Abandoned Land is Heading To 25% of the Mainland

[Prokofy Neva]

Here are Tyche's latest figures and an article by SLHamlet on her annual survey numbers.

The figure is now 22% of land on the Mainland is abandoned and now owned by Linden accounts,, and this chart tells the story:

So this isn't news to those of us who watch the trends but it may come as a shock to some.

One we face this threshold, on a product that brings LL only $600,000 out of their $4-6.8 million revenue a year, and is part of their severe cost center in terms of staff and infrastructure, you have to begin to speculate what LL will do about this and adjust your investments and commitments accordingly.

Desmond Shang has advocated that the Lindens merely cut out the empty sims and push mainland sims together.

If there is a full sim that is entirely empty, that's easy enough to do. But it's the patchwork of ownership/abandoned that makes that hard. How would you do it then?

Well, some Lindens could be tasked with the mammoth chore of literally cutting and stitching sim by sim. The technical aspect of that might involve the Lindens making mirror sims, which they do, and creating block by block a whole new Mainland with the parts cut out, so that suddenly if you are in, say, Atis, where half the land is abandoned, you will be smack up against the borders of another sim that used to have an "easement" between you and it, with new neighbors, possibly not a joyful experience.

I can't believe they'd do that time-consuming or labor-intensive method, although I once saw a furry copy a sim and deploy it elsewhere on top of a private island, i.e. its landscaping. And we know this is possible even with content (copybotting), which is what made me realize this isn't a technical problem, really. Lindens are god and can cut and paste land out in the ocean anyway they want. Their copy is legal and part of providing the service so they can cut and paste the entire sims over one by one and cut out land.

But another way they might do this which is more rational is to do what they did with Zindra -- create a new continent, maybe even with roughly similar landscaping and climates, and offer people to move over there for one month's free tier in exchange for junking their old land. This wasn't a day at the beach and there were lots of kinks in this program, but it more or less worked. I took part as did hundreds of others, but I hated Zindra for all kinds of reasons and sold everything there but one little dacha community. But it worked for others, especially clubs.

LL could do this voluntarily, or they could coerce people, as they did with Zindra. If you have an adult club on a mature sim, you will be closed down unless you move to Zindra -- it was mandatory for some, and others, if they liked, could make the room to get the free tier offer and dump land that maybe wasn't making a profit in M or especially PG.

How else could this be done?

LL could say they are closing the Mainland as a bad business, except for Linden Homes and their own parcels where they have welcome areas, let's say. That would be awfully sad, but again, they aren't sentimental, as the management and staff are all new people who weren't here for the early days and likely hate Mainland duty.

Then they'd say everyone who owns a Mainland parcel will get a compensation that will show up as a one-time extra huge stipend. So if you own a 512, and Linden closes the Mainland, they send you a stipend for $1000, confiscate your land, and tell you to go move into the Projects or Assisted Living in the Linden Homes. Some would find this move to a reservation acceptable.

Or they could say to large mainland owners, or those who own a whole sim or more, we will give you the equivalent in private islands, free of set-up costs, and you start paying island tier after 30 days, $295 a month. No more of this $195 grandfather stuff. Again, there'd be some who go for this. If you are struggling with a half vacant griefed up sim, and you can suddenly get a cost-free private island, you'd jump at the chance, even with the higher tier.

But then there are those of us who would hate this because we have nice sims, they are low cost ($195 in tier), they have creative, social, historical, entertainment and even religious value of one kind or another, and it just won't be the same and SL will have all the life sucked out of it.

So LL could say, sorry, we have those two offers, Linden Home for little guys, private island for big guys, and the rest, go fish. Or they could make a new half-way house, a kind of Schermerhorn or Brown, where they say, well, you people who just won't leave your land, here are some nice new fast shiny sims with landscaping that has prettier textures, and you can move your parcels there one by one, either first come first served (a madhouse) or we will move you one by one to equivalent but not identical spaces  -- if you had most people flock to the islands or LHs with the first two solutions, you might be left with a population that would be more or less manageable to move on to Shiny Town. Of course, they'd shake loose some people who would be mad and quit.

These three options I've mentioned, or even two of them are the humane and decent thing to do for an ethical business -- compensate the long-time user for change/deprecation of the product they bought, and move on. There's no guarantee LL would do this, however, as the cost would be big for them. They may be driven to saying, "Everybody out of the pool on X date, you're on your own, so long, and thanks for all the fish."

That would be like them.

Why would it be necessary for LL to do any of this -- because you might argue that they don't need to.

The answer is that these poor people are spinning thousands of servers that are not used, do not have people on them, do not pay tier into their coffers, and are a cost sink and staff headache. If you could delete them out of your server farm, great! Then the revenue that should come from them might pick up in some other, more controlled form, in the form of more LHs or more Shiny Towns, even.

Of course, there are other things the Lindens could do to fix this 25% of lost land -- that are completely different and would make life nicer for us and even them:

1. Put abandoned land to sale for $1 immediately. It used to work that way! Stop this doling out of abandoned land to people who request it -- if the Lindens think they deserve it and it is contiguous on 3 sides with their existing land -- and just put it for sale, for God's sake.

2. Stop the auctions until you sell off more of this abandoned land. Give a 30-day tier holiday to anyone who buys this new "homesteading" land to start soaking up abandoned land.

3. Remove the function of "abandon" from the user panel and make it so that all people who want to leave their land have to put it to sale, if only for $0 or $1 or whatever -- but tier-free. Some of it might still sit there for months, but some would soak up.

4. Enable anyone who owns a full Mainland sim to have global ban and prim removal powers on that sim, the special powers they apparently gave to a few special friends in the past.

5. Enable the creation of community councils through tools like Groups that enable a higher level of organization on a sim whereby people in those councils can elect officers to remove prims. Yes, this is complicated and griefy and gameable, but maybe not. Give some thought of how you solve the problem of junk piling up on no-show land which ruins the land market everywhere. 

6. Police griefing more by shutting down entry to SL from anonymizing and proxy sites. Please don't talk to me about Iranian freedom fighters. Do this for a week, and watch how griefing reduces like magic, and how only a handful of oldbie sandboxers will complain that their creativity has been harmed. Those few can be encouraged to put payment information on file and stop using proxies as no one is going to "get" their privacy.

7. Loosen restrictions on Community Portals so that more groups can be involved in this problem and have incentive to help newbies.

I realize that LL has no incentive -- speaking of incentive! -- to do this the right way. They told us they aren't abandoning the Mainland in favor of Sansar, and that they will only improve and enhance the Mainland.

But they did this by making that space/future village which immediately because completely out of reach of most pocketbooks. They did this by making games and portals that most people don't care about. I don't want a new game to play or an expensive Jetson's home. I want the trash picked up from the parcel of that idiot who hasn't logged on since 2007 and has a Charter account, or who paid two years of tier in advance (who does that?!) supposedly, never logs on, and left spinning garbage on his lawn for ever more. All of that should go so that the land around me sells instead of gets abandoned. This can be done on a ticket by ticket basis or even a concept like this: don't log in? Your land flushes off its prims after 365 days, just like an avatar you abandon and get back has no content in the inventory when you get it back.

Again, if you have good will, you find equitable solutions. If you don't, you harm people but they are only 9 % of your customers, so it doesn't matter...

Edited January 20, 2018 by Prokofy Neva

[Cedric Brown]

4 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

1. Put abandoned land to sale for $1 immediately. It used to work that way! Stop this doling out of abandoned land to people who request it -- if the Lindens think they deserve it and it is contiguous on 3 sides with their existing land -- and just put it for sale, for God's sake.

 

I vote for this recommendation. Surprised Abandoned land only constitutes 23% of mainland actually. 

[Theresa Tennyson]

On 1/20/2018 at 6:00 AM, Prokofy Neva said:

1. Put abandoned land to sale for $1 immediately. It used to work that way! Stop this doling out of abandoned land to people who request it -- if the Lindens think they deserve it and it is contiguous on 3 sides with their existing land -- and just put it for sale, for God's sake.

This chart shows exactly what happened when that was done:

You can see exactly when this policy started and stopped by the aqua bars. Note that the total land for sale more than doubled at its height. However, this chart has the same time scale as the chart you posted. It didn't slow the abandoning of land; if anything, it increased it. This was because people bought land without a workable plan to pay tier over time and had to re-abandon it shortly after. Meanwhile, the amount of land for sale by private owners dropped substantially and never recovered, even after the policy ended.

[Prokofy Neva]

That's merely your analysis of it, and it is speculative. You believe they didn't have a "workable plan" -- snort. As if land flippers and ad extortionists have any plan but flipping land until they are banned, whereupon they make new alts. Perhaps some genuine people who bought land didn't have a plan, but that's not the reason for the phenomenon of abandoned land. And it's totally not a reason not to introduce the function again NOW THAT THERE ARE POLICIES AGAINST AD EXTORTION IN PLACE.

People who live and work on sims for years and can't get the abandoned land on it because the Lindens won't give it to them and won't put it on the very long auction queue see this very differently. Their development is crippled, they can't get land on demand, they can't expand or make nice areas -- they are thwarted by this idiotic state of affairs where land doesn't come to auction OR go to people even adjacent to it unless a Linden makes a discretionary decision based on -- who knows what. 

 It should be put to sale on demand. ANY demand. Ideally, by someone who lives there, already on the sim. The Lindens are afraid of a huge administrative backlog if they work this way. But either they want tier to get paid or they don't. Anyone for any reason who asks for land to be put to sale next to them on their sim, no matter what size it is, should instantly get a cheerful reply that in 5 working days it will be there with their name on it.

This absurd, insane notion driving a DIFFERENT ad-hoc discretionary policy is that "it isn't fair to let one person get that land, it should go up on the auction so everyone has a chance".

Well this is sheer nonsense as real life doesn't work this way. Not everyone follows auctions such as to show up, nor should they. More to the point, the auctions are infected with land flippers who drive up prices by jumping into auctions and forcing up bids, then dropping out and leaving a hapless end-user to pay a big price. Flippers do this to keep their value; flippers also simply want to flip. There's nothing you can do about this in a free market -- except, you can. You can have a deeds office and publicity, a city hall, that outs the people who do this so that the actors in the market stop buying from them.

The Linden auction USED TO HAVE THIS. Every single bid had a name attached to it. Every winner was visible and kept visible for some days. Everyone knew who was buying and how. I even had a funny bidding game called Barons that would make outside wagers for fun on the basis of who would likely win any given auction, to see if their guess was right. If there was an alt who appeared that jacked up prices without buying, just to harass people, keep his price high, etc. people stopped buying from him and he stopped that practice. In normal organic life, you need not just code, but law and conventions wrapped around automatic things. We used to have more of this in SL; now we have less, because the Lindens decided to buy Ebay's auction software and that didn't have a function providing the names of the bidders and the winners. Now it is all a black box, rewarding flippers.

The simplest thing to do to start to cure this is to put abandoned land for sale instantly, so Lindens don't have the excuse that they are put into an administrative nightmare. Today is a very different time than 2011 or even 2014. There are far less land dealers. There are far less people interested in land dealing as a way to make money (it isn't). The cover of Business Week with Anshe Chung has receded far into the past. Nobody even knows this any more among newbies. So while it's not an ideal climate, it's better than it was.

Again, I'd rather have sale on demand from contiguous owners as a registrational, rather than discretionary, policy. That is anyone is given it, no matter what, unless their account is in arrears or something. Some queuing up then -- but less.

The idea that THIS POLICY of letting land go to sale immediately "caused" the lessoning of land and more abandonment overlooks some other key points:

o The original form in which land abandoned was in a big bunch of 16m squares -- lots of them. This was an outrageous, crazy thing that started the ad farm extortion craze. The Lindens thought this idea was just ducky, thinking like geeks. What better notion than to have one of their silly land numbers, based on the way servers are cut up (hence these uneven numbers of 512 and 1024 and such) to default into little 16m squares so you could "take only what you need" in a "really efficient way" -- so if you needed only a few more prims, why, 96 m would be plenty, and all your other neighbours would decorously take their "just what I need share".

The reality is this junked up sims, as unscrupulous actors swooped down, grabbed the individual 16ms for $1/m and put ad farms on them, especially in "donuts" in the middle of what had been a 512, ruining the rest of it for any other buyer (sometimes they didn't realize this). This took us four solid years of endless campaigning to begin to dislodge from SL as an extortionist practice. The Lindens only came to this position when their own sim sales began to lag because no one could risk investments of $1000 US on the auction for a full sim, or $600 for a part sim, when this devaluation process with the Bush Guy and all the rest was occuring. THAT is the real history of "letting abandoned sell" that burned real business people for years on end.

o Then finally the Lindens changed briefly for a time when you abandoned that it ALL went to sale, not chopped up automatically, and then moved to their current system of sometimes allowing a purchase of abandoned land if the amount is small and contiguous on 3 sides, and sometimes putting it on the auction, but generally letting a lot of it languish.

o The chief factor at work here in making land sales tank in SL isn't the practice of allowing abandoned land to go to sale -- that's ridiculous. It was the practice of 16m squares in multi-chunks go to sale, then the refusal to institute a policy against extortion, then copyright theft as a bigger issue, then Sansar. It's THAT hippie refusal that dragged on for years and years under the name of "creativity" that caused the woes of the Mainland; it's that "California Business Model" that allows uploading of stolen content to drive views of ads (by analogy) for revenue; it's other things.

o LL based its non-intervention on theories of creativity and freedom goaded by oldbies who got an advantage from a) old Mainland sims with no ad farms because they owned all the land there b) oldbies/midbies who had island businesses, and like LL, enjoyed the crapification of the Mainland because it threw more business their way, and enabled the Lindens to sell more expensive islands. This is the reality of this economy, and to pretend otherwise and say more abandoned land made for more abandoned land is to forget that THE LINDENS DROVE THIS with their drive to islands (who can blame them) and their insider pals with bulk discounts were even more nasty in driving this with their creation of ad farms -- with ads for their islands! and their chuckling as the mainland became a wasteland and they picked up all the refugees.

o Let's not forget other factors that crashed the land auction, real factors, not imaginary ones like "that abandoned land was allowed to go to sale".

- Ryan Linden crashed the auction one day when he thought it would be a really great idea to make all the prices the same -- in keeping with Philip's socialist and communitarian dream of making all land prices the same to be "fair". He didn't run his own RL business on these principles, but we were supposed to. The original auction had a variety of start prices based on whether a sim had a valuable telehub on them (yes they were valuable despite what certain oldbies thought about them given certain esthetic issues from some of them on their old areas), whether it was waterfront, whether it had hard-to-terraform mountain, etc. This variety of prices was vital in making the market diverse and communities diverse too, but another problem is that the Lindens refused to 

After Ryan's experiment in egalitarianism, they went back to diverse opening prices, but the damage was quite done.

- Linden Lab withdrew the telehubs, the most valuable land on the market, for purely ideological reasons driven by a few oldbies. This is a topic I've written extensively on, it's fascinating, but I'll leave it at this: Philip Linden acknowledged that most of his world's revenue and his company's came from these sims yet he caved to oldbie leftist anti-business ideology and killed them (telehubs bought by newer business people were a competition to the old boutiques on old sims held by oldbies). The land owners en masse rose as a class and said they would quit SL unless Philip compensated everyone who bought this land or he would get a lawsuit for "bait and switch". To his credit, Philip created a compensation scheme -- $6/m for every returned telehub land, half or less of its cost at that time.

But in order to force Anshe Chung to not overwhelm their system with rebates, they issued the refund (and she had had an early tipoff of the scheme and changed from rentals to sales, fooling many newbies into buying telehub land about to tank) -- but then they glutted her by putting out 40 or 50 prime white island sand sims in Mainland, almost like private islands in field. She was forced to eat them to stay in her monopolized waterfront market -- this was the beginning of her end, and also yet another stake in the coffin of faith in LL's dealings.
 

You were born in 2010 (although of course, you can always have other alts) when 7 years of bad practices had already succeeded in crippling the Mainland. The Lindens have always had a very ambivalent attitude towards any capitalism but their own as they are driven by "Better World" think in Silicon Valley; they are also reluctant to hew to the land model because they want to get away from dependency on it; they want content sales to be king and to live off their percentages, not allow a fulcrum to be created different than the creator class which is the land class. These are age-old historical problems in real countries between small-holders and craftsmen and so on and it isn't resolved here, either.

Reality is not the numbers of a graph, plus whatever notion people want to attach to what they think is "cause" and not even "correlation. 

Organic life as it happens even in worlds created by numeric values is the more important part of the story.

I am not matching unrelated things -- a graph, and my beliefs.I am citing a series of real historical events, actual policies, and their devastating consequences.

Everybody in the land business (and that would not be you from all I can tell) understands that the Lindens devalued their product from the beginning until after 2010 (when Jack Linden left and Cyn Linden came in) and then several years after until the ad policy was firmly established and enforced. Yes, the ad policy came in 2008; but with numerous problems and lack of enforcement; the 2012 date on this wiki might indicate when it was really solidified (that's my recollection but I'm happy to see other evidence).

Anyone who looks at the abandoned land issue and can't see their way clear to understanding that was caused by a) four years of ad farms crippling the view and value followed by four plus years of poor enforcement of policies; b) poor management and even crashing of the auction; c) other chronic problems like indulgence of griefing -- is not acting in good faith.

And now to look at the graph again -- what happened in 2014, after ad extortion should have been "cured," and many other things (though not the silly and obstructionist abandoned land purchase policy).

And the answer is....SANSAR! Talk of Sansar was at least in 2014; the first actual beta group was 2015, but talk and buzz was a long time before that. From the very first confirmation that there would be a Sansar -- another, better world, but not compatible with this one -- some people simply quit. They withdraw. They said enough "bait and switch". Others reduced their activity enormously. They stopped buying on auctions or inworld. Some like me only occasionally bought abandoned primland if they could convince a Linden to sell it but hardly went on the auctions with are populated by essentially the new form of extortionist: the people who drive up prices without accountability as they are anonymous. Still others were knocked out of the running by the emergence of mesh, which is part of the Sansar thing.

Another important date to figure out was the last date of the Mainland whole-sim auctions. The fall in land purchases definitely correlates with that (I'll look it up) because no one could buy a whole sim (or very rarely) any more and thus control it entirely without ad farms and surprises.

 

 

Edited January 21, 2018 by Prokofy Neva

[Qie Niangao]

The Lab's announced intent to move sim hosting to the cloud may help with this, because they're surely looking at ways to more efficiently virtualize the simulation. Expanding and revamping the existing "auto idle" function to further reduce unnecessary sim processing could make vacant Mainland less costly, however it's distributed. That would further reduce the incentive to "consolidate" and shutdown Mainland sims.

And yet, the barrenness of some parts of Mainland can be pretty depressing. Unless there's something encouraging more land to be owned and used, I doubt it would help much to add all the abandoned land to the glut of land already available. I occasionally check the auctions, and it appears to me that the "land Lindens" are watching as parcels hit the "abandoned" inventory and they pretty promptly enqueue for auction those with any prospect of sale. Most get the $L0.5/sq.m. opening bid, but not all. The problem seems to be lack of demand, not a shortage of supply, and market forces are artificially constrained: however low the sales price drops, it's nothing compared to the fixed recurring cost of tier.

[Theresa Tennyson]

1 hour ago, Prokofy Neva said:

I am not matching unrelated things -- a graph, and my beliefs.I am citing a series of real historical events, actual policies, and their devastating consequences.

 

The things you're describing all occurred before the start of the charts you and I posted in this thread. That wiki entry was actually created in 2009 with largely identical policies (tip: if you go to the "History" entry on a wiki page you can read each version of it throughout its existence.)

The charts you and I posted both start in December 2010, when I was in Second Life and saw things happening with my own eyes.. (It's also worth noting that the time distance between bars is quite variable. The last four bars are each at least a year apart - 2015 is skipped entirely - but the earlier bars represent surveys taken more often.) Abandoned land was automatically put on sale in April, 2011.

http://dwellonit.taterunino.net/2011/04/26/price-alterations-for-abandoned-second-life-land/

Now look at the land sales chart: After the start of the policy through about the end of 2011 the amount of abandoned land started dropping. This was probably people buying up good, useful abandoned land. My "family" bought land at this time that we still hold.

Now look at 2012. Three things happen.

1) The TOTAL amount of land for sale begins to increase rapidly, then toward the end of the year it begins to drop from this level just as quickly.

2) The amount of land for sale by SECOND LIFE RESIDENTS starts declining and never returns.

3) The amount of ABANDONED LAND starts increasing and never stops.

The Lab stopped putting abandoned land on sale automatically somewhere around March 2013.

http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/general-sl-discussion/81770-newly-abandoned-not-sale.html

The backlog of Linden-owned (i.e. abandoned) land starts tightening up to the pre-policy-change level within a few months. Private land sales never recover and land abandoning continues to rise.

Ebbe Altberg became CEO of Linden Lab in February 2014; the first rumors of a vague future project that was to become Sansar weren't until a few months later. I'm guessing June from the date I bought a car I remember buying right after these rumors started coming out.

And I. Was. There.

Edited January 21, 2018 by Theresa Tennyson

[ChinRey]

8 hours ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

Ebbe Altberg became CEO of Linden Lab in February 2014; the first rumors of a vague future project that was to become Sansar weren't until a few months later. I'm guessing June from the date I bought a car I remember buying right after these rumors started coming out.

You're spot on. It seems the first time Ebbe Altberg mentioned Sansar in public, was at the TPV meeting 20th June 2014.

 

Edit: this is off topic but it's such a common misunderstanding. The development of Sansar did not begin in 2014, it was much earlier than that. Although he was a little bit vague, it seems Rod Humble hinted at it as early as 2012 and the work may well ahve started even before that.

Edited January 22, 2018 by ChinRey
Editing

[ChinRey]

On 20.1.2018 at 4:25 PM, Cedric Brown said:

Surprised Abandoned land only constitutes 23% of mainland actually. 

Keep in mind that a substantial part of mainland is used (or not) by Linden Lab themselves. The infobus, Linden Village, Blake Sea, the Sea of Fables, the Guls of Moles, the Heavy Metal sims, the sandboxes, the various public Mole and content Linden builds, the roads and waterways, the forgotten Gaeta sims... The list goes on and on and it wouldn't surprise me at all if it adds up to more than a quarter of the mainland.

[iamyourneighbour]

If you want to see abandoned, come to Jeojeot. The pros? You can literally buy out a whole sim unobstructed that's how empty it is. 

[Chic Aeon]

Just one thought about that abandoned land. A few years ago when it was starting in earnest the framerates plummeted NOTICEABLY on mainland. I was on serveral plots at that time and all of them were slow as molasses when they had not been before.  I assumed (no intel at all) that this was because Linden Lab was putting more properties on the same server. 

Think about it. I know several folks who are almost the whole sim of actual people and they are on very small plots. There is no reason to have a sim on the same level of service for two people as it would for twenty or forty. So moving more sims (I think of it as 'stacking' but sure there is a real technical term) onto one server only makes sense.

Hence the "using too many resources" argument would be negated.  So far as The Lab is concerned it is no more than it ever was. This is just one scenario but certainly a plausible one talking to the folks I know who do this RL stuff :D. 

 

Selling off all the abandoned land would just glut the market and make it impossible for anyone to sell at any price above "free". So I don't think that is a solution at all.  I am still in the "give folks 1024" contingent overall, but where we are now I think there is really no viable answer. There have been choices made along they way (mostly for quick bucks) that were the downfall of mainland. And lots of folks LIKE the fact that they are just about the only one on a sim LOL. I get that too.

 

ChinRey is absolutely correct that Sansar was in the works way before the official leak. I had a friend who partnered with a techie with LL connections and she actually told me. But what I didn't understand at the time was WHAT she was telling me. I thought the devs had quit Linden Lab and were going off to make their OWN world, not a world for The Lab.  

 

It is a little late in the game now. I am not sure that things can get 'fixed' other than the citizens finding their own way. It isn't all that different form our (US) government. Sadly so.  So we do what we can do and make our lives the best we can while we can with what we can. 

 

[Prokofy Neva]

17 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

The Lab's announced intent to move sim hosting to the cloud may help with this, because they're surely looking at ways to more efficiently virtualize the simulation. Expanding and revamping the existing "auto idle" function to further reduce unnecessary sim processing could make vacant Mainland less costly, however it's distributed. That would further reduce the incentive to "consolidate" and shutdown Mainland sims.

And yet, the barrenness of some parts of Mainland can be pretty depressing. Unless there's something encouraging more land to be owned and used, I doubt it would help much to add all the abandoned land to the glut of land already available. I occasionally check the auctions, and it appears to me that the "land Lindens" are watching as parcels hit the "abandoned" inventory and they pretty promptly enqueue for auction those with any prospect of sale. Most get the $L0.5/sq.m. opening bid, but not all. The problem seems to be lack of demand, not a shortage of supply, and market forces are artificially constrained: however low the sales price drops, it's nothing compared to the fixed recurring cost of tier.

@Qie Niangao But that's not how you watch the issue, obviously, Qie, watching the Lindens to see that they put up parcels "pretty promptly" on the auction. That's the other end of the telescope.

Of course they put up their huge queue and backlog "pretty promptly" LOL. But there's a backlog! And most of it not in queue.

The way you watch this issue is to look at real sims. And as I never tire of explaining, I have land on 50 sims. That means I see 200 sims because of my land and all the land around them. And that's a pretty good sample. 

So I can only say, do you do that? You have contiguous land on 2-3 sims. Do you fly around and observe regularly what is happening elsewhere?

I do, and I see stuff that has literally been abandoned for years that is prime waterfront. It's extraordinary. I see the Lindens sometimes picking out what is more valuable, but other times responding to user requests and putting up stuff to frustrate that user because now he has to bid against flippers.

It's not a lack of demand. It's a LACK OF POLICY. You must never ask for abandoned land. I have hundreds of time. The Lindens do not sell it on demand. They dole it out on a discretionary basis.

@Theresa Tennyson I need to get even better at laying traps for trolls by learning to do it consciously!! I'm scoring 2 for 2 already today. unconsciously. But I deliberately described things before the charts tank knowing that you or someone would jump on that and gloat. That's why I explained the later developments of Sansar, in 2012-2014, and consolidation of ad farm policy by 2012 (which you ignore because it doesn't affect you) -- hello! And long-term developments are important to understand for user confidence and the market long-term.

You said "You can see exactly when this policy started and stopped by the aqua bars. Note that the total land for sale more than doubled at its height. However, this chart has the same time scale as the chart you posted. It didn't slow the abandoning of land; if anything, it increased it." 

Perhaps you'll admit now that the chart REALLY shows not "what happened when Linden allowed abandoned land to sell immediately" because a) they did that in early days in 16m chunks and stopped; b) they did this later and stopped fairly quickly then did that OTHER thing which was STOP it and STOP demand requests by ticket. THAT is the factor.

Tateru Nino is never an authority for me on anything, anyone interested in the long version can IM me. Next?

There are explanations for every single thing you cite that you aren't admitting:

o 2012 events are a response to the previous 7 years of erosion of user confidence. And I mentioned 2012 as the start of Sansar rumours and that's WAY important.
o People leave SL and don't have land to sell or even abandon AND they also don't buy new land such as to have it to abandon any more! People forget that when, say, capital flight reduces from Russia, it's because there's no more capital to flee. 
o Abandoned land increases because there is NO WAY TO BUY IT ON DEMAND. You can't. You've helpfully identified when the Lindens stopped automatic sale and therefore we know now that it's not that "abandoned land only makes more abandoned land" (your unsupported theory) but that the policy not to allow automatic sales anymore depresses that activity enormously. Thanks for making my case for me!
o Private land sales is a different dynamic that has to do with higher prices and so on.
o And thanks again for making my case for me -- enter Ebbe 2014, cue Sansar. So YOUR theory that "abandoned land only makes more abandoned land," like it's "poor project planning" (your concept) -- just unsupported. Thanks for admitting that, although you didn't, actually.

You were there and you missed the obvious fact (because you don't have enough land or don't observe enough land to see how this cripples thing) that not being able to get abandoned land on demand in any form is a huge crippling thing. You cannot expand your holdings or beautify your neighbourhood or work with others. It's not that somebody sees abandoned land, and like copycot suicides, abandons their land, too. Doesn't work that way.

@ChinRey but she's not spot on, because I first made that point, she didn't. She claimed that "abandoned land increases because of poor project planning" and other nonsense. Then when she was trying to "rebut" me, she made my arguments again. Oh, well.

We know that Sansar rumours started in 2012, we all remember that who remember Rod Humble and various meetings in and out of world. So that's why I said the tanking starting in 2012 is THAT, and not silly things like poor planning and more abandoned land makes for more abandoned land.

As @imyourneighbour points out, nothing could be better for a rental than a half sim of "easement" for your rentals community provided by abandoned land.

Except...the Lindens won't let you buy any of it OR put it on the auction, as anyone who watches this on more than one sim knows perfectly well.

@ChicAeon -- maybe the Lindens reduced performance and helped abandon land to increase, yes.

But your idea of glutting just doesn't hold for the one principle and proposal I am making -- ON DEMAND land which you ASK FOR AND GET. I don't think you and others understand this. Hundreds of offers to buy land outright in all sizes go in. Tens of sale sets come out. Tens of auction sets come out. If you fix that, it's not a glut. It's conceding that there is pent-up buyer demand that will buy once you stop your ideological shilly-shallying. Giving land to end-users who request it isn't a "glut," but a tier revenue raise. Sure, some flippers may request it. But if they keep to their "contiguous" or "same sim" concept, they reduce that.

From there, you can see whether automatic abandon-to-sale works. Perhaps on a sim-by-sim basis. Perhaps only for land of 1024 or less. All kinds of brakes on it can be conceived once you have a will to really fix it -- which is not there.
 

Edited January 22, 2018 by Prokofy Neva

[Theresa Tennyson]

2 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Theresa Tennyson I need to get even better at laying traps for trolls by learning to do it consciously!! I'm scoring 2 for 2 already today. unconsciously. But I deliberately described things before the charts tank knowing that you or someone would jump on that and gloat.

Of course you did.

That's why I explained the later developments of Sansar, in 2012-2014, and consolidation of ad farm policy by 2012 (which you ignore because it doesn't affect you) -- hello! And long-term developments are important to understand for user confidence and the market long-term.

You said "You can see exactly when this policy started and stopped by the aqua bars. Note that the total land for sale more than doubled at its height. However, this chart has the same time scale as the chart you posted. It didn't slow the abandoning of land; if anything, it increased it." 

Perhaps you'll admit now that the chart REALLY shows not "what happened when Linden allowed abandoned land to sell immediately" because a) they did that in early days in 16m chunks and stopped; b) they did this later and stopped fairly quickly then did that OTHER thing which was STOP it and STOP demand requests by ticket. THAT is the factor.

The "later and fairly quickly" period started in early 2011 and lasted until January 2013.

https://modemworld.me/2013/01/19/changes-to-the-abandoned-land-policy/

Tateru Nino is never an authority for me on anything, anyone interested in the long version can IM me. Next?

There are explanations for every single thing you cite that you aren't admitting:

o 2012 events are a response to the previous 7 years of erosion of user confidence. And I mentioned 2012 as the start of Sansar rumours and that's WAY important.

 People leave SL and don't have land to sell or even abandon AND they also don't buy new land such as to have it to abandon any more! People forget that when, say, capital flight reduces from Russia, it's because there's no more capital to flee. 

o Abandoned land increases because there is NO WAY TO BUY IT ON DEMAND. You can't. You've helpfully identified when the Lindens stopped automatic sale and therefore we know now that it's not that "abandoned land only makes more abandoned land" (your unsupported theory) but that the policy not to allow automatic sales anymore depresses that activity enormously. Thanks for making my case for me!

I was able to buy abandoned land right next to my properties quite easily, in various locations, by making a case for it in my support ticket after automatic selling stopped. Even extremely well-placed waterfront land. Of course, my major landholding account isn't a well-known troll who complains about the Lindens constantly.

o Private land sales is a different dynamic that has to do with higher prices and so on.
o And thanks again for making my case for me -- enter Ebbe 2014, cue Sansar. So YOUR theory that "abandoned land only makes more abandoned land," like it's "poor project planning" (your concept) -- just unsupported. Thanks for admitting that, although you didn't, actually.

You were there and you missed the obvious fact (because you don't have enough land or don't observe enough land to see how this cripples thing) that not being able to get abandoned land on demand in any form is a huge crippling thing. You cannot expand your holdings or beautify your neighbourhood or work with others. It's not that somebody sees abandoned land, and like copycot suicides, abandons their land, too. Doesn't work that way.

@ChinRey but she's not spot on, because I first made that point, she didn't. She claimed that "abandoned land increases because of poor project planning" and other nonsense. Then when she was trying to "rebut" me, she made my arguments again. Oh, well.

I've seen the "poor project planning" thing multiple times. My family owns most of its land in two distinct areas; one area since 2011 and one since 2013. In both locations I've seen large tracts of neigboring land be bought up after the last owner abandoned it, started projects that were sometimes expanded, and then abandoned again within a few months. I've even seen the same account buy land, build it up, abandon it, and then repeat the entire process with the same land about a year later. Meanwhile, these abandoned projects leave lots that are so large that they aren't practical for someone who wants a smallish lot for a house to buy.

We know that Sansar rumours started in 2012, we all remember that who remember Rod Humble and various meetings in and out of world. So that's why I said the tanking starting in 2012 is THAT, and not silly things like poor planning and more abandoned land makes for more abandoned land.

Show me evidence of any rumors of a "new Second Life" in 2012. The chatter I saw back then was more of random wondering about the future, or Second Life closing or blah blah blah. The concentrated "new world" chatter only started in 2014 after Ebbe Linden mentioned new developments in a magazine article.

As @imyourneighbour points out, nothing could be better for a rental than a half sim of "easement" for your rentals community provided by abandoned land.

Except...the Lindens won't let you buy any of it OR put it on the auction, as anyone who watches this on more than one sim knows perfectly well.

@ChicAeon -- maybe the Lindens reduced performance and helped abandon land to increase, yes.

But your idea of glutting just doesn't hold for the one principle and proposal I am making -- ON DEMAND land which you ASK FOR AND GET. I don't think you and others understand this. Hundreds of offers to buy land outright in all sizes go in. Tens of sale sets come out. Tens of auction sets come out. If you fix that, it's not a glut. It's conceding that there is pent-up buyer demand that will buy once you stop your ideological shilly-shallying. Giving land to end-users who request it isn't a "glut," but a tier revenue raise. Sure, some flippers may request it. But if they keep to their "contiguous" or "same sim" concept, they reduce that.

If there's a "pent-up buyer demand", why are those waterfront lots on Honister which are on sale for L$1.5/square meter or less (i.e. not really much higher than they'd be sold for as abandoned land) still sitting on the market? Even the major Mainland land entrepreneur whose land is directly next to them hasn't seen fit to snap them up.

From there, you can see whether automatic abandon-to-sale works. Perhaps on a sim-by-sim basis. Perhaps only for land of 1024 or less. All kinds of brakes on it can be conceived once you have a will to really fix it -- which is not there.
 

 

Edited January 22, 2018 by Theresa Tennyson

[Callum Meriman]

A lot (but not all) of the reason for abandoned is threefold - that we have a decreasing number of residents, along with a large number of private estates renting for the same as tier, and the inescapable fact that mainland is quite simply butt-ugly.

Sure, mainland is interesting and ever changing, but it's a freaking ugly mess, and all too often something beautiful that you "buy into" suddenly turns to ugly full-bright privacy screens or blue domes blocking your views and casting shadows. We've all been burnt by that over the last decade.

If mainland looked a little nicer, maybe it would attract a few more people. For example, I've always dreamed of the Lab creating a team of resident gophers (less powers than moles) who can spend time beautifying the vast tracts of abandoned prime granite or wide open prairies of empty mountainous grassland. Gophers would be Prok's 'clean up crew' I guess.

But that's really an aside, and more just wanting all those boringly empty sims to look a little nicer.

 

The biggest problem the Lab should consider is that if easy to get, cheap, mainland draws too many people away from estates then estates will drop regions, and that ultimately costs the lab more to their bottom line.

If the ability to buy abandoned land without auction happened it would need to be set up so that sales could only be requested for abandoned land that adjoined a parcel you already owned in the same region. Allowing anyone to take any part of abandoned mainland without a foothold already could upset that rather fine balance between mainland and estates.

As Qie mentions, it's sort of moot really, soon enough the regions will be cloud hosted and can have a minimal operational state with very low cost to the lab.

[Prokofy Neva]

2 hours ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

 

As I pointed out in making this joke, I didn't consciously set a troll trap, but you two fell in any way. I saw in my post that I had addressed the pre-crash era more than the post. I thought, "the trolls will merely discount everything I say and hammer on my lack of information on the post-crash". But then I shrugged and said to myself, so what? If they do that, the answer is that a 7-year trend precedes it, and the rumours of 2012 -- and that IS the answer.

It's like people who argue whether the Soviet Union collapsed because 75 years of Communism killed it, or because a few years of Western-style experimentation with something remotely resembling free markets killed it, and obviously it's the former. You don't say that a 75-year-old smoker who began smoking when he was 15 died because he smoked filterless cigarettes in the year before he died.

This idea of "I was able to do it, so you must be wrong" is what is so laughable about the forums. (Marian McCallister is particularly hilarious in making all those types of claimes, which only tend to confirm that those who remain inworld for long periods and befriend oldbies and Lindens succeed LOL).

Er, I have also bought from the Lindens, bought waterfront that they could have sold for more, and bought even non-contiguous land. Hello, I do have more experience in this and the Lindens at the end of the day don't care if I have a critical blog or criticize them on the forums (some of the departing ones would tell me that this was extremely important for me to have done and I should keep doing it). My point -- although it might sail right over the heads of anyone who once got some land from Guy -- is that you can't ALWAYS do this. You can't do this EVERY TIME. You might get it one or two times out of ten -- you just don't have enough repeats to see the trend. You haven't talked to frustrated neighbours. You haven't seen people move out of sims in frustration. You just don't have enough experiential data. The Lindens do, and they know full well if they published these requests it would reveal that what I say is true.

Same for your "poor planning" concept. I've seen poor planning, too LOL. Like here's one: A guy buys some land that suddenly, for no reason in the world, after years and years of languishing, the Lindens put on the auction. Now, of course this was a fresh opportunity to wonder -- why don't the Lindens make ALL water in an enclosed pond of the type they have sprinkled over the Moth Continent Linden land so no one can grief it up, devalue the sim, and force abandonments??? They already hold so much land -- if they fixed their ponds from the start they'd save themselves a lot of cancellations. This has been a real wrecking ball on that continent.

But, years of lying fallow suddenly seemed "too much," they put up that land, and a guy bought it. Then he looked around him and began to panic. Two or three adjacent parcels with nice waterfront had been abandoned, and not so long ago. Why? Well, few people feel comfortable owning a waterfront parcel that may become a water-behind parcel when the Lindens sell that water abandoned in front of it, and some idiot puts up a tower or a giant ship, which we'd had in that pond before -- they couldn't take their Titanic to a private island or a open waterfront, it had to overwhelm this little pond. So this guy began to worry and far from poor planning, he thought up a brilliant plan -- he put up "the Kawaii Mall" on that water he bought, put up gigantic, gaping mouth fish of the worst I've seen in SL, put huge spinning and glowing signs around, and pretended he was in the mall business. I had 4-5 tenants promptly move out of my waterfront looking at this horror, so I said, what on earth are you thinking? You couldn't find flatland in the middle of a sim for this stupidity and let people come from search?

Then he told me his diabolical plan. He planned to ask the Lindens to put those 2-3 waterfronts on the auction. They surely would, he reasoned, then no one would bid on them because they looked out on an ugly Kawaii (!) Mall and he could thereby scoop up that waterfront for $1 or $2/m meter on the auction.

I told him that if he kept this up, not only would I bid him underwater, I would put ban all around him so his land would become a prison. So he removed his uglies -- good neighbours are worth more than diabolical plans. And the reality is, he won those auctions any way and picked up those waterfronts but then -- poor planning again -- the tier became too much. He then offered me to buy the water. Now I have adjacent waterfront abandoned that at any moment itself could threaten my empty water, which I keep empty as a courtesy to neighbours and put things up in the sky instead. 

Sure, poor planning, but diabolical planning and also another thing -- spite, stupidity, and actual heedlessness. People buy stuff and do stay for years, but then their husband dies in RL, they exit SL quickly and don't return. These things happen.

Looking at all the little stories I know of like this on dozens of sims, I don't see that "poor planning" is the issue on anyone's part except the Lindens. They didn't lay out their continents with much thought, nor develop rules for zoning or the minimum of effort to prevent conflict drivers like water for sale in the middle of the pond.

Honister is an interesting story, though, not typical. It was abandoned by a long-time user who complained that the Lindens' "took away his power" and he abandoned all his land, including that whole sim of Honister. It IMMEDIATELY went on the auction -- funny, that. It immediately went to sale -- and the best parts of it sold to end users who made nice builds -- those Mainland islands weren't cheap. Then the seller put the water there to very high prices (to prevent them messing up the whole sim) and put the very large waterfront (8192 is large for this area) to $1.6. So like everything you claim, there's a larger context beyond the 1/0 -- I happen to know this situation intimately and I also can look at the map over a week and see the seller's strategy -- sell Mainland islands for a whole bunch, keep the water very high to reassure those Mainland island buyers, and set the waterfront next to them low so they'll be tempted to buy it. or so it will have a quick sale and relieve his tier -- while his little waters take their time to sell for a whole bunch. That's good planning, and you can't see it. 

I don't suppose an actual news article by SLHamlet with quotations from an actual CEO then, Rod Humble, would be enough to convince you that the rumors in fact had confirmation, but here it is.

This article in December 2012 merely validates finally what quite a few people heard for months before, and took action accordingly. I know I did!
 

For most people, that would be enough proof.

Edited January 22, 2018 by Prokofy Neva

[Prokofy Neva]

1 hour ago, Callum Meriman said:

A lot (but not all) of the reason for abandoned is threefold - that we have a decreasing number of residents, along with a large number of private estates renting for the same as tier, and the inescapable fact that mainland is quite simply butt-ugly.

Sure, mainland is interesting and ever changing, but it's a freaking ugly mess, and all too often something beautiful that you "buy into" suddenly turns to ugly full-bright privacy screens or blue domes blocking your views and casting shadows. We've all been burnt by that over the last decade.

If mainland looked a little nicer, maybe it would attract a few more people. For example, I've always dreamed of the Lab creating a team of resident gophers (less powers than moles) who can spend time beautifying the vast tracts of abandoned prime granite or wide open prairies of empty mountainous grassland. Gophers would be Prok's 'clean up crew' I guess.

But that's really an aside, and more just wanting all those boringly empty sims to look a little nicer.

 

The biggest problem the Lab should consider is that if easy to get, cheap, mainland draws too many people away from estates then estates will drop regions, and that ultimately costs the lab more to their bottom line.

If the ability to buy abandoned land without auction happened it would need to be set up so that sales could only be requested for abandoned land that adjoined a parcel you already owned in the same region. Allowing anyone to take any part of abandoned mainland without a foothold already could upset that rather fine balance between mainland and estates.

As Qie mentions, it's sort of moot really, soon enough the regions will be cloud hosted and can have a minimal operational state with very low cost to the lab.

I agree about your three over-arching reasons -- less residents, and less Premiums, so less stability; more private estates now with more prims and more attractive, especially homesteads; and sure, Mainland is god-awful in places.

But not everywhere. Large swathes are perfectly fine because people have worked at it for 10 years (not only me). 

Yes, their work can be threatened at the edges, but people work around. Sometimes they just flee -- they are the ones abandoning -- and go somewhere else to cheap land and start over -- at these prices, you have that flexibility to get out of bad neighbour situations you couldn't years ago. You're not factoring that in.

Who can take a large tract of 5000 sims or whatever, and make some overarching "look" to them? Not residents, even in land councils cooperating across sims (there are a few of those but generally the idea couldn't take off because there were no automatic tools to encourage it and Lindens don't like policies if they can avoid them).

I already said that the first step is land on demand from the contiguous or same sim. This is very basic. But I estimate it would only soak up 10%, say. That's because there are just too many giant tracts of land that are the result of failed malls and clubs that people abandoned because of copybotting, griefing, and low cashouts with more and more fees and a devalued Linden -- and -- and even bigger reason -- failed love affairs. The failed love affairs of SL are a big driver of mobility and economic failure.

The Lindens' recap of costs with their cloud hosting is great for them, but it does nothing for us.

It doesn't help the Mainland look better, it merely delays their inevitable decision either to dump it entirely or pinch it together.

I don't know how to incentivize the Lindens on this. The extra tier from getting 10% or 20% of the abandoned land under tier may not be enough for them, give the administrative costs.

Making new tools to enable people to create communities and vote on things like no-shows with ugly builds and no autoreturn, demanding that they be cleared if the person doesn't log in for 90 days -- these are too exotic and will be viciously fought against by forums regs who think this is middle-class Trump American Disney power messing up their sophisticated and underappreciated creativity.

There are also issues we can't see, that the Lindens don't tell us. There are puzzlements as to why certain land devaluing everything for miles by spinning towers, where the owner hasn't logged in for two years for sure (you can see his log in dates in his groups), are not able to be abandoned. (Requesting that land become abandoned is another avenue of activity that I and others have been involved in, and this is an uphill struggle). Who would pay for a 1024 account more than $72 a year at a time? If they aren't labelled "Charter Member" (tier free 4096 for life) and aren't in a group, how does their build remain on their land for 2 years? The answer might be "Because that's our board member's son." Or "because that's a Linden who made a test alt to test server speed and we need to keep that." Who the heck knows! They aren't telling!

Lindens do favours for their old friends and sometimes that's a good thing, if it means that someone with an elaborate build that had lots of visitors and appreciation gets to keep their build even if tier isn't paid until they can pay it in a few months. I've seen situations like that.

But we're not talking about such edge cases most of the time...

[Callum Meriman]

44 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Making new tools to enable people to create communities and vote on things like no-shows with ugly builds and no autoreturn, demanding that they be cleared if the person doesn't log in for 90 days

...

There are puzzlements as to why certain land devaluing everything for miles by spinning towers, where the owner hasn't logged in for two years for sure (you can see his log in dates in his groups), are not able to be abandoned. (Requesting that land become abandoned is another avenue of activity that I and others have been involved in, and this is an uphill struggle). 

Mostly I agree, but this is a difficult one, as it doesn't allow for those who through computer fault, health, employment, or service to country reasons take an extended holiday. How would you feel if you bought 8192sqm at $90/sqm for some Blake Sea mainland (so almost US$3000) and you found real life called you away for 4 months? That when you came back your land was stolen and your US$3000 lost?

I played another game for a while - SOE's Landmark - it was a game where you could claim land, on which you pre-paid a rental in silver. Once your silver pre-payment ran out the land was cleared and other people could take it. The system was set up so you could only prepay 2 weeks of silver. A shorter time scale, but a similar idea to your brainstorming. The problem was that quite a few people needed to take breaks, and each time they did they lost their land. It caused a lot of resentment.

I'll throw an edge case at you, there is one sim where I have a fairly large statue of Jesus, surrounded by most of a region of abandoned mud on all sides. (I used to own the mud, but got tired of paying for bad ground textures, so abandoned that and bought a region instead). Thing is, and this is where I throw an edge case at you, one of my alts owns that land, and due to a number of reasons he hasn't logged in for ages.

Ah, but you say, let's talk about the RL person and not the AV, so, how do you know that ugly tower with the MIA for 2 years owner you mention isn't similar?

Yeah something needs to be done about abandoned land, but this one idea of yours is way too communist for me. I really don't think it's right that you want the state (LL) to be empowered to take someone's personal property, that's too much like what happened under Stalin or Mao.

Edited January 22, 2018 by Callum Meriman
added a picture XD

[ChinRey]

10 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

Just one thought about that abandoned land. A few years ago when it was starting in earnest the framerates plummeted NOTICEABLY on mainland. I was on serveral plots at that time and all of them were slow as molasses when they had not been before.  I assumed (no intel at all) that this was because Linden Lab was putting more properties on the same server.

That is very unlikely. Rendering is done by the viewer and content are delivered straight from the assets servers. For a static scene it shouldn't matter at all to the framerate how busy the sim server is.

A more likely explanation is that abandoned land tends to have a lot of exposed ground and the system ground in SL is very render heavy. Generally, the more of it you can hide with items or landscaping, the higher your frame rate will be.

[ChinRey]

5 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

@ChinRey but she's not spot on, because I first made that point, she didn't. She claimed that "abandoned land increases because of poor project planning" and other nonsense. Then when she was trying to "rebut" me, she made my arguments again. Oh, well.

I did not respond to her post as a whole, only to the one sentence I quoted.

[Cedric Brown]

23 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

The Lab's announced intent to move sim hosting to the cloud may help with this, because they're surely looking at ways to more efficiently virtualize the simulation.

OFF TOPIC; Hi Qie, you seem knowledgeable on tech. Please help me understand why moving sim hosting to the "cloud" is different than what happens now?  My understanding is currently sim hosting is a computer server in a building that is running 4 or so regions on its hard drive. And my understanding of the "cloud" is again, a bunch of servers in a warehouse that run databases, programs etc. Just another server in a building. 

[ChinRey]

4 hours ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

Show me evidence of any rumors of a "new Second Life" in 2012. The chatter I saw back then was more of random wondering about the future, or Second Life closing or blah blah blah. The concentrated "new world" chatter only started in 2014 after Ebbe Linden mentioned new developments in a magazine article.

https://modemworld.me/2012/10/16/rod-humble-hints-at-more-virtual-worlds-in-lls-future/

In his early comments about Sansar, Ebbe Altberg said he expected it to be launched in 2015 and that it might happen in 2014. No matter how much spin and optimism and "CEO estimates" we add to the equation, there is no way he would have said that if he hadn't believed the development process had come much further than what it could possibly have after only six months.

Edited January 22, 2018 by ChinRey

[ChinRey]

39 minutes ago, Cedric Brown said:

Please help me understand why moving sim hosting to the "cloud" is different than what happens now?  My understanding is currently sim hosting is a computer server in a building that is running 4 or so regions on its hard drive. And my understanding of the "cloud" is again, a bunch of servers in a warehouse that run databases, programs etc. Just another server in a building.

The difference is that a cloud host has a network of servers all over the world, Akami, the biggest specialized cloud host and the one LL is currently using, has servers located in more than 100 countries.

When it comes to content delivery that means shorter distance between you and the content delivery server and that again means faster and cheaper data transfer.

It's hard to see any such benefits for the sim servers though. You can't split the functionality of one of those across several locations to serve people in different places and when it comes to performance, it's more important to keep servers hosting adjacent sims as close as possible to each other than to the user. An isolated sim or sim cluster that gets most of its traffic from one part of the world, should gain from being cloud hosted but there probably aren't many places like that in SL and I suppose moving to the clouds is mostly about getting cheaper hosting than performance improvement.

Edited January 22, 2018 by ChinRey

[Theresa Tennyson]

5 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

I don't suppose an actual news article by SLHamlet with quotations from an actual CEO then, Rod Humble, would be enough to convince you that the rumors in fact had confirmation, but here it is.

This article in December 2012 merely validates finally what quite a few people heard for months before, and took action accordingly. I know I did!
 

For most people, that would be enough proof.

That article in December 2011 sets up for the announcement of...

(wait for it...)

Patterns (the Minecraft clone), Creatorverse (a 2D puzzle-type game), Dio (a website creator) and that "create your own adventure" thing I'd forgotten the name of, and the purchase of faux-Steam service Desura.

Forgot about those, didn't you? Well, so did everyone else.

[ChinRey]

44 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

Forgot about those, didn't you? Well, so did everyone else.

Not me.

 

44 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

That article in December 2011 sets up for the announcement of...

Maybe, maybe not. Inara's articles and Rod Humble's comment to one of them, seem to indicate something far more substantial though and they are from late 2012.

It's really off topic for what you and Prokofy seem to be discussing anyway. SL users wouldn't have reacted to the news about Sansar before they actually knew about it. So the only relevant date in that context is when it was announced and that was late June 2014.

Edited January 22, 2018 by ChinRey

[Theresa Tennyson]

3 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

Not me.

 

Maybe, maybe not. Inara's articles and Rod Humble's comment to one of them, seem to indicate something far more substantial though and they are from late 2012.

It's really off topic for what you and Prokofy seem to be discussing anyway. SL users wouldn't have reacted to the news about Sansar before they actually knew about it. So the only relevant date in that context is when it was announced and that was late June 2014.

Theresa Tennyson twirls her hands and then holds them with palms up and fingers slightly curled, with one arm close to her chest and the other extended, and cocks her head to the side with a raised eyebrow, nonverbally saying, "Well, will you tell HIM that?"

[Callum Meriman]

7 hours ago, Cedric Brown said:

OFF TOPIC; Hi Qie, you seem knowledgeable on tech. Please help me understand why moving sim hosting to the "cloud" is different than what happens now?  My understanding is currently sim hosting is a computer server in a building that is running 4 or so regions on its hard drive. And my understanding of the "cloud" is again, a bunch of servers in a warehouse that run databases, programs etc. Just another server in a building. 

CPU/RAM capacity is elastic in a well designed cloud. As something needs more resources it can be applied, as it needs less it can be removed.