Where will Mainland prices be in three weeks?

I see my .2-.4 decline guesstimate was spot on. Is it permanent? I don't think so... I think that that 2152 was a sweet deal, when considering the future.

Making 'voice' a premium service would help; it'd also stop a lot of the inevitable grefing on throwaway alts too.

Restrict inventory to 500 items on unverified accounts.


Two fairly simple technological changes, and reasons for people to upgrade.

Before people complain... you gets what you pays for.

Broccoli

I guess restrictions are the only way to go since they are not bringing any added value to the table. Tonight I'm not getting what I paid for since my premium account is supposed to include search and TP functionality.

I can't find my group land "Service unavailable". Strange with the TP's though, one plot of land I couldn't TP to, selected the neihbouring plot from a landmark on the same sim and it worked.

I didn't know about the classifieds only searching titles though, that's a bad one.

Hmm I'm pretty much in agreement with you. I don't know if this is because I've been up all night

I'm not sure how easy those changes would be to implement though, I'd imagine they have one set of settings for all AV's and that to change that wouldn't be straight forward.

Now that I think of it, content creators would be a tiny bit miffed if people had to limit what they could put in their inventory. How else can we make basic members' lives miserable?

As a non-Premium account holder, I think those would be very fair suggestions. Partially because I am not that interested in Voice anyway ^_^

... but inventory, ah yes inventory. In most games, inventories are rather severely restricted because of the database issues. Its one thing people often clamor for more of, in most subscription games I play. And the devs always respond "Can't do it, sorry, it would kill the servers." Maybe that is one of SL's top issues.

I don't know how SL works, especially given the fact so much is custom content, surely tracking the huge variety of unique items must be an issue. 500 items is of course very small (well, not compared to other games of course, just by SL standards), but would still give people the chance to sample everything so long as they were willing to discard stuff they don't use/like/want/need in favor of trying out new things. And be a very compelling reason to upgrade one's account.

Be very curious to know how much of a factor "inventory database" load is.

If it is a huge issue, then I think this is an absolutely fantastic suggestion. It's quite possible to live with 500 items I think. Now I just need to figure out which 97% of my stuff I don't really need ^_^

It really would go a long ways towards making a Premium Account highly attractive. If database is behind much of SL's woes, this really sounds like a spot-on solution.

Apparently many land values have risen so I suspect 30pm will be the norm by then
Hmm what will not having slot machines chat shouting do for your sim?

Today I saw a land sale ad in search, oddly listed under "Events", for lots on a private island. I was bored and popped over for a looksee. The area seemed very nice and the prices looked a lot less than I expected based on the $L9/m2 price I often hear for mainland, especially the $7.08/m2 for the 4096 lots:

Cost of Land
Size * Purchase Price
1 (65536 m2) $512000L
1/2 (32768 m2) $256000L
1/4 (16384 m2) $128000L (sale $118, 000)
1/8 (8192 m2) $64000L (sale $62,000)
1/16 (4096 m2) $32000L (sale $29,000)
1/32 (2048 m2) $16000L

I'm not yet near ready to plunk down $109 RL cash for a 4096 lot and commit myself to tier fees. I am also not sure if these were unusually low prices. Right now I am happy with my $L250/wk 1024 newbie lot ^_^ and when they kick me out after 120 days, I'll give it more thought.

I can't help but think in SL, initial land purchase prices are going to keep dropping, to fit into my own vision of SL -- which of course may not be your vision of SL. I may be very very wrong, but to me, what SL represents is really nothing less than the future of the internet, and those are simply not prices that are going to accomplish that.

SL may not have the substructure to support this anyway. They may either need to have a "second generation" Third Life, or watch helplessly as someone like Google steps in. But right now, SL has the advantage, and I assume the reason they are trying to get so many realworld businesses to base here, is to cement that advantage. Eventually investors are going to go, where the money is. And that doesn't mean sales based off $L250 prim shoes.

Free accounts actually help some. People will come more easily if they think they are not walking into a money-draining "lets dress up and play house" type of online Sims game. But they might come if its free, and they might stay if its fun, and if Second Life does prove out its longterm potential, eventually decide to commit financially. But not for those kind of entrance fees, I think. I think eventually, more land will keep being added and initial land purchase costs will gradually keep dropping and tier fees become increasingly the main revenue source, but ONLY until The Great Advertising Age kicks in to keep the boiler engines running. It worked for radio, for television, for the internet, and I think eventually for SL too. Or whatever name the next generation takes.

Anyway, I am keeping my eye on land prices, but it may be a long wait before I ever buy any ^_^

These looked rather nice though.

Tempting.

Hmmm......

Land is something I dabble in, those prices aren't excessive. You'd generally pay a fair bit more for mainland. The strange thing about the SL land market is how supply far outstrips demand. You'd think that naturally therefore prices would drop a fair bit. Yet someone yesterday who is far more experienced than me was saying that if you set your land for sale for L$.1 per metre less than the mainland listings, then a bot will snap it up.

true!

IMO: thats why landprices are fairly stable, but as more and more land is added / for sale, less land per "landbaron" will be sold, this will have its effects on the smaller dealers 1st, who might need to sell at loss ...raising the costs to the remaining landbarons ...at some point.. i really think the market will crash..

I agree with you regarding the reason that landprices are fairly stable, although I have noticed that someone who buys mainland unseen has dropped their buying price, but that person doesn't employ bots so maybe there's already a downward trend developing.

I'm not sure if there will be a crash but it's a market with very flaky foundations.

Sorry, I replied in the wrong thread I think.

This is all very well, but ultimately the market, not LL, controls the price of land. Controlling supply only works if the demand is there.
Land just sucks as an investment.I dumped all mine the minute the gambling ban was announced.

I relied heavily on slot machines and other gambling products to pay tier and other expenses on land while trying to sell it. I wasn't the only one. Unless you are going for what most people is absurdly high volume and associated investment, there aren't many other worthwhile strategies.
The only real alternative to going for economies of scale like the land barons, is to put up advertising. That in itself devalues land which, ironically, makes the advertising steadily less and less profitable. From what I've heard no one who pays advertisers to promote their product makes any money anyway, apart from the now defunct casinos.

What no one seems to get is that gambling is one of the few things you can do better on SL than anywhere else. You had very few start-up costs, nothing compared to those of an Real-world or even online casino. Setting up a casino could be done in hours. And you had a potentially huge market. No amount of selling of virtual jewellery is going to compensate for the loss of that.

I have little confidence in the long-term future of SL right now and am not inclined to purchase any more land at any price. SL has been going for some time now and LL don't seem to have a clue where the world is actually going, and keeping on pulling the rug from under the feet of residents who have invested in the world with some new instant arbitary change.

Most of the problems that were here when I arrived at just as bad as ever, the ridiculously
high churn rate amonst newcomers, the constant technical glitches, the camping chairs, the unbearably bad search interface. And a host of new problems such as the omnipresent ban screens preventing movement, and hideous advertising banners.
LL has done a lot of stupid tinkering but nothing really helpful.

SL appears to be growing because they are working the publicity machine well-but that's a double-edged sword. The backlash is already beginning. There has to be some fundamental value to a product like SL in order for it to continue to exist, and I do not see where the fundamental value is.

At the moment, if you took away camping-related activities and the RL magazine articles there would be very little left. SL is currently in the position of an organization like alladvantage.com (remember the get-paid-to-surf ads everywhere?). You can't expect people to invest in a flawed concept like that.

Though I think linden was a bit wimpy to give in on the casino issue too easily I wont miss what they do to a sim... the lag they create and how they make it difficult for some to tp into their own land at times... It was one of the biggest risks in buying mainland... maybe some land buyers are relieved and wil be more willing to buy mainland now?

Elinah

Two words:

Ad Farms

LL has a huge influence on the price of land. They are currently the only entity that can create it. They can create as much or as little as they want. This has a direct impact on land prices. The hardware used to support land in SL does have a RL cost however.



There are other more effective ways to advertise in SL than putting up an adfarm on land. You will see them soon. They will affect the economy of SL in both positive and negative ways.



From the perspective of the casino owner you are correct. However, were your slot machines regulated by any kind of gaming commission that made sure they paid out a certain amount? In Atlantic City many advertise RL slot machines as paying 99.9% of bets back over a certain time period. The gaming commission backs up those advertised claims. You would be hard pressed to find a slot in SL that would be back 50% of bets and hardly ever would one pay a large win in *any* case. I think casino's might have died on their own eventually anyway as people caught on to the fact that they were mostly unregulated scams.



You don't think that violating federal law by allowing SL casinos to operate wouldn't have "pulled the rug" out from SL users? Allowing gambling to continue in SL would have shut it down. period. This change wasn't arbitrary. Casino owners should have seen the writing on the wall when LL no longer allowed them to come up in searches.



Valid points. I think its crucial these things be improved before SL takes the next step.



Yes, SL needs mature leadership right now. Though, since its a relatively new venture that's hard--its unlike other business models.



I don't think so. If LL can somehow drive down the costs of SL for a new user there is plenty of potential out there. The simple entertainment value of SL alone is enough to support this platform if done correctly. A 2 dimensional myspace page with a few pics and videos has nothing on a 3D mansion situated on a beach which can include all of those things and more.

Not a bot necessarily, but a land broker. You see, these opportunists (I used to be one) are the folks that keep land prices high. Supply only seems to outstrip demand. The brokers demand the land and thus keep prices high. They are investing high tier in the hopes that an end user will pay their inflated price for the land. There are enough of these brokers to keep prices where they are today, even with all the land for sale all over the mainland.

Now that's a very good point. I wasn't taking land brokers into account when I was saying that supply outstrips demand.

Thank you. I have wondered about that very issue for some time now. I fly over sims that are all yellow, check the prices and am astonished. A lot of them have sat like that for ages.

You have to take them into account. They are buying the highest percentage of land by far, including the new sims on the auction page. If it was left to actual demand of end users not intending to resell for a while, land would be about L$5 a meter.

Absolutely Raymond, it makes it much more clear to me why prices are so stable when I see so much land for sale.

if the lindens really wanted to lower land prices they would sell land direct.

If they have the money, that is the thing to do. Lowers the overall cost per square meter that they own if they average out the cost over all their land. Buy right now as prices drop, sell when prices increase (and their overall holdings at that point would have a lower per unit cost and therefore a higher potential for profit; as in if they need to sell some land later, quickly, they could see slightly less than normal and still make a profit; or they sell at their "normal" rate and make that much more profit).

Yep. In a way they do: it's called an island. Too bad they don't sell smaller sized plots. The current tier fee structure must be working for them.

I don't think they want prices to go much lower than they are now. Otherwise they would be releasing more of the new continent to auction. As I've said before, they like getting US$2,200 minimum for their full auctioned sims.