Second Land Only in Second Life – First Land Banned
by Pixeleen Mistral on 20/02/07 at 6:05 pm
Mainland land market may be flooded soon
by Pixeleen Mistral, National Affairs desk
Jack Linden took time from an important search and rescue mission today to announce that the Lab has discontinued – without any advance notice – the subsidized “first land” purchase program for Premium account holders. First Land allowed Second Life subscription account holders a one-time below market purchase of 512 m2 of virtual land at L$1 per m2.
The surprise announcement seems to have come before the web site and knowledge base had been updated, and Jack’s announcement admitted, “The website and knowledgebase will be amended to reflect this change shortly”. There was no mention of grandfathering in existing Premium account holders or any sort of grace period. Somebody get the Lindens a PR firm. Oh wait – they already have one.
Jack also suggested the game gods intend to flood the mainland land market and promised “much higher levels of mainland expansion” in the hope that “market forces will act to bring resale prices down over time”. Several residents commented on the official Linden blob that Premium accounts seemed less than enticing at this point, and Jack asked the community for ideas on how to make premium accounts seem like a good deal.
In related news, after concluding his announcement, Jack re-joined other staff members in a continuing office-wide search for Philip’s missing hash pipe. Sources claim Philip remains optimistic despite the dimming hopes of recovering the beloved pipe – and suggest the missing paraphernalia could be part of the solution to customer satisfaction issues. What effect these developments will have on Wednesday’s planned grid maintenance remains unclear.
Prokofy Neva
Feb 20th, 2007
Good. Just what I proposed here:
Now, as to bait and switch, I’m all for calling the Lindens on that kind of thing. But, look at how cleverly the language is worded:
” First Land
Second Life’s “First Land” program allows Residents to purchase their first parcel of land below the current market value. Parcels are 512 square meters and sell for L$1 per meter to those who have never owned land. Please note: First Land plots are subject to availability. A snapshot of the available land can be viewed by:
* Go into SL and click on the Search button
* Select the Land Sales tab
* Select “First Land” from the pull-down menu and hit “Search”
* When you find a plot you like, teleport to it and buy it on the spot”
SUBJECT TO AVAILABILITY. Well, they haven’t been available. And now…they are gone completely.
However, you still have the 512 that comes with the premium account. You can use it:
>Buy Land from Residents
Residents are always putting plots of land up for sale. You can see what’s currently on the market by checking out Second Life’s in-world map to view what’s currently for sale or:
* Go into SL and click on the Find button
* Select the Land Sales tab
Auctions
Buy newly created land with either Linden $$ or US $$ depending on the auction. See what’s currently up for auction or learn more at the Auction FAQ.”
As more and more people come in and don’t have the confusion between land and tier, and see that what they are given is a land credit to apply to land they still have to pay for, they will not have illusions about this subsidized socialist paradise. They’ll realize they need to purchase land by shopping.
That can actually be one of the most fun things in SL, and finding a great deal is a great satisfaction. With this giant new continent and with land barons now unable to farm or resell first land for income, they’ll be forced to lower prices and try to roll out sims that are more attractive to first-land buyers.
First land, like public housing that turns into blighted, piss-covered, drug-infested messes, was turning into ugly sims with spinning junk and idiocy everywhere — people don’t respect things that they get for free.
When they have to give up a latte or *gasp* even a dinner in a restaurant, maybe they will respect it more as the paid entertainment they are in fact seeking.
When I first looked for first land, it actually sat there for days and days at a time, enabling you to shop for long periods and mull over the setting. I still have my first land. I confidently bought first land on my alts, too, because it was not only allowed; it was encouraged by Linden staff themselves as a workaround to the problem of grouping land but having to risk having officers who would sell it out from under you.
Since the creation of unlimited alts, however, it’s been gained. So it’s good they’ve eliminated it.
The reality is, while nobody who screeches on forums wants to admit it, most people buying a premium just went and bought the more expensive stuff. Premium accounts skyrocketed in the last few months, but not due to bots because they have stayed growing month after month even after the re-sale. You can see it inworld where people remain on their parcels.
Prokofy Neva
Feb 20th, 2007
*it’s been gamed — and by “gamed” I mean not only bought up by people making bots or farming it, but by people immediately selling it after they get it.
Originally, it was meant to serve at least for a while as land that a newbie would actually go on and live or work. I remember struggling for weeks on my first land trying to put up a house etc. Now, you would see people take the first land, piss on it and put up some giant piece of shit and spinning for-sale box, then put a huge price tag on it and never come back.
Curious Rousselot
Feb 20th, 2007
Well, there goes any hope of me actually getting a premium account.
Frankie Antonioni
Feb 20th, 2007
I was going to get a premium account, but not now. Why not have it so you can’t sale the land for about 8 to 12 weeks after you bought it. This would have made Linden Labs more money. Now there is no reason to get a premium account.
Prokofy Neva
Feb 20th, 2007
Curious, why don’t you just buy the premium, collect the $4.44 US it gives you in stipends ($1200), forego, oh, a dinner or a movie or a magazine or a few lattes this month, buy a 512 that will be coming down in price to like $6000 ($22 US) and use your 512 m tier on it. Makes sense to buy the 3 month premium at $21.95 to pay even less per month.
Why is $25 US a cost that breaks you? Don’t you spend that much on a blouse? Seriously. You could save it over 90 days if you are from some third-world country or disabled living on a fixed income.
Then, if you feel you’ve horribly splurged and put yourself in the poorhouse, why, sell that sucker for $8500 and cancel the account, and come out ahead.
Prokofy Neva
Feb 20th, 2007
>Why not have it so you can’t sale the land for about 8 to 12 weeks after you bought it.
Because of the administrative headache, staff time, and resources that would have gone into trying to police this, given the alt and farming problem.
Farmers and alts can just wait the 8-12 weeks.
Curious Rousselot
Feb 20th, 2007
Prokofy,
A fair question. So I’m going to try to answer it. First, it’s not the money. $9.95 a month is pretty insignificant. Absolutely no argument with you there at all. In fact, it doesn’t even enter into my consideration. It isn’t the cost of the account it is the value of the product.
There just isn’t that much difference between a premium account and a regular account anymore. Look at it this way. What do I want a premium account for?
Is it required to keep playing the game? No…
Do I get a discount on L$ over the LindeX? No…
Does it prevent me from having a place to call my own? No, I can rent from you or one of the other land barons and get a much nicer place than New Land used to get.
Does it provide protection from losing my land? No, have a look at some of the previous articles about what LL is doing to a few people. I actually feel a bit safer renting from you than I would owning a large chunk of land from LL.
Really, where is the value? What am I getting for my $9.95 a month? I’m not getting stable servers (yet). And I’m getting even less than I would have when I could have gotten new land.
When LL created the free accounts they gave people like me the chance to see what SL was like. That was probably the only way to get me to try it. And what I found was interesting enough for me to stick around. In order to get me to pay there needs to be value in what I’m paying for regardless of price.
As long as there is more than one account type to choose from, I am going to have to see the value in moving up to the next level.
Prokofy Neva
Feb 21st, 2007
Well, I disagree. Premiums have never really been valuable for the Lindens — at least, not for a long time. You can buy them for cheap. But if you get the 3 month plan, it’s a bit cheaper and LL isn’t going to expel you from your land for no cause. The very few exceptions to this are long, drawn-out dramas that don’t affect the average person, and certainly not on a 512.
Performance has been pretty bad. But even as bad as it is, you can still log on, spend time in your house, explore a bit, it’s not the worst. I’m finding it fairly good most days. There are problems and annoyances, but the creativity capacity is still there.
Why do you expect stable servers in an evolving world like this? Stable servers come from things like World of Warcraft.
I think there’s really no substitute to owning your own land so that you can have access to it whenever you want and not be dependent on a land baron. With my rentals you get a lot of freedom; even Anshe has anarchists’ sims and there are all kinds of places at all kinds of prices now. Still, having your own dig-on-demand land is a good thing, I think.
Seola Sassoon
Feb 21st, 2007
Curious, you’ve summed up a very, very good point!
Owning your own land would be great, except that even more so lately it seems – the tools that are for land owners is glitching badly.
The streaming media has been going wonky every now and then (not the streams, but the streaming media onto the parcel, the streams are fine otherwise), I’ve seen some people banned from sims able to get in (my guess is due to lag in the system), the anti’s have been a bit wonky, etc.
Anyways, what’s interesting is that they give something to premium (priority queue) then take something away, that’s probably worth more to some of the ‘real’ noobs (as in, NOT camp bots) than it is to be able to jump a few spots in line.
Simondo Nebestanka
Feb 21st, 2007
Unfortunately the “First Land” program simply had to stop at some point.
The disparity between the cost of First Land (L$500 + account creation costs approx. L$2,700) and the going sale price, hovering from L$7k – L$10k, represents a low-effort profit, just too shiny for some to resist (over and over, until they got bored with making money
. Some residents have suggested various lengths of waiting periods to take away the quick profit motive, but I agree that many would just ride out that waiting period; it’s still easy (if reduced) profit. Even if you make the no-sale period 90 days, you can buy a 3-month membership, equivalent to approx. L$6,100. You’d have to make the non-sale period 4 months or more, and I don’t think legit first land buyers would go for that.
(I think my maths is correct and I hope that I haven’t ignored other relevant costs).
The concept of first land was terrific when this pricing disparity was not so great. Like Prokofy, I was able to check out several parcels, for several days, before deciding I’d go ahead with one. Even then I chose badly! My first land was on the same sim as an overloaded sex club on ‘Yulmu’, and this made my spot pretty useless as the entire sim would constantly grind to a halt. I was glad when my neighbour wanted to buy me out! I think that many newbies, even back then with the lengthy shopping time, would have ended up with First Land that they would not have been happy with after more exposure to well-designed sims. I really doubt newbies buying First Land in the last couple of months could have ended up happy, with the mad panicky buys that would have been going on.
There’s just no point in continuing a scheme that’s so easily taken advantage of, and in the process defeats its own purpose – newbies are simply not getting anything out of it.
The legitimate outcry is really from those who upgraded to Premium in the last few months, with the advertised benefit of cheap first land foremost in their minds, only to find “there isn’t any!” Now to be told “there will never be any” must be relatively devastating. Jack Linden’s blog entry did not pre-emptively address the new Premium members issue so my guess is LL have something in mind to redress this, but will put it out there when the screaming dies down a little.
Perhaps a more realistic, harder to abuse for profit, scheme could be a simple rebate on a user’s first land purchase, by which I mean *any* land, which happens to be that user’s first purchase. LL nominate a percentage or a set $L amount (or whichever is lower for each transaction), and Jane Newbie is entitled to a refund after making her first buy. Somehow though I feel this may have been an option discussed among many others, and perhaps not seen as valuable enough to a potential newbie.
*
But can we get back to the main story here – did Philip find his pipe?
OMG
Feb 21st, 2007
Well I was going to get a Premium account next month but screw that… I wanted to buy land from LL but now I have to deal with some scummy land baron? FORGET IT!
Curious Rousselot
Feb 21st, 2007
Prokofy, you don’t get to “disagree”. Those are my reasons. Not an argument to be rebuffed. I explained to you, as you asked, why it is not worth it for *ME* to get a premium account at this time. I provided you with MY reasons. If you don’t like it to bad.
Tad McConachie
Feb 21st, 2007
Whether this was a good move or not depends on whether or not LL creates enough land to outpace demand – at least enough to lower land prices significantly. I’m not sure anyone in their right mind would buy a 512 plot for $20USD or more, but more might at $10USD and it’s a downright bargain at around $5 or $6.
I think it’s time for the price on land to drop considerably, though it’s just a matter of time until land become a total commodity. Eventually libSL or LL themselves will figure out and release a solution to allow anyone to connect their own server/sim into the grid. Then we can all have however much land we’d like.
That’s not going to happen today and probably not this year, but within 5 years the concept of buying virtual land in the meta-verse, at least when location doesn’t matter, will seem quaint.
Martin Squeegee
Feb 21st, 2007
I think we all know that too much of a good thing is bad in the long run. I agree that first land is an important aspect of being in second life but if it has gone then it has gone. Instead use your freedom to purchase land anywhere you want… sure it won’t be as cheap as first land but at least you can move somewhere that you want to go to and more importantly a place where other people have chosen to be…. the result regions full of like minded people who have made a commitment to spending some cash and are more likely to want the place to stay nice.
Naturally the only downside is that you will be buying from people like me…
Martin Squeegee will be back in his office in Julia Creek very soon…
humanoid
Feb 21st, 2007
When the government gave away parcels in the American West during manifest destiny times, one had to stay on the land for upwards of five years in order to aquire a deed. The idea that First Land wouldn’t serve it’s intended purpose with similar conditions is false.
If they do intend to flood the market, and the first 512m will still be free of monthly maintenance charges, then then end of First Land isn’t that big of a deal. It does remove yet another reason to buy a premium account, but that isn’t anything new.
Prokofy Neva
Feb 22nd, 2007
Well, um, I disagree with your reasons, Curious lol that’s life in the big city.
Re: Then we can all have however much land we’d like.
That’s not going to happen today and probably not this year, but within 5 years the concept of buying virtual land in the meta-verse, at least when location doesn’t matter, will seem quaint.
Well, I wonder about this. I don’t see why we should be expected to step up and be fleeced and pay out all kinds of money to keep LL and LibSL in their sandboxes making their software in order to some day devalue our land and turf us all out. That’s called “selling the rope to the capitalists which they’ll use to hang themselves,” as Lenin said when he rolled out NEP. No thanks. I don’t see why we should be signing up for such a sacrificial role. It’s like a game of musical chairs. You might make money, you might not, but when the game stops you will be left without a chair to sit down on.
But to push it further, I don’t see how those who host their own can somehow magically endlessly roll outsims for ever and ever amen. How? Sims are server space. People hosting their own may have even less resources than Linden Lab to house and manage servers. Even if there are gadzillion people hosting, and there is lots of land suddenly flooding the area, still, that means lots more people will come on all those servers. There’s a limit to how many can fit, even if you distribute the system all over the world. It’s like bandwidth. It *is* bandwidth!
So these host-your-owns, given their greater costs as they don’t have economy of scale, may be making very chic high-cost rentals of their own, for all we know. If anything, given human nature, given the propensity for feting and privileging, this is what we’ll see, all kinds of high-cost exclusive enclaves. Let’s see how altruistic people are when they have to buy a $6000 server and a $6000 T-1 line and meet their costs of hosting their own.
Seola Sassoon
Feb 22nd, 2007
This brings the interesting situation of ‘who funnels money?’. With first land, the funnel, albeit clogged, worked some of the time. Now, instead of LL selling first land for cheap, and allowing players (in even a minute sense) to live on cheap land, or turn a bit of profit to start off, they’ll auction the land off at the minimum price THEY value the land, then create an instant large sink for the money you pay them.
Want that roadside/beachside plot? LL puts it at auction for 7k themselves, then lets people fight it out.
They now effectively control the land market in a much larger capacity than before. Not only do they control how much new land is put up, now they control all the land pricing as well.
www.sl-post.com
Feb 22nd, 2007
Second Land Only in Second Life – First Land Banned
Linden Lab has discontinued the subsidized “first land” purchase program for users with premium accounts.
ScrewedBySL
Feb 22nd, 2007
Seola Sassoon wrote “The legitimate outcry is really from those who upgraded to Premium in the last few months, with the advertised benefit of cheap first land foremost in their minds, only to find “there isn’t any!” Now to be told “there will never be any” must be relatively devastating.”
Well put Seola. Though as a premium acct holder, the loss of First Land isn’t devestating to me but still amounts to $20-$40US that they screwed me out. Of course the Lindens are more interested in opening sims to “solve” the supply-demand problem FOR THEM … more $$ in their pockets, rather than fixing the problem of First Land or the whole screwed up way they have implement “virtual land.”
In RL when you buy land, you are buying into a community and sense of permanance. Your land increases in value because of the community and what you invest/build into your land. But in SL, your land (unless you own the whole sim) can become worthless overnight by a new casino/club/etc on 512m parcel that pops up stuffed with camping chairs etc. that can grind the whole sim to a halt.
The key points for me is how willing the Lindens are to reneg on their promises; how they stuff their pockets with $$ from new sims with excuses that they are doing this for *our* benefit rather than fix real problems affecting us (too many to list), and to keep changing the TOS to cover their arses and not have to be accountable to anyone.
Seola Sassoon
Feb 23rd, 2007
Just to clarify, that was Simondo.
Names appear *after* the post.
IllinoisEnema Bandit
Feb 26th, 2007
If anyone starts up a class-action lawsuit, I’m in. They killed it a month before, and those of us who have been trying to get First Land are just left out in the cold – literally. I wanted a spot for my employees to get together for meetings. The SL ‘bait-&-switch’ method for stealing my money — yes, I consider it a theft of services — is ethically and morally wrong. I guess the Lindens are going to have a bunch of free accounts running around now. With any luck, they’ll go bankrupt in RL.
Soma to florida.
Sep 22nd, 2009
Soma sonic music.
Soma addiction and lying. Pictures of soma 750 mg.. Soma next day delievery. Soma. Suicide with soma how many does it take.