06-28-2005 17:52
You should be receiving an email this afternoon with the following announcements:

Island Estates
First, effective July 15 the initial set-up fee for private islands will increase to $1,250 per island. This change will not affect your monthly billing.

The price increase reflects increased costs for servers, customization and maintenance, plus the enhanced feature set for private islands versus the mainland. Linden Lab has regularly added new features for estate management, and will continue to refine controls and add features in the future. Today an island owner can control their island environment through terraforming and terrain texture choices, setting the sun position, or connecting to other island to create a new sub-continent. Island owners can also parcel the island, keep it open or private, and completely control access. We will continue to refine island controls and add features as Second Life expands.

Mainland Regions
Second, we're converting to whole region (16 acres) auctions, with a minimum starting bid of US$1000. We will no longer parcel mainland regions in advance, except for those regions that are set aside for First Land for new residents. Buyers will still be able to parcel land and directly resell it to their fellow residents.

Auctions for mainland regions will run until the land is sold, and we'll make sure there is enough land available at any one time so interested buyers will have a choice of terrain and location.

I'm sure you'll have a lot of questions about these changes, so we've planned a Town Hall meeting for tomorrow, Wednesday 6/29 at 3:30PM Pacific/11:30PM GMT with Philip Linden.
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