Alts buying First Land?

I was lucky enough to actually run into First Land a few days ago and snapped up a plot as soon as I could. I notice now, just a few days later, that all the First Land plots around me are all owned by (different) people who have recently joined in Jun/Jul, essentially no ratings or profile, and members of only a single group with a "real-estate" type of name.

Perhaps it's truly coincidence. But it sure seems awfully suspicious and unethical. Especially with the First Land scarcity issues that have been under discussion here.

I know this must be an ongoing question/issue, but I didn't find anything elsewhere in the forums.

If there is any rule against forming a group of alts and buying a block of first land to resell for a profit, it's probably not enforced. I suppose every game has unethical players and loopholes they can exploit. Fortunately they have to tolerate themselves more than we do.

Grats on finding your land.

I agree, its pretty crappy considering the shortage.

But... assuming you have to activate a premium account to purchase first land, do the numbers add up to where there'd be a profit in making a bunch of alts for this purpose?

Unless the first land is in a really unique & desireable location, I couldn't see it selling quickly for much more than $5/sqm. Using that number, that's approxomately a L$2000 profit. At current GoM rates - that doesn't seem to offset the account fees.


Or are my numbers off here?

I think first land is massivly abused. LL has little incentive to do anything about it, because they need to show subscriber growth. Appearing to be popular is more important than actually being popular.

I wonder how many accounts have been created solely to game the first land and harvest the stipends.

Khamon, thanks. I've been having a blast as a new landowner. I just hope I don't have to tolerate someone building the SL equivalent of billboards or slum housing next to me.

Travis, I was thinking the same thing about the incentives, unless there's some way to activate the account, buy first land, transfer the land, and then deactivate the account without getting stuck with the charges somehow.

Or if it's simply in someone's interest to make sure they have as much available land as they can get. I've only been on SL for about three weeks now, so I haven't really seen (and have actively tried to avoid) the seedy side that I'm sure must exist. In my case, the land is all over water, which doesn't really bother me, since I'm not constrained by physics, but I can imagine there must be some reason someone would want to just buy and hold a lot of land.

Buster, I agree. Like AOL claiming 350 million or however many subscribers because that's how many accounts have been made.

I dunno how many alts may or may not have bought land near me, but the owners of at least a dozen plots immediately around my land fit the exact same profile of "new resident, no ratings, no profile, same real estate group membership only". It can only be seen as suspicious, and so blatantly so that it bothers me.

I've been thinking of ways you could prevent, or at least curtail this behaviour, such as requiring a certain amount of dwell on your own First Land in the first 30 days to retain it, no sale/xfer of First Land for 30 days, or something. But nothing I've thought of couldn't easily screw with "real" people trying to buy First Land. And nothing that would prevent someone who is already willing to create and log in with as many alts to perform this kind of behaviour wouldn't be willing to do anyway. It would have to be something that wouldn't overly burden a real resident, but put altie land grabbers in the position of having to have lots of alts logged in for long periods of time at the same time.

Unfortunately it just seems like some people have to be jerks and we have to just deal somehow. Now I do worry now about suddenly being surrounded by giant bricks or plots surrounded by ugly walls or a similar nightmare like some people have mentioned on the forums though. (I happen to think me and my neighbors have or will shortly have some very beautiful, original and elegant housing at the moment that we are having a lot of fun playing with.)

Your numbers are valid. I didn't say it was smart. I'm fact it's such a ridiculously risky venture that only an id...be nice Khamon. Still, how reasonable can you expect someone who'd perpetrate such a scam to be?

Buster, LL have no incentive at all to avoid having all of the available land on The Grid owned. It doesn't really even matter if every square meter on the map appears for sale as long as somebody's paying the tier whether or not they actually want, need or use the parcels. LL will only perceive a problem when land is left public for days because nobody wants it at all.

This has been discussed before. It isn't just the first land, you also get the stipend. Upgrade to a premium acct for 1 yr, $72 one time payment. L$500 per week = L$26,000, plus $2,000 first land profit = L$28,000 @ current gom rates = ~ $110, a $38 profit for each account. Not bad for 15 minutes "work" for each account. You need to have friends and relatives though, becuase there's a limit to the number of accounts you can do this with per credit card / RL name.

It isn't about having "all the available land available on The Grid owned." It is about people setting up accounts just to game the first land and harvest the stipends, which contributes to the problem that noobs who want to build and participate can rarely find any first land.

Buster

That's true, Buster - but you'd have to be an Id... (following Khamon's lead)

That $38 profit is over a years time. Percentage-wise, that's significant, but it sure seems like a small reward for so many hoops involved (assuming you get friends and family involved.)

I just question how rampant this FL gaming truly is. Hypothetically speaking, if 10% of the 2500 accounts that were created over the past week went premium - that's 250 plots of first land up for grabs. Linden doesn't even release that much in one go. Not to mention the backlog of folks that have been waiting patiently for it.

If it were genuinly new residents purchasing all these plots, how could we possibly know the difference?

Edit:

I'm sure gaming of first land happens - but there just doesn't seem to be a significant enough of reward for doing so to justify it being widespread.

Heh, that's why I bothered to post in the first place. At first I thought it was just a basic land-grab ploy, but then after just thinking it through about the effort and costs involved and what'd you'd get in return, it didn't make much sense.

But _something_ weird is certainly going on - the simple fact that there are all these "drone" looking accounts buying up First Land...

Well - I admit I have a naiive side from time to time

I forgot about the 'drone-account' names you mentioned. You're right - that doesn't add up.

/boggle

I think there are thosands of such accounts.

According to this page the growth rate in total number of accounts seems to outstrip the growth rate in logged-in users.

Yep yep yep yep and a thousand times yep.

I think $38 profit (plus having the land to keep or sell) means a lot of people do this.

And having the subscribers increase without really increasing the number of active players works out pretty well for LL.

The unfortunate side effect is people can't find first land who are really after their "first" land.

I think they need to rewrite their materials so people don't think (a) they are looking wrong somehow and then (b) they've been gyped when they realize it really is that scarce.

coco

Wow. Its hard to debate those stats. Thanks for the link, Buster.

So - assuming we have a problem here - folks gaming first land for profit - what are some possible solutions?

Here's a couple ideas right off the top of my head:

1. Scrap first land alltogether, and let the market dictate the price of land.

2. Make first land 384m plots instead of 512m to make them less desireable on the resale market.

3. Make first land free, but also non-transferable. When someone gives up their first land, it gets sent back to governor linden to be recycled as first land to another resident.

4. Create "first land" sims, that have zoning, terraforming, or other restrictions that make the land there less desireable.


I'm kinda partial to #1 and #3 myself. Thoughts? Other solutions?

When looking at the graphics of the stats, you have to consider that the chart scales are deceiving. The difference in overall growth rate is not as dramatic as it first appears. Still, I think the increase in log-ins doesn’t keep pace with the increase in accounts.

I would expect a higher percentage of noobs to be logging in than oldbies. There are old SL accounts that never log in, because they are bored, or didn’t find it interesting in the first place. The percentage of old accounts logging in on any given day would be understandably low for that reason. The percentage of new accounts logged in on any given day should be much higher. Statistically, somebody who created an account last week would be more likely to be online today than somebody who created an account a year ago.

When I first created my account, I logged in every single day for several weeks, even if just for a little while. These days I only log in two or three times a week. If that pattern is typical (and I think its pretty common), then I would expect the 3000 or 4000 accounts created over the last two or three weeks to be logged in a lot more than they actually are. I would expect that if 2000 legitimate accounts were created by genuinely interested noobs, then a significant number of them would be logging in every day, or at least several times a week, at least for a while.

Then again, they don’t have to be all that interested if it’s free. Maybe a lot of folks are signing up just because it’s free without even knowing what it is.

Anyway, to answer your question, I would suggest that first land could only be sold back to Linden for the same price originally paid. (i.e., recycled) Close to your #3.

Buster

I'm partial to #1 and #3 as well. At the very least, first land should remain first land and only ever be available to newbies.

I'll happily admit to liking First Land. I'm here for fun and don't want to have to worry about "tier" pricing, or auctions or .... I liked the One Low Low Price combo of "premium" along with the ability to get a nice little plot somewhere.



Pretty much same as #1 since 512 is small enough, 384 would be practically useless, so you might as well just make everyone buy market land.



This makes a hell of a lot of sense. Once First Land, always First Land. That cuts down on the resale-ability of First Land though, which may affect what some First Landers may want to be able to do with their land. (For example, buy FL in a sim that turns out to be massively popular, but now I can't sell my FL for a zillion times return since it has to be sold back to LL as FL.) I don't even see a problem in still paying for it like I did my plot as long as it remains First Land when you try to sell it.

If LL could offer some kind of Fair Market Value, this isn't a big deal, but I dunno how LL would think about that. Also, I see this kind of hypothetical situation pretty uncommon anyway.

A modification would be to just make it non-salable/non-transferrable for say 90 days or something.



Insufficient data. At first glace this seems like a completely reasonable idea. I haven't been around as a "landowner" long enough to think of any drawbacks if there are any, since I've got 512 out in the middle of relative nowhere and am enjoying the crap out of it anyway.

Another idea I had was to have a First Land waiting list. Something where you would get put on a list, it would take 7 days, during which you would have to be online a certain amount of time. The online time requirement would make it much more of an "investment" for someone to run a bunch of alties to grab land since you couldn't just create the account, log in, grab land and log out.

When your waiting period was up you would receive First Right Of Refusal of some set of FL parcels, which would allow n00bs to select from a range of FL plots to buy. Since when I saw FL available, there were only a dozen or so plots available, I don't see this as much of a restriction either.

This is easy. Just make First Land transferable/salable only to users eligible for First Land. Mark it as such with a special border color/title. Retain ability to release land to Governor Linden for recycling.

Personly I like the time period limitations. 90 days or more sounds good, 6 months would be the high side, but then thats how long it is between free trials on a CC.
I also think that there should be some system in place for a comunity to deside on what to do with a sim, and to regulate what happens in there sim. Yes any major problems would take a mediator ( ethire directly from lindin or lindin aproved)

A waiting list for fist land also sounds like it would help. Requireing a amount of time and rating, if you are not already a full paying member. make it cost people to try to buy up a lot of land with out putting any time into the game. a decent pattern reconition/overview of account status to catch cheats, would also help. I have some more Ideas and some of them would take even more man hours to make work. I also think that giveing jobs in game (basicly govement sponsered) and a good system of checks and balances, should take up less of the lindins time.

So any possibility any Lindens have read this thread and can comment on what could be going on?

I was checking out all the plots again yesterday when my neighbor mentioned someone very rude walked up to him at his place and started demanding he sell his land to him. I wonder now if he was associated with the same group that already owns all the land in the area except for the few plots we picked up.

They're just so clearly alts, or at least up to no good...

"up to no good" is a very subjective analysis. It's no skin of LL's nose if a bunch of alts are buying the first land. They're only concern is that somebody buys the land. That provides them with tier payments and that's the bottom line.

That newbies will get frustrated and leave is a secondary concern and, obviously, not very high on the list. I imagine they figure that people are so overwhelmed by the whole experience that they'll tough it out and find a way to accumulate money to purchase some real land without any help from the company. At this point in time, they're apparently correctly predicting most people's attitude and reaction. There's no other software that offers a comparable experience. What're ya gonna do, sit around and post complaints until they DO something about it? Not - the population continues to grow.

After considering this all, coupled with the constant complaints about how first land is administered, and projecting the number of programming hours involved in restricting buying and selling rights, I'd be inclined to chuck the whole program in the bin.

It would be interesting to read a Linden's perspective in this thread, especially whether Khamon has accurately portrayed it in this last post.

I agree with Jeffrey's idea about having specific plots of 512sqm permanently
set aside for "First Land". The Lindens can (and would) add more plots or
sell them off as the population of newbies increases or decreases. Newbies
could get there First Land cheap, but only hold it for a limited time (perhaps
something like 3 months)... then it would be turned over to some newer newbie,
and the aging "newbie" would then have to buy their "second land" at the
going land rates if they still wanted land (of which not really very many people
seem to own - and is not required to just "have fun".

However, I feel Khamon's post is right on target. LL is going to do what's in
their best interests. Fortunantly a big part of that is having happy customers (us),
so some of the biggest land owners probably have more leverage on what
goes on with the land than any of the small players. For those LARGE land owners
who see SL as an investment and not a game, then I wonder what LL would do
if they all got together and.... uh... demanded(?) some sort of land reform, or
else they'd each pull all their "investment" out of SL... which means selling off
all their land, converting $L to RL cash, etc... and going to invest somewhere else
for a while. After all, any GOOD investor is not going to put their money in a
bad place if they can help it.... and LL might not be willing to take the huge hit
in income if all the big time investors (server space rentors) pull out at once, and
so LL might bend to their collective "suggestions".

Of course, if it's the large land owners that have "seen the light" at how easy
it is to make a real profit in SL from land ownership/resale/rent/whatever,
then they are not going to be the one's petitioning for a change.

I don't see anyone being hurt here except the newbie who is trying to buy
first land... If the Lindens were smart (and no reason to think they're not)
they might find it worth the extra time to get dedicated "Newbie Plots" in place
which can't be sold... only recycled to other newbies.

The advantages to the Lindens are that they will have happier newbies, which
translates to those people sticking around in-world for longer... and hopefully
long enough to get more addicted to the point it's harder to leave. Someone
who's invested 3 months in to SL is going to have a LOT harder time quiting
than someone who's less than a month old and getting hit with all this BS.
If the large land owners are trying to buy up all the First Land, then they would
buy up all the land on any new sim, so no need to frustrate newbies.. just
plunk down a new sim for them to buy up -- if LL is going to be adding land
anyway, it just makes sense to do it this way and keep a larger percentage
of their customers happy... and less attrition.

This will mean newbies can't sell their first land for a profit, but I see no
problem with this.... we can all look at it as "coming of age"... if you still
want land after your (practically welfare) First Land, then you should plan
on that, and use those 3months to build up your income to afford second land.

Gabrielle

ps. For those of you following the thread "Economy and the newbie"
/130/06/54054/1.html
I'd like for the people who think it's wrong to sell freebies to see here
my somewhat different/conflicting view on THIS matter... where I feel
the newbie hasn't really paid anything (much) for this land and should not
be able to sell for a profit. -- what's "free" should remain "free".

For those of you who really cannot understand my different stance here,
it has to do with what's the best for the SL economy... providing welfare
land to newbies to get them settled in and hooked is important. Holding
back a free market economic system is not.

Gabrielle

I like it all except for that part. I happen to _really_ like where I found my First Land and I would really really hate to move, not the least of which because I'm sure it would cost me _much_ more to find plot similar to the quality where I found first land. And just as important, several friends of mine bought plots right nearby as well.

If I ever sell it, I'd love to see it go right back to First Land, but I'd rather not _have_ to sell it after three months. I'll be just fine with 512 for some time now, I'm sure, and wouldn't look forward to being forced to find a chunk of ugly land in the middle of a bunch of block houses away from my friends.

Ledge,
I agree that it's possible to LOVE the place where you start out and
get first land... since you get to pick it... and have to buy it... and
right now the law of the land is that First Land is "yours" to do with
as you wish.

However, if that "law" were changed (as I feel it should be), so that
First Land is not yours, but instead it's a welfare, govenment (LL) owned
piece of property that you get to pick out and rent for 3 months
at super cheap rates ($1/sqm)... then I think people would go in
to the idea of First Land totally different... you would know right off
that you're only renting it... for 3 months... and so you'd not become
so attached to it.. or.. even if you did fall in love with it, you would
know from the beginning it was temporary.

Gabrielle

While I realize the system is gameable and something may need to change, I thought I would offer one newbie's story:

I came here during the free account period a week ago intending to spend zero money on an online game. I discovered that sandboxes are not ideal places to try to do anything complicated while you are trying to learn, but when I looked at first land it was all in big flat boring subdivisions, and there was no way I could afford anything else. Then a single first land plot opened in an established sim where I had already made a friend, and I fell in love with it. Having bought it, I discovered how small 512m actually is, and I am hoping to buy surrounding land and tier up a level. The first land program made the difference between my trying to buy land or not. Looking at the suggestions:



First land was a huge hook in getting me to go premium, and I would likely have not otherwise. I might have tried to find market land, but the initial jump is pretty high and it was a real barrier to me - not to mention I would have had to wait 4 - 6 months spending absolutely nothing in order to save up the money from a basic account. Would I have stuck around building in sandboxes for that long? Probably not.



That's 80 or 90 prims, right? I think it's too small to be useful. I'm finding 512 too small as it is.



This would have been really ugly for me. I plan to buy land adjoining my first land, and it would leave a hole in the middle if I sold. This also leads to "newbie" sims that never develop into real places - sim ghettos maybe?



Again, these make ghettos. It would also have been a problem for me since I want a residence/public park/art gallery/store on my land. How would that be zoned?



If I wanted to rent, I would have rented. There are freebie places for newbies from time to time, and other places that aren't too expensive, although it makes it harder to save for buying land.

I realize I'm not perhaps a typical SLer. I have no interest in tringo, clubbing, or cybersex. I am interested in learning scripting, meeting a few people (I'm shy at first, and everyone in SL has been so nice.), and building something that makes SL a little bit better place. And I don't think I would be here without first land.

Anyway, that's my story and my 2¢.