Mainland (the new continent) price is going to be adjusted violently!!

I don't own a private sim, so this may be incomplete. First, LL provides more service to private sim owners in terms of concierge services, terrain editing, etc. Second, LL gets a single monthly tier payment from the owner of a private sim. Mainland sims, however, can generate a multiple of the nominal tier. If player A owns a parcel, then sells it to land-flipper B, who sells it to bottom-feeding land-flipper C, who sells it to player D, each one is liable for tier. Now some of them will be selling some land while buying other, so staying below a given tier threshold, but still it is reasonable to expect that LL gets more than the nominal monthly tier for each mainland sim.

The sensible reason for the monthly price difference is: they can get it.

I don't know what they will do with mainland pricing. Personally I would expect: nothing, eventually bringing it down. Also eventually bringing the private island fees down too. If they don't, well, there's a competitive hole big enough such that another business could drive a truck through, and will. But that's not to say I know what the Company will *actually* do.

If there were a massive outlay of mainland sims, yes it would affect the private island business, but remember the private island business is highly, highly segmented. It offers things that just don't work on the mainland. So again, a balancing act here.

Oh, and quaternions are tricky little buggers but quite tame-able really. I suggest a chat with Mr Seifert Surface. Highly recommended.

No most of us arent' aware of that, having never owned any sim before, please explain?

Yes the smell of freshly discovered trillion year old terraformed virtual land is vastly diffrent to 4 year ago discovered trillion year old terraformed virtual land

Ah but what's really important is how many new premium users per day vs how many leave / downgrade

As long as there are newstories about people "getting rich playing a game", I doubt the situation will change unless LL makes a deliberate effort to do such. Premium members are trivial to the mainland equation... There are a few barons out there who hold onto (as in not reselling) more land than hundreds of normal premium members would (estimating 'normal' at 1024sqm). As long as you have enough land dealers who continuously continue to buy out the sims, prices won't be going anywhere.


There's a reason price fixing is illegal in most countries -- the consumer often doesn't have a choice. If you want to do anything creative in SL, you'll likely need land. Your choice is to pay the going rate or go without. That's not much of a choice.

Think about it in RL. If gas prices went to $10/gallon tomorrow because all the major oil companies agreed they would do such, would you stop buying gas? Sure you may be angry, call in sick for a few days hoping prices go back down, but in the end, do you really have a choice? If you need a car for your job, you'll need gas. Unless the cost of gas is so high as to make your job trivial, you'll continue to fill up -- you have no choice if you want to put food on the table.

Now, there's nothing stopping any land baron from forming a group of barons who choose to refuse to sell under a particular pricepoint. If, between the group, they have enough assets to continue purchasing the sims at whatever rate LL releases them at, there's no reason prices should fall. Of course, if they were to do such, LL might be required to release sims at a faster rate to keep it's customers happy.

and becaus of such behaviour SL become RL. Welcome to the new world

What's the point of SL???? (to LL and also the Land Barons)


Zen

premium members are pretty important to your equation hehe if you are talking about mainland land the only kind of person who can buy the mainland land are premium members. If it becomes more cost effective to either buy your own mainland sim because the cost of buying plots is way to high or buy your own island then those people needing land for business will just go and buy one.

Anyone wanting residential land will start looking to the private estates, that's what I did and now i conduct business on private estate land and live on private estate land I dont buy mainland land unless its a decent deal.

If private estates suddenly get overpriced then I willl start considering other options like say renting small shop space or '' buying my own sim if i need that much space.

So i'm not sure how you say premium members dont matter when the subject of the thread is the prices of mainland sims which can only be sold to premium members unless you want land barons and land flippers to hold onto land forever .. i dont get how they aren't important.


Ah well such is life no one said it had to be logical?

It's by no means accurate anymore, but you can read through the blog posts (and Zee Linden's 2-3 comments) about the private sim tier increase. At the time increasing mainland tier was being considered and large tiers would get - proportionally - more expensive than the lower tiers, but the technical infrastructure to do so wasn't in place yet.

I agree with you Wil I have been reading many posts over the last month or so pertaining to land pricing/sales and the influx of all the free accounts coupled with the grid problems. Time and time again I see people responding to angry SL landowners who are pissed that they either cannot log in or cannot access their land due to the sim being overloaded with floorwashers/chairsitters/streetsweepers etc. I see flippant responses like its no biggy with all the numbers coming in if you teir down someone will replace you blah blah.... First it makes me wonder if the idiots that post that drivel arent LL in disguise because thats about the same attitude you see from them. I mean think about it for a minute 10 percent of the AV population are premium account holders ..... not sure what particular business model that is but sounds like one destined to crash unless their is another motive in the massive numbers of Freebies and the small numbers of actual landowners (big landowners). I think its a larger plan to market SL to corporations as an advertizing tool for reaching all these thousands or millions of untapped "viewers" , if you have corporate advertizing dollars to supplant what players spend then it helps explain the lackadasical customer service attitude LL displays.... it also tells me the land economy is nothing more than a house of cards that LL can tumble with a flick of a finger. Using some of the reasoning I have seen on these posts .... LL *shrugs and says yeah a few disgruntled entrpenuers have lost money on landspeculation but look at the new numbers we are growing daily!!*. I saw one freebie posting to a landowner that he contributes to the economy by paying rent to a landowner so she should just shut her piehole about the Frees/land prices et al. The point this particular idiot didnt seem to grasp that without the initial premium account landholder he wouldnt be paying rent or have land to play on .... this would then force HIM to belly up to the bar and pay his own tab. I got out of the LL landgame a long time ago when I say the games they were playing ..... phew ok rant done *laughs*

Your logic works only with regard to free but unverified accounts. But there are plenty of free verified accounts that pump cash into the system, and Linden benefits from it, as well as in-world businesses. While there is an apparent need for mainland and hence premium owners, LL now gets a hell of a lot more cash from private island owners, who DO NOT have to be premium. The free account may rent from someone on a private island, but that just increases demand for private island land. Clearly it's doing something, because the demand for islands spiked and when you consider the cost of obtaining a mainland sim, a private island is looking pretty good these days...

Then you were looking at land somebody had bought off me and put up for sale again. I wasn't asking that much.