Island Fee Increase

OK i just need to know, does anyone know if the new increase is for new islands or if you already have one are they saying that it will now cost me 295 US a month for a sim that I have had for a year and half?

LOL someone?

from Property Sales and Rentals to Resident Answers so that others may reply and to facilitate a better answering process.

(i'd answer if i could, but i'm not sure on this one)

From what I have read and the people I have talked to the increase only applies to new islands. At this time anyway...

What happens if you sell an island to someone else? Do they pay the original $195 or the new $295?

Islands weren't worth what they used to cost, why would they up the price????

Apparently because larger companies are "willing to pay" the higher price.
It's probably been suggested but it would make the most sense to me to charge different rates for different classes of servers, bumping down the prices/classes as new ones come in.

There are new "Class 5" servers coming in for private islands. As far as I'm aware the new price only applies to them, and all private islands from now on will be using them.

I'm not sure that the over 50% increase in price justifies whatever performance increase occurs, but, well.

They haven't connected the Class 5 servers to new islands, so this isn't a for sure thing. A direct question on it was asked, and the answer carefully sidestepped.

They do say it's to increase the Class 5 servers but as of now, no guarantee when you buy a new island under that pricing, that's what you will be on. In fact, it almost seems the answers are to say that you won't get a Class 5, that those are in reserve for 'large corporations who can afford these fees' (their words, not mine).

I will never buy an island now. I could buy a CAR within a year worth 5000 bucks. That's a lot of money to me. Sure, there are some whom it won't matter to, who can afford to throw away 1600 bucks on virtual property that guarantees NOTHING should SL go under, but then there's people like me... who could barely fathom 1100 for a sim, let alone a 67% increase not only in sim price but upkeep.

A class 5 server doesn't justify the price increase at all, maybe a higher set-up fee, but not a greater monthly fee. Even if parts were failing on a monthly basis, $100 extra is insanity.

If all they want to attract is big business then I can see this game dying, because big businesses will be the only ones playing it, and they'll see no reason to with no audience left. And I'm surprised big businesses are even interested in SL, it's the most unstable game I've ever played, with none of the updates I can remember since 1.7 actually improving that. 1.10 improved performance that was lost in 1.8 and 1.9! =/

No it doesn't really. A 'class 5' normally costs less than 1000 bucks to actually buy, not to mention they are putting more than 4 sims on a server. That's an ungodly profit and aside from electricity, 300 a month is ridiculous to share space on a server that only costs maybe 10 bucks a month to run.

Now I know they got bills to pay, but god, the rest of the tier charges are a bit crazy too! They admittedly don't have a large staff for the amount of active accounts, so not only are they subparring the service, but increasing payments for costs that they aren't really accruing.

Class 5 servers would cost just as much in the today market as Class 4's did a year ago and before and before.

I truly hope their aim wasnt soley to please big business. Personal opinion its the people that have the smaller to mid range business plans within SL that are going to be making them the most money in the long run. Imagine a world here withOUT them, and only the huge corps remain, oh yay?

My current business plan for this game just got shot right out the window with this latest increase and I have had to rewrite it if I was to expect any kind of future here in SL. I will be sorely disappointed if the sims I already have are changed to the new increased value since I only purchased them a few weeks ago. Bad business to tell someone "Hey, buy this at this price and pay this amount" only to come back 2 weeks later and say "Oops! Never mind, pay this amount now!" Lets see if we can tick off the smaller businesses a lil bit more eh?

Also, the grandfathering of a 195usd tier fee is for certain now, but will be done away with in the future. It to will raise to 295/month at some point.



Go ahead and call concierge to inquire about this. They will tell you there is nothing now but check the blog regularly to be updated on any change........

It is always bad marketing to announce your new product too soon.
It’s even worse to admit that you messed up this way.

I suspect that sales dropped as soon as they announced the Class 5 servers and they added the price increase to the class-5 servers as a way to finish selling the class 4’s.

The blog clearly says that they have inventory of the class 4’s and that continuing sales on the land store will be at the existing tier. Another blog said that class-5 servers will still only have 4 sims on it.

I suspect that the island tiers will be grand fathered in until that island is upgraded to a class-5 server.

Or they may even go to a price thing similar to the void sims.

1) Class 5 with prim boost = new price. (There are over 20,000 prims in some of the preview grid areas and there is a sim setting that private island owners can set)
2) Class 4 or packed class-5 = existing price
3) Class 4 packed 16 to a server = low cost void sim
4) Mainland tier is unchanged, but is already really expensive per SQm for small owners.

The recent price increases have killed off my plans to buy a sim. It's simply out of my budget range now. A future of corporate-owned sims? Where's the room for creative input then?

I wouldn`t have minded the up in price for the supposed "set up fee"right) as much. What really gets me is the increase in tier cost.


That is 100$ more a month that someone has to scrape up and pay. Most are pushing it with the 195 deal.

It occured to me that with this mad rush of sim purchases on November 1st, LL is about to make a good little chunk of change by creating this frenzy. They have 150 sims for sale at the lower price and I'm assuming these are going to be snatched up very quickly. I think some people who were merely considering it before are going to rush to get one now, before the price change.

Let's do the math.

150 sims X $1250 USD = $187,500 in set up fees.

Of course then we have the additional $29,250 USD per month in tier fees from these 150 sims. In a years time, that works out to be $351K in tier fees

This means over a half million dollars extra for a year.. just on this bit of insanity. If they decided on November 2nd that this increase was a bad idea and not do it (which I doubt they will hehe) They still stand to make a good half mil by creating this frenzy. I'm sure this isn't the reason for doing it, but it sure isn't going to hurt their bottom line... just a thought.

That's $5210 in real money.

An income of L$1406619 a year (at current rates) just to cover the costs.

$14 or L$3853 every single day of the year.

Rentals... 16 x 4096 plots on a region, 100% capacity for a year, is L$7500 ($2 per plot per month just to break even.

Yes, I know Anshe charges more than this ... but is the risk of that investment (which, incidently, is worth squat should LL close down) worth it for $60 a month, given the headache of only having to have 2 empty plots before you start to lose money?

I know I could build, maintain and operate a residential area that would be of high quality and a pleasure to live in. But there's no way I can tie that amount of cash up in a computer game as a risk - and a great risk it is right now, with LL's financial stability obviously in question.

Lewis

The only justificition they gave for the +$100 is 'continued development' which I read as 'more staff'. Which IMO is an absolute farce, they have a considerable amount of staff as it is, and the 'progress' we've seen lately has been frankly disappointing. The priorities that people have and have wanted for AGES now only just seem to be getting attention (performance and stability, though we've yet to see ANY improvement on those fronts).
If the problem is that the current staff aren't up to it, then replace the ones who are failing, don't take out on every potential sim owner, every hopeful business, or every builder with a grand vision. I was going to get a sim, I could afford the $195 a month, but I will not be forced into doing it before I am ready to set-up (I want to build it FIRST!). $295 I wouldn't pay even if I could, it simply isn't justified for a machine you will never own, you have little control over, which is commanded more by the casual griefer than you, that will crash, that will have downtime, that will lag and run horrendously.

LL's business decisions of late are a joke, and I don't think any of the residents are laughing
The appeal of this world to businesses, are the players; the players play for fun. Take away the fun, and you take away the players, take away the players and you take away the business. Many of the best sims are created by people for fun, they may have some business venture there to help support it, but it's the fun sims that make SL what it is. Making them LESS accessible to people is suicide. I don't want to spend my time in mall sims, I want to explore lush gardens and other cool places, participate in events they hold and so-on. But with the removal of dwell, and now the increase in costs, that just isn't going to happen anymore.

With every decision LL makes I find myself with less and less reason to stay, and I fear that if this latest remains final that that may be it. Because for the past 3 months I've been building for my simulator idea, and I still have a lot of work to do, and now it's all for nothing if I simply can't make it work. That's a simulator that I see as fun, cool and unique, with a few rental places here and there to help keep it running that will never happen because LL seems determined to kill it, and the entire SL world with it.
I'm more and more tempted to just to take MSN addresses from my friends and leave, because a glorified chat client full of big business advertising that runs about as well as dog with no legs is really getting less and less attractive as a pass-time.

If over the course of the past few updates LL had really pulled out all the stops, finally fixed all the bugs, got SL performing like it should (the dynamic content excuse only works when we haven't seen a faster running game of the same type. And the fact is, SL used to run a lot better than it does now!), then maybe they'd be justified in upping prices a bit, emphasing a BIT. Not 50%!

^^^ Agreed!

I think there is a natural limit to what people are prepared to pay for virtual fun and the current sim charges match that, that is based on a dollar spend of around $25 to $40 per month plus a few lindens in game.

However from a business viewpoint the increases would not really matter that much especially if they obtained a worthwhile increase in rez graphics etc.

This is just a guess but what may happen in the future are separate sim classes at the dollar rent you wish, to match your requirements, that is.....

Void Sims for large space low prim allowance designed for one or two people only

Standard Sims (current version) for standard performance with perhaps the odd server upgrade as and when available via Linden, with perhaps large land barons being able to obtain some pricing power pressure. However future supply is now capped at current levels

Superior Performance Sims for outside business use, especially where there is interaction between the 2d Net and SL. That is the future

Just a thought but I do not think it is the end of the virtual world, for example I note that Anshe Chung already has one or two sims emulating the high performance sims (with a double prim count and no lag at all) And they have been rented out at twice Anshe's standard rate


Just a personal view

Here is a possible future scenario, as I se it anyway;

1) LL increase private island rental to $295 compared to mainland sim rental of L$195
2) Corprorations, profit making groups, whatever/whoever purchase islands and run them agressively as profit making entities
3) Resident owned islands that are not profit orientated are sold (or even abandoned) in favour of land purchases and sim rental on the mainland
4) Land prices on the mainland increase as demand outstrips quantity
5) LL increase Tier fees accordingly thus affecting the vast majority of residents and increasing the income for LL.

I've missed out a step between 2 and 3; over time LL will discomission servers that house current sims at $195 a month rental, my theory is that when they do this they will raise the price of those sims to the $295 rate.

This is a simply view of what I believe will happen in the coming 6-12 months. I'm sure people out there have accurate financial models that may disprove my theory but I'm sticking to it!!!!

Lee.

Doesn't matter any more in my case. $295 is about the same as renting my real place for a week. I can't possibly justify an extra week's rent a month purely to avoid having to look at ugly mainland horrors all around ... even then I was on top tier on mainland there was nothing but grief ...

Unless they really will start offering out a whole small primload many to a server sim at a reasonable price (and that will suck anyway because how many avs can possibly be supported that way, realistically?) then I will never now have my island.

SL is currently not a technically viable platform for aggressive profit making of any sort and at anything like the scale required by a corporation. There is literally nothing they can do, create or sell here for returns like that.

Corporations are coming in at the moment purely for the PR opportunity given SLs currently high profile in the tech media as the hot new thing.

As far as real profitability, the reality is that there is a small cottage industry of self employed content creators making a very modest profit, essentially selling "game" content to the majority of residents, while an even smaller handful of high profile development companies ride this wave of corporate interest while it lasts.

I am a bit confused as to why this rate hike is so high but I might have an idea, I think as the world (Grid) fills up with private islands there is less and less space for new ones to be put online since each island gets 4 areas around it that no one can build on as they wont put 2 private islands next to each other without consent from each island owner. I am not sure if the grid can be made larger but if not then perhaps the increase in price is because of this, its like RL real estate when you run out of places to build and people want to build land value goes up.
But from what I read I take it as this which sort of confirms my thought, all new Sims will be built on class 5 servers once the class 4 inventory is gone which is when the rate increase takes place, Well that means that main grid land will also use the new servers but if you buy a main land Sim you still pay the 195.00 rate Plus what ever the Sim sells for at auction. The rate increase is only for Private Islands not main land Sims. Maybe they want to push people into buying main land Sims which the new price structure.

Ninja, in a word no.

We are assured Linden Lab is currently not profitable but needs to be. The price hike was simply the result of math & the fact that a change in island costs was relatively simple to implement first.

LL has plans to expand SL far beyond the grid as it is now and there are no serious technical limitations to doing this.