Best laid plans of mice and men often go awry… the new Land Store is just not ready to ship.

Rather than inflict you guys with a tool that isn’t ready yet, we have decided to bring the old store back up with the new prices. All the old challenges remain (doesn’t work in IE, wait time for delivery) but you will be able to place orders as you have in the past.

You will still be unable to order Openspaces via the old store, and the delays there will continue to be long as we deal with backorders. New island orders will go up as quickly as possible, and we will keep you updated on the progress of not only those orders but of the new store as well.

Thanks much.

As originally reported here, our auction pages will be offline for scheduled maintenance this evening from 9 pm until 11pm PST.

We apologise for any inconvenience this essential event may cause.

[RESOLVED 12:44] The problem has been isolated and fixed, and things should be returning to normal shortly.  Thank you for your patience!

There are currently ~700 regions offline. The issue is under investigation. Please monitor the blog for updates.

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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As originally reported here, our auction pages will be off line for scheduled maintenance this evening from 8 p.m. until Midnight Pacific.

We apologize for any inconvenience this essential event may cause.

Our auction facility will be off line for four hours of scheduled maintenance next Wednesday, 2 April, from 8pm until midnight Pacific time.

We apologize for any inconvenience this event may cause.

– teeple

Work proceeds apace on the Bay City regions as LDPW Moles build their little hearts out and we expect to be nearing completion by month’s end. So far they’ve show themselves to be as industrious, professional and fun loving as any insectivore you’re likely to meet and the content being created is certainly on pace to set the standard in these new urban spaces.

Thoughts on scripting:

– Bay City has a couple of major scripting requirements, drawbridges and the trolleys. The physical trolleys will run at a fixed height, and at a fixed north-south distance in each Region they’re in — thus they should move pretty smoothly over Region boundaries. Scripting will deal with starting and stopping at drawbridges, stops, and the ends of the line. Drawbridges are pretty much “door” scripts, but we want some “coordinated” activity of various objects when bridges go up or down, and some limits or pauses to prevent malicious “flapping” of the city’s bridges. Some of the bridges will be “paired” (two-leaf) bascule bridges; and we may try to have coordinated light signals or such … maybe.

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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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The LDPW moles are hard at work on the new “Bay City” Regions even as we blog, however we need more ideas and input! Please consider adding your suggestions to the CONTRIBUTE section of the LDPW public wiki page HERE. We’d love your input!

Jack mentioned in the initial LDPW post that we’d be “… finally completing the missing coastline on the southern continent.” Well, the thirty new “Void” regions are now being terraformed, excavated, massaged, smoothed, named, and textured.

We’ll hide a few easter eggs here and there, but we’ll also include a small island which will be set in the gap between McManus and Pogon. We could just throw down some palm trees but that’s no fun so we need suggestions. What do you think? Tiki huts? Evil supervillain hideout? Man eating tigers playing bocce? The island is small (under 100 meters across, maybe 200-300 meters long north-south) and therefore it only has a few hundred prims. So whatever you suggest, consider that it probably shouldn’t be too complex or large as it’ll be a couple of hundred meters from the nearest Resident-owned land.

Jack has now started to contact builders from the applications we have received, we have a few on board but there’s still plenty of opportunity to get involved. If you’ve applied, watch your inbox!

If you haven’t applied and you’re a skilled Second Life builder, scripter or artist and interesting in being part of the LDPW then do it now…you might have what it takes to be one of the few, the proud, the moles!

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