Chaos Mohr Posted April 23, 2011 Share Posted April 23, 2011 Of course now these Abandoned Land parcels are beginning to flood the market - currently 26 plots at L$1/meter. This of course will have a debilitating effect on the land market and will probably just encourage more people to abandon their land or dump it to landbots as the prices go further down (people needing to sell will have to drop their price below L$1/meter in order to have a chance to sell quickly and for that low price some will just say screw it and abandon the land or sell it for $1 to the bots. It would have been much better to just automate the auction system thus giving everyone a fair shot at the land - have abandoned land automatically go into the auction que - this will probably also have a negative effect on the land market as sometimes there is just too much abandoned land for the market to absorb, but at least that way every interested party would have a chance to bid and have 48 hours to notice the land was up for auction. I have tracked the land market daily for the past 4-1/2 years and have seen it go from way overpriced to the current toilet where it is now. A middle ground would be nice where the value of the mainland plots would encourage people to develop and keep their property, however until LL changes some policies, it will remain where it is - when something has little value, people are much more likely to throw it away. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Almadi Masala Posted April 23, 2011 Share Posted April 23, 2011 How about simply notifying adjacent landowners when an abandoned parcel is up for sale? That couldn't be too hard to do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mags Indigo Posted April 24, 2011 Share Posted April 24, 2011 Almadi Masala wrote: How about simply notifying adjacent landowners when an abandoned parcel is up for sale? That couldn't be too hard to do. I agree - of all the suggestions a simple email to the other owners on the sim seems to be the simplest . Unless of course some of the other owners are 'land sellers' - but then someone might be trying to sell their land because they need a bigger plot and as such the possibility of buying more might mean they wouldn't need to sell. etc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prokofy Neva Posted April 26, 2011 Share Posted April 26, 2011 Oh dear God, I can't believe all these people turning up here to praise this awful action of the Lindens that will flood the market needlessly and once again punish Mainland land owners, rentals agents and other businesses. We've been ravaged so many times, and now this. There doesn't seem to be any good reason why these parcels couldn't be going to those who already own on the sim. To characterize these people as evil big land barons blah blah is ridiculous -- they might be non-profits or poor people who just happen to have land in SL to realize their dreams. And why can't there be land barons, for that matter?! They pay the tier around here. I just never heard a good reason why this couldn't have been done in a way to give the people already on a sim first dibs -- it seems technically possible. The Lindens should simply accept tickets with offers to purchase abandoned land. There won't be that many tickets, truly. And existing landowners -- have a care. Can't we prevail upon you to have a conscience? IM your neighbours first and offer your land, rather than dumping it to Governor Linden and the ravages of bots and flippers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chaos Mohr Posted April 26, 2011 Share Posted April 26, 2011 Another great plan (NOT) that is not executed well nor even as promised - so much for 'Abandoned land will not be listed in search'. There are now 47 'Abandoned' land plots listed in land search at $L1/meter. This of course is forcing the bot owners to push more land for sale below this price - which of course they can do as they always get it cheaper than the current low of the market. Now there are over 100 plots of land priced below the 'Abandoned' land with approx 40% of the land below this price for sale by bot owners - the rest is people who are trying to sell their land quickly and who have to now keep pushing the price down to keep get under the growing glut of 'Abandoned' land, or land dealers who are competing now with LL (and yes, land dealers make a profit, but they also pay a lot of tier to LL). So much for Helping clean up the mainland by driving more nails in the mainland land market - while the bot owners are still making a nice profit on the nicer properties they are snatching up, even their profit margin is somewhat shrinking, though until land is free, they will continue to profit. Meanwhile, people who live in sims where there is land they have wished for or waited for are missing out and losing the opportunity to add to their home or business areas because they aren't online when the land is abandoned or goes up for sale. Instead of taking some of the money that LL gets from its residents in Mainland tier every month and paying someone to actually do something like inform land owners of land in their sim going up for sale, or how about combing all the odd shaped and sized abandoned plots in a sim into standard sizes before putting up to Auction, they are trying to cut corners the cheapest way they can by automating the process - REMEMBER LL, Second Life is supposed to be about the PEOPLE, so please use a real person or people to deal with the real people who make Second Life what it is!!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Deakins Posted April 26, 2011 Share Posted April 26, 2011 A few points... Land-bots: Chaos has been seeing these newly abandoned parcels in search but have you been following what's been happening to them, Chaos? Are land-bots actually buying them at 1L/m? I's be very surprised if they are because they haven't been buying at prices as high as that for quite some time. I don't see why anyone should have anything against land-bots and land-flippers, except for those occasions when someone makes a mistake and a land-bot instantly takes advantage. Auctions: LL offers land at 0.5L/m in the auction so why 1L/m for these parcels? Neighbours: I completely agree that neighbours, and/or land owners in the sim, should be offered the abandoned parcel first - there should be at least a few days (a week, perhaps) for them to buy. It wouldn't make any difference to LL and it would avoid some gnashing of teeth. I can envisage situations like I've been in for a long time (small parcels within my much larger land) where such a parcel gets abandoned and the surrounding land owner fails to get it because s/he doesn't notice it quickly enough. Imo, that would be a travesty and LL really should incorporate something to deal with it, such as the suggested messages to bordering land owners. Overall: I can understand LL doing this because the amount of abandoned land is a huge joke and, while it's abandoned, it's earning nothing for the company. Much of the land that's sold in this new way won't earn anything for LL either, because many of the buyers will have unused tier, but some will - and the joke will become smaller. On the whole, I approve of this new measure, but I don't approve of not including something that benefits at least bordering land-owners. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chaos Mohr Posted April 26, 2011 Share Posted April 26, 2011 As I have stated previously, the landbots are much smarter these days with certain ones programmed to be selective in buying. There are some that are programmed to grab 'desirable' land (ie: Adult rated, Bay City, Beta sim, protected waterfront sims etc) at prices above what they normally would pay (which is generally 10-15% below current low market listings). For the most part, they are snatching any of these kind of parcels at the 'Abandoned' land price as this means much higher profit margins for them. In addition, they are now being pushed to sell their other bot acquired regular land below the L$1/meter price of the Abandoned land which had the effect of further driving the land market down (which in true roundabout form has the effect of leaving more of the Abandoned land for sale as the quickest sales are generally always at the bottom of the market). If LL offered these plots at the L$.5/meter as in auction, they would certainly be snatched up instantly by bots (at least up until the point where the market had dropped to that point, which it probably would in a fairly short time). I noticed this in full force the other day when I saw a few parcels of 'Abandoned' land listed which was very nice waterfront. Upon trying to actually TP to the sim, I would get bounced, so I TP'd into a neighboring sim to see a number of bots 'stuck' in the sim due to multiple bots making multiple buy attempts which dragged the sim down to the point of locking up (trying to buy from the adjoining sim gave me time outs and error messages). This is of course a prime example of where the bots break TOS by abusing sim resources, but LL fully refuses to do anything about this. When I returned later to this area, all the 'Abandoned' plots were now owned by bot owners and set for sale at much much higher prices (not that a land flipper wouldn't have done the same thing, but they nor anyone else, including the sim residents gets a chance). The big point is that LL stated that this land would 'not' be listed in search, but they were obviously misinformed (which is strange as they themselves are responsible for the programming <sarc>). If the land in question were not in search, that alone would slightly help the local residents as it might give them a better chance of getting the land before it was swooped (of course there are ways around this too for the bots, but it does take them a bit longer). A better system should have been tested and refined (gathering resident input) before such a broad policy change was implemented. I have been involved in the Mainland land market for the past 4-1/2 years and have tracked it carefully. While I do not have access to the LL metrics (which as reported by them have always been totally skewed and inaccurate), I have observed the daily, weekly and monthly trends in the market and in the general state of the Mainland sims. While my observations and conclusions are my own, they are based on buying and selling well over a thousand sims worth of land, and observing the buying and selling of many more than that. Putting the 'Abandoned' land into the direct market channel the way LL has done is not the best way to help clean up the Mainland as the majority of it will either be flipped repeatedly if it is valuable, or it will sit and stagnate while the land market goes further down - thus increasing the probability of even more land being abandoned (why go through the hassle of selling something that is basically worthless to begin with). Years ago, LL had a 'first land' program which gave 512m of land away to new residents. This was terminated because bots were snatching it up as soon as it was released and real people rarely had the chance to get it (and why not, when the land at that time could be resold for more than the cost of becoming a premium member). There was little abandoned land back then as land was worth so much more and there were daily auctions of full sims until LL got stupid and flooded the market with so many new sims that the land market collapsed. This is when the landbot owners really made a killing of people's mistakes, like when someone would be trying to transfer land to a friend or an alt and mistakenly put it for sale to anyone at L$1. There were people then who lost thousands of USD in a second due to such mistakes, but thankfully due to the poor value of land now and better education, that doesn't seem to happen quite so often anymore. I would really like to see a reply from a Linden to all of this, at least to tell us why this policy is not be carried out as originally stated, and perhaps to try to improve the process by working WITH the community and residents to find a better way to handle this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Deakins Posted April 26, 2011 Share Posted April 26, 2011 I think you were right in one of your ealier posts - that one LL hand doesn't know what another LL hand is doing - and mistaken in your latest post - that it's the same people who write the programming. There is no reason to suppose that the people who wrote the programming to automatically set abandoned land for sale are the same people who are in charge of the programming that lists land for sale in search. There is every reason to suppose that they are not the same people, and that they have different priorities. Although the abandoned land is listed in search (42 parcels right now), and the wiki gives no indication that its absense from search is only for a limited period, I'd guess that the people who are responsible for the search programming will catch up when they are ready. If that's the case, then perhaps it would have been better not to launch the new system until everything is in place. Even so, so some land-bots get some land to flip in the meantime - it doesn't really matter, does it? I approve of this new system provided that bordering land-owners get the first opportunity to buy. Without that first opportunity, I disapprove of the new system. Giving other land-owners in the same sim an equal first opportunity with bordering land-owners would be wrong, imo. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hugsy Penguin Posted April 28, 2011 Share Posted April 28, 2011 Welp, just got hammered a bit by this policy. A 16m² that was abandoned for quite a while (in the sim where I have most of my land) must have went up for public sale. The first I see it is today and paid L$449 (someone other than LL) for it. It's only a few bucks, but I can see this happening with some larger plots that will go who-knows-when (grrr). LL, this is not better (for us anyway). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Deakins Posted April 28, 2011 Share Posted April 28, 2011 That 16m parcel could have been sold in the auction, if they sell such small bits there. Or someone could have asked for it and got it because maybe they dont want to sell such small bits in the auction. The new system is automated and that 16m was abandoned before the new system, so what happened to the 16m is unlikely to be anything to do with the new system, although I suppose the governor could have abandoned it to put it into the new system Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Qie Niangao Posted April 28, 2011 Share Posted April 28, 2011 I kinda doubt that the unusual events around that abandoned 16m² was really a function of this policy. Very rarely, I see some unexplained transfer of abandoned microparcels to somebody not otherwise present in the sim. It's very rare, and I've consciously decided not to probe into it too deeply, partially because of something stupid I did to myself in my "main" region: A while back, I'd gotten very tired of looking at the sole remaining 16 in a burnt-out adfarm that I surrounded and managed to consume, bit by bit, over years. This 16 was set for sale at some absurd thousands-of-L$ price, but belonged to a group that had no tier contributed to it. I submitted a ticket, hoping it would get force-abandoned and I could finish off that adfarm for once and for all. That isn't quite what happened. Harry moved that parcel to a piece of Linden property that he carved out of the SLRR right-of-way, interposed between my property and the SLRR, deeded to one of the owners of the defunct group. I was disappointed (to say the least), but thanked Harry for the assistance. I realized that I'd brought it on myself. Then, that freshly-minted microparcel actually sold, and now has an ad on it. In fact, the ad is technically in violation of the adfarm policy because it includes a rotating texture. I've decided not to press my luck by ARing it. I figure another "improvement" like that and I'll be abandoning the whole d*mned sim. Speaking of abandonment: There was another 16 that I surrounded on 3 sides, again for years, for sale for multiple-thousands-of-L$s (of course) by one of the last adfarmer hold-outs. (Yes, they still exist. You may recognize this one by her faux French name, which I can't say here.) About six months ago, discouraged by the above incident, I finally gave up on that one and abandoned a couple thousand sq.m. around it. Overnight, that 16 had been abandoned, too. Elsewhere on the sim I've still got another 16 surrounded, for sale for L$4000 by yet another sleazeball. If I could be sure it would kill-off that S.O.B., I'd abandon however much land it took. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Deakins Posted April 28, 2011 Share Posted April 28, 2011 Qie Niangao wrote: Speaking of abandonment: There was another 16 that I surrounded on 3 sides, again for years, for sale for multiple-thousands-of-L$s (of course) by one of the last adfarmer hold-outs. (Yes, they still exist. You may recognize this one by her faux French name, which I can't say here.) About six months ago, discouraged by the above incident, I finally gave up on that one and abandoned a couple thousand sq.m. around it. Overnight, that 16 had been abandoned, too. Did you ask for your abandoned land back? You could have got it and then asked for the 16m in the middle of it. I recently abandoned 3/4 of my land - half a sim, and then a month later about another 1/4 sim. Since my land is group owned I could keep more than the remaining 1/4 sim and pay the tier for 1/4 sim, so I abandoned the last lot chunk by chunk until I got down to the maximum I could own for 1/4 sim tier. But I went too far and abandoned 256m too much and reducing my land by 3/4 meant that prims were now quite valuable to me for my store. So I submitted a ticket to get 256m back and, although it took a month and I'd forgotten about it, I did get it back not long ago. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chaos Mohr Posted April 28, 2011 Share Posted April 28, 2011 It is great to see what a success this new project has been. There are now over 120 of these Abandoned Land plots in search, and amazingly it has helped the land market down to a near record low of $L 0.6 per meter (and gee wouldn't you know that the majority of land listed below the Abandoned land is land being sold by bot owners - way to go LL, another great policy!!! Thanks so much for helping make mainland so much better! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Deakins Posted April 28, 2011 Share Posted April 28, 2011 That's something that hadn't occured to me - lowering the value of land. Plenty of land is being abandoned these days and since it's being listed in search at 1L/m, in spite of the wiki saying that it won't be listed in search, people will find it harder to sell land for more than 1L/m and the overall land value will be reduced. Having said that, land had become near valueless anyway so it probably won't make much difference in the grand scheme of things. Not long before this new system, I'd abandoned almost 3/4 of a sim. The reason I abandoned it was because I'd rather that LL lost the tier from it and, since its value was so little these days, due to LL flooding the market some time ago, it was easy to abandon. If its value was anything like reasonable, I may have been tempted to sell it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chaos Mohr Posted April 29, 2011 Share Posted April 29, 2011 Phil Deakins wrote: That's something that hadn't occured to me - lowering the value of land. Plenty of land is being abandoned these days and since it's being listed in search at 1L/m, in spite of the wiki saying that it won't be listed in search, people will find it harder to sell land for more than 1L/m and the overall land value will be reduced. Having said that, land had become near valueless anyway so it probably won't make much difference in the grand scheme of things. Not long before this new system, I'd abandoned almost 3/4 of a sim. The reason I abandoned it was because I'd rather that LL lost the tier from it and, since its value was so little these days, due to LL flooding the market some time ago, it was easy to abandon. If its value was anything like reasonable, I may have been tempted to sell it. Yes, this will be and already is an effect of this. The price of land is decreasing, and this will have the probable side effect that more people will abandon land due to how little it is worth - considering that the 'bot' price has already dropped approx 30% since this went into effect, that is a big percentage of loss. The Abandoned land is glutting the land search and whereas a few days ago, there was little land below L$/1 per meter, more people (including the bot owners) are now being forced to drop their prices below these 'Abandoned' properties to have a chance of quickly selling them. - when people can't sell, after a while it is easier to abandon than to keep adjusting the price and certainly cheaper than paying tier on them for another month - instead of helping with a problem, it seems LL may just be making it worse. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hugsy Penguin Posted April 29, 2011 Share Posted April 29, 2011 Qie Niangao wrote: I kinda doubt that the unusual events around that abandoned 16m² was really a function of this policy. Very rarely, I see some unexplained transfer of abandoned microparcels to somebody not otherwise present in the sim. It's very rare, and I've consciously decided not to probe into it too deeply, partially because of something stupid I did to myself in my "main" region: There's other weirdness with this land and the timing is oddly coincidental. To the North of this land is Linden land/water. To the East and South is land owned by another resident (who hasn't logged into SL for over two years). To the West is land owned by me, but in another region. Years ago it was, of coarse, an ad plot. Then that land was abandoned. When I finally noticed, I put in a ticket to have it sold to me. I thought I might have a chance since I own most of the rest of the land in the region (although not bordering this plot) plus one side in the neighboring region. Also, of the two residents who do border, I'm the only active one. This was denied and they actually set the land for sale to the inactive resident. *facepalm* It stayed that way for months. The land was bought by the land group on April 21 IIRC which is the date of the blog post in the OP. I'm very certain that this resident didn't log in, buy the land, and then sell it to the land group I bought it from. It must have been Linden Lab switching the land from “for sale to resident” to “for sale to anyone”. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Qie Niangao Posted April 29, 2011 Share Posted April 29, 2011 Phil Deakins wrote: Did you ask for your abandoned land back? [...] Nah. I found other things to do with the tier. I was very glad to see the adfarm extortionist gone from the sim, even though I didn't own the immediately adjacent land anymore. But I was pretty mystified that she gave up literally overnight, once I abandoned the surrounding land. I mean, it had stayed as a standoff for well over a year; I'd never contacted her to try to get the land (it only encourages them), and before had only absorbed parcels as the adfarmers had been driven out by LL. So it's not as if she could have had any reasonable expectation that I'd pay her ransom if she held out long enough. I have to suspect that she had reason to think that LL would be less tolerant of her crap when the surrounding land was owned by the Governor than a private resident. Hugsy, that is an interesting case, and yeah: the timing makes it difficult to see as coincidental. About pricing: I really don't think this policy is going to increase the rate of abandonment. Rather the opposite, in fact; I'd certainly never have abandoned any of my land if I knew it would go on the market immediately. Indeed, I kind of rushed to do the abandoning before the policy took hold, knowing it would sit "fallow" for a while that way. As always, it's the bottom of the market that will suffer, if this process succeeds in pushing abandoned parcels to sale faster than the auction system did. Honestly, there is some Mainland that should have no value whatsoever. In fact, even if tier were free, too, some of it is too awful to own. But what I mean is that this really isn't going to have any effect on Nautilus City, Bay City, nor most of Zindra... nor Blake Sea coastline, etc. But yeah, for landlocked, run-of-the-mill Mainland, I can see it raising the "no value whatsoever" threshold. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Deakins Posted April 29, 2011 Share Posted April 29, 2011 Qie Niangao wrote: [...] But I was pretty mystified that she gave up literally overnight, once I abandoned the surrounding land. [...] I had a not too dissimilar thing happen in the sim of which I owned 61.5k, the remaining 2.5k being owned in 512 pieces by several people. I always bought whatever became available in the sim as long as the price was reasonable, and I occasionally IMed the owners to ask if they fancied selling. In one 512 case, it looked for all the world that the owner had gone from SL - his 'home' building was there but people had put other things on it, including fire, and his 512m mega prim (32x16) seriously overhung my land, which surrounded his. I tried to contact him him a couple of times about the overhanging prim but got no response, and it did look like he'd gone. So I filed a ticked to ask if I could have land since it looked like the owner had gone from SL, but the Linden checked and found that the account was still active. The Linden removed everying, including the building which was linked to the overhanging prim. Later the building reappeared so the owner really was still active. Then I recently abandoned the land surrounding it and very soon afterwards, that area of the sim was put in the auction, including that 512m piece. The building never left the parcel right up until the parcel was joined to the surrounding land that I'd abandoned and put in the auction, and I wondered how they (LL) did that if the account was active. I'd waited years for that 512 and then it was suddenly joined to the surrounding land and in the auction, without there ever having been any indication of it being abandoned or for sale. There's no doubt a very good explanation but I still wonder how they did it. If it had been abandoned, I may even have bought it, even though I was then in abandon mode, because it was that little parcel that had always prevented me from having my very large castle on the highest ground where I would always have liked it to be. That area, as two parcels, sold in the auction, even though it's the worst kind of land there is - all rock - not a blade of grass anywhere. It's the sort of land that you said should have no value whatsoever. Two flippers bought it and put it up for sale. Astonishingly, one of them sold quite quickly and there's a very small, empty mall there now. The other is that price-reducing filpper, Best Land lol, who split his part into three parcels, but none have sold it yet. I'm not altogether in agreement with you about the new system not increasing the amount of abandoned land. I understand your point, but I can envisage that many people who want to get rid of land will abandon, knowing that they can't realistically ask more than 1L/m for it, and abandoning is better than holding out for such a tiny amount, or for a higher amount in the face of such low cost competition, when tier is coming due. For instance, at 1L/m, a 512 is worth US$2 but the monthly tier for it costs much more. Of course it depends on each person's tier level, available tier and the type of land, but I can see the new system encouraging some or many people to abandon rather than reach the next billing date. If it does tend to encourage abandonment, then the new system could be seen as LL's cynical decision to get into the land market in a much bigger way, by encouraging abandonment so that, with reduced effort, they can rake in more money in both sales and tier. They can't be criticised for wanting the tier, of course, but controlling the land prices by this method, and being the seller themselves, could well be open to criticism. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Deakins Posted April 29, 2011 Share Posted April 29, 2011 Phil Deakins wrote: If it does tend to encourage abandonment, then the new system could be seen as LL's cynical decision to get into the land market in a much bigger way, by encouraging abandonment so that, with reduced effort, they can rake in more money in both sales and tier. They can't be criticised for wanting the tier, of course, but controlling the land prices by this method, and being the seller themselves, could well be open to criticism. In recent times, Linden Lab have started to compete directly with their own paying customers. They entered into unfair competition with SL stores by opening their own website mall and raking in a commission on sales plus fees for listing items in their mall. The competition is unfair because they plug their mall everywhere they can, to the detriment and literal expense of their own paying customers. They also entered into the housing market with their Linden Homes - also at the literal expense of their own paying customers. And now they have entered into the land sales market at the literal expense of their own paying customers. I can see the non-financial logic of selling abandoned land "on the spot" rather than via the auction and, on the whole, I am not against it, although I am very much against bordering land-owners not having the first option to buy, and I am against the 1L/m pricing because, imo, it will tend to reduce the value of most of the mainland, to the cost of all those customers who bought land in more "realistic" times. Imo, the effect will be the same even if/when such land does not appear in search - if that ever happens. It's not long ago that Jack used to talk of keeping land prices at a reasonable level - something like 6L/m was the reasonable level. Now, apart from 'special' land, 1L/m is the target level. I can also see the logic in Linden Homes, because they are a carrot to encourage premium memberships. There is also logic in a web-based mall such as Xstreet and OnRez were before LL got their hands on them. But, in this case, LL's unfair advertising practises literally costs normal shop owners a lot of money, and that's abominable. In all of those cases, LL has shown no consideration whatsoever for their paying customers. They have shown no "loyalty" considerations towards them at all. As time goes by, it won't matter, because the population is ever turning over, and before too long, those things will be the norm for the population in general, who won't have known things to be any different. Even now, almost all that ever gets talked about in the Merchants' forum is the marketplace, which, through LL's unfair practises, is rapidly becoming the "normal" way of merchandising for SL - it's sad but true. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Qie Niangao Posted April 29, 2011 Share Posted April 29, 2011 Phil Deakins wrote: [...] As time goes by, it won't matter, because the population is ever turning over, and before too long, those things will be the norm for the population in general, who won't have known things to be any different. Even now, almost all that ever gets talked about in the Merchants' forum is the marketplace, which, through LL's unfair practises, is rapidly becoming the "normal" way of merchandising for SL - it's sad but true. Yeah, the real oldbies talk about GOM; means nothing to me, though, since I arrived post-Lindex. To be frank, I wouldn't mind LL showing enough interest in Land again to actually try to compete with their residents. What I see happening, rather, is a continued shift to Marketplace, which makes absolutely no sense to me. I can't see how there's enough margin on that miserable little commission to be worth lighting the website, let alone spin off profits to keep the Lab afloat. Meanwhile, it erodes revenue from the Land product, the only cash cow they've got. I really think it's Marketplace that's responsible for the renewed collapse of Mainland prices. I expect Estate sim sales to follow suit again, too. If in-world commerce is dead (abetted by the mess that is Viewer 2 Search), and the only purpose of Land is to hold the stuff people buy on Marketplace, well, that's a market, but it's a heck of a lot smaller market than that to which the Lab has grown accustomed. I don't understand why they'd be so intent on doing away with one revenue stream when they've yet to discover anything else beyond a trickle. One other observation: if the new abandon-to-sale process adds even more downward pressure on Mainland prices, then you're absolutely correct that it would cause more land to be abandoned. It would mean even less incentive to bother feeding it to the bots. Not that there's really any incentive any more anyway. (Nostalgia: I remember signs around Mainland, exhorting folks not to abandon land, posted by land dealers presumably on the premise that any land in circulation was land on which they might make a profit some day. I can't imagine anybody still thinking that they could profit by having more land on the market. And, of course, with the new policy, it doesn't matter: it goes into circulation almost immediately after being abandoned.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ericc Carter Posted May 3, 2011 Share Posted May 3, 2011 Releasing abandoned land this way is bad. It probably looked great on paper but this is an awful move. Land is a very important aspect in Second Life and decisions which impact it should be thought out carefully. There is already a huge overabundance of land. There are not enough real end users to occupy and use this abundance of land. 'Supply and Demand'... the value of land now is practically nothing. This is because of Way too much land being brought onto the market, primary by auctioning it but also now via this new method of selling abandoned land. It's disheartening really because the residents care about Second Life and want it to do well. So in the effort to get more land "occupied", which is really an effort to collect more tier, this has further added to the fragility of the market. That's a non-sustainable business model. Think of the future. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clarissa Lowell Posted May 3, 2011 Share Posted May 3, 2011 Prokofy Neva wrote: And existing landowners -- have a care. Can't we prevail upon you to have a conscience? IM your neighbours first and offer your land, rather than dumping it to Governor Linden and the ravages of bots and flippers. This. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Qwalyphi Korpov Posted May 13, 2011 Share Posted May 13, 2011 The resident who provided the previous content, if any, has replaced it with this generic statement. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Deakins Posted May 13, 2011 Share Posted May 13, 2011 It's probably as I suggested earlier - that the people who created the new system are not the ones who would change what appears in search, and the people who do that would get round to it in their own good time. It just means that the system ought not to have been launched until it was *all* ready, but it's LL, and LL doesn't do things in a sensible way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chaos Mohr Posted May 15, 2011 Share Posted May 15, 2011 Qwalyphi Korpov wrote: BTW - I looks like they fixed that Abandoned Land for Sale showing up in search this week. Which is good I suppose. Although... it makes 'how's it going' a mystery again. I can still see Abandoned land in search, now over 700 plots and growing daily - it is just that now there are many many more plots for sale cheaper than the $L1/meter that it is selling at (thanks LL for another nail in the land market). The bots are cleaning up, everyone else is losing, and more and more abandoned land is getting snatched by extortionists, ad farmers, and others for nefarious reasons. Very few land 'flippers' are buying the abandoned land unless the happen upon something exceptionaly nice that the landbots haven't swooped in on yet as the price of abandoned land is now well above the bottom of the market. In this respect, the program is helping a some people have a chance at buying abandoned land that may adjoin theirs or be in the same sim - unless of course the land is waterfront or adult or special like bay city or beta land in which case the bots usually get it, or unless it is a micro-parcel, in which case an ad extortionist will probably get it, or unless a greedy neighbor snatches it to turn around and set if for sale at some outrageous price. In other words, if you own land in a Rock sim, or on a goat herders hillside, you might get lucky Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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