Why does mainland feel so empty to me ?

[Ted McGregor]

Fewer and fewer crappy builds near otherwise nice roads ; empty land sometimes as far as the cam can see ; problematic simcrossing for so many sims being offline ( no more grid restarts at monday apparantly) : Is Second Life dead / dying ?

 

 

Why ?  :robotindifferent:

Anyone ?

[Phil Deakins]

They probably saw you coming.

[Ted McGregor]

[Qie Niangao]

I too am amazed at how empty Mainland seems, but specifically because I know that there is quite an active market in Mainland parcels.

It's really quite baffling to me that land will sell at auction, then maybe flip at a profit to another buyer, then maybe get built up, then abandoned again, all in the course of a month or so.

I watch this pretty closely and it happens a lot. I mean, it's absolutely the norm for auction parcels.

And, incidentally, those auction prices seem to be creeping upward, ever since the news that the Lindens have another platform in the works. I truly do not understand that at all.

So I'm amazed that, simultaneously, people are very actively bidding up land prices, and yet quickly abandoning what they bought (and presumably rinse and repeat).

But then it's SL, and when has it ever made sense?

[Ted McGregor]

---

Qie Niangao wrote:

I too am amazed at how empty Mainland seems, but specifically because I know that there is quite an active market in Mainland parcels.

It's really quite baffling to me that land will sell at auction, then maybe flip at a profit to another buyer, then maybe get built up, then abandoned again, all in the course of a month or so.

I watch this pretty closely and it happens a lot. I mean, it's absolutely the norm for auction parcels.

And, incidentally, those auction prices seem to be creeping upward, ever since the news that the Lindens have another platform in the works. I truly do not understand that at all.

So I'm amazed that, simultaneously, people are very actively bidding up land prices, and yet quickly abandoning what they bought (and presumably rinse and repeat).

But then it's SL, and when has it ever made sense?

---

That's what occurred to me as well last night when a friend was trying to relocate ( aside my attempt to just cruise about on mainland unhindered ) : much of mainland is confiscated by LL and not open for auction ( abandoned lands ), while prices for land are high and never negotiable. There's indeed something peculiar about this much land being availiable when people still pay far too much for mere space.

It's not entirely about making sense though why I posted this. I'm just wondering if LL is abandoning maintenance on it's current world completely.

This world does not seem to be improved or progress into a better experience ( in regard to using vehicles to use the roads).

Shame .. :robotindifferent:

[Perrie Juran]

---

Qie Niangao wrote:

I too am amazed at how empty Mainland seems, but specifically because I know that there is quite an active market in Mainland parcels.

It's really quite baffling to me that land will sell at auction, then maybe flip at a profit to another buyer, then maybe get built up, then abandoned again, all in the course of a month or so.

I watch this pretty closely and it happens a lot. I mean, it's absolutely the norm for auction parcels.

And, incidentally, those auction prices seem to be creeping upward, ever since the news that the Lindens have another platform in the works. I truly do not understand that at all.

So I'm amazed that, simultaneously, people are very actively bidding up land prices, and yet quickly abandoning what they bought (and presumably rinse and repeat).

But then it's SL, and when has it ever made sense?

---

I was really surprised how fast my 4096 sold for several weeks after the announcement.

It was three days before my billing date when I put it up for sale and was expecting to need to just abandon it to avoid more tier

I priced it at 0.5sqm and got grabbed a minute later by a land bot.  That was a shock.  I didn't think land bots bought that high.

[Conifer Dada]

There's so much abandoned land that isn't for sale now - just wasteland.  

What to do with it?  

1)  Maybe LL could raise the tier-free allowance to 1024 sq. m. - that might attract more people to upgrade to Premium.

2)  And they could add a few new Linden HIghways - I mean short links that join two highways, avoiding long detours.

3)  It would be nice to have a few more public parks on mainland that you can be sure won't be here today and gone tomorrow.

 

[Ted McGregor]

Those are all propositions that could be considered, but they also leave me with another question : whatever happened to the LDPW (and are they still recently active) ?

All in all confirming to me mainland is no longer LL's main focus. Probably hasn't been for quite some time.

 

[Theresa Tennyson]

---

TDD123 wrote:

---

Qie Niangao wrote:

I too am amazed at how empty Mainland seems, but specifically because I know that there is quite an active market in Mainland parcels.

It's really quite baffling to me that land will sell at auction, then maybe flip at a profit to another buyer, then maybe get built up, then abandoned again, all in the course of a month or so.

I watch this pretty closely and it happens a lot. I mean, it's absolutely the norm for auction parcels.

And, incidentally, those auction prices seem to be creeping upward, ever since the news that the Lindens have another platform in the works. I truly do not understand that at all.

So I'm amazed that, simultaneously, people are very actively bidding up land prices, and yet quickly abandoning what they bought (and presumably rinse and repeat).

But then it's SL, and when has it ever made sense?

---

That's what occurred to me as well last night when a friend was trying to relocate ( aside my attempt to just cruise about on mainland unhindered ) : much of mainland is confiscated by LL and not open for auction ( abandoned lands ), while prices for land are high and never negotiable. There's indeed something peculiar about this much land being availiable when people still pay far too much for mere space.

It's not entirely about making sense though why I posted this. I'm just wondering if LL is abandoning maintenance on it's current world completely.

This world does not seem to be improved or progress into a better experience ( in regard to using vehicles to use the roads).

Shame .. :robotindifferent:

---

Look at the World Map. See all those red hearts? Entire regions owned by the same company who stack up a series of region-sized skyboxes which they rent out. There's apparently at least one more company doing the same thing.  Linden Lab has a single landowner per region to deal with rather than a handful of drama queens Premium landowners. It makes much more sense financially to let a non-prime region empty out and then sell it to a landowner like this than to keep it parcelled out.

With Linden Homes and the Marketplace taking away the need for cheap land the Mainland is largely of interest to those who operate vehicles, like interesting terrain or want to live in a historical area. Those pictures indicate you were on Jeogeot, which is the least desirable continent for all of these factors. It's big, comparatively flat, has little open water and has no connection to any other continent. It has a good road network but Satori's is almost as good and has the advantage of being contiguous with the Blake Sea area. Besides, road travel is always going to be problematic because ground vehicles react worse to sim crossings than aircraft or boats because of the need to follow the terrain (although I've actually found sim crossings to be unusually good the last few weeks - I can drive from Noyo to Tathlina without major problems.)

Basically Jeogeot is in the same position as the older "inner ring" suburbs of a major US city - people would rather live in newer areas with better facilities or older ones with more character.

[Alicia Chenaux]

Mainland has a bad reputation for being ugly and laggy. But there is more you can do with a private island - like changing the seasons and terraforming it within an inch of its life. That's why the people that I know, including myself, have private islands rather than mainland property. We like being able to do what we want with it.

[Theresa Tennyson]

---

Qie Niangao wrote:

I too am amazed at how empty Mainland seems, but specifically because I know that there is quite an active market in Mainland parcels.

It's really quite baffling to me that land will sell at auction, then maybe flip at a profit to another buyer, then maybe get built up, then abandoned again, all in the course of a month or so.

I watch this pretty closely and it happens a lot. I mean, it's absolutely the norm for auction parcels.

And, incidentally, those auction prices seem to be creeping upward, ever since the news that the Lindens have another platform in the works. I truly do not understand that at all.

So I'm amazed that, simultaneously, people are very actively bidding up land prices, and yet quickly abandoning what they bought (and presumably rinse and repeat).

But then it's SL, and when has it ever made sense?

---

Mainland is the Land of Dreams Waiting to be Broken. People get an "easy" business idea, such as becoming a landlord or selling affiliate merchandise, and get some land without realizing how unlikely it will be to break even, much less turn a profit. My alts relatives have had lots in various areas and have seen many businesses like this come and go - the favorite was the fearless soul who got 1024 in the middle of a flat, uninteresting area, threw up some prims and started trying to sell Aley Arai's free full-perm spaceships for L$10,000 to L$20,000 apiece in the vain hope that the one avatar in the entire virtual world with less business sense than that merchant would wander through and buy one. These people are also the reason the Lab charges $1000 to set up a sim or else private regions would be started and be deleted so fast you'd see the map flicker.

[Ted McGregor]

Thanks for the elaborate answer, Theresa. Makes a lot more sense to me now.

I've often experienced the trickyness of riding a vehicle on mainland ( hell , I was even blocked 2 weeks from SL while being ghosted after travelling the grid ) when simcrossing were more sturdy than they are now.

It just seemed today to me ( after absence of a year ) that crossing a sim had not improved at all or was worse than I remember. Many crossings fail and my vehicle get catapulted a number of sims away from me. Luckily the vehicle tells me where it ended up .. :robotindifferent:

---

Theresa Tennyson wrote:

Basically Jeogeot is in the same position as the older "inner ring" suburbs of a major US city - people would rather live in newer areas with better facilities or older ones with more character.

---

 To me that would beg the question : why won't LL then give it's mainland more character instead of leaving such a big whole of waste ? If they made the mainland their own showcase ( which shouldn't be that hard regarding availiable resources from either themselves or others), general user interest would be a lot better than it is now. Why .. some of that land could even be rented / auctioned at reasonable prices  or, dare I say it, donatedfor merchants to showcase their work. It would be in LL's own interest.

Now it all just looks ... unprofessional, uninviting and boring.

[Ted McGregor]

I can understand that that is the choice of many.

Of course for me the attraction of mainland is to travel endlessly from region to region.

Kinda like the reason why SL railroads were built, I guess.

[Aethelwine]

I wish they would seize the initiative and repossess land to make for more roads and features.

I also wish they would take a considered view on ban lines and orbs and work out a way to balance land owners desires for privacy against the opening up routes for people to explore unhindered.

The Sansara lakes and rivers would be a wonderful place to explore by boat if it weren't for getting stuck in banlines and having your vehicle returned without prior warning.

If they did this more of mainland would be more desirable and give it a new lease of life. But it is quite a big undertaking and regretably something I doubt they will consider when their focus is on the new platform.

[Perrie Juran]

I don't think there is any one answer to your question but a mixture of reasons.

One thing is that Mainland never developed the way LL envisioned.  According to Second Life Wikia,

" A side benefit Linden Lab had hoped would be that telehubs would help in "urban development", creating more commercial centers around them, and leaving the outskirts of land further away from the "hubs" for residential-type land."

This never came to pass and probably the prime reason was LL never really had any zoning until Linden Homes.  If LL had declared some SIMS residential only, commercial or mixed use it might have changed what happenned.

According to Grid Survey about 14% of Mainland is abandonned parcels.  The last time I did the math Linden Homes now account for more land mass than the abandonned land. 

You do have to be careful not to confuse undeveloped land with abandonned land.  Many people build in the sky and never do anything on the ground. 

[Ted McGregor]

---

Aethelwine wrote:

I wish they would seize the initiative and repossess land to make for more roads and features.

---

 Exactly the thought I contemplated while getting stuck in the big blue-ish limbo and my vehicle reported to me it was in another region apart.

Are you psychic ? :robotsurprised:

---

Aethelwine wrote:

 

I also wish they would take a considered view on ban lines and orbs and work out a way to balance land owners desires for privacy against the opening up routes for people to explore unhindered.

The Sansara lakes and rivers would be a wonderful place to explore by boat if it weren't for getting stuck in banlines and having your vehicle returned without prior warning.

---

Yes. Cannot understand why borders can touch or even cross roads or why roads can cross three sims in shorter distance than servers can carry users.

Maybe that's a remnant when land went out quicker out of the door than I can say "pshychic" ... :robotindifferent:

 

---

Aethelwine wrote:

If they did this more of mainland would be more desirable and give it a new lease of life. But it is quite a big undertaking and regretably something I doubt they will consider when their focus is on the new platform.

---

Well .. if they are planning a new platform, shouldn't maintaining the first one properly build more trust than none or hardly none ?

 

 

If it were a living thing, it would be mercifully shot.

( Sorry .. not being unneccesarily harsh here, but that's how I see it .. :robotindifferent: )

[Ted McGregor]

---

Perrie Juran wrote:

I don't think there is any one answer to your question but a mixture of reasons.

One thing is that Mainland never developed the way LL envisioned.  According to

Second Life Wikia

,

" A side benefit

Linden Lab

had hoped would be that telehubs would help in "urban development", creating more commercial centers around them, and leaving the outskirts of

land

further away from the "hubs" for residential-type land."

This never came to pass and probably the prime reason was LL never really had any zoning until Linden Homes.  If LL had declared some SIMS residential only, commercial or mixed use it might have changed what happenned.

According to

Grid Survey

about 14% of Mainland is abandonned parcels.  The last time I did the math Linden Homes now account for more land mass than the abandonned land. 

You do have to be careful not to confuse undeveloped land with abandonned land.  Many people build in the sky and never do anything on the ground. 

---

I want to ask you then Perry. You ever checked for those numbers by visiting the mainland ?

Not disputing the figures ( purely because I did not measure them or collected them myself ), but I'm ready to defy that number. To me, regarding mainland, it seems at least 50 percent.

I do consider that many roads usually tend to be built land inward, while preferred residential is usually based on islands and sand beaches ; they're usually on the edges of continents. I also admit the specific continent I was visiting ( Theresa mentioned it earlier ), is the most vacant one I have seen so far.

I wouldn't blame the waste to mere skybuilding as well : that could be restricted/restrained to certain map-areas of mainland to manage wastelands of skybox only-based maps.

Of course .. if you set off mainland against all other unconnected regions the figure is probably right, yet somewhat too flattering, imho.

Probably for a reason.

 

Still is not a pretty sight .. :robotindifferent:

[Amethyst Jetaime]

There are a number of reason the mainland has so much wasteland in my opinion.

Linden Homes is one reason.  Before they were available, premium members all bought mainland to take advantage of the 'free' 512sqm of tier.  Now there is not as much incentive because Linden houses don't count against prim limits.  So practically speaking, you get more usable prims having a Linden Home than a 512sqm parcel.  Linden homes were never intended as permanent residences when they were introduced.  The thinking was that newbs would get them and would be introduced to having a home but would eventually want more prims or a better home and move to a larger lot elsewhere on the grid.  Of course that happens but not nearly as often as LL anticipated.

Mainland contains a lot of ugly laggy builds.  There is no covenant or zoning on most of it.  You can buy land in a beautiful sim there and have the home of your dreams.  But within a month someone sells their land and the new owner comes along and erects and ugly build not in keeping with the neighborhood or you find some undesirable business next door to you that is many stories high.

Really desirable mainland parcels are many times priced outrageously thus making desirable private estate land cheaper to acquire. You can get private estate land by just paying the first weeks tier.  Even estates with lots of amenities that actually charge an amount over and above the tier are generally cheaper.  For example I can buy a 4096 in a very large sailing estate with as much sailing area as the Blake Sea for a lot less than the same size lot on the shores of the Blake Sea.  There are even estates with lots of roads that span multiple sims.

Private estate tier rates cost per prim can be a lot less than on mainland under certain circumstances.  That's because a private estate usually prices tier by actual prim count or sqm's.  Whereas on mainland the tiers are by category so you may own, say a 3000sqm parcel but have to pay tier at the same rate as a 4096sqm parcel.  You also are charged tier for a full month even if you own the land for as little as a few seconds during a month.  You also don't have to be a premium member to acquire private estate land.

Private estate land is generally more attractive due to zoning in covenants that is enforced.  Estate land generally offers more flexibility for terraforming than mainland and offers a wider choice of land textures and is more consistent in landscaping for a particular climate.  So of it is professionally landscaped which appeals to those that don't want to be bothered with landscaping yet want an attractive looking lot.  Many private estates offer much better customer service and will readily help new people do things like set up media.  They generally respond faster than LL does too.

The majority of residents that have land have it on private estates.  Owning mainland really only appeals to premium members that want no covenant or want to pay LL directly rather than an estate owner.  Granted there are 'bad' estate owners that confiscate land for little or no reason, or through poor business planning resulting in the inability to pay LL their tier and have their region repossessed, however most estate owners are reputable business people and the 'bad' ones are the exception rather than the rule.  If you only deal with well established estates you have very little problem.  I've been in SL for 8+ years and never had a problem with a private estate owner.

[Perrie Juran]

Ivory Tower

 

 

Jeogot (Continent)

 

---

TDD123 wrote:

---

Perrie Juran wrote:

I don't think there is any one answer to your question but a mixture of reasons.

One thing is that Mainland never developed the way LL envisioned.  According to

Second Life Wikia

,

" A side benefit

Linden Lab

had hoped would be that telehubs would help in "urban development", creating more commercial centers around them, and leaving the outskirts of

land

further away from the "hubs" for residential-type land."

This never came to pass and probably the prime reason was LL never really had any zoning until Linden Homes.  If LL had declared some SIMS residential only, commercial or mixed use it might have changed what happenned.

According to

Grid Survey

about 14% of Mainland is abandonned parcels.  The last time I did the math Linden Homes now account for more land mass than the abandonned land. 

You do have to be careful not to confuse undeveloped land with abandonned land.  Many people build in the sky and never do anything on the ground. 

---

I want to ask you then Perry. You ever checked for those numbers by visiting the mainland ?

Not disputing the figures ( purely because I did not measure them or collected them myself ), but I'm ready to defy that number. To me, regarding mainland, it seems at least 50 percent.

I do consider that many roads usually tend to be built land inward, while preferred residential is usually based on islands and sand beaches ; they're usually on the edges of continents. I also admit the specific continent I was visiting ( Theresa mentioned it earlier ), is the most vacant one I have seen so far.

I wouldn't blame the waste to mere skybuilding as well : that could be restricted/restrained to certain map-areas of mainland to manage wastelands of skybox only-based maps.

Of course .. if you set off mainland against all other unconnected regions the figure is probably right, yet somewhat too flattering, imho.

Probably for a reason.

 

Still is not a pretty sight .. :robotindifferent:

---

First of all I have lived on Mainland for most of my Second Life as well as travelled it's roads, etc.

As far as Tyche's numbers are concerned I don't know exactly how her API's work but I have never heard anyone call in question her numbers up until you just now.

Some areas of Mainland may have more or less abandoned land.  Flying around many regions in the area of the Ivory Tower abandoned land was almost nonexistent.  Whereas on the Continent of Jeogot you are more likely to run into it.  So location can be a big factor in what you see.

I would guess if you removed water (Blake Sea, Gulf Of Jeogot, etc) from the total number of SIMs and just dealt with land the percentage of abandoned land would be higher.  It might go up to 20%.  I don't think you'd get anywhere near 50%.  I'll leave it to someone else if they want to do the math based on Tyche's numbers.

And I won't dispute that it isn't a pretty sight.

And lastly, the snapshot for the map is taken at an altitude of about 400 meters.  Anything above that height has never been on the map.

[Ted McGregor]

Points taken.

 

Hence I adjusted the title of the thread.

[Perrie Juran]

---

TDD123 wrote:

Points taken.

 

Hence I adjusted the title of the thread.

---

People have been questioning how Mainland has been managed by LL almost from Day One of SL. 

Sometimes we feel like it has been managed like an abandonned child.  But the real answer to your question is that LL is managing it the way they feel it is most profitable to them. 

(My number crunching says it is more profitable for them to do Linden Homes then to have people renting 512's or 1024's from a Mainland Land Owner.) 

We may think it would be more beneficial for them to dress up Mainland.  But that apparently is not their opinion.  It is always going to come down to return on investment.   Personally I think they should do more to beautify Mainland.  But I'm not the one crunching the numbers on this.

[Ted McGregor]

---

Amethyst Jetaime wrote:

There are a number of reason the mainland has so much wasteland in my opinion.

:: followed by reasons ::

---

You're explaining the shift of demand very well, which in turn explains why mainland has become less attractive to private residential users and why they shifted to private regions.

Thank you for posting that.

[Ted McGregor]

---

Perrie Juran wrote:

  Personally I think they should do more to beautify Mainland.  But I'm not the one crunching the numbers on this.

---

But as you said .. profit seems to be the only focus here.

Detrimental to the experience for me without that focus, I had to say.

 

[irihapeti]

Tyche Shepard uses bots to collect the data. Is a automated system. The data is not wrong

Tyche has also said in the past that they are a statistician by profession. Statisticians like their data to be accurate. They leave the interpretation (like what it might mean) to others. Tyche's numbers themselves are not disputable

[Amethyst Jetaime]

---

Perrie Juran wrote:

---

TDD123 wrote:

Points taken.

 

Hence I adjusted the title of the thread.

---

People have been questioning how Mainland has been managed by LL almost from Day One of SL. 

Sometimes we feel like it has been managed like an abandonned child.  But the real answer to your question is that LL is managing it the way they feel it is most profitable to them. 

(My number crunching says it is more profitable for them to do Linden Homes then to have people renting 512's or 1024's from a Mainland Land Owner.) 

We may think it would be more beneficial for them to dress up Mainland.  But that apparently is not their opinion.  It is always going to come down to return on investment.   Personally I think they should do more to beautify Mainland.  But I'm not the one crunching the numbers on this.

---

Personally I think LL misses the boat with Linden homes on their own little mini continents.  If they put them on some of that abandoned land that will most likely never sell, mainland would not look so desolate and it would integrate the residents into the wider SL community more than their current isolation in what many call the SLums.  If groups of homes are scattered around the mainland some residents would see larger homes and parcels used for residences, which they may not now unless they go to regions that are primarily residential, and they'd be more likely to want to upgrade.  It would save them money too not having to run as many servers.