What is the point of the Land Flood? what about us?

how can this possibly be a benifit? i am a premium member and i pay for my tier just like everone, and i also paid RL Dollars for my land, it is not acceptable to then manipulate the market like that...... it should either continue to based on supply and demand with typical risks (on no market manipulation by LL ) or it should be capped......

yes that is good then, and then LL should not manipulate the market to kill the prices..... so that people can be left to make that money....

Oke, my apologies since I did not read the whole thread and anyway I may have missed something.

My point still stands, though. At no time there was any kind of guarantee that land prices were gonna stay the same or go anywhere high.

You bought land at price "X"? It was your choice, you could have waited for an undefined amount of time, but probably then you could not have started your business.

Edit: and yes, LL manipulating things is a well known part of the risk; if you don't realize that then you're just being naive.

really thats fine i know....i know. the thing is normal volitility and fluctuation does not drop prices from "X" to "x/2" in 3 days? this has only happend because of the LL influence of fooding the market with land......

From the point of view of someone that has had a free account for a relatively long time, but could just not justify spending the amount of (real world) money that it would cost to join and buy land in game I can say that any effort on LL's part to lower land prices is welcome. Someone mentioned that it's no more than the price of going out for an evening-well that may be true for some, but for many players from parts of the world where the US$ or GBP is not the currency of choice, it's not really that cheap

Stew you mention a land cap, besides irreversibly breaking the economic model of the game, how would that possibly prevent what is upsetting you from happening again? Say the cap was set at L$10/sqm, what happens when someone buys at that capped level, and land falls to L$5 or L$6? They will 'lose value' just as you have. The only way to prevent that from happening is to fix the land price, and in the long run that would just have the effect of the US$/L$ exchange going haywire.

You're obviously pissed off and feel done in, but this thread hasn't introduced anything new from either side of the argument for a couple of pages. Why not just agree to disagree

i dont mind if the land naturally dropped from 10L/sm to 6m that is acceptabe business, but to drop from 10 to 6 because of a forced influence..... it is simply not acceptable.....i know the prices are expensive and yes it should come down but how many times will this happen? and like i said there are better ways to bring prices down that will only hurt on a smaller scale, than to flood the market with land......

I think you're just plain missing the whole point of owning land. The majority of people who actually want to *do* something with their land don't care what they paid for it, and generally don't really care whether the current prices will net them a $1 US profit or loss. The purchase price only matters when you're thinking about buying land, and the resell price only matters when you're thinking about liquidating it.

Between those two points, many months can come and go, meanwhile you're getting some kind of use or enjoyment out of owning your land or you just made a mistake when you bought it.

For your sake I hope you never buy anything copy/no transfer.

What you're leaving out of this analysis is pretty important.. there is another "forced influence" at play here.. the land "trade".. which is soley responsible for the high cost of land to begin with. Linden Lab is simply introducing some influence on the market to counter this. If what they're doing doesn't sit well with you, all fine and well. I haven't seen you speak out much about the unfair influence that land dealers have had on the market.

Caps on the market are not a good choice, in my opinion. There are often exceptions to every rule - and in this case there are probably scenarios where a particular parcel is genuinely worth more than average market value - caps would hinder the market in these cases. In general, I think their preference is to try to keep things in check by exerting influence, rather than absolute control. Don't expect caps on land sales any time soon - it ain't gonna happen.

But the SL economy is not a "natural" economy, prices don't rise and fall "naturally", or at least not in the same way as RL prices.

So far as land is concerned, in RL there is a fixed and finite supply. You cannot make more land. Only in periods such as the US expansion across North America in the 19th century has there been anything close to an ever increasing supply of land.

In SL, LL have the power to create new land. Unless they do this exactly in proportion to the rise in the number of people wanting land the market is always going to go up and down. This week they are releasing a pile of new sims so the price drops, next week they may release no new land and the price will rise. The fluctuations in value according to LL decisions on releasing land ARE "natural" for the SL economy. LL have an absolute monopoly on the production of land, and the only limit on how much they can produce is how quickly they can buy and install the servers.

The closest RL comparison to LL's position in the land market might be something like OPEC, who can influence oil prices up and down by controlling production, and whilst those decisions are usually for purely commercial reasons they can and do make decisions for political reasons, not unlike LL's decision to try and drive down land prices.

What a whirlwind of a thread! Here's what I extract from it all:

1. Stew can't be reasoned with.

2. Stew is contradicting himself by simultaneously denouncing LL for influencing the land market while also calling for price controls.

3. As Cristalle said, Stew is completely self-interested.

i cannot for the life of me understand why you would be willing to accept this.... we can all accept that prices need to come down, but not like this, im sorry, u can say as much as you want but this is not an acceptable way of bringing prices down......

Perhaps we are talkin past each other because i feel you are missing the point.... yes it is all good and well to make sure the land prices have dropped but what u are sayin is screw the people who already own land... u may be willin to accept it but i am not happy with it....

Land buyers and land sellers should set the price of their land. If someone owns their land, they should have the right to sell it or not sell it, and if they want to sell it, they should have the right to name their price. They should not have the right to force anybody to pay what they are asking, however. If someone wants to buy land, they should have the right to set limits on how much they're willing to pay. They should not have the right to force a landowner to sell within those limits, however.

I don't blame LL for pouring land into the game. Imagine, just a few months ago there were under 1,000,000 residents--now there are more than 4,000,000. Yes, I know, only a smallish fraction of those residents are people who are really going to stick around in SL and want to buy mainland, but it's probably similar to the fraction doing so a few months ago as well. So, to keep the economy stable, LL would naturally want to increase the land available in proportion to the population growth. And, as everyone knows, the problem was compounded by other priorities. LL has had the integrity never to make any promises as to land value. There have been times when LL has sold only four sims day, and times when they haven't sold any; on the other hand, there are times when they've sold over 20. Speculating on a daily basis is riskier than planning for broad price movement over time.

Any action that does affect land values--positively or negatively--is going to help some people and hurt others. If values go up, sellers get more L$ and buyers have to pay more. If values go down, sellers get less L$ and buyers get more for their money. No matter what anybody does, some people will shout, "Woot!" while others will cry, "Dang!" Either way, there's nothing anybody can do that will make everyone happy. I believe LL is acting in their best interests--ultimately they want to make money, but they can't do that if everyone quits playing in anger or disgust.

Setting a price cap on land will hurt newbies and help land dealers; the pros will figure out ways to realize the real market value of their land, and money will change hands outside of SL's system. Newbies won't realize this, so they'll go around forever wondering why nobody will sell them their land at the set price, or if they do get some land, they'll sell it at that set price when everyone else is getting extra off-grid. Many MMOGs have tried to stop illegal sales of game currencies and items, but they're trying to stop The Market and that just doesn't happen.

The thing everybody needs to realize is that while we're all victims of the economy, LL has more levers to pull than anybody else. They can (and do) mint L$ to trade for US$, keeping the value of the L$ relatively stable. They can (and do) adjust other sources of currency such as stipends and bonuses. They can (and do) manage currency sinks such as classifieds and texture upload feeds. They can (and do) make changes to the prices of tier, private islands, and starting prices for mainland sims. They can (and do) change the rate at which new land is introduced into the game. They can (and do) change models of membership in SL. They can (and do) make changes to the server software and client software, changing the way we live our second lives and impacting those who write scripts. Finally, LL does not hide the fact that they claim the right to everything in SL--all our land, our buildings, our L$--eveything that's not protected by copyright.

There's no reason why people shouldn't try to make some money in SL. But they should educate themselves on what factors they can and cannot control, and not get caught by surprise when LL pulls one of their many levers. Most of us have been in the game for only a few weeks or months, and it seems many have assumed too much in such a short about of time. All the name-calling when things go wrong and cackling in glee when the worm turns offends me.

Guess what, Stew? Your interests are not the only ones that LL must consider when making business decisions on behalf of its investors.

Stew, it seems you're not incline to consider a different point of view than yours. Do read cHex Losangeles last post, I really liked it.

I'll say that it's pretty naive to expect prices to fall down naturally when population grows at a massive rate and new land is released at a very slow pace (if it's released at all).

LL does and can influence the market (again, refer to cHex Losangeles post) and I'll say it again to death, land baroning can't be a nice spot where you just make (loads of) money, no risks involved.

A content creator has to face the risks of someone making better content at the same pr lower price, for example. While that's not a risk brought into by LL, you can be pretty sure that it's gonna happen. Land barons face the risk to see LL release any amount of land at any price.

YES Rockwell thanks for selling us high priced land!!! ur type of profit making tactics is what got us here in the first price.....Buy and sell, buy and sell , buy and sell!!!

That's part of the point here, Stew, and you're complaining that Linden Lab is attempting to counter this effect by manipulating supply, yet almost in the same breath, suggesting that they put a cap on land sales altogether.. You are being both obstinate and self contradictory here...

Stew, the idea that Linden Lab is "manipulating" the land market is wrong, they just release more land because demand is high, if that happens in groups of 20-40 sims, thats because there are people buying many sims at once and seem to never get enough. The land prices went so high cause Linden Lab wasnt able to put up enough Mainland sims for a while, and you blame them now if they try to fix it?

High or low land prices, over time, not just some price peaks, arent given by LL dropping just 2 or 40 sims at once, its given by the total amount of land available and demand for land. So trying to make a lot new sims is just to go back to a normalized price.

I only have one large quibble with cHex's insightful post: there are NOT 4 million unique individuals who are residents of SL. (Seven of them are me.) The most recent analysis by people much smarter than me estimated it at about 250,000 unique individuals when the LL official count was over 2 million.

it is a suggestion , one or the other, read what i said, either put on land cap where it does not matter how much land there is... or dont interfere with the pricing (defn, dont force a reduction in pricing) its not a contridiction it is one way or the other..... read what i said

LL will do neither. Deal with it.

I undertsand that it needs to be done, but it needs to be done in a reasonalbe way....Sims (some)of the new continent where already there before they "Announce they will be droppin 40 sims to help bring down the prices" they created that fear....which caused a major drop in land sales but if they continued to just make the land as per normal, it would be fine.... people are now threatened of LL, again they said (with the removal of first land, not sure how that helps) that they are releasing land at a fast rate to meet the demand " AND reduce the price" ..... the power of suggestion.....

maybe u should go sell land or somthin..... u have not right to play devils advocate here..... i supported u guys buyin and sellin land until about 3 posts ago.....

Should have known I'd get the label of conspiracy theorist. 5 of the 7 pages here are just flame posts anyway.

Its like this like it or not, LL wants business in SL, and business can afford higher land prices, do you really think LL gives a hoot about someone that wants to build a home in SL? Give me a break, LL is courting big business here. Its not really hard to see, as long as your not thinking on a monkey level *Second Life is a 3-D virtual world* NOT a 3-D virtual suburb, and private homes dont make any world turn around, its business that makes the world turn around.

Its Kinda like the earlier days of ebay, remember when ebay was mostly a place where people where selling junk out of thier garage?, you can still find that, but the bulk of ebay is big business now, and they have adjusted thier fee's accordingly same as Linden Labs is doing with their higher island cost, and tier fee's. Wait till membership fees goto $19.95 per month. Wait till Linden labs figures out a way to raise the tier fees on mainland properties.

I'm the one telling you how it is. Thanks for your support

Just because you see prices dropping 1-2 Lindens for square meter, does mean nothing. Like said above, only total amount of land available compared to total demand will give the end price, the stable one. Prices going up and down in peaks its just land holders and traders that get paranoid in some way, any time LL release new land.

I tell you someting, in my opinion this small crashes are nothing. There will be a very big crash sometime, when population grow will stop because nearly ALL internet users did try it out (50+ millions registered peeps?) and know what is SL, and the number of new residents that want to buy land will drop dramatically, we will have land traders sitting on so much empty and unsold land that Linden Lab will even have to close simulators that nobody wants. That because land speculating people look always forward like demand will always be the same or higher, but thats not. Demand will drop drastically sometime, either because SL population is saturated and all that may have interest in being here, are already, or some new 3D reality platform comes up and a lot people loose interest in SL, or third possibility, Linden Lab cant fix important issues and people start leaving in masses. All three pretty much possible. We had how many new registered users in the last months? Think about it, sometime, even if SL will be promoted like hell in the media, all will know if SL is something for them or not, and population will start to be steady, and all the people that think land is a very "fast money" business, and there is a lot of them, will learn that nothing is forever.