Without land, you are nothing

I don't think this is true at all. I think you've misread the situation entirely. New residents have the critical mass, and first land is not their only entry point. I've met new residents who's entry point for land ownership was multiple sims. The grid is growing, and fast, beyond what supposedly wealthy old-timers could possibly hope to control (and actually most land sales I see on the grid these days by 'land traders' have new and unfamiliar names attached to them). 'Old-timers' are not universally wealthy by any means, and nor are new residents necessarily without means just because they are new.

Some people said similar things around the time I joined, that it was not possible for new residents to have the same success. I've never found that to be so, and now I see new residents moving up even faster than I've seen in the past. There's a lot of talented people coming into SL, and they will make an impact.

In SL, you're only really limited by yourself. No one else can really hold you back.

1. A perq of being a newbie Premum Account is the ability to buy First Land at a low rate.

2. Real newbs have a hard time competing against oldtimers for "First Land" since experienced players know (or spend more time looking) for them than the average noob. They then create a "newb" Premum Account.

3. Unless you wish to buy land on the Mainland, a Premium Account is worthless, since you can buy $L cheaper than paying a monthly fee and receiving the $300 a week stipend.

4. A newb who can barely walk and talk is probably not able to make items of high enough quality to interest buyers. Some of us are not interested in doing so. Sometimes the making of items and the marketing of items are even disparate interests.

5. Nevertheless, it has been fun for my husband and I to decorate the land we rented via his free account (my premium account has thus far been worthless). Although I doubt that will interest me more than a month, and I suspect that we'll both be returning to the "Premium Accounts" in other games that we've been paying for without a second thought for years.

The only reason I'm still in this very-little-value-for-money place and have not told LL to stick it where the sun don't shine is because I foolishly believed thier spin about the place, and sunk a good amount of REAL MONEY into a 4096sq Land Tier. If I hadn't done this is, I would be outta this place extremely quickly..

I never EVEN TRIED for 'first land' as it was never around..

IF THEY EVER GET AROUND to fixing the thing it will be great..but from what I hear people have been waiting years for that..

As far as "Your nobody without land" thats a matter of opinion, I paid out the ass for mine (but not as bad as it is now) it all comes down to how bad you want it..

I could most likely sell my mainland oceanfront property for 3x what I paid, but thats not where I want to be.

Cheers

Interesting post, but it leaves me wondering where you want to be...

Hee hee, I have one day off work and what happens?
A misinformed OP puts a single post out and whoosh! two pages
Got first land, don't sell anything. Don't care whether anyone thinks I'm someone because of it. If they don't know me what does it matter? Lots of 10k$L 512 plots in Yamma Yamma last night.

I 'want to be' where Linden Labs blurbed about Second Life, where you could run a business, create 3D scripted items, join in a relaxing, profitable 'Second Life' and have fun in a virtual world..

So far, I have not been able to do any of the above because of constant crashing, lag/packet loss, inventory loss, scripts that take an age to load when more than 15K people are on..objects not rezzing half the time. I have to stay up till 3AM in the morning just to hopefully get a bit of work done in my 'great new world' when not many are on... look in the rest of the forum and the Linden blog for more of the same.

But I will keep playing the sucker, paying my tier and maybe in a year or so I will get sick of 'Thank you for your patience"

Of course, I'm not suppose to be 'whining' about this...also of course, it not the money of the one complaining about my 'whining'

Cheers

All of which is possible. Bugs and stuff: they are what you make of it.

Thanks for the reply.

BTW, I'm not one of those who have been complaining about whining. I'm just a newb who has only been playing for about a week and wondering why people do it more than a month or so.

If I read your words literally, you are using "sunk costs" as a rationale, i.e., "I have paid too much in the past to get out now, even if I would be financially better off by doing so."

However, reading "between the lines", I doubt you are that stupid. So I'm wondering if there are things you haven't said.

Are you having fun and is the cost you are paying proportionate to other things you could do to have fun?

That's the bottom line for me - fun. It is the only reason I play games.

I'm just guessing, maybe for it's the same for you too, but not sure. Are you having fun, and is it worth what you are paying for it?

And if you aren't, then why are you playing?

Oh yes!

Same here... Very much even!

Morwen.

Desmond, while I do not disagree with a lot you say I would also point out that as a trader you can have a position, without having a position. That's not double Dutch, in the trading and investment business you find that the money is mostly in the waiting, in fact in rl I have made far more money sitting on my hands (and keeping a big hammer available to whack my mouse if tempted) than participating against the odds.

Making money from Second Life is hard because what ever you do you are some way down the food chain, and that will not change unless you are prepared to invest hundreds of thousands of real US dollars in owning and/or controlling land, unless you come up with a semi unique proposition as you have partially succeeded in doing with Caledon.

The likes of Anshe Chung turning a $9.95 premium account into real life millions of US dollars is an almost one off, which was only possible very early on if you were able to grasp the opportunity.

Today there are just too many people within SL for another semi unique event such as Anshe, short of a major code or policy change by Linden. After all what you can do in SL is limited by computer code.

In real life this is mirrored in the Far East. There you see a small number of billionaires and a very large number of poor people, what is needed is the emergence of a so called middle class to achieve some type of general living standards, (for most of the population,) equal to that of Europe or North America.

The only way I see that happening in SL is for Linden to take a decision to take less food and leave more on the table for the residents, an event that absolutely has not happened to date. Its very similar to rl taxation

I am sure some people will continue to make a genuine living and profit from SL in the future, but the big money days of the early adopters has gone, and this is related to real life experience in buying and selling technology shares, with Google for example the big money profit was buying the shares shortly after issue at $80. Today at near $500 per share I would need to see Google multiply its profit and market share 5 times to achieve that return.

Perhaps we should look out and see if Linden does an IPO, and evaluate the position then, although that’s not financial advice you may be much higher up the food chain

Well, technology is precisely it, I think - one may never make the returns from Google ever again, say, but there are new fields arising all the time.

Computer breakthroughs, bioinformatics, nanotech, all sorts of areas where new things are possible.

Even on our grid, we are going to be 'discovering' voice technology, new avatar technologies, dramatic extension of LSL to many coding languages, HTML on a prim. Each one will spawn a thousand innovations great and small.

Even the bugs and constraints generate solutions. Look at Rez Foo / Rez Faux; or my own rezzer. Were it not for the link constraints such a solution would not even bother to exist. Or 'security orbs' - things that solve a need. (If Jillian's privacy zone proposal goes forward, I can see the security orb market crashing hard though)

One of the fundamental rules of marketing is this: there are generally two big players in any mature market. Ford and Chevy. Pepsi and Coke.

The grid isn't yet like that - many of the markets are polar, and dominated by this person or that. It wouldn't take much to be the better alternative in a number of markets, though I hope you forgive me if I don't name several easy niche market opportunities.

its funny i find myself pretty successfull in product design. And the two sims in own do not bring me a cent.

It sould a bit like me that you complain you can't run a business if you don't:

A. Make large investments.

B. Have some talent.

Well, guess what it's ythe same in RL, we have investors and peoples creating/inventing new things.
And inbetween cheaply paid workers/labor.

Anshe's "big break" wasn't to do with land - it was animations! When custom avatar animations were first added to SL, there was a "run" on them, and she got involved in making them then. The same thing happened with several new features - HUDs, flexi, etc. In fact, I think that the reason why the Lindens keep adding new features, even though all the bugs are not fixed yet, is because they want to make sure the market keeps having new opportunities like this.

Old users do have a bit of an advantage, in that the value of the L$ has risen from what it used to be, so they can cash them out for more than the value they had when they were earned.

There are some markets in SL that are locked, but generally they're not the result of "everything was already done by an oldbie", but of network effect and social integration with the market. That can also be challenging to deal with (and its effect on the overall market is, I think, actually worse because it means the market stops at a product that isn't necessary the best, but was just the best at the right time)

Many residents have a tendency to believe that their particular computer system configuration is the norm, and that the problems they encounter with SL lag, crashes, and inventory control are therefore also the norm. Then they wonder why anyone would play SL or enjoy it and anyone who claims to be having a good time is some kind of LL apologist, yada, yada, yada.

Mileage varies greatly depending on your particular system (not to mention temperament). I started playing SL on a marginal computer, but soon realized that I was really missing the full experience, so I bit the bullet and upgraded to a machine that was much more powerful (though still not cutting edge). The change in SL was VERY gratifying. I do have the occasional lag moments and even crashes, but so far nothing that cripples my SL experience, whether I'm just shopping or building a new house.

So please bear in mind that there's a limit to how far LL can accommodate marginal computer configurations. SL is a demanding and complex platform, and it's unrealistic to expect LL to fix problems across all OS platforms, processors, RAM and graphics cards. If you can't afford a high-end system, then you're going to have problems. Recognize that it's a trade-off of what you can afford versus what you want to do.

Very good point! I can access SL from three Macintosh computers - an older G4 iMac at work, a G4 laptop, and a very new iMac at home. At work it's almost unplayable (a very good thing actually), on the laptop it's adequately acceptable, and on the new iMac at home it is great. Last night I had no problems at all teleporting, building, scriting; everything works fine most of the time for me.

I'm not saying everything is rainbows and smiles, but like Regan pointed out, the subjective user experience does depend a lot on the user's own system and setup.

-Atashi

Well said...

If you think thats interesting...I've only just logged back on to find my single angst posting sitting at 3 pages....interesting.

I'm only thru the 1st 2 pages so far and will keep reading all the way to the end. I've found some valid ideas, and some I consider protectionist from the 'old guard'. However, I'm not done reading so that may change again as well.

I'll post back then...or sooner if a comment arises.

Yes, I do reiterate that the land is where it's at. Or a spot--renting or a negotiated corner, it's still land.

the rest of my argument--I withdraw of the grounds that it is based in the online personalities vice RL inadequaceies. I'm not bashing their reason, but those are the true 'enjoyers' of this sim. Those not lacking came in here perhaps, like myself, looking for a sort of challange.

And to those, yes..I agree...I must find that challenge myself or else logout in fin.

Resident Answers is specificaly for residents to ask other residents for help.

Answers to a request for help may certainly be opinion pieces... but the thread should at least start with request for help, no?

It sucks that the official forums no longer have a 'General' area for people to post opinion pieces... but if we treat Resident Answers as "The New General Forum" it'll go away too.

Please.... Let's not kill Resident Answers by mis-using it.

Lets all try and agree on one thing.

Back in the Dark Ages of SL, anyone making a RL cash investment were at very high risk. SL was just becoming known, no one knew then if the 'game' would fizzle away as 'just another one of those games'. Even by the admissions of Phillip Linden regarding the potential aggressive nature of Linden Labs own investors, could have demanded a return on their initial investment, effectively 'Sell.. Sell' senario devaluing, and potentially crippling any investment by the original SL investors that took a similar risk, buying 'Land' which had/has a closed market for real life cash. Anyone sneering at those people who made that investment and risked their own cash, who are only now realising its potential, comes across as 'sour grapes'. This 'argument' can be transfered into Real Life, 'why was my parents home so cheap?', well it wasn't when they bought it based on potential earnings.
Progress born from those original investments, created commerce and breathed life into a 'game'. Are we to deny them a return on their investments? Not me, fair play to them. Anyone with a vision and or a skill to see or create markets that give some form of pleasure to others, that become successful are to be applauded. On the broader picture, the same can be said for Linden Labs, their investors etc...

The fact that someone comes into a game that has already gainned momentum off the backs of those that took the greater risk, not choose to whine about things being 'unfair' should reach for the Off button on their PC. SL has grown expotentially, than its past years, over the past 6 months producing greater potential for us all. Take the plunge, make your own investment, take what is a smaller risk than those 'frontier' people.

FYI, I joinned SL back in early 2004 and only bought my first land late last year. Until I decided to start a business that required land, before that I don't believe I was spinning my wheels, nor was I a nobody. I invested in people and contributed to the commerce.

My experience...

No one told me about the first land option... so when I stepped foot on the grid I was happy being the homeless explorer. As I travelled I discovered renting, and in short time I made a good friend in my landlady and rented from her. Fast forward to a new estate island where I actually had to spend some RL cash to get over 5000m of land... luckily I had gotten a really nice house I was saving in my inventory for just such an occasion. So now I have land... recently lo and behold, the property behind me went up for sale, and my SL g/f had a desire to be a landlady... so we bought it. Now we have two lands total of 10km and four rental properties (skyyboxes) that people love and pay us regularly... we are at the point where the rentals are paying our tier.... provided she or I do not go on shopping sprees lol.

Now I am gonna take it to the next level. Inspired by Cubey Terra... I am getting into the airship business, as well as making items to appease my love of Star Wars...

My point is... this is how it goes... you start humble, you get inspired, you build up... the only limits to this game is your imagination. I am not rich yet in game... but it is my goal.

The day I can call my rl work (which pays me 26.88 an hour US) and say kiss my butt I quit... that will be a day long remembered... right before I log into SL that day and count my lindens.

It's good to have goals folks... gives you focus.

"Without land, you are nothing" - Not unless you are a guy!!! (wink)

As another old-timer, I have seen the effect of a large amount of land being released at once on the grid. Don't tell me you forgot about the snow sim land crash?

Anyway, you don't need to invest a lot to make it big. The key to it is to not expect to be a millionaire over night. Even with Anshe, she started small. Made a few L$ here and there. She then took those profits and reinvested them into her business. She worked hard to be where she is now. You can do the same. If you make L$100 a day selling something, then that is $3000 in a month. With that money you upload textures and make something new. Now all of a sudden you are making L$500 a day. The next month you have L$15000. So you go use that money to set up a shop. You make your own little shop and no longer pay rent anymore for you old spot. Since you can control the ads and such, you now are making $1000 a day....

I know it is a bit simplistic, but that is the way that many people that I know of started. They are now very big and makes lots of money. But it took them time to define what their brand was. It may be harder to be noticed, but if you have the talent and the determination you will be big too.

Just depends...

In the flexibility of such a virtual world and possible new code changes - assuming the First Land system gets 'fixed' so that the big land holders can't snatch it all up - they stand a chance of being stuck with large amounts of land they simply can't sell.

As I look around for it, I see some 'realtors' that have obviously sold large portions of what they own, and others are practically whole sims they are trying to sell without a soul there.

I've been around the computing world long enough to know, one must be careful where they put too much money, particularly in a world where the rules can completely change in the space of one patch...

So for some of the larger land owners - there is significant risk too.

Say.. a competitor opens up a new 'sim' that people flock to... many things could happen indeed.

But it's not unlike the real world at all. As there is no 'legal' agreement that you do, in fact; literally 'own' the land within SL, you are actually 'leasing' it. I suspect down in the EULA it says no matter what this is all 'owned' by Linden Labs...


And yes - in fact it clearly states that...


THIS DATA, AND ANY OTHER DATA RESIDING ON LINDEN'S SERVERS, MAY BE RESET AT ANY TIME FOR ANY OR NO REASON. ALL CHARACTER HISTORY AND DATA MAY BE ERASED IN WHICH CASE EACH CHARACTER MAY BE RESET TO NOVICE STATUS. YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT, NOTWITHSTANDING ANY COPYRIGHT OR OTHER RIGHTS YOU MAY HAVE WITH RESPECT TO ITEMS YOU CREATE USING THE SERVICE, ALL OF YOUR CONTENT AND ACCUMULATED STATUS HAS NO INTRINSIC CASH VALUE AND THAT LINDEN DOES NOT ENDORSE, AND EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS (SUBJECT TO ANY UNDERLYING RIGHTS IN THE CONTENT), ANY VALUE, CASH OR OTHERWISE, ATTRIBUTED TO CONTENT OR ACCUMULATED STATUS.