Look at Island selling from the Linden's perspective

I think if we're going to properly provide a solution to the issue of selling/renting/leasing land in the Private Islands we need to look at this from the perspective of the Lindens.


What are their goals?

i. Most of all, they need to ensure things are fun for new people without making it unfun for old players. This requires:

a) Cool places for people to join and build in
b) Pricing stability

ii. They want to avoid getting caught up in p2p disputes. If people are angry at each other, so be it, but they do not want their brand or their company to get caught up in the crossfire.

iii. Third, they want to have more hosting customers, or, in SL parlance, sell more land.

iv. I believe they want to improve the nature of the content in SL. They want it to be more organised and more impressive looking. This sort of content will go a long ways to provide a natural marketing machine for SL.

v. they don't want to pull the rug out from underneath their big customers. It sends an evil message to anyone who wants to make a similarly large investment.

So, given these goals .. what solutions do we have that solves all of them?

If we let people sell island land as it were real land, then it could provide a cool new zoning way for people to join in and have fun with nice builds and tight, pleasant communities.

Unfortunately, it could also completely wreak havok with land pricing stability. It will be non-obvious as to who you're buying from and LL will get caught up in p2p disputes.

They will probably sell more land as the growth will not be constrained, but at the price of ripping out the bottom of the land market. I think the content will improve as group/zoned builds will be more viable. And, finally, they will at least be treating their biggest customers well.

So, a good solution in general however I believe it doesn't satisfy two key conditions - pricing stability, and p2p disputes.

So, how do we solve those two problems?

The second problem is probably easily solved - we make sure darn good and sure that players know they are buying land from other players and not SL. lots of popups, lots of flash text, lots of dialogs. You Are Renting From Other Players. That way, LL keeps out of the disputes.

However, even with many dire warnings, I don't think it's entirely clear that this will lead to pricing stability. People will look at the much cheaper prices and realise they could go to Anshe Chung instead of to LL and pay much less for their land. Or, heck, they could just organize their friends and buy from them.

LL could fix it by making it seem very unpleasant to buy from Anshe Chung (or your friends), but that would simply throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Zoned islands / group builds will just stop happening and it will be hurting a big customer who's made a lot of commitment to SL.

Not a great message to send out at all, and it just makes the place more unpleasant for everyone in general.

That leaves us with a solution which ensures pricing stability with all the due warnings to players about who they're buying land from, but otherwise all the same easy to use and easy to market mechanics as buying regular land.

This solution goes back to my earlier posts in Hotline which LL took forever to read and respond to (for more obvious reasons, now).

Basically, we need a minimum price on island land sales which either tracks against the average price of the mainland or is set to to some straightforward minimum price that LL has committed to.

The price can not be too high which makes buying from Anshe unpleasant, but at the same time it shouldn't be too low to cause mainland grid pricing instability.

The problem with this solution is policing it. What if Anshe simply gives the land for free to people and just takes in their tier? How do you stop that? You probably can't.

However, at least new users won't see this on the Land for Rent / Lease / etc tab and from an easy to market perpsective, it won't be a slam dunk to simply buy straight from her.

In fact, the island land minimum price could also serve another purpose I've been asking for quite awhile - a clear target price by the lindens as to what they're aiming to keep average land prices at.

Blaze, my solution would be to encourage the privatization of land sales and managment as quickly as possible. Objectives would include:

as you said, making darn sure that newbies understood that all non-mainland renting of land was accomplished through third parties*;

bending over backward to facilitate themed and zoned groupings on the main grid for the express purpose of advertising;

buying every available mainland parcel with the understanding that the economy would be highly destabilized for several weeks;

and, when all the land was accumulated, recycling mainland sims into private ownership.

*The company would have implement some method of recording and enforcing contracual agreements between the leasor and tenet. On the surface, this seems a less complicated task than dealing directly with the daily terrors of neighboring disputes and the sheer ugliness of the mainland. Expecially considering the fact that existing policy grants the liasons no power to actually do anything to solve those disputes or enhance the appearance of the world for trial users.

Yeah, I proposed the same earlier.

That solution holds a lot of exciting possibilities and sounds like the future to me.

However, it's reasonable to assume LL will move cautiously and migrate rather than leap head first into a solution like that.

geez, blaze have you been attending classes at the Prokofy Neva School of Writing?

Let me tell you what I think is wrong with all this: your assumption that you know so much about the land business when you actually don't deal in it experentially yourself (but either just watch it or dabble in it) and your assumptions about Linden Lab's thinking and goals (which you as an older and tekkie player may have more access to than I have, but it's got to be limited).

First of all,you're assuming that all the kvetching that you and Lindhar (is he your alt?) and all sorts of other Nervous Nellies at the Gates have done about the land/lease program Anshe and others are running in fact wasn't harmful, wasn't destabilzing and and didn't hurt this market. It was. It did. And it will take a long while to uncover. You've all made sure that it has been struck and hardy and nasty whack that will be a gift that keeps on giving for a long time. Players are confused, overwhelmed, unsure and they will avoid islands to some extent.

A hardier bunch will ignore all this flak and just go for the gold. They'll get it that this is a great deal, an end to ugly and an end to grief and they'll have no problem in right-clicking, getting whatever info they need from anshechung.com or secondserver.net and living happily ever after.

I'd like to assume that the overwhelming majority of players are adults who can sift through the junk on the forums -- or ignore the forums -- and just get what they need to get to have a good time in SL and move to islands if they like.

A few newer entrepreneurs (yourself?) will be very stumped as to how they can enter this then very competitive market (filled with the biggies) in a climate of uncertainty and hatred (which biggies can weather pretty well but smallies get whacked with).

So islands are just not going to be the ne plus ultra that you thought they would be.

Not only because you all bitched and moaned about the way they were being advertised, creating a fake problem, fake solutions, fake Linden headaches, and fake victims.

I deal in land every day, one way or another, and I see that sure, prices are falling but I also see lots of areas that still command a very healthy price and get a very healthy payment. Listen to what I already wrote the thread about land value: There is no greater value to you than land in your own sim next to you or providing more prims to you and your friends or partners, and there is no higher price you are willing to pay -- 12? 17? -- than that land which is important to you on your sim for your purposes. That holds the value in the game, and it keeps the stampede out to the islands. There are 600 sims -- most of them aren't private islands. Each of those sims has people on it. I don't think you're such a good judge of what those people are going to do next.

And there is no greater value to people than being king of their castle. They want to own. They'd rather put out their stupid newbie box and be happy poking around with the junk in their library than living on some streamlined road by the GIGAS people a little unsure about their rights and freedoms. At least some of them.

Land is just not that expensive and tier is just not that great at the lower levels that people won't opt to be free, make their own choices, and not go to the islands.

The Lindens will keep rolling out non-island and non-new-continent sims down in the south as they've been quietly doing and creating more factors undermining mainland and old-sim value but...I'm willing to bet that more established sims with communities, large or small, structured or loose, are going to start to have more value. In Ravenglass, for example, every single property for sale after the first round of sales has sold for at least $1L if not $2L more per meter than the original sale price precisely because either the people who live there want more land or the people who move in there want freedom combined with voluntary residential. I'm for adding more value like that all over the place in a whole variety of ways -- islands deeded for sale or rent, zoned communities, voluntary communities, structured communities, themed communiities, rentals communities -- whatever.

You mention this putative group of friends. I'm finding that the hardest thing for people to do is to get together with friends, pool tier, and buy a sim. It's because of the crappy group tools, and because people can't trust each other -- and what you and others have done with your hypotheticals, and your "perfect is the enemyo f the good" stuff has merely fanned the flames of mistrust and hated in the game even higher.

Now I"m not saying this because they don't want to group and pool tier with *me* -- I understand my character and I realize my lack of attractiveness although...P.S...I actually get complete strangers to happily donate tier to our group not because of my sparkling personality but because....we don't have to care about each other...we don't have to give each other goddamn huggy bearz...we can just have one thing in common: a desire for residential living with reasonable views and reasonable reduction of ugliness and griefing.

Khamon,

I want to understand what you're saying exactly. Linden Labs itself should buy up all the land currently for sale all over the main grid? Consolidate it? And offer it again to those bidders or buyers who want to privatize their servers?

Now I can't imagine they will do something like that. Not only because it will destabilize the economy. One thing that would happen is that everybody with any kind of land, hearing that now they can get an instant sale (and the price Lindens will fix would probably be something like $5/meter for mature) would sell it back to the Lindens, ready to get at least *something* than the *nothing* they get if they don't sell and the code goes open-source and they are either all dumped off the server or made irrelevant by stampedes to other servers.

I can't imagine LL doing this. Aren't they busy making their game work better with various patches? And playing around with other stuff like "how to get communication to work betterin SL" etc. They're going to start fooling around with massive numbers of land transactions?

Also, in your grand scheme, how are you going to work this problem: some people, like me, own land on 28 different sims, parts of sims, sometimes just a plot or two. This is what you need to do to find the best views and best opportunities. So...if I am to be bought out or to buy out, what exactly do I get? If it will all be divided by sim/server and no longer calculated by tier/land?

I got as far as this:



And my eyes glazed over and I stopped reading.

The only thing I assume about myself is that I am really dumb and have a low IQ.

Well, blaze, you wrote something just as long, and I read it twice, hoping for some brilliant nuggets, as I often find.

So please go back and read what I wrote since I counter all your theses and it will help you think harder to justify your arguments.

What is your basis for commentary about the land business? Theory or practice?

My basis is logic.

Well, that's silly. Logic in a vacuum devoid of actual experience lol? Go back and read my post.

With regard to the idea of making all sims privately held, I see a fundamental flaw.

At present most of us trust just the Lindens, and obey only rules made by them. they are not anonymous, and could ultimately be sued. This would mean testing the validity of their disclaimers in the courts, but could in principle be attempted.

If holding land meant I had no choice but to trust an anonymous person with my assets, and submit not only to their rules, but to their absolute and unacountable judging on those rules, then I would not hold much, if any.

I think this could only work if LL had first solved all the problems of making binding contracts, and set up some sort of justice system. Both a long way off.

So I think that "trust and obey another anonymous player" (TOAP ? OTAP?) must remain strictly voluntary, and must be plastered with health warnings for the time being.

I do see it as an exciting development, however, and expect to see the following advertised soon (and a good thing too):

"free land", "no tier","balloon lease", "hire purchase", "rent-to-buy"
and a complete mix of options relating to payments both up-front and recurring, termination conditions, durations of contract etc.

All based, sadly, on a huge imbalance of power between the contracting parties. But it's a free choice if fully informed.

Much easier and much more fair would be to include private island sims in the auction system.



Why should I? And couldn't I do this on mainland too? The only problem is unlimited supply of cheap sims. If that is switched to controlled land supply I don't see problem.



If island minimum price is target price for land then I can only advice to all (mature) land owners: run!

Actually, that's not true. I know hundreds of people who have obeyed rules I've set in my rentals groups, which involve not using excessive scripts, not asking for bounce scripts, not building over two storeys high such as to block the view, etc. It's worked for the most part. Voluntarily. Without having to run screaming to Lindens. I don't think I've ever run screaming to a Linden about a tenant, and I don't think tenants have ever run screaming to Lindens about me. Maybe a newbie who didn't understand why stuff was returning off Linden water would ding a Linden from my rentals property, but that's not a p2p conflict.

So my tendency is to accept that while conflicts will arise, we have various ways to address them (a card distributed describing frequent conflicts, why they happen, and how to handle them, i.e. one tenant sucking all the prims up out of the group and blowing out the prims of another tenant).

My tendency is to expect that maybe 10 percent of the cases might result in some kind of terrible conflict requiring Lindens but I'm willing to bet that most people with conflicts press "refund" and get their money back LOL. And if they don't pay their rent, I press "return objects". So the pressing of return buttons is actually the best built-in conflict-reducer that either of us have



Uh-huh. I'd love to see the court in this land that would take such a suit LOL. They'd be very careful before "going there". LL is just a private club with members who sign a club rules, like a yacht club or the Boy Scouts. It is very hard to sue entities like that in American courts, and I think even a British judge would be hard put to accept a virtual case like this.



Um, well that's just you. Lots of other people disagree and just go do it and they didn't turn into pumpkins yet.



And what a good thing, too!


Most people come to SL to have fun, not be plastered with health warnings.

Why don't you buy a sim? You said you could buy 13. Buy 13! Plaster them with health warnings! Make a goddamn health clinic! But...look out. It might turn into a hospice.

I do see it as an exciting development, however, and expect to see the following advertised soon (and a good thing too):



This game just doesn't get as complicated as RL -- and what a good thing! I think you'll go on seeing FREE, RENT, RENT-TO-BUY, BUY -- and that's it.



So many people already left the freedom of the grid for this restrictiveness of the private island. They don't need all this informing that you want to put up their ass, and they don't need to view it as a horribly unbalanced situation. They got a good value. Now leave them alone.

Dead right, Anshe, on every point.

Only thing is, don't you see what will have happened?

The whole original concept and purpose of the private island will have been effectively abolished.

As I understand it the concept was to make a big chunk of land available to eac h of us at a minimum fixed price in return for us accepting restrictions which made it cheaper for the Lindens to provide and run. The crippling of land sales was precisely to exclude land-baronry, so that this privilege could be enjoyed by the rest of us.

Maybe this new development really needs a third type of sim, to be auctioned as normal.

This would be exactly what the old private island has been unexpectedly turned into. A dictatorship. Explicitly stated and understood. Precisely because of all the benefits a benevolent dictatorship can bring, particularly in a world without any binding contracts or civil law, and court system.

The true fixed-price private islands would revert to being without the new "deeding" capability which let the genie out of the bottle. So I could buy one for myself without paying $1600, provided I accepted the same original restrictions.

OK, this is another solution but will require yet another class of private sims.

Basically, if you want to rent / sell to other players you have to bid for that sim on an auction.

There will always be a SIM you can buy just for non renting/selling purposes. LL has no reason not to keep this up.

Duh. What you're saying Lindhar was exactly the implication that Ryan Linden put in his letter to auction bidders, posted here (possibly before your *cough* join date?).

He implied that there'd be micro-auctions of sorts that would start at $980 but might end at $981 if there weren't enough bidders, giving people the equivalent of private island sims for a song. Normally sims have gone for $1000-1600.

I'm not sure if Anshe's idea of having the private islands go on the auction is the right way to go. If they uncap the advertising ban, if the net nannies get their hands off the jugular, Anshe will sell a lot more divvied up island space -- but not some unlimited amount. People have their reasons for staying on the mainland and having risk but freedom.

Hell is other people. Bad neighbours with less-than-stellar building and scripting choices can happen even in paradise LOL.

I think it is the right idea. It just shouldn't be for *every* sim. There are a lot of people who want to buy a sim and have no intention of renting/selling. There is no reason they should have to bid on auction for it.

However, for people who intend on renting/selling, they should have to bid on an auction for that SIM.

It makes a lot of sense. It also gives LL the ability to throttle the sims as they go to the market and maintain a certain level of price stability.

Anshe, you should suggest that one. I think it's important to stress that your auctionable sims are another class of private sim though.

I don't think LL has any intention of giving up all you can eat at $980.

I think you should also be able to do a dutch auction type as well, where you can ask for a set of sims and that's what goes up for auction as they suggested in their letter.

It also solves the problem of people trying to buy the sim and giving it away for free to make it all up on tier. If you can do that, people will bid up the price of the sim and squeeze the margin a bit.

However, how long will it take for prices to settle properly? That's always the question.

Well, I thought it was so inspired I put it in the Hotline

If this is true, then surely Blaze did attend the Prokofy Neva School of Writing. It's hilariously ironic to watch someone accuse others of tactics they themselves pioneered.

The land business is NOT as complicated as our resident jack-of-all-trades would like people to think - but, if he projects it as such, it will keep up the smokescreen that it is, thereby insuring that his business survives. The hardest part of land trading, renting, etc., is getting past the hefty initial costs. Any semi business minded person could take it from there.

What is it you are upset by Mr. Neva? Blaze and Lindhar are not spreading malicious or false info. What is your main beef with warning people that there is a difference between leasing land from a player or "purchasing" it through Linden Lab? That this new policy will change how private sim sales are handled? I have a feeling it's for personal reasons, care to elaborate?

There is nothing wrong with warning people and raising a red flag when a situation like this crops up. It's called information, the opposite of what Mr. Neva likes to throw at us.

By the way, accusing or insinuating that someone is an alt is forbidden. It's considered a breach of the privacy agreement, you know, the policy you squawked about for days. You certainly don't have an aversion to hypocrisy, do you? Keep it up and I am sure someone will send a nice AR in your direction.

I agree with this.

Buster

I am sorry, but please put warnings up next time so I do not spit my pop thru my nose laughing again lol

I tend to disagree, the LL's have made it crystall clear they have no intention of providing any content, zoning, or local government in this game and have stated it was upto the players to do that.

Plus I came to SL based on what I read was a free enterprise system that is self regulating and not controled by some "god" high above. The price of land on the mainland is rediculiously high! It is overpriced and the "value" is too low to warrent the price (all in my opinion of course). Land price will regulate itself and will stabalize once land price = land value.

blaze, one issue with that "all-you-can-eat" idea that Ryan had suggested -- it was a $980 opening price, a dutch auction with just a few, etc. but then it might end at $981 or $1001 who the hell knows for all kinds of reason of cold feet, etc. Plus he had a $100 refund fee which means that I suppose all kinds of people could buy one, return it, and just pay $100 for having used it (really a bad idea IMHO).




Well, um, it is true? There are fake problems? There aren't any victims? There aren't any even genuine purchasers or shoppers or newbies coming on here and saying "I'm confused...I wuz robbed...I'm deluded." There are just Fake Friends of Newbies LOL.



Yeah, I don't think it's complicated at all. It's pretty straightforward. I do more rentals than land trading so I'm not really an expert on being a "land baron" I just watch land barons at work and take notes. I don't smokescreen, but I do try to waft away the smokescreen that Lindhar and others are putting up with fake victims and fake fooled newbies.

I don't see a lot of people in this business, which is heavy customer service and not so economically sound, with all the harsh restrictions and all the caps, etc.


Because they aren't just putting up a warning and leaving it at that. They are running a giant crusade powered by some agenda -- it's just that I can't see what it is because I don't know whose alts they are or whether, if they are not alts, what their real issue is and their intentions for SL. Nobody powers up the forum posts like that without having a really big agenda, and I think it needs some questioning.

We all absorbed miles ago that there is some potential confusion, Anshe herself recognizes it and works with, everybody has a ton of good will on it in the game and is practicing what they preach. The only problem that I can see is the hysterical furor left here on the forums LOL.

I have no personal stake in the island business because I don't own any islands, and don't plan to buy any. It's just not what I want to do. I've said that like 3 times now. Take it or leave it lol.




Um, what I"ve thrown at you is information, too. The information that there is no vicim, and no sky falling.I've asked a dozen times for those squawking here to travel into the world, right-click on Ansheland or Nexusland or for that matter Prokofyland, and *see what happens when you click*. What's written on the land? What kind of notecard is there on the box? What's on the ad in the land for sale list? I've done that, and brought back reports. I've also gone and talked to real people living and working in Ansheland and Nexusland. Have you? I just don't get all the fussing. Leave it alone.




I am *so glad* you mentioned that! Guess what! Your fussing about this is worthless. I, too, thought that there might be some teeth behind what Pathfinder did the other day (wish I could find that link). When Ulrika and others in a thread kept repeatedly accusing Cocoanut of being my alt, and of others being my alt, even though they are real separate people, Pathfinder, perhaps not having access to all account information or not wanting to interrupt his flow, deleted some references and said: "You can't expose people's alts". That seemed pretty clear.

What he didn't say was "Thou shalt not bear false witness against they neighbour's alt," ie.that you can't accuse someone of being an alt.

Great! sez I. And I immediately filed several ARs on those who do this to me here, and in game. And guess what? Jeska replied to the effect that "Linden Labs does not comment on alts," i.e. that there is no such policy.

I'd like Pathfinder and Jeska to clarify once again: what is the policy on outing of alts? What is the policy of naming alts, and relating one alt to another, here, and in the game? Please spell it out.

I would also like to point out that if I ask Lindhar or blaze if they are alts of older players, that isn't outing their alts. I have no idea who they are or their alts. It is asking them to be responsible. It is asking them to be accountable. It is asking them to be forthcoming on what their real agendas are here. By doing that, I'm actually doing what they feign to do by stirring up this discussion. I'm asking them to quit the fake screaming about fake newbies being fakely robbed, and come clean with what their real issue is. They want to go into this business themselves and want ironclad guarantees from the Lindens and less competition from Anshe? Then say so.

If it turns out that they just like to be fake screamers about fake viictims, great. If I ask if they are alts of each other, or alts of older players with vested interests, that is not "outing" them. It's asking them to come clean with a possibly hidden agenda. If there is no hidden agenda, great. The volume, repetitiveness, hysteria, and persistence of their screaming does suggest otherwise.

Look in the mirror.

I see. So, the only logical course of action was to start doing that which you are upset with others doing.

By the way Mr. Neva, I realize you think your more clever than the rest of us dolts, but some of us can recognize insinuations even when made in the form of a question. Thank you Alex Trebek!

Look in the mirror yourself

Who is Alex Trebek?