Land

Hi

Just an observation really,

Ive noticed that quite a fair bit of land in SL is useless, what do I mean by useless.....

Well its gets transfered from dealer to dealer with it rarely being held by a person who ACTUALLY builds anything. Now this isnt an attack at the dealers as I know a few and fair play to them but I feel that a large reason this is is NOT becasue of the high cost of purchasing the land becasue at the end of the day the prices average out at about L$10 - L$13sqm anyway.

This is really aimed towards LL, Opening new sims left right and center will NOT encourage folk to buy land while Tier is a such a high price. My monthly tier is only at about £50 a month which isnt in the big amounts that people DO pay, but I am starting to question what I am recieving for both my membership AND my tier payments.

I understand that Tier is a maintainence fee from Linden Labs to keep the servers ticking over but at the same time LL say that nothing in SL has any value, yet we pay them money to maintain ..... nothing at least as far as value is concerned.

We pay the premium membership to recieve the right to buy land ONLY and its a visious circle...

We pay LL a fee for membership to buy land so that we can pay them more money for them to maintain so that we can build and keep the IPR to items that dont exist or have any value to LL, yet we have paid for a service to which there is no CUSTOMER service.

Its starting to feel as though LL see second life as a university project that gotten out of hand and is used to pay for the "beer money", it seems to be ran in a most hap hazzard kind of way and allthough I really do appreciate the work that IS completed I also feel that closing the curtains, sticking your fingers in your ears and singling LA LA LA does not make people disapear into the ether.

As an IT Manager if I paid for a data center to host my data (which ultimately we ARE doing), and they went .... "oooops we lost it ... never mind it wasnt real anyway" you would do you NUT and sue for loss of business. Now as LL have marketed Second Life as a virtual world and have on multiple occasions sold the platform based on RL marketing value and the ability to make RL money then is this not false advertising.

It all seems a little challenged, even to the point of asking for L$100 to create a group, or L$30 - L$50 to advertise seesm another way that the LL can charge you for a service that is poor and then sell you the lindens you have paid them back to you. The business model isnt bad at all ..... just badly executed.

Come on LL ..... offer a service stick to that service and maintain your customers after all we HAVE PAID FOR IT!!!!!!!



Marty

The vast majority of the resident population of Second Life owns no land.

And a good number who do own land will probably stop owning land after running into the great number of frustrations involved, at least at one point or another.

Hmm... Don't know.

Most land owning friends I know stay for the longest time on the same place... myself included (living for more then a year in Maia-sim and no plans for leaving at all there).

Morwen.

Depends on where, I suppose. It depends on what's going on around you, how much property you have, whether or not you get frustrated. There's a lot that factors in. I've known a great deal that have moved, and many who were shoved out by a massive hideous casino crawling across three sims, and no one wants to live next to that. And I've known a lot of people who owned land, and maybe it just wasn't for them, or something about Second Life irritated them enough to give it up.

At one time I was paying $125USD for monthly tier. Now I pay $0 and have gone down to a 512 meter plot.

Here are the reasons I have drastically reduced what I am paying LL monthly:

1) Lag and performance issues. Why own a lot of land when you can't move around on it?

2) Reliability issues. Why have a lot of prims when things I purchased disappear permanently from inventory?

3) Allowing a few a huge advantage. Why pay for the ability to buy a lot of land when landbots beat you to every deal?

4) Poor customer service. Why risk having so much money in a world where when problems come up you have to wait weeks for an answer?

5) SL is less fun. Many of the friends I made long ago no longer log on due to various bad experiences and frustrations with what I have outlined above.

With what I have personally experienced of their mananagement, reliability and service, I feel like now I am paying them what they deserve: Nothing.

Pretty much sums up a great number of the reasons why people stop owning as much land as you do. It's a risky venture right now, and one that can too often be frustrating (not to everyone, but to a lot of people.)

I still marvel at SL. There is nothing else like it. But the only reason I stay around is because there is nothing else like it. Can't wait for some legitimate competition to give me an option. And to all those brokers paying the high monthly fee wondering where all the buyers went who used to rebuy their land, all I can say is sorry dudes. My 512meters and 117 prims are suiting me just fine.

It's bound to happen, and soon with all of the media attention SL gets now.

It's coming, I am sure. I doubt it will be too terribly long until some high-speed individuals catch on to just how much is jacked up about Second Life and start working on a much more competent client.

Till then, I am right next to you. SL is awesome in as many ways as it is frustrating.

Hey Sarah. Couldn't sleep. Whatcha doing?

I pay 40 us$ per month. To your points (and those are only my personal experience/thoughts and nothing more then that):

1) There is no or almost no lag in the sim where I own my land, but then there are no casino's or clubs there.

2) Luckily I had only once items dissapearing and that was from my inventory, but never something that was placed on my land. Guess I am lucky then.

3) I am not dealing in land, I just own land. So landbots are no issue for me (and no, that doesn't mean I agree with them).

4) Concerning my land I had just twice to rely on support. Once for a item I lost... and I made huge hole in my land to see if it was not underground.... The person helping me must have laughing very hard (yes, I know now that you can make land transparant ).
The other matter was when I logged there was a huge "nothing" where my land used to be. They promised the sim would be up in 15 minutes... and they were right.

5) Although I do spend many and many hours in SL (I have lots of other things to do as well), I am still having a great time in SL when I am logged in.

Again, this are only my personal thoughts and experiences...

But I guess that Raymond is right. A lot depends on circumstances...

Morwen.

Thank you for that balance to my post. When I think about it, $25-$40 feels about right and it's what I was paying the majority of the time last year. My main frustrations were a laggy home sim, landbots killing my livelihood and losing a ton of stuff in my inventory. So everybody has their own experience and I'm glad you are having a mostly positive one. Thank you for also reporting a positive customer service experience. We don't see many of them mentioned on this forum.

One of my greatest pleasures in VR worlds is to walk through the landscape and marvel at the virtual places you can see.

For anyone here who has visited WoW, the Gold Coast Road, Stormwind, Ironforge, The City of Shattrath and the terrace of light, are prime examples.

Putting aside the technical and cultural differences if WoW allowed avatar customisations, homesteading, and commercial activities they would clean up imho

You can do similar in SL ....

You can go and wonder at the Strip Clubs ......

Look in amazment at the rotating Monoliths of Advertisment

You can awe at the gigantic MEGA PRIMS of KASINO.

Alternitivly you can just look at the vast wide open prairy lands of "landforsale plains"


There is a HEAVY commercialisation of SL, but if EVERYONE sells.... nobody buys and a vast amount of in game money is being taken OUT of game by alts and camping bots .... then the economy will crumble and EVERYONE will loose.

I have no solutions but as long as LL make a buck on every transaction then the wheels will keep on turning (at least untill Wednesday update ....... then the wheels may turn faster or slower .... or may disapear alltogether as the wheels arnt really wheels as they dont really exist)

The rotating Monoliths of Advertisment are breathtaking at sunrise.

Depends on WHICH sunrise *lol* .....

would that be Sun V1.0, Windlight Sun or Oversized grapefruit sun *girn* ...hhehehe the people would LIKE TO KNOW!!!!!

Funny you mention this…

Yes, I agree with you. Walking and exploring VR worlds is awesome.

I will never forget the long and beautiful road leading from The Death Passage to the City of Oren… or Hunters Village…. (Lineage II).

And I still love to sit on the hill next to Willow Wood and look over the peaceful village… or watch the waterfall in Baulbeshire… and then there is this spot where can watch over the beginners area in the Greater Faydark… (Everquest II).

This kind of beauty means a lot to me….

Sorry, for getting off topic.

Morwen

The one with a shamrock in it

Just over a year ago, I stumbled onto the Zen Gardens of Achemon here in SL. As I wandered Kyuubi David's grounds, I fell in love with SL. Thank you for taking me back to my first unjaded days...

It's funny, when I think about when I first started SL. It feels like so long ago, just a year and a half ago really, but it feels like it was so different then. I had no land, no nice skin... I remember the first outfit and only outfit I owned, I bought it from BareRose, lol. The Ou En Dah or something like that... I wore it for months. My first prim hair from HCT. Was all I had for the longest time, but I didn't care, I just loved flying around everywhere in second life. And that was before the Flexi/Light update, when I could actually fly around without hitting massive lag, heh.

Those were the days! Now everything about Second Life is so different to me. It was so new then, it was like stepping into Neal Stephenson's metaverse. Now... I don't know what it is, to be honest.

It's a lot more like RL now for me. But other than the lag, I am largely to blame. I slowly imported the drama, ego and worries I was trying to escape from into my SL existence. Time to return to my zen beginnings perhaps. Speaking of which: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P6UU6m3cqk

Yeah, that's it I guess. I let all the negativity follow me into it. I like that idea, of going back to the beginning, back to the zen of Second Life, even, lol.

God that kid was so cute it hurt, xD

Edit; I thought I'd mention, that is a really novel bib that baby has on, rofl. I dunno why that was interesting to me, I guess I just remember the bibs my parents always used on us when we were little as these pointless little fabrib ones that never truly did the trick.


maybe this is how people feel about SL;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dO37pHMWqeQ&mode=related&search=

I actually am thinking of doing the same thing...for exactly the same reasons.