New Continent Coming to Second Life Mainland
Tuesday, January 30th, 2007 at 1:00 PM by: Robin LindenOver the last several weeks we have been adding land to the mainland at a fairly slow rate (4 new regions per day) while we complete the delivery of islands ordered at the end of 2006. The result is that pricing has been creeping up steadily and is currently about double what we saw per m2 in November. In order to meet the increased demand, our plan is to start to increase the rate at which we put mainland regions online.
Look for a substantial new continent to begin to appear off to the east!
This increase in land supply should also help to offset the impact of the use of ‘bots as high speed land scanners to skim off the lowest priced, and generally smaller, less desirable parcels. In addition, we’re looking at adding a step to the purchase process which should make it more difficult to use ‘ bots in purchasing land.
January 30th, 2007 at 1:03 PM
Great, new land! Hopefully, it wont add to the current slow downs we are experiencing
January 30th, 2007 at 1:04 PM
Good. The landbots are proving to be a massive hassle to honest folks trying to find a place to set themselves up. You should be aggressive in banning anyone who uses such underhanded methods to get First Land, and release everything they own back to First Land.
January 30th, 2007 at 1:11 PM
Sounds cool. I slo hope slow downs will decrease rapidly, making the exploration of the SL world much easier. Then, I might be willing to spend money for a nice place…
January 30th, 2007 at 1:15 PM
I’m a TG user, and I am wondering: is there going to be a mainland increase on the Teen Grid too?
January 30th, 2007 at 1:15 PM
I’m gonna buy me a piece of the new land. My first day in Second Life and I get a new continent.
January 30th, 2007 at 1:19 PM
Yeah, if you are throttling the replies to land for sale searches, than I think that will be a good idea … for all concerned.
January 30th, 2007 at 1:19 PM
I have a few questions about the addition of a new continent to Second Life.
1. What will this do to hinder/ease the capibility of the asset server to handle the extra load this will surely cause?
2. Is there any plans to upgrade to a new asset server network with greater scalability?
You have been having asset server problems for over a year now, as shown in this post on the SL Forums - Announcements & News…
http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=69740
I wish you would come out and talk about this issue. it’s effecting everyone in second life and you go on day by day as if nothing is wrong!
This has been a continuous thing in second life. What are your plans to deal with this? Is there any plans for you to come out and talk about this? Will you let us all know what your doing to help easy this situation?
I just want SL to work. Is that too much to ask? =(
January 30th, 2007 at 1:32 PM
Square away your current problems before you scale up yet again with no planning other than; we add more land, we collect more tier, we make more money. YAY us :/
January 30th, 2007 at 1:33 PM
Did you guys totally miss everything we have been saying the last few weeks??????? The reason we hate this automated buying bot is because it gives the one user acess to EVERY decent deal that pops up, it buys EVERY mislisted plot because of user error, it gives him an advantage over every land dealer in sl. I guess all of our tiers mean little or nothing to you. I agree with my close friend Ray, you are using this bot as a scapegoat to release alot of new land for the gain of LL. http://secondlife.com/vote/vote.php?get_id=2783
January 30th, 2007 at 1:36 PM
I hope that extra step isn’t the use of a CAPTCHA, I find the Linden Labs ones to be totally unreadable.
January 30th, 2007 at 1:41 PM
the reason that land prices are so high is that these major land grabbers get all the new land as soon as it beomes available. Their tier will never increase above the max, if I understand tier payments. So why stop at owning a whole sim worth of land. Just keep buying up land and set whatever price you want, because you’ll never pay more tht the max tier.
Tier should be in mulitples for those above the max level, just on a sliding scale. You don’t have to charge the max for extra land over an entire sim but there should be some cost.
Just my two cents, and I apologize if this is wrong!
January 30th, 2007 at 1:42 PM
Hear hear to Doodles’ post! Ban landbot users, and release their holdings back to First Land. Shrieking real estate harpies are one of the worst things about SL. My First Land purchase was a freakin’ nightmare of harrassment by these goons.
Slow, torturous de-rezzing in a bath of virtual acid is too good for ‘em.
January 30th, 2007 at 1:43 PM
C-c-c-combo breaker! SL keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger..
I should buy a slice of it before its taken over!
January 30th, 2007 at 1:45 PM
I was beginning to think First Land was a myth. Will the Property companies get it first? Will its release be timed so European users aren’t asleep when it becomes available?
January 30th, 2007 at 1:47 PM
I guess it’s kinda pointless trying to hold a debate in this blog format which is why we switched to it and away from forums. Anyway, no-one is using bots to buy first land the two issues are totally seperate.
After owning a whole sim of land tier increases linearly. i.e. two sims costs twice as much as one sim. And fifty sims costs 50 times as much.
January 30th, 2007 at 1:47 PM
Cappy, there is no max tier.
January 30th, 2007 at 1:48 PM
Hi
Just wondered whether wholly Linden owned sims on the existing mainland continents would ever enter the auction queue - sims like Whiskey and Horisme for example. Or is there another reason why these older sims stay barren?
Jeremy Neumann
January 30th, 2007 at 1:56 PM
If they know bots are in use then why are those accounts still alklowed in sl at all? eliminate the criminals jeez.
January 30th, 2007 at 1:57 PM
I have no clue on how to use this site, but it looks good!
January 30th, 2007 at 1:58 PM
The obvious answer Ann Otoole is that running bots is not any kind of crime at all.
January 30th, 2007 at 2:03 PM
Great news the “Bots” is that not in your TOS, if not put it in there and ban them I see it as criminal…………..
SL should be an equal place to trade without such criminal activity to get rich quick………..
January 30th, 2007 at 2:05 PM
Sounds encouraging - though I’ll agree with #5, the asset database nightmare is an issue that should be further discussed/expanded on. I think Cory did that a bit - but an entire town hall about the asset server issues and current plans for remedy (not turning off search) might be well received.
January 30th, 2007 at 2:05 PM
I agree….. land scammers are the lowest of the low …… you know who you are, Joe and friends.
January 30th, 2007 at 2:07 PM
Will this be something different? I’m tired of all the same green/rocky/coral land. This isn’t RL, give us mainlanders something different please. :-/
January 30th, 2007 at 2:07 PM
Well that’s very good news to hear. I’ve been dying to purchase First Land for a month now, simce upgrading.
January 30th, 2007 at 2:12 PM
Joy Iddinja must be happy with this news…
January 30th, 2007 at 2:14 PM
WHAT GOOD NEWS????? Its not even weekend and thing go all bad again. No rezzing??? how can I work on my projects?
January 30th, 2007 at 2:15 PM
Persephone Milk Says:
Cappy, there is no max tier.
Persephone ,so what happens if I hold more than 65,536 m2?
January 30th, 2007 at 2:16 PM
You pay more Cappy
January 30th, 2007 at 2:19 PM
will it cure the poor performance or increase the profit margins?
January 30th, 2007 at 2:21 PM
I need to talk to an economics wiz, but changing the “rules of the game” midstream is not fair to all parties. By allowing land rates to change and then react by flooding the market is not fair to users who have bought land as an investment, or with understanding they can at least break even. Those who bought plots during the price increase now stand to lose a substainail amount of investment because noobs cant afford an extra 2000 lindens per 512. Anyway, restricting real estate leeches would be a better approach. In the end, it is a proven economic ideal, that increased regulation will increase prices. Furthermore, flooding a market with a product will devalue the linden (just watch all you linden hoarders..better break out the pay pal now) The addition of one content is a cheap, low-thought-level approach to lowering prices. Perhaps Linden could look at its own land offering protocol instead of just decide..”hey lets offer more land”. Currently i own a 1/4 sim to support my casino. I bought my land during the increases and if prices fall 2-3 k a 512, I lose a great deal of investment. I know i wont make money on the land i bought, but now i can lose alot. I was playing this game for fun and adding money to increase the fun. Basically my land, my lindens, and my overall nest egg will be destroyed. Thanks linden..
Also, could this not have been addressed when prices began to sky rocket 4 months ago? Even the mention would keep land hikes lower. Instead we get a message after now, 4 months later. Its not good for Sl or its players for the most part. Increase slowdowns, devalued land (which will devalue lindens folks as land is a major money maker here), only to increase access to basically worthless 512 plots for the noobs who will probably wont even stay on sl.
January 30th, 2007 at 2:23 PM
Great new land now Ill hopefully be able to own some! Hope it wont make Second Life any slower then it is though. -_-
January 30th, 2007 at 2:23 PM
MORE LAND… woohoo great… means that the top land barons can grab this up too which btw is what cause land prices to rise… not demand. If demand was so apperant… why is there still tons of land for sale? Supply drives prices down unless there’s a monopoly *cough*
Am i the only one to have noticed that since November, the average mainland sim is sold at a whopping $3500 compared to just a month before that, October $1200-1400. So if there’s more sims to buy… does anyone else see the average price really dropping? Probably not. The larger land barons WANT more land to buy. plain and simple.
Watch land prices per m2 to stay around 10-12 in the future.
January 30th, 2007 at 2:25 PM
From the TG, we have a veryyyy small grid less than 30 main land sims that you are able to buy from last time i checked. And since atm there is barley any new contents forming what so ever. We are lucky to get once everny 3-6months for the mainland. Also, if you could do something about the 25U.s a month cap it would be wonderful for if you have over 25U.S tier it most of the times, say you are maxed out blah blah. So now i have to use several alts to buy any sort of money.
January 30th, 2007 at 2:25 PM
william Fish Says:
Watch land prices per m2 to stay around 10-12 in the future.
Where are you looking? Land prices are more $20L - $30L per square meter and rising! Especially in the new sims.
January 30th, 2007 at 2:28 PM
after you have the first “sim” worth or about 65k then you are charged per half sim incremnts $125 per if i remeber all that correctly. I asked the Lindens this early as it appeard to be a very profitable loophole, but was not.
January 30th, 2007 at 2:29 PM
Hopefully this will decrease lag, not increase it. Has LL considered using shard servers for different continents, but allowing for Inter-Shard Travel ingame?
Though, as a Non-Premium member, I cannot take advantage of this, I would like to see a Desert/Badlands continent…
January 30th, 2007 at 2:29 PM
I guess Lex Luthor was wrong, they ARE making more of it…
January 30th, 2007 at 2:30 PM
4 sims per day a slow rate…? I wonder when will the next sim be coming to the Teen Grid….
January 30th, 2007 at 2:31 PM
Rest
Thanks for the info. Still not a bad deal as you get a discount. What’s sitting on some land when eventually you’ll get your price anyway. Maybe opening up more land will help, only time will tell.
January 30th, 2007 at 2:33 PM
Lindens
With all the land grabbing qnd other problems Sl has had in the last few months, it seems its getting closer to a time when u will have to change the way ur grid works. Why not release the Server Codes and let each of us have a region on our own server/computers. You could then scale back to a more managable system of banking, software updating and linden grid/matrix management. The new grid setup could be a 3d matrix type grid unlike the 2d grid u have now. A 3d matrix of this nature would give u and almost unlimited listing of connection locations. You should really consider releasing ur server code guys. Sl would become the internet in short order im betting! Think bigger guys, the world is waiting!
January 30th, 2007 at 2:35 PM
*wonders how bad this will affect the allready horrid problems of sl, including the severe lag*
January 30th, 2007 at 2:39 PM
Hello and thank you for the preview Robin, I personally think that keeping land prices reasonably low will ultimately pay off for all of us, and not drive away new members before they get a chance to experience our world. Land prices have been awfully high lately.
I do have a question though; perhaps someone can give some insight? I see the LindeX $L conversion rate and the availability of land as inextricably linked portions of our economy.
Is there an intent to manage land release, much as there are brakes and stabilisation factors put in place on the LindeX?
Personally, I proceed with much caution with regard to my private islands and keep plenty of reserve tier simply to brace myself against any potential shock to the land market. I find myself balanced between community (asking: more land!!!!!!) and risk (land prices potentially plummeting; unprofitable sims).
My goal is to invest more, not less - but in a manner that mitigates as much risk as possible. If yourself or Lawrence Linden or Zee or anyone else is willing to share any insight into the short term (2007?) land release strategy, I’m sure it would stimulate the grid’s economics in a very positive manner.
Is there perhaps a ‘target’ price range for land on the mainland?
Constructively, and warm regards,
Desmond Shang
Caledon
January 30th, 2007 at 2:43 PM
One thing i constantly hear about is new poeple wanting to buy land and unable to because of the bots, i hear of this every day sometime hear from the popel that try for very long times to get land and are unable to because they are not on when land becomes available. Suggestion the moment somone gets premium account, guarentee them land so that land bought is capped so the buy bots can’t work or find some solution to keep the larger public happy, Happy people stay, un happy people leave and spread the word. Referal business build, referral bad listing does too. Cut the negative out.
January 30th, 2007 at 2:46 PM
While reading through the information about ‘land grabbing bots’, I realized this can effect sales of larger builds. These land grabbers get the land and sell it in smaller parcels at higher costs. This prim and size limit makes it that much harder to sell large builds….
Greed in First Life is a killer…. so is greed in SL….
January 30th, 2007 at 2:50 PM
Land prices? See the auction prices at http://cosyhome.org/cgi-bin/auc_statistics/auction-stats.html or in my (German) blog at http://blog.cosyhome.org/
Mel
January 30th, 2007 at 2:50 PM
[...] 30, 2007 at 2:50 pm | In Business | Today Lindenlabs dropped the bomb: there is going to be a new continent in the east! Not even that, they are adding the new regions at a higher speed than earlier and [...]
January 30th, 2007 at 2:59 PM
Linden Labs needs money to invest in enhanced capacity to provide a better user experience. SL needs a way to at least throttle a little the wild land flips by land speculators who through their pure drive for pure profit, drive land out of the reach of ordinary game players. The solution? Simple. A capital gains tax. SL databases know how much a person paid to own the land, and how much they sold it for. The difference in between is profit. I call for a 10 to 15% capital gains tax to be imposed on that profit, with the money raise being invested by Linden Labs in enhancing capacity for everyone else. That way, while the land speculators still benefit, at least everyone else benefits as well.
[Some may say the difference is not pure profit, as people have had to pay tier fees for the time they held the land. That, dear friends, is money that you had personal benefit from in that you had the land during the period, so no deduction there. And tier fees on land which you didn't personally use, but just horded for speculation purposes? I wouldn't allow a deduction either: that's a fair price for your having kept it from being used by others. Besides if you start deductions, it could just become a nightware. So keep the land tax a straight, low, flat tax, with no deductions. KISS principle. But we do need one, and soon.]
January 30th, 2007 at 3:01 PM
by the way at current prices most of the bigger land owners are make thier tier payments with one plot sale. So what stops them fron grabbing more land. Look around, you’ll get what I mean when you see the same three or four land for sale signs.
Off my soapbox now. =)
January 30th, 2007 at 3:02 PM
My land, when I was transfereing it back to myself from a group, was stolen by a “bot.” I had to threaten the guy for the longest time before he would give it back. It was amazingly fast and I lost a lot of really valuable stuff, my Hippo-Tech, furniture, appliances, tons of stuff because he sold it back to me for $1.00 without the objects included.
Why isn’t this practice illegal in SL? It is in RL.
January 30th, 2007 at 3:02 PM
Ban the bots.
Bots.
Ban them.
Capital gains tax sounds good - but then i would say that; i’m still waiting for first Land
January 30th, 2007 at 3:04 PM
Can someone explain to me (or tell me where to look) to understand what this ‘landbots’ thing is all about?
I thought to buy first land you had to meet 2 qualifications :
#1 - be a premium member
# 2 - never purchased or owned land before.
How can having a bot find first land help someone? If they already bought land they can’t get more “First Land”. Can they?
January 30th, 2007 at 3:05 PM
Cappy… go to the SL economic statistics http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy_stats.php you will see that land is
January 2007 - MTD 47,997,408 “12.20″
Now mind you this does include the L$ sales people do on their land for whatever reason. I’ve been watching this stat for awhile (last july) and have noticed that the REAL average land price is generally a good 5-8m2 greater then the above stat.
January 30th, 2007 at 3:09 PM
Landbots… a brief research found that one of the land bot owners is Elanthius Flagstaff and his RL wife Skye Whitcroft who own the group “bot plant trees” which in their discription says.. “This group is to raise awareness of bot racism and intolerance in SL.
For every anti-bot vote, every cruel and unjust anti-bot remark, we will plant a tree and make the world a better place.
If you are too intimidated to join publicly, just set your small parcels of land for sale at least 10% under market value. We’ll do the rest. This makes YOU an honorary bot lover!
Together we can clean up ugly ad farms, beautify the mainland, give a dogbot something to lift his leg against, and plant a tree.”
Do people really believe this? who buys into this crap?
Anyhow from what i have researched… it’s true and very real. Next question is… what will Lindens do about it?
*http://forums.secondcitizen.com/showthread.php?t=8071
*http://www.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2007/01/landbots_bought.html
January 30th, 2007 at 3:09 PM
Eliminating automated land buying by bots would be greatly appreciated, Robin. Thank you!
January 30th, 2007 at 3:12 PM
I hate to throw a wet blanket over all this enthusiasm, but the truth of the matter is that the announcement only said that a step will be added to make it “more difficult” for botters to grab up land. Note that it did not say “prevent botters.” Anyone who has the technical wherewithall to write a bot in the first place also has the ability to add a work-around to the “more difficult” improvement.
As for banning the botters, and freeing up their land, dream on. It ain’t neva gonna happen. Although the User Agreement states that accounts can be terminated for “any reason or no reason at all,” I found nothing that expressly forbids the use of third party tools to perform actions that can normally be performed using normal in-game tools. If some of these botters have invested thousands and thousands of dollars in land buying schemes, I can imagine the lawsuits that will entail if they are banned “for no reason at all.” I sincerely doubt that Linden Labs wants to open this can of worms.
But I’m new to the game (although totally disgruntled that I can’t get my parcel of First Land), so what do I know?
January 30th, 2007 at 3:13 PM
Randal Oulton…. good solution but let me play devil’s advocate if you will… what’s to stop the land owner from selling the land in exchange for $$’s via paypal instead of L$? I had already done this once. The buyer wanted to pay me via paypal instead of lindens… so when it showed up to me in paypal that he paid… i sold the land to him for L$1. There’s no capital gain tax there.
Keep thinking though! It’s positive thinking like yours that keeps this game on it’s toes
January 30th, 2007 at 3:19 PM
Kebin: if I understand the First Land Scam, they start a new account, an alt, usually without announcing that it is an alt or paying the $20 alt fee to Linden Labs. Then they “donate” the land to a “group,” which is actually their primary alt’s group.
That’s one version of first land grabbing I’ve heard about. I don’t know if it really works that way or not.
But more recently, I was friends with someone who got in on a new Mainland Sim. They didn’t get the First Land price; they just grabbed a parcel at the regular price. What I saw was, at first the entire landscape was full of flat-skinned, white-shirted noobs. Then after a while some parcels became owned by land speculators. These people put up ugly hideous signs and pointless banlines, and basically made the landscape as ugly and annoying as possible.
Eventually, many of the First Land noobs either gave up on SL and quit or sold their parcel for slightly more than they paid for it. (But since they were paying first land prices, they were also selling it at a low price.) We were thinking about expanding our parcel, and what we noticed was, after the noobs moved on, the land would be held by a land shark asking for a certian ammount, and then next week that parcel would have been bought by a different land shark, who was now holding it for 4 times its original ammount, and so on, and so on. Eventually some developer would put a house or garden or some other fancy build on it, to try and make it more attractive and justify the ridiculously high price they were asking for it.
So, I don’t know. It’s possible that one land baron buying from another, over and over again, continually raising the price, can make it LOOK like the land barrons used an alt account to purchase the land. Really I am starting to think it’s more a matter of the land baron getting a good deal on the land when the noob who bought it had buyer’s remorse. But I’m not in a position to know exactly what the noob and the land baron were up to. This is just my observations.
Naturally, land barons will do everything they can to encourage buyer’s remorse by building huge, hideous abominations right next to your quiet little cottage.
I think that’s why most people who’ve been in SL for a while tend to favor gilded communities like Caledon or Azure Islands. Public roads linking all the parcels, landlord rules against banlines and ugly builds, and no land-grabbers for neighbors. Just players like you.
I’m digressing all over the place. Sorry.
January 30th, 2007 at 3:25 PM
So the MG gets a Alot of Sims and the Price Gets Rasied. But Why does TG Have the Same price. We dont have that much money and are Parents dont wana pay 300 usd for a game. So i Ask u LL Make Land Cheeper and Get Rid of Land Barrons. ^_^ and what kind of New land mass.. Snow Grass? Mt? Can it be Sand?
January 30th, 2007 at 3:36 PM
I scanned through the posts but didn’t see what I’m asking..
Is the new Continent bieng place on the old 3’s and 4’s that islands are being upgraded from? Or is the new land on 5’s?
January 30th, 2007 at 3:41 PM
Are there going to be more mainland sims on the TG too?
January 30th, 2007 at 3:47 PM
no clue havnt heard that one yet… looks like lindens still want to add to the southern one just to the east.
January 30th, 2007 at 3:49 PM
Look around, there is plenty of land on the market, at the L$20/m level. And, more coming on at less in the older mainland sims as people panic in the fear that the new grade 5 servers will drive the price through the floor.
I see a massive movement of people to the new sims. The so called land barons must be looking at taking a bath on some of the stock they have. And one of the people who paid over US$4500 for a sim recently then had a 2/3 block of it on the market for less than he paid.
Seems to me that supply and demand will drive prices in the long term. Quit worrying about land barons - if the supply rises and demand goes down, prices will soon level. This simple economics. No land baron can afford to go on paying tier charges on unsold stock for ever.
January 30th, 2007 at 3:51 PM
William Fish said:
what’s to stop the land owner from selling the land in exchange for $$’s via paypal instead of L$? I had already done this once. The buyer wanted to pay me via paypal instead of lindens… so when it showed up to me in paypal that he paid… i sold the land to him for L$1.
That could be why the enocomic number is so low. Look around at land prices in world. Tell me how much per sqm it goes for.
January 30th, 2007 at 4:05 PM
Is this why I have never seen first land in the search area.. for first land? I’ve looked often and not once have I ever seen any first land in the land search.
January 30th, 2007 at 4:07 PM
Well if they can put in a search limiter on land sales to help discourage the bots/land speculators that could help with lag. As we’ve seen with many of the recnet issues searching tends to create a lot of strain on the asset servers and the grid as a whole. If someone’s got a bot script running constant searches for ‘good deals’ that’s a lot of impact on the search/asset systems that can affect everyone’s SL expeirience.
I have to agree that the lack of zoning on the mainland while idealistically Utopian creates a rife playground for land speculators and price inflation. You get the ‘ugly build’, parcel encroachment, and sim performance slowdowns that will drive many off a sim. I left the mainland due to a mix of these factors and now live on a strictly residential sim with limits on build size, banlines, scripts, and build types (no clubs, no shops in the sim). What prompted my move was 3 fold: neighbors with ugly HUGE signs about land sales or spouting some sort of SL/RL political slogan, a club opening next door that though a skybox (and therefore they thought cutting down lag) destroyed the phycis on the sim to the point that I was falling through my own build all the time and sometims through the ground, while standing still. Thirdly was because of the nature of the club they got griefed a lot and I’d get hit with fallout from the grief attacks (people bounced into my house, flames from weapons, more sim performance hits, sim crashes, litter from the grief attacks all around my parcel). I felt a bit annoyed at being forced out of what for months had been a quiet, stable sim because of newcomers.
I think the mainland could benefit from having zoned sims. Not all of them with set zoning but give people who don’t want to live on a private island/estate the option to look for parcels in a commercial/mall sim (to improve traffic by being in a shoppng area), a residential sim (and away from busy shops, clubs), an entertainment sim (for clubs, casinos, parks, etc). Maybe have mixed sims that allow some or all as well. It wouldn’t stop all the problems but it might encourage more mainland purchases and give a more community feeling (after all most RL communities do have zoning laws to avoid a biker bar from opening up in the middle of a school zone or quiet neighborhood).
January 30th, 2007 at 4:12 PM
good thought grazel… but what happens to those of us that already own land? do we get forced to rezone?
cappy.. id take an edumacated guess and say it’s roughly around 19per m2… give or take.
January 30th, 2007 at 4:30 PM
Good news! At the moment, I would happily buy more land and increase my tier payments - IF - I could afford land!!! Current prices are ridiculous though.
January 30th, 2007 at 4:37 PM
William.. Let’s see if my math is correct a plot of land say 1024sqm sells for 33,000L. Looks like $32L per to me. Oh and tht is the cheap land, I’ve seen the same size plots for 74,000L. Not quite $19L per sqm.
January 30th, 2007 at 4:45 PM
about time you sorted this land scam out where is first land for us that pay full acount Current prices are ridiculous
you need us to buy land to keep your game going
January 30th, 2007 at 4:47 PM
with regard to First Land and cheap land why not have a rule that any purchase made cannot be resold for a certain period ie three months, or that you can only sell one piece of land per month and new plots cant be added together and sold as one without a penalty so as not to beat the system.
January 30th, 2007 at 4:52 PM
Is this not another cart before the horse scenario?
The grid can’t handle the existing mainland and islands when the concurrency reaches about 21k or so.
But you’re going to add more mainland (and continue adding more islands) BEFORE rewriting the code to communicate more efficiently with the DB?
What good is more land if you can’t search for it, TP to it, or rez on it? (the problems we typically see when concurrency is above 21k or so.)
Sounds like the kind of decision one would expect from decision makers who are living in heavy DENIAL of load problems / scalability problems.
January 30th, 2007 at 5:00 PM
Speaking of concurrency, has anyone noticed that the number of second lives created to this date is over 3,100,000? Though so, that includes anyone who illegally created more than 2 accounts.
January 30th, 2007 at 5:27 PM
Anything you can do to stop the land bots or at least slow them down is a good thing.
January 30th, 2007 at 5:31 PM
I am pretty new to SL but I would like to remark that BOTS RUINED other online games. Games I’ve been using for +5 years.
1. Bots are an unfair tool over those users who don’t run bots.
2. They create an hostile/anti-social enviroment.
3. To compete with bots only you can do is… to run a bot!!! This causes a fast infestation.
4. Users feel uncomfortable sharing a game experience with bots and many USERS JUST LEAVE.
Seriously, SL people, control bots now or bots will control you soon.
January 30th, 2007 at 5:36 PM
I would like to comment on 1st Land problems and offer a suggestion. I have been trying to help several new friends aquire 1st Land, so I watch for when it has been listed in search. Everytime I see a listing I go and tell my new friends. Upon reaching the sites, here is what I find:
Several developers standing and shouting to the buyers offering them L$5-6K for their plot. Or, a bunch of “New” residents who have quickly purchased land and are quietly “selling” it to the scalper. (I wonder how many of these “new” residents renew their accounts for the next month. Lets see, L$2700 (equiv to $10 US) for an account, L$512 for the land, resell at L$10000. Kill the new account. Profit L$6788 ($25 US) Makes financial sense to me.)
At any rate, in a matter of minutes, all first land has been scalped buy these developers and now shows L$10000 for selling price.
This is patently unfair to anyone who truly desires 1st Land to get a start in SL and not just make a few lindey’s for some shoes.
Here is my solution:
1) Raise the price to L$1024 per 512 m2 parcel to more accurately reflect land value in today’s market.
2) Put a restriction/covinent on 1st Land so that it can not be resold for 45 days to hinder the creation of accounts just to scalp land.
While it probably won’t completely stop anyone who is creating accounts just to scalp land, it should remove some of the “buy for profit only” insentive by making it less attractive to scalpers, and will at least get the scalpers off the 1st Land hunt, since they will not be able to just purchase it from the original buyer on the spot.
Hopefully, if implimented, this would allow some folks who really desire the land to use, to purchase it at a resonable price, which of course was the original intention.
DRD
January 30th, 2007 at 5:50 PM
“This increase in land supply should also help to offset the impact of the use of ‘bots as high speed land scanners to skim off the lowest priced, and generally smaller, less desirable parcels. In addition, we’re looking at adding a step to the purchase process which should make it more difficult to use ‘ bots in purchasing land.”
Shouldnt they have fix this cheat awhile ago? why now say do they fix? BIG land buyers have been this trick for a very long time. the offen got away with it because they themselves have gotten kickbacks for the land buyer cheaters.
January 30th, 2007 at 6:04 PM
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January 30th, 2007 at 6:40 PM
Enough with this slamming land agents, with the exception of Elanthius and Skye, none of us Land agents do anything you cant do, we search and we buy, theres no mystery to it STOP slapping people when you have no idea what your talking about
1 Bots cant buy first land, UNLESS its the first peice of property they buy.
2. Bots havent been around but for a week.
3. If you sell your land without even checking what land is selling for your part of the problem and not the solution, Can I have first dibs on your real life land too?
4 if you bought land when it was at its highest price, and feel you are being cheated cause land values are going down, dont blame anyone but yourself as its your poor judgement that put you in that position. not land agents
January 30th, 2007 at 6:44 PM
Validation: Finally, something in writing confirming what I was writing about in the beginning of December, that new sim birthrates had slowed to a crawl, contributing to the series of prices spikes we experienced. Economics 101…. not the ‘man behind the tree.’
Extra Steps: In theory, an extra step in purchasing land to stifle bot activity sounds great, but please, please, please - don’t slow things down and/or complicate the purchase process for real buyers. Simple is most often best. There are many days when we can’t even search for people, places or things. Don’t make the land purchase process dependent upon anything having to do with the database, queries thereto or any sort of file database indexing. The poor database seems to be taxed beyond its limits already.
New Land: Sounds great. Now, if you could only stop making boring land, we’d really be on to something. This is SL, not RL. Let’s see some unique, yet practical, other-wordly terrains and take land to the next level. Is there one single planetary surface in SL other than someone’s conceptualization of parts of earth’s terrain?
There are reasons that places like South Dakota aren’t heavily populated, not the least of which is the fact that it looks and feels boring to live there. Too many sims in here look that way…. and they shouldn’t. The possibilities are endless. Make some COOL land. Give people bang for their buck. At the very least, experiment with a few sims. People will jump all over some new terrain ideas. Don’t fall victim to cookie-cutter scenarios where you just keep pumping out more of the same. Dare to put forth new ideas. There is an intelligent community here that can run with them.
January 30th, 2007 at 6:44 PM
I really like Grazel’s idea of zoned mainland.. Not sure if its feasible at this stage — I can see the island landlords raising hell over it… Things would have to be balanced out somehow so as not to have unfair competition with island land. Now personally I don’t care — I don’t own an island — so I love the idea, but am just thinking about stuff
January 30th, 2007 at 7:02 PM
What about upon becoming a new member have an option to own first land. Stating that a 512 parcel will be reserved for them.
Do you want land in SL? (yes or no)
Explaining the difference between basic and primium accounts.
PG or Mature?
Explaining the difference between the two.
If they chose yes then a 512 parcel will be automatically be assigned to them making that parcel their home location upon entering the world.
Upgrade to primium now? yes or no
January 30th, 2007 at 7:33 PM
Nice idea Donald… Give them 60 days as a premium account to claim it, and add the 45 day before resell. That should allow any Nube to get land and put an end to the 1st Land grabbing.
I like it. Who said more heads dont help…
DRD
January 30th, 2007 at 8:08 PM
I am an aspiring land baron, engaged for the past weeks in buying land and reselling it for a profit. This announcement in and of itself puts me at increased risk, let alone the effect of an accelerated rate of new land release. But you won’t hear me whining.
I was happy to work with supply-and-demand when it was driving prices up; I made out like a bandit. Why then should I complain when the same principle I profited from works against me? If LL had claimed to keep the rate of new mainland release steady, I could complain–but they never promised that. If LL had claimed to protect me from my own decisions I could complain–but they never promised that. I knew I was taking risks, and the risk of losing money is something I had my eyes open to when I pursued the opportunity of making a profit.
There are other factors that I, and anyone seeking to make money in SL, must consider–the liquidity of L$, LL intervention to depress the value of the L$ in the LindeX, advances in technology (such as the way the move to an open-source client may hurt those making money writing scripts), etc. LL has always been transparant enough for me. I knew better than to confuse “the way things are” with “the way things will be” or “the way things should be.”
There was a lot of whining when land prices were rising. I had little respect for those who wanted LL to intervene just because they didn’t like land prices. I won’t be whining now. LL has no more obligation to guarantee me a profit than it had to guarantee everyone L$5/meter land. (I reserve the right to whine at some future point if I feel LL has broken trust with us in terms of things they’ve actually committed to.)
January 30th, 2007 at 8:37 PM
Here’s a thought along some of the lines people have suggested. How about when you sign up, you have that option for your land and the price will be deducted from your sign up bonus, Then after said purchase, you may only resell firstland in less than 30 (45 if it makes you happy) days BACK to LL to be made available to new folks. This would keep the firstland program flowing more freely without the need to add more sims and eliminate the grabbers from making ANY profit off first land without holding on to it for longer. This would also avoid the grabbers from combining all the 512 plots into 1024 and selling them at 15 -20k without first holding on to the land for a billing cycle. Thus, they’d need to pay at least two months on a premium account ($20) in order to flip it for any kind of profit. In addition, should you use that option of selling back, you should still be eligible for firstland (with the same conditions). This allows genuine buyers the option of changing locations without contributing to the currect Flip and Run culture should they be dissatisfied with their purchase. The way it is now, people have to buy ANYTHING that comes up regardless of location or neighbors. This would also get rid of the grabbers offering new folks 2500L that don’t know any better and turning around and marking it at 8-9k within minutes. It’s not something that would be terribly hard to implement and the barons can still try to sell their land at outrageous prices, but at least this would help fulfill the promised Firstland program. LL doesn’t lose anything by this as the land is being paid for from the sign on bonus they give you anyway. The only people that could possibly be against this are the very people making huge profits from ripping off the unaware. Just my two cents…
SS
January 30th, 2007 at 8:40 PM
Cappy,
“William.. Let’s see if my math is correct a plot of land say 1024sqm sells for 33,000L. Looks like $32L per to me. Oh and tht is the cheap land, I’ve seen the same size plots for 74,000L. Not quite $19L per sqm.”
Not sure where your looking but i see alot of 1024m2 ML for around the 16500-20000 mark. which puts it roughly around 17-19 per m2. Look at the prices on the new sims….
cHex,
I dont think anyone here is whinning about land prices going down… if infact we are whinning it’s because we WANT them down. Like others before me in this post, i use to be able to hold onto an entire sim… with prices so high i can barely hold onto half of a sim. I refuse to raise prices above a reasonable price just so i can AFFORD to buy more land.
I think the main point here is that we want land prices to go down, even as sellers of land… we are tired of landbots doing as they please, and wish someone would step up to the plate and deal with this on a positive term… not doing reactive measures.. proactive measures.
January 30th, 2007 at 10:07 PM
obviously looking over our shoulders. thanks for always being on top of it and giving the world what we need. everyone must appreciate the extreme process the lab goes through to implement the quick/easy thought. keep the train moving folk. righteous. peace, love, first land.
January 30th, 2007 at 10:17 PM
You are just proving his point with your intolerance and hatred.
I am very dissappointed that Linden Lab would cave into to a bunch of whining luddites.
January 30th, 2007 at 10:17 PM
While we’re on the topic of people who artificially jack up the price of land…
…Is there some way to penalize the people–or at least clean up after them–who 1) buy regular parcels at market rates, and 2.) just turn around and shatter them into small parcels, throwing up ugly banner adverts and pricing some of the 16m^2 land at, say, L$9999 or higher?
This practice has totally wrecked a number of regions where I’ve looked for some additional land. It seems like a kind of extortion–e.g., “Yes, you can have this (formerly) 512m^2 parcel…. if you pay me a premium for one or more of the sub-parcels that make it up.”
I’m sure some people are foolish enough to pay through the nose for that last 4×4 piece, at least often enough to be profitable for the perpetrators. So this “microparceling” continues to spread like fungus across the mainland.
But judging by the purchase dates on some of those parcels, it can blight a region for months–assuming it ever sells at all. Currently, these people get away with it simply because they can. There is no mechanism in place to re-unite a shattered parcel except to pay for each bit of it, at crazily inflated rates.
And there’s no assurance that you won’t see your neighbor sell his well-managed land tomorrow… only to watch as that single, useful parcel becomes five or ten or thirty bits of astronomically priced garbage that, for economic reasons, may never go away.
So again: is there any way to put in place some mechanism that will slow down the rate that SecondLife’s once-pretty hillsides (etc.) are getting churned into eyesores? And any way to reverse the damage to the mainland that’s already been done?
Short of finding some civic-minded saint with very deep pockets, it would appear that, over time, every unzoned region on the mainland will eventually get hit with this land-cancer–to the dismay and detriment of everybody who just wants to enjoy (and profit from) a nice-looking neighborhood.
January 30th, 2007 at 10:57 PM
i just want to say i wanted to buy land but the prices are really stupid, i mean really insane. 4 months ago i bought a 4096 mainland parcel for 26999, now you’re lucky to get one for less than 100000. please can LL step in and stop the high land prices, it stops those of us who want to own land actually buying it. they’re just wanting to make money auto buying land, it’s not fair or right.
January 30th, 2007 at 11:05 PM
This is a little long but it’s feedback from someone who’s only been exploring SL for a few weeks.
I’ve been working on acquiring first land for a week now. And I’ve been working hard, probably manually did 10,000 plus searches over a number of hours - just to see what it’s really all about. In that time I’ve personally seen 40 lots released and even by staying on top of it they’ve all been completely sold,usually 2 minutes before I get there. I’ve been trying to decide if its all a sleazy come on to premium membership or if its just incompetence on SL’s part. Whatever it is, it sure makes you wonder if its worth it and I’m a total fan of the concept. The present situation takes ’subject to availability’ to a new level of improbability.
I very much agree with the idea of giving a basic 512 mm plot to every premium member on sign-up. Add a starting tier level, and even a basic account fee. Why? Because every Avatar out there adds load to the server and that affects everyone - after a 30 day trial you should know if SL is worth your time. You could still get another free account if you create a new one but would loose all other inventory, name, etc.
How about, roughly:
a 30 day trial - free - the present basic account.
a 5$ monthly basic account fee - access but no land.
a 10$ monthly silver account - includes 512sqm assigned when you sign up.
512 would be the maximum land you can own with this account.
Fundamentally this would be the starter home. It would be a convented parcel which can’t be resold and which must be abandoned when you want to buy any other land. It doesn’t even have to be land - how about we get a little more ecological and have condos and higher density residences, with a lot more public low prim space. Right now I mainly need space to experiment - if I had some place to put stuff I just might start visiting some vendors. Put new users right beside each other with some sandbox and scripting help available in the local park and you might actually create a community and get people invested in SL emotionally and socially and not primarily economically.
The top stage could be a 15$ citizen account which includes tier fees for up to 1024sqm with additional tier fees for as much land as you want. All land bought on the open market. Really what you have now but with some stability in the market.
When I look at the situation from the perspective of a newbie with nothing invested I see a speculative bubble real estate market that could even take the company down. It’s uncannily like real life. If it looks like real estate is going to crash and with it the Linden, even with restrictions on the exchange a few days with a little ‘The Lindens Going To Crash Rumour’ going around could produce a lot of pissed off people who bought at one level and have to live with another. SL is really quite right to try to get a handle on it. Right now it looks primed for manipulation and chaos.
Speculation has nothing to do with creativity or community. It just sucks people into a virtual pyramid scheme and people like me who would love to participate in the idea of SL see this going on and don’t see what they were looking for. I would say that this is a real barrier to resident/customer retention.
Now I’m not against developers. I think that people who really do the work designing the terrain and neighborhood and covenants should be rewarded but only based on the work they do to make something that other people want. The creative ones that have a concept will get rewarded. I’ve seen tons of property (most) that has no attraction at all except that it might evaluate.
January 30th, 2007 at 11:06 PM
When I bought my firstland just two months ago, the land barons were only offering L$2,000 for it. Of course I didn’t sell. However, one of the “helpers” in the Amber Welcome Area had told me that the best way to make quick cash in SL was to go premium, get my first land and then flip it “for thousands”. Wonder if he was in the employ of or was one of the land barons?
Instead of selling, I made offers to the owners of adjoining land (a couple of weeks later) to pay them L$8,000 per 512m2 when and if they wanted to sell. Now I have ~3,500 in adjacent lots.
Rather than go past the US$25 tier to US$45 though, I’m buying a quarter sim on a private island. Even 8k m2 is has a cheaper tier than way than 4K on the mainland. If you add in that my SO and I could cancel our premium accounts, we could apply that US$14.00 towards the tier and bring it down even more so for not much more than US$10 a month more than 4k m2 of Linden land, I can have 16k m2!
LL even said that in the near future, most of their income would come from private island/sim tiers. I can certainly see why.
January 31st, 2007 at 1:10 AM
Speaking of concurrency, has anyone noticed that the number of second lives created to this date is over 3,100,000? Though so, that includes anyone who illegally created more than 2 accounts.
What about those of us with legal 2nd & 3rd accounts?
January 31st, 2007 at 2:26 AM
Kill the bots is a very good idea. In fact any kind of bots should be dis