We are delighted to announce that the old Land Store has now been switched off, and the new Land Store made available for the puchase of normal islands and Openspaces. However, as part of our gradual rollout of this new tool, we will not be enabling it for all residents immediately. Instead, we will be enabling it for two specific groups like so:

• Those that recently ordered or have expressed an interest in ordering or who we know have been waiting for the new Land Store to go live. Those on this list will be enabled automatically and should receive an email from us once the new Land Store is enabled for them.
• Anyone who applies for access, and wishes to buy a new island or Openspace, and is comfortable using beta software.

In this way, we will be able to control the traffic hitting the new store and watch for any early problems. We will be closely watching how the early orders go and will correct any issues we find. If all goes well for a week or so, we will then open it up to all residents.

How to Gain Access to the Land Store (beta)

To add your avatar name to the LandStore Beta access list, visit www.secondLife.com/support and make sure you are logged in with the correct account. Then, click the “Submit a Ticket” button on the right hand side of the page. On the ticket page* select “Land and Region issues” and then “LandStore Beta Access”. Fill in all the fields and we’ll add you to the access list. It will take ~24 hours for your request to be processed.

• Residents with Basic accounts will be taken to a knowledgebase article and will then need to click on the “Click here to submit a ticket.” link to be taken to the ticket page. On the ticket page, they should select “Special Questions - Basic account or Guest Login” and then “LandStore Beta Access”.

Just to be clear, as the old Land Store is being disabled, if you need to buy an island or Openspace you will need to apply for and use the new Land Store. Applicants will be added/enabled within 24 hours.

Screen shots (click image for larger version) :

Land Portal Page

Land Store Map Page

Estate Listing Page

Estate Management Page

We had hoped to launch the new Land Store today but unfortunately we’re not finished polishing and testing and hitting it with hammers just yet; we want it to be as bug free as possible before going live. So no new Land Store today I’m afraid. I can’t offer a final date for launch, but hopefully it’s not much more than a couple of weeks away. As soon as we have more information about how it will launch, I will post it here.

This means that the Island price change will also be on hold, until the new Land Store is ready. In the meantime we will switch off the old Land Store to avoid any confusion. That will happen today. If you want to order at the old price, ahead of the new Land Store launch, please contact the Concierge support team via the support portal.

As stated previously, any whole mainland regions we put to auction from today onwards should have the new starting price of USD$750. We’re busily preparing the new continent, carving out Linden land and ensuring the waterways are protected. I’ll blog again when we are ready to begin offering that land at auction.

As promised in yesterdays post, here are the fine details for the price reduction and how this affects those that have purchased recently. Before getting into that, I’m going to repeat my final comment on that previous post.

Several have asked if this is in some sort of panic move in response to poor sales. This is absolutely not the case, in fact sales of islands have been very consistent through Q1; we sell between 100-110 islands per week plus a fair number of Openspace regions.

Technology and service costs vary over time and we as a business have to respond to that in sensible ways. In addition, we have to continually assess our business model and make changes where we need to. By and large we have worked hard to keep prices static for long periods, and when we have had cause to increase prices in the past, we allowed grandfathered monthly fees to continue because we value the time and energy those people had put in. Nearly 18 months on and that grandfathered pricing is still in place for many island owners.

This was the right time to reduce the setup price of an island. As any business would, we will review the effects of these changes over the next period and make adjustments or leave them unchanged according to how it goes. If we are able to make savings, then we feel that passing those on to our customers is a good thing.

We believe we are on course for an April 16th/17th launch of the new Land Store, so that will be the day that the price change goes live. If for some reason we have to push that back a week, then the new island prices will move back too. Regardless of what happens with the Island price change, the Mainland auction start price will drop on April 16th.

When the new Land Store launches, setup fees will be:

• Normal Islands: USD$1000 setup
• Normal Openspaces: USD$250 setup
• Educational Islands: USD$700 setup
• Educational Openspaces: USD$175 setup

These prices exclude VAT.

The monthly maintenance fees for Q2 will not change from their current levels.

For anyone that has bought a normal island in the seven days prior to Mondays announcement, including any awaiting delivery now (so any orders placed in April PST), you will be offered a choice between:

• Your order cancelled with a complete refund of the amount paid, allowing you to re-order when the price drops if you wish to, or:
• Keep your order and get a free Openspace region with it. The Openspace would have no setup fee and no monthly fees for a period of 6 months after which normal monthly fees will apply.

For those that purchased a normal island between 11th and 31st March 2008 you will be offered a free Openspace, with no setup fee and no monthly fee for a period of 3 months after which normal monthly fees will apply.

If you have had an Openspace region delivered on the 1st April 2008 or later, you may cancel that order for a full refund.

If any of the above offers affect you, please let us know your preferred option before 16th April by contacting the Concierge team.

An further FAQ article will be added to the Knowledge Base shortly.

If you’re a prospective or existing island owner and have any questions or concerns, please direct them to the Concierge team via the support portal.

As with my previous quarterly posts, here is an update on land, including supply, average prices, abandoned/defunct land and pricing information relevant to Q2 of 2008.

This is a little later than I’d have liked, mainly due to one of the items, Island Pricing, needing a bit more time to finalize. I’ll come to that part shortly. It’s a long post, so join me after the cut..

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For some time now we have been selling a low prim island type to existing island owners called Openspaces (often called void sims by Residents).

This blog post is to announce some important changes to Openspaces..

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Linden Lab hasn’t traditionally been involved in resident to resident transfers other than to action the transfer itself upon receiving permission from the buyer and seller. This has meant that residents have had to arrange any payments privately between themselves and this has proven to be problematic at times.

For new transfer requests submitted on or after Monday 10th March we will be enabling the Buyer in an island transfer to pay the Seller through their Second Life account. This will be our default transfer process.

So how will this work?

Both buyer and seller will create support tickets, via the support portal, that detail the region to be transferred and the value they have agreed on. This value can be in either U.S. Dollars (USD) or Linden Dollars (L$). Both sides will also have to confirm other details about the region being transferred.

If both tickets match (ie. they state the same details and value), we will charge the Buyer through their Second Life account, either USD or L$ as specified in the tickets. Once the charge has been successful, we will credit the Seller the same amount minus the transfer fee that we normally charge. The transfer of the region will then go ahead as usual.

The island transfer fee, always payable by the Seller, is USD 100 (or L$28000 for L$ transfers).

This does mean that buyers will have to have valid payment information on file with us (or have the necessary account credit in USD or L$). The ‘Increase Your Credit’ link on the account pages can be used to add USD credit to an account.

If they use PayPal as their payment method - they will need to have their PayPal agreement set to a high enough limit (by default PayPal limits are relatively low).

If the buyer’s payment fails for any reason, then the transfer will be cancelled and no action taken. Both accounts must also be in good standing (not delinquent) for the transfer to take place.

We hope that this will make the process of transferring islands quicker, safer and more reliable for both buyers and sellers. If you have any questions, please contact the concierge team.

We’ve had lots of great feedback on the Department of Public Works project, and as we still need a few more builders for the first team, it’s time to explain how you apply..

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Despite the title of this blog post, the phrase ‘Ad Farm’ is a bit of a misnomer, so to be clear up front, adverts themselves are not the issue and we don’t want to stop legitimate advertising or use of small parcels for promoting events or stores. For the purpose of this post, ‘Ad Farm’ will apply specifically to advertising or content that is intended solely to drive an unreasonable price for the parcel it is on, usually by spoiling the view of others. We have heard the feedback, read the comments and blogs and so we are making some changes to address it.

So whilst advertising in itself is okay, where it crosses the line into harassing behavior or visual spam, where the intent is purely to compel another resident to pay an unreasonable price to restore their view - then this will be covered under Harassment in our Community Standards. Such cases should be abuse reported as you would any other Terms of Service or Community Standards violations, so that the governance team can take the appropriate action. See below for detailed advice on how to abuse report these.

It will obviously be difficult for us to define exactly where example A is an abuse issue as compared to example B where it is not - but the intention is to be as consistent as we possibly can and to remove the content as it is reported to us. Also, please keep in mind that this post only applies to Mainland; it does not impact private estates or islands where the owner is able to manage their land themselves.

So to recap:

• Advertising on small parcels is fine, we are not outlawing the use of small parcels for this purpose.

However..

• Using content, particularly advertising, to deliberately and negatively affect another resident’s view so as to sell a parcel for an unreasonable price, will be deemed unacceptable and dealt with as a violation of our community standards.

This will begin tomorrow at which point the Knowledge Base will gain an article explaining how best to abuse report these. We will then review how this goes over the next few weeks and once we see how it works out in practice we can continue or make changes as necessary.

Our first action when we come across cases of ‘ad farming’ will usually be to return the content and warn the person responsible. Repeated violation may bring further action including suspension. If you are suspended and feel our decision was wrong, you can appeal. Instructions on appeals can already be found in the Knowledge Base (search for the word ’suspended’).

Just a short post in answer to the rumours that seem to have been circulating inworld over the last few days that there are class 6 regions on the grid. We’re not sure where this has come from, but there is no such thing as a class 6 and we have absolutely no plans to introduce a new class of hardware any time soon.  So consider that rumour squished. We have only class 4s and 5s on the grid.

Due to some cleverness that we call Het-Grid, we are able to run different simulator versions, so we have some Havok 4 regions inworld undergoing trials for example, but these are still on class 5 hardware. There is no class 6.

We are launching a new program this month that is all about improving the experience for residents living on or visiting the Linden mainland. We’re calling it the Linden Department of Public Works (LDPW), a project within which we will organise teams of resident builders, artists and scripters to create new linden content on our behalf.

We haven’t done much content creation over the last year, which makes us sad. It takes a lot of time and resource, and has been difficult to commit to with so many other areas to work on - so by using the skills and experience in the community, we think we can make a real difference.

So how will this work in practice?  Well, we’re currently assembling our first team of ten resident builders. These are people that have been referred to us and (importantly) have time to commit to the project during the early stages. Later on we will look at how we can invite other builders to apply, but for now this gets us going quickly whilst we work out how best to run this.

We will provide the team with specific build projects and will oversee progress before taking ownership of the content once work is completed.

What will we work on?  Good question; basically, we will consider anything and everything that we feel will make the mainland more attractive, fun, engaging and interesting for new or existing residents. Initially, we’re looking at extending the city area which is very popular, so that will involve some new built up areas to the west of Barcola (joined via bridges to preserve existing water views). We’ll also be looking at new park areas, Linden folly builds, beautifying existing Linden land, better gathering places and seeding new mainland with themed builds. Some of the content may find its way into the Library in your inventories.

In addition, there will be other work ongoing as part of this program that will include repairing terrain, and yes - finally completing the missing coastline on the southern continent.

As we go forward, we will post regularly to the blog to let everyone know what is being worked on and what plans we have. We’re pretty excited about this project, it’ll be very cool to see what a difference we can make over time with help from our own community. If you have ideas about what we should consider doing, keep your eyes open for some office hour sessions soon where you’ll be able to discuss them with the LDPW directly.