Second Norway is bankrupt

[Aethelwine]

34 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

That's interesting and promising. It would set a new precedence if anything comes out of it though. If LL offers Ey a bailout, there is bound to be quite a lot of other estate owners who want the same.

I had a look at both Second Norway and Sailors Cove today and so far there isn't anything happening at all. The estates are still owned by Ey Ren but all the vacant rental boxes at Second Norway (I didn't check SC for this) are locked.

I'm surprised there is no mention of Sailors Cove in this btw. I would have thought that would be the first to go if Ey Ren was downsizing or giving up. Second Norway is his own baby after all, he made it himself from scratch (with a little bit lot of help from his friends of course). Sailors Cove is an estate he took over only a few years ago when Blacktip Razor, the original owner, passed away.

It might be that HP was unaware Ey Ren also owned Sailors Cove East and South and how many regions that actually covers. Whilst I love Second Norway, Sailors Cove has always been extra special because of its history, it goes back to 2007 before the Blake Sea.

It must feel pretty bad for Patrick who has only just recovered the connection West of Rainforest where the Galaxy regions were and now he might lose the connection to the East, he had to juggle regions around to put the winter sports area in, in the New England sims, so he must be running the regions on the limit of affordability.

I really hope they can do a deal to get the good outcome Patch hopes for.

Edited March 29, 2020 by Aethelwine

[Aethelwine]

 

[ChinRey]

24 minutes ago, Aethelwine said:

I really hope they can do a deal to get the good outcome Patch hopes for.

Since I'm a Norwegian myself, I'd prefer it kept its Scandinavian flavour - as compromised as it is - rather than have it moleified. The place could do with some updates, much of it is getting a bit old, but I really hope the style won't change. Maybe we could get Ebbe directly involved in it, he's Swedish so it should be familiar enough to him.

Don't get me wrong, I do actually like the Bellisseria style. I just don't think it would be a good idea to apply it to the whole of Second Life.

Edited March 29, 2020 by ChinRey

[Bitsy Buccaneer]

5 hours ago, ChinRey said:

 rather than have it moleified. The place could do with some updates, much of it is getting a bit old, but I really hope the style won't change.

I was in for a visit from the link you posted in another thread (TY for that btw) and I really liked how vibrant and saturated the textures were. So much mesh all soft and fuzzy and drab washed out neutrals. That has its place with the shabby chic crowd but it was good to see something richer and remember how that used to be the norm.

[Mollymews]

5 hours ago, animats said:

LL would presumably charge tenants tier or rent.

It's a cheap way for LL to experiment with something more structured than mainland but not LL-built like Bellisseria.

a thing which I think would stand Linden and everyone else in good stead going forward (now that Linden is going to focus its own world efforts on Second Life) would be a way to pay rent on the private estates with Tier. Maybe as a Estate control bound to the parcel, the estate owner able to vary the parcel tier rate as they see fit

to pay the rent: About Land, pay Tier to estate owner or pay Rent in L$

Linden charging all estates a uniform tier conversion rate, with any difference made up by the estate owner in USD

[Juequinaisheley Ichibara]

7 hours ago, Mollymews said:

i read over on Inara's blog that Patch Linden mentioned that Linden is working with the Second Norway people to do something with the estate

I know that LL looks for a solution for Premium Members that find the standard LH plots (1024m2) and amount of prims (351) to small and not enough. Maybe this area can provide there solution, if they start renting it out them self, for a 'normal price' (1.1 up to 2.5 L$'s a prim). Funny is, they become a direct concurrent of the big landlords like MarkTwain White and Patrick Leavitt. I can't wait.

[ChinRey]

5 hours ago, HP Darcy said:

Funny is, they become a direct concurrent of the big landlords like MarkTwain White and Patrick Leavitt. I can't wait.

These are not big landlords, they're medium sized and Bellisseria already makes LL a formidable competitor to them. We can agree to disagree on this but personally I'd be sad to see them go. They, more than anybody else, create the variety that makes Second Life as a whole more interesting and they are the only ones who can provide housings for people who fancy neither American suburbia or claustorphobic skyboxes. There's no way LL would be able to maintain that variety even if they agreed to take over the estates and run them themselves.

The distinction between big and medium sized landlords is rather important here btw. The real big landlords have special discounts. The medium sized ones don't, they have to pay the same tier as everybody else. In fact, if your estate is connected to mainland or if you try to do something similar to it on actual mainland, you end up with an effective tier considerably higher than the standard rate. I totally agree with you if you say the prices at the Blake Sea estates are too high but you have to remember that it's not the estate owners who get all that extra profit, it's Linden Lab.

Edited March 29, 2020 by ChinRey

[Zero Starchild]

When I first discovered the original Second Norway 10 years ago or so I fell in love with the cobblestone streets and the original town etc and lived there on almost every sim at one time or another. To be blunt and honest though it lost all it’s charm when the big, damn airport and trains moved in causing horrific lag and the sims to be remodeled. They took away the quaint cobblestone roads and put in ugly highway asphalt roads and moved the town all to bow to the all might ugly airport. I moved away and still visited from time to time and saw again and again empty plots of land where folks had been living for years.Maybe it should retire.

[Prokofy Neva]

On 3/26/2020 at 3:43 AM, HP Darcy said:

Ey Ren, has given his Second Norway sims back to LindenLabs. Second Norway is the most East Estate at The Blake Sea. What will happen with the sims, nobody knows. Maybe is LL looking for a new owner? Maybe the sims are gone, next week. 

I must say that sins November 2019 all over The Blake Sea sales got worse, more and more yellow spots on the map... To me a normal reaction of the landlords might had been, lower your prices! But no, 3 L$ a prim stayed as it always was. Even the new snowy sims (Sailors Cove North, around the sim Homewood) of Patrick Leavitt are 5 L$ for 1 prim. I wonder who will rent it? I don't think thats the way to run a rental business these days. So there will go more landlords broke,... Well, the Corona crises might save them

An other reason that the little rentals of second Norway stayed empty the last months is the new continent: Bellisseria. If you put in more then 10.000 new free plots, you break the excising rental economy, Sorry to say. 

 

I'm sad to sea Second Norway go because I liked to visit it, and I love RL sims in SL and track them, they're great. I have some friends there, and it's sad.

$3/prim isn't what I charge, and may seem excessive, but it's not unreasonable. If you rent a sim, you have to pay the tier, which is a fixed cost where no one cuts you a break -- nor should they, as I've explained in the General Discussion thread where people are demanding the Lindens to convert from a business with costs of their own and payroll to a charity giving you a handout. There is no need for that. You also have to pay for content which constantly has to be refreshed and it would be nice to pay for your time, too, you know?

It can be exasperating when rentals sit empty and the agent keeps the price high, but he's doing that for valid economic reasons, which is that in a world of low occupancy which we all share and which will increase, those willing to pay more for a nice sim will carry it.

You can debate whether $3 or 0.75/prim is the proper way to run a business, but you aren't the one running it and your opinion, if you have not paid its tier or helped create its value, is not really relevant. A free market depends on merchants being able to chose their level of investment and exposure. There are huge varieties in SL and you can choose another rental that is much cheaper if you want.

Bellisseria did cut into the rentals businesses' of the user base, that's for sure. Not everyone has the flexibility to adjust to that and compensate for that. I don't feel it threatens my business as much as I see my tenants come and go to it -- they got tired of prim limits and lack of choice and come back to my rentals or others. This could change, and they could all flock out of my rentals and my colleagues' rentals to Bellissaria, and that would be sad but then the Lindens lose my tier when they do it because I can't afford to keep open empty rentals.

At the end of the day, if the Lindens have to decide between what is good for their bottom line -- premium accounts with recurring payments -- or the ability of their user base to rent sims and re-rent them -- guess what they will chose. Hopefully, they watch the indicators and balance things out, and slow their Bellissaria if they see attrition among their large island tier payers who constitute the bulk of the rentals industry.

Bellissaria is more of a threat to Mainland rentals agents like me with small parcels of that size, than it is to islands with more customized and beautiful environment. Yet I don't think it's that much of a threat. Anything that brings more people to SL and creates more premium accounts is a tide that raises all boats.

Edited March 30, 2020 by Prokofy Neva

[Ey Ren]

Thank you for your support and interest. The official source of information on what happens onwards with Second Norway and Sailor's Cove East will be my blog at: https://www.blog.baldelf.com.  ~Ey

[Prokofy Neva]

On 3/28/2020 at 2:20 PM, animats said:

I'm a bit worried about Bellisseria eating the world. It now seems to be the biggest continent.

Bellisseria - We're #1! Do we have a suburban sprawl problem?

 

Mainland for sale. Want some?

 

Kama City, Zindra. Something strange is going on here. One big landlord is buying up properties and raising the prices. They put nice empty buildings on them, so the property doesn't look abandoned, but nobody rents or buys most of the properties.

Something needs to be done to revitalize Mainland. We can't just have endless suburbia and unused mainland.

The Lindens probably saw the pandemic coming earlier than most; hence, the sale of Sansara. Good! And they are making Bellissaria a priority because those people sign up for recurring subscriptions. Good!

Can't beat that with a stick.

As for the "something must be done" stuff -- Are you just logging in after many years away? It's been like this for years. It's actually better now as more people are buying abandoned land, and the Lindens are processing requests for it faster and more fully -- before they would deny you for various reasons on some kind of grid they consulted, but now they don't.

The one person owning all the land and asking a high price for it is sustaining Linden Lab's bottom line now in tier. So I wouldn't wish that person ill will if I were you.

I've actually noticed the prices coming down even in Zindra -- which has the most high prices in SL generally because people want that security of adult land where no idiot or ex-friend can abuse report them for mature activity.

PS a lot of us have been revitalizing the Mainland since 2004 -- as long as it has been required. And we go on doing so. It doesn't need Lindens or anything. Just good will and attention.

Edited April 3, 2020 by Prokofy Neva

[Crim Mip]

There's a bit more to this. Those sims were originally created under a specific charter for the United Sailing Sims. For a lot of years, those were the only private sims allowed to be connected to the mainland. While that is now possible for others, that original charter still dictates certain conditions of who can own those sims. It looks like one of the USS sim owners is going to take over at least some of the Sailors Cove sims. As far as I know the Second Norway section is still on the block at the end of the month. That estate area has always had some of the highest rent prices on the grid. It's been losing tenants over the last year. Certainly Bellisseria opening up didn't help, but it wasn't entirely the reason either. LL has every reason to want large private estate areas to shrink and more people to pay for premium and move into Bellisseria. They've flat out stated they wanted to start relying less on land tier (and thus the large land holders) for LL's income stream. I fully expect them to keep making Bellisseria more and more attractive for people to inhabit and for fewer and fewer to be willing to pay premiums rental prices even for water access parcels.

[ChinRey]

5 hours ago, Crim Mip said:

LL has every reason to want large private estate areas to shrink and more people to pay for premium and move into Bellisseria.

Maybe, maybe not. I'm repeating myself here but there is one factor that used to be important to SL that there is no way LL will ever be able to provide on their own: variety.

Regardless of whether you like Bellisseria or not, it's a monoculture. Yes, there are houseboats and there are trailer parks and two kinds of suburbs that apparently are supposed to be different but they are all still fairly minor variations on the same theme.

What you are actually saying is that it is in LL's best interest to let go of the variety that even today is one of SL's main seelling points (even though it has been seriously reduced the last few years). You may well be right, at least from a purely commercial point of view. A virtual reality with a narrower appeal isn't likely to generate as much income but it's also easier to manage and maintain so there's a lot of money to save that way.

I still think it's a shame if SL is turning into a one-size-fits-all kind of virtual world.

Edited April 16, 2020 by ChinRey

[Aethelwine]

I am sure at some point Linden Lab have said Bellisseria is meant to be an introduction to landownership, that they want to encourage people to outgrow and move on to the bigger parcels available on mainland and private estates. Second Norway, with basically the same covenant as Bellisseria but with more space and freedom to build in a theme should have been ideally placed to take on those out growing the new Linden homes. 

It is sad so many regions and their history are being lost while people are excited and focused on the new Linden homes. 

[ChinRey]

Time for an update, Second Norway is saved!

More info here:

https://www.blog.baldelf.com/