I know you must be swamped on this issue right now, but I would be very grateful if you could spare the time to answer a few questions:
1. When the remaining 150 low-cost islands are sold on Wednesday, you have mentioned that you will be restricting the number that can be bought by any given account and their alts. Will this also apply to multiple accounts controlled by multiple people, who are however representatives of the same company? Will there be any restriction on the transfer of these islands after they are sold, to prevent someone getting more than they otherwise would have been allowed to by appointing others to buy islands and then transfer them? Yes, there is the US$100 transfer fee, but that's still a bargain compared to the extra US$100 per month.
2. Under the old pricing system, it is possible for 4 people to split an island with intent to repay the downpayment in a year, and recieve a good deal compared to equivalent mainland tier. Under the new pricing system that is impossible (except in highly unusual circumstances), and getting a mainland sim instead is not an option because this will require outbidding people intending to resell the land at a profit. Was preventing this method for obtaining cheaper land (although, in exchange for long-term investment) a deliberate goal of the price change? Was the effect of the price change on groups who do this considered?
3. Will there be any allowance for groups of people who HAVE bought islands on the grounds described in 2)? These people now find themselves, without warning, unable to ever own a larger continuous land space than they possess on their current island, because expanding would require another island at the higher price (which, as above, would not be viable), and moving to the mainland would remove them from the covenant on the existing island, potentially making the island unviable for everyone else involved - not technically impossible to do but something many people will wish to avoid.
4. Are there any plans to alter the system of auctions for the sale of mainland sims?
5. Will Mainland sims be upgraded to the higher class servers, or their avatar limits increased? Many successful and popular businesses on SL have moved to private islands (such as Simone, Bare Rose, Curious Kitties, and similar); in some case these are paid for outright by the business, and in some cases they are split by covenant between multiple businesses as in 2 (just because the business does not need to split the island to afford it, doesn't mean it wouldn't rather keep that profit!
). Future businesses will be effectively penalised by the higher costs for moving out to islands, and thus they are likely to remain on the mainland, with their popularity resulting in them potentially consuming all of the avatar slots on a sim and rendering all land in the sim other than theirs unusable. No amount of "being a good neighbour" can prevent this and unfortunately lag does not discriminate between deserved and undeserved popularity! Thank you very much for your time.
