the Iris hub auctioned. It is not on the auction block and no one that has any ideas about how they may use the area will not be hindered, because it simply hasnt happened yet. Its not too late. Smaller plots will not keep developers from acquiring the land, more likely it will finacially boost a lot more people with some land speculation money.

Its been fun, Im out. Its now up to the community to support a stance and go with it. Cheers.

You are right about that, I will indeed. Because it troubles me enormously that the Lindens would make sound business decisions based on their prior performance, and then stop them because of a few tree-huggers. They are setting up this kind of story with their new voting toy, and it worries me that that kind of mass "democracy" that brings jihadists to power due to the "people's will" is what you will get with a mechanism like that with no protections against abuse and manipulation and no shared culture of a liberal democracy established in the world at all.

I think it's very important that you took this side in the debate. I respect that and I defend it. We don't have to like each other for me to feel fiercely protective of your right to expand upon and develop this view point. It has some adherents.

But it is unrealistic and it's my job to point that out to you. Some people seem to think that someone should provide them with wilderness playgrounds at somebody else's expense. That's what I keep hearing.

What I'd like to know, Loki, and try not to view this as some heavy slam or anything, is, why hasn't it worked for you and those who think as you do to preserve land in SL?

I have a little notecard I hand out to Lindens called HOW TO PRESERVE LAND WITHOUT SOCIALISM with my suggestions for how to fix the group tools. IM me for a copy.

But I'm keenly interested to understand why people can't cooperate on a lot. In TSO this was so easy, because RL dollars weren't involved. But the RL dollars here are so small really when pooled, what's up?

Loki, you had a wonderful idea to make Friends of the Forest. Every red-blooded hippie, sk8ater, punker, rocker, tekkie and his brother in here would be for that. Who wouldn't be? Some gouging oil baron destroying the wilderness? So you could presumably get 100 people to just kick in 512 free to save Linden trees...right? Or...you couldnl't? I happen to know how hard that is, but you tell me. I was willing to put in tier, lots of people were...so what happened?

I remember the usual long and boring meetings that always are typical of those on the left who have process and positioning and posturing and faction fights higher on the agenda than action. People had tier to give and even ideas (like my idea to give you 10k of Ravenglass if someone could help me on the tier for 30 days).

But...why couldn't it work? Well, for one, people were so allergenic about "developers" and "land barons" that they couldn't dream of working with them to preserve a sim...but whatever.

Then I know there was a long hiatus while everyone tried to find a forest/sim/deal on the auction. I saw one Friend of the Forest simply buy a lot of a sim and keep it really nice. She's paying the tier month after month, I imagine with no help.

But why can't 10 people pay the tier on a thing like that and reduce the burden?

I often make quick calls for people to rally together to buy up a sim, or even just buy up some neighbouring parcel coming available so that we don't have to deal with griefers and viewblockers. And it is like pulling teeth. Everybody has a story. And that story is that no one ever, ever wants to tier up even $5 for the common good, good they, too, would benefit from.

Am I wrong?

You want to save Iris? You and 10 of your friends could save Iris and without even spending a fortune, I imagine. But can you get them together?

What we discussed with the Lindens today in that session about residential communities is how they can provide incentives and develop better land tools to make this less burdensome.

But honestly, we need to hear from more people like yourself who have tried to preserve beautiful areas of "nature" in our virtual world but had difficulties.

I did not create the Friends of the Forest. I never had a desire for any type of leadership role in this or any other group.

It was Ilianexsi Sojourner who created Friends of the Forest, and I saw you at the meetings, Loki.



You contribute to SL for the good of the community; no ego crap. I respect that. My sandbox alt was working feverishly as the wipe deadline loomed closer, and you were flying around giving a reminder here and there to people who seemed so immersed in building that they might not be saving a copy of their work. I hope that kind of contribution to SL pays off now, and the community steps up to support you on this issue.

I always saw you at the meetings and you appeared to take a leadership role. You were among the officers. I will always associate you with this group because you were my interlocutor on my proposals. I realize there are other names associated with this group and the point is not to pin anybody with leadership or blame anything, but merely to understand. I remember I was quite new when I observed all this effort around Friends of the Forest, I didn't understand it then, and I don't understand it now, because I guess I'm just still too much of a newbie.

People who raise questions about this group, which we were members of, aren't seeking to have "ego" in their own projects but trying to find out *why things fail in SL* because that concerns all of us.

Why do they?

Why can't people get together and pool purchase price and tier? And when they can't...why can't they talk about why?

I don't understand why Loki's valourous efforts to help people save sandbox work -- very important service! -- would mean that you'd have to support him on this issue of the normal process in SL, which is to sell telehub land on the auction. Huh? And I could add that anybody's hatred and dislike of me shouldn't get in the way of them supporting the idea of Linden continuing to auction that land, but in smaller bits.

If someone wants to save telehub land, and the Lindens sell it, they can buy it and try to do something with it. Some have done that. If someone doesn't have the money for it -- and I sure don't have the more than $10/meter on the auction (and it will be more than that!) to "rescue" Iris -- than can they get together a proposal to make things happen differently but *pay for it* and *pool their tier*.

Trying to get together a collective purchase price and pooled tier for Iris looks to me to be a mammoth job. I'm hard put to see who could do that other than the usual land barons, so they can't be blamed until someone else comes up with something different. That's because the land is valued very highly because it helps our fellow citizens of this world sell their wares by getting traffic and buyers, making them able to be full-fledged citizens who go on paying for land and tier adding to content in this world.

All this obsession with comerce and making money is why i nearly walked away from SL after i found it. Quite frankly the commerce-obsession sucks big time and makes SL an unpleasant and impovershed experience. I mean, why not rename it 'Sex Mall' or an online verision of 'Theme Park Tycoon' and be done with it? There is something about the commerce-obsession that speaks loudly of a severe lack of imagination and a stultified spirit.

No, it is not fun to find that the so-called wonderful online game is cluttered with what can only be described as soulless industrial units and malls where players are ruthlessly herded into crummy clubs where they're fleeced by predatory hucksters. I don't need an online game for that sort of 'experience'. I only need to walk out the door where I live in RL for crap like like that.

Well, it's inappropriate to take that kind of hateful stance, so allergenic to commerce, in a game where you just bought a game subscription from a game company that makes a profit not only from your game subscription, but from its land auction and from the content players provide for free, using it to hawk more subscriptions!

There's nothing "impoverished" about a game bustling with ideas, energy, creativity, and commerce, people selling things to somewhat compensate for their considerable labour and time in this game. Few people ever make a profit from this game because of its considerable hardships, including attitudes like yourse.

What you fail to understand is that nobody has "herded" the "masses" into their clubs and malls. Most of what you see is there because people wanted it, and it worked for them. You may find it distasteful and curl your lip, but you're in the minority, and better to become aware of that sooner rather than later. Most of the people playing this game don't have that minority snobbist elitist attitude towards clubs and malls. They are just ordinary people who want to log in here and have a good time. They decorate their avatar and their homes and they want to play house, not art critic or socialist commune worker.

I suppose there is no need for you to grandstand and "walk out the door" when you will find a little coterie of hard-core, subsidized, older players who benefited from all the beta-test and early days of this game when most of them were all the social engineers and utopianists and communards you seem to tout and promote. You'll find company for yourself in this game, but you'll also find people like me squawking about those class-hated attitudes they can embody.

Since that time, the game opened up to a lot more people -- and thank God for it, because Linden Labs, even if they fully espoused the socialist doctrines and hatred of commerce that you display (and I'm not sure they don't), could not survive for long in this world unless they agreed to make some profit from players like you.