Buying themed land from LL?

This is new to me... and it's "coming soon" - looks like a lot of us may have some more to worry about from Linden Lab:

https://land.secondlife.com/en-US/developed-property.php?lang=en

People will be able to buy developed islands and even developed mainland. I know I was away a long time, when did this first crop up?

Some of this came up last year, at SL's Land Expo

Quite a while back.

LL are now in direct competition with it's customers. Not sure it has a great take up though.

To be honest most people investing that sort of money to purchase an Estate sim want a blank canvas to create their own vision. Not sure how it works with Mainland though.

I won't quote sources on this, so if anyone doubts anything, just write me off as crazy, I won't mind.

There's a few flavours of it.

1. Themed regions being simply regions you can buy, with 'stuff' on them from day one. They already sell these. Not a big deal, it's like buying a build with your new region.

2. Places like Blumfield, Shermerville, Bay City and Nautilus. Old news.

3. More stuff like Linden Homes. If Linden Homes takes off, rest assured that it will be followed up with something like Linden Estates (similar but on a grander scale). Because that's what almost anyone would do, if Linden Homes makes money. No brainer. Even if it's not in the pipeline yet, or no one has even thought of it yet, this is a logical product line extension. On a small scale (say 5 or 10 regions) it won't affect anything. On a mass~produced regions scale, it could change the entire economy if it is successful.

4. Cooperation between the megabarons and Linden Research, in an attempt to offer a little bit of the best of both worlds, i.e. a sort of place that is halfway between SL mainland and traditional private estate, in flavour. No, I'm not involved with this.


As for my thoughts on all this as a private estate baron on a relatively small scale... no comment, other than to say that my business decisions are largely driven by the overall business climate. I'd expect the same would be true for most other barons as well.

This has appeared to be LL's business plan for some time now:

Quite some months back and then nothing seemed to happen. On mainland they advise those selling plots to include items with sale to be included in the themed category but as they haven't provided any more details than that I doubt anyone is doing it.