More "results" from Wholesale Land Tests

Curioser and curioser:

1. Robin officially announced on Friday Morning that the remaining 40 sims on the Tabletop Continent will be cut up into packages of 5 and 10 sims: "Starting today, January 13, we will continue ... The next phase of the experiment is in response to suggestions about previous block size and its ability to expand/limit the market."
   
2. Our group is preparing to bid for one of those smaller packages. The arrangement of the sims in those packages as described in Robins announcement is horrible, but we want to "have a try" at least.
   
3. Nothing happens all Friday. The 40 sim large block stays at the auctions. No 5 or 10 sim block appears.
   
4. On Friday there is an opening bid for the 40 sim block.

One might wonder what happened behind the scenes on these two days. I don't want to jump to any conclusions. Maybe it was just an accident, someone forgetting to take the big package from the auction block. Someone else not finding the time to prepare the new offerings for the auctions. Happens.

But these accidents now leave us in a situation where nearly a months supply of "fresh land" is in the hands of two (or one) groups. Competition?

My question in the hotline (if there will be new sims coming to the auctions) is one of those rare questions that are not being answered for a week. Even if new sims would appear at the auctions they would enter a market that will be flooded with (probably) cheap fresh land next week.

I have to correct myself :


I am sure that Anshe will do something really nice here. And the direction, which LL is taking with the wholesale model surely is an inevitable one. But I am still not sure if the way, in which the "Wholesale Land Tests" have been handled, lead to the optimum result for Linden Lab and Second Life.

Results so far (link HERE ) are maybe not so encouraging.

-Ghoti

They just also won the 40 sim auction, so that's 70 total.

Ghoti, as far as terraforming by land barons goes, I have allways considered Anshe's works some of the better examples. It is not always creative terraforming like that done by Linden Lab. She can't do this, because she has to "sell, sell, sell". But it is much better then some other examples one can see at the private continents.

Maybe it is a little bit early to judge what will happen on the new sub-continent. Lets give her a chance before tearing her to virtual pieces in advance.

I agree, there are many parts of Ansheland that look great. Don't get me wrong., I am not knocking ALL of their work. I am joining in the collective OMGWTF reaction to the progress so far in these bulk sims.



Indeed, I understand capitalism. I also understand that the private islands are a different matter. There, the owner has a great deal of power over the terrain forever. It is never locked down. In addition, private islands are just that... private islands. The mainland, which these bulk sims are a part of is NOT private islands, and aught to be held to a higher standard of realism. OUR world.



Too early? Unless there is a very drastic change in a very short amount of time you're seeing what we're getting. There's a deadline on how long these sims will be fully terraformable. After that time limit they will be locked down like all the other mainlands sims, forever.

'Results so far are maybe not so encouraging.' is not hardly tearing her to virtual pieces in advance.

-Ghoti

I agree! I just can't see an easy solution, how Linden Lab can reduce its costs (time invested) in producing fresh land without allowing the residents developing the land a lot of freedom. Any system that tries to uphold a set of standards is costly because only (expensive) humans can judge those standards. It is a true "dilemma". The solution for that dilemma can't be found by simply "thinking about it" probably. They have to try. That is obviously the reason why Robin is talking about "tests" and "experiments".

The deadline was "one week after the reception of the money by wire transfer" if I remember it correctly. I don't know when that happened. I only know that the first terraforming on the south eastern sub continent was visible 3 days ago probably after 1 day of experiments.

The outcry "oh, how horrible" happened immediately. I am not sure, if we will see changes. I don't like much what I am seeing there. Maybe it will not change. Maybe it will. I only said that it would be fair to wait until the land goes on sale.

But it sure is land that is along the lines of "I want my private little island in the sun". If this land stays like it is and sells well ... maybe it is not Anshe who is at fault when she styled it like this.

Sorry, maybe my words were too drastic. I apologize.

It is just that the overall tenor of most of the comments on the forums was very rude so far. It was not ok to criticize you for that.

The conditions Linden Lab set up for this "test" are extremely tight. It is hard to do much more than a very simple design for 40 sims in just one week. Maybe you can do more than currently is visible down under. Maybe. But look at the estimates for "time needed per sim for good terraforming" posted somewhere else.

Those conditions were set by the Lindens. Anshe is just trying to work within these limits and still make a profit.

Yep, I believe I commented in that thread, too. It would take me significantly more than a week to terraform 40+ sims to the standards I personally feel they should be kept to. I acknowledge this. I am also only one person, doing terraforming by hand using the tools provided in world by LL. I would expect a team of terraforms to take a good deal longer than a week to do 40+ sims as well, doing it all by hand. Given a tool to generate terrain (say, like Bryce) and some lead time to have continents or parts there-of prepared ahead of time, I could see 40+ sims going from newly autioned flatland to freshly imported RAW files, to cleaned up, decorated, infrastructured, etc and ready to sell sims fairly quickly. I still think it would take at least a couple weeks if done alone, -maybe- a week if there's a whole team of terraformers working on it. Its still too tight of a deadline, I think.

I certainly do not intend my words to blame anshecorp for what might result in subpar (IMO) terrain for these sims. LL also needs to ensure that the permanent mainland sims are treated differently from private sims. If it means a significantly longer development time once the sims are in the hands of the landbaron, so be it. It is the end result that counts.

-Ghoti

The only issue I have is the short notice given by LL on these auctions. They essentially took out any competition for these sims, which may in fact be what they wanted. It is virtually impossible unless you wanna go at it alone to raise that kind of money in a week.

Props to my girl Anshe though. She stepped up to the plate and took advantage of the situation. I am quite sure she will do very well financially with this investment. She has the market and has worked very hard to get it. It was not so long ago that a group of people came after her personally to bring her down but the girl prevailed and has had the last laugh.

Ultimately it doesn't matter what everyone else wants or thinks of what she is doing. She paid the money, not you, and can do whatever she wants with it. Don't like it then perhaps you should have spent $70,000 plus tier on 70 sims. Congrats on pulling this off Anshe. Well done!

Please don't get me wrong, Billy. As I have said elsewhere, I don't begrudge Anshe and Guni this coup. Especially the second part, grabbing the 40sims before the Lindens could put smaller packages on the block or retract the big block. That was a textbook example of courageous entrepreneurship.

I am just questioning some details of the process: the relatively short time between the announcement and the first auctions, the very short time for development of the land, the absurd arrangement of the sims in the smaller packages and maybe the flooding of the market with another 40 bulk sale sims over the weekend.

Especially the timing questions seems to have made it more or less impossible for any other group to seriously participate at the first round of auctions. Just now with 70 fresh mainland sims entering the market this week and the next, the idea of buying a strangely shaped arrangement of 5 or 10 sims in the second round seems a lot less attractive - for a while.

And some competition would have been good for Linden Lab, because prices would have been higher. It would have been good for Second Life, because more competing teams would have produced more diversity.

I am sure this will still happen. It will just take a little longer now.