Jacked land prices - Shame on the Land Barons

[ItHadToComeToThis]

More a rant / annoyance but. What is the deal with the land prices in SL for renting at the minute. One company I usually use has gone from 14,600k per week for a 20k prim region up to 17k. The Chungs are ripping people off as per usual up at 17499k. All of the other land baron prices have gone up drastically. I feel like due to the land store closure the land barons are abusing it and trying to milk as much as they can out of the residents. Given that this is a time where a lot of people are out of work all over the world and there is a global pandemic crisis this just seems like pure naked profiteering. Its not like these people are going to be out of pocket as SL land is generally their jobs, land is still being rented, land is still being bought. The highest I have seen in SL for a sim is 19499 a week. I am happy enough not to rent at the minute but I am kinda disappointed that this is what's going on.

Edited August 2, 2020 by ItHadToComeToThis

[Sister Nova]

Unfortunately this started pretty much as soon as LL made the announcement that there were no new regions being made available until the cloud migration was complete. It’s bad enough that some are looking to profit from the “But I want a region NOW!!” market, but what I found even more distasteful are the barons that hiked the price for existing tenants  

[ItHadToComeToThis]

I really do think that once Linden Lab move everything to the cloud and hopefully pass some more land savings onto us. Those that want a full sim should say f*** the barons and buy direct from LL. I think its horrific that they have done this during this time. When other businesses all around the world are trying to find a way to make life easier for those who are struggling. I get that they couldn't lower their prices but they could have at least kept them the same. Scum, all of them.

[Jules Catlyn]

My guess is that some of them were renting out land with little margins and are now taking the chance to get a little meat on the bone. For the other part: It is how the economy works. When things get lower in supply and the demand goes up, companies will profit from it. Our rent hasn't been raised yet *knocks on wood* . 

[Qie Niangao]

They better store up that profit now if they've been relying on Homestead revenue. I'll be very surprised (and disappointed) if Homesteads remain exclusively Estate products, once the grid is in the cloud and Premium Plus is available.

(Interesting how those stars appear to be aligning. Also, imagine explaining "Estate owners as channel partners" to the new investors, who do not appear to have been born yesterday.)

[Chroma Starlight]

Yeah, owning land on SecondLife was a little less fun when it involved being economically exploited. I don't know, I just recall some bitterness at the time, like our commonwealth had just been privatized by a newly-forged class of oligarchs.

Edited August 2, 2020 by Chroma Starlight

[Imagin Illyar]

Not all estates gouged pricing just because they could.  I didn't.  I've sold out several times during the pandemic and still kept my prices the same. 

[Chic Aeon]

19 minutes ago, Imagin Illyar said:

Not all estates gouged pricing just because they could.  I didn't.  I've sold out several times during the pandemic and still kept my prices the same. 

And my homestead sim is the same historical rate also (and one of the lowest). Not Willowdale, so there's two in the list.

 

TO BE FAIR ----- it isn't just virtual land going up since the pandemic.   Many to most items in the US anyway have increased in price including food.  Organic fertilizer is WAY up (like double from last year). A two by four now costs $8 in my small town and $4 if you drive into the big city -- but of course they don't have any LOL.  Sooooo.   Some things are the same price of course and that is true in  SL too.  Lots of prices on clothing and furniture have gone down or stayed the same.  I haven't seen a lot of increase in those areas --- mostly I would guess because of competition. 

 

I agree with @Qie Niangao about the homestead thing.  There have been official comments over the last couple of years that lead me to suspect a change in that area. I was expecting that to come along with super duper premium, but then that got set back and of course the pandemic came into play and "sale".    There certainly could be some major changes in land by the end of the year -- but that's a long time. Especially in  these days of uncertainty. 

 

If it is such a bother to some folks, they CAN move.  If you have the new sim and the old sim at the same time, you can pretty easily move in a day or two.   I have done it many times.  So THERE ARE CHOICES. 

 

 

[animats]

"Cloud migration" is not far off. I wouldn't be surprised if the first sims in the cloud are new isolated estate sims.

[Chic Aeon]

23 minutes ago, animats said:

"Cloud migration" is not far off. I wouldn't be surprised if the first sims in the cloud are new isolated estate sims.

^^  We can hope.   At one time Ebbe said that it wasn't possible but things change.   AND Lab plans change also

 

[Lucia Nightfire]

On 8/2/2020 at 6:39 AM, ItHadToComeToThis said:

I really do think that once Linden Lab move everything to the cloud and hopefully pass some more land savings onto us.

Don't think cloud migration means LL is going to start offering lower land pricing.

IIRC, even Ebbe stated they are not looking into that for any foreseeable time.

[steeljane42]

14 minutes ago, Lucia Nightfire said:

IIRC, even Ebbe stated they are not looking into that for any foreseeable time.

Sad if true. This year has been pretty disappointing in that regard so far. Last two had price cuts around SLB times (among other changes, like some stuff for premiums), and, I think end of 2016 is when we got free prim increase.

I understand that with sudden boost in sales, concurrency, etc LL doesn't feel like they have to do anything for now to prevent regions/people numbers from dropping even further, but it's rather short term strategy.

I'll take 2.5-5k extra prims (for the full region) that should be possible to add because of more modern hardware on AWS compared to outdated one LL uses now (pretty sure I read they stopped with upgrading their servers the moment they started to work on cloud migration, which has started almost 3 years ago) instead of the price cut, though.

[Lucia Nightfire]

More prims means more hosts for scripts.

LL has yet to do anything about the impact idle scripts have in mass have on a region.

There is no fair resource use policy enforcement.

LL is still nowhere near implementing land impact changes based on script count via Project ArcTan.

Scripts seem to run 2x - 3x faster in cloud based regions from my testing.

What that will end up being when things are finalized is anyone's guess, but that shouldn't be looked at as a solution to the current script lag problem.

There are far too many regions across the grid running with less than 50% script run rate.

We need the aforementioned issues addressed at some point.

[Allen Parks]

On ‎8‎/‎2‎/‎2020 at 8:18 AM, ItHadToComeToThis said:

More a rant / annoyance but. What is the deal with the land prices in SL for renting at the minute. One company I usually use has gone from 14,600k per week for a 20k prim region up to 17k. The Chungs are ripping people off as per usual up at 17499k. All of the other land baron prices have gone up drastically. I feel like due to the land store closure the land barons are abusing it and trying to milk as much as they can out of the residents. Given that this is a time where a lot of people are out of work all over the world and there is a global pandemic crisis this just seems like pure naked profiteering. Its not like these people are going to be out of pocket as SL land is generally their jobs, land is still being rented, land is still being bought. The highest I have seen in SL for a sim is 19499 a week. I am happy enough not to rent at the minute but I am kinda disappointed that this is what's going on.

I have been  in sl  for  16  years  and I finally got smart .  I bought an  entire sim  on Digiworldz   and I couldn't  be happier    Costs less per month  then an sl  premium  account   

[Chic Aeon]

On 8/3/2020 at 1:36 PM, Chic Aeon said:

^^  We can hope.   At one time Ebbe said that it wasn't possible but things change.   AND Lab plans change also

 

As I was reading the latest post on this thread I came across what I had replied to animats earlier.    I MISREAD what he was saying :D.  What "I" meant to say was that Ebbe once said that "on demand" regions (as in Kitely) were not possible in SL. That has apparently changed and so we "could" see some type of lower priced regions that were not always "on". What the final decision on that will likely be determined  in the future. Focus changes often and these are certainly troubling times.   I can see both sides (or several arguments really) both for and against having both types of regions on one grid.  So who knows.  We'll see when we see. 

 

And to that post above mine. I am happy that they are happy but comparing Digiworldz to  Second Life isn't very equal in oh so many ways.  

[ItHadToComeToThis]

3 hours ago, Allen Parks said:

I have been  in sl  for  16  years  and I finally got smart .  I bought an  entire sim  on Digiworldz   and I couldn't  be happier    Costs less per month  then an sl  premium  account   

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[Lucia Nightfire]

10 hours ago, Allen Parks said:

I have been  in sl  for  16  years  and I finally got smart .  I bought an  entire sim  on Digiworldz   and I couldn't  be happier    Costs less per month  then an sl  premium  account   

Don't hypergrid worlds have even less people than Sansar? 🤔

[Vanity Bonetto]

The last time we raised our prices was back in 2009. You will find full regions with 20k prim for 14,950 L per week here and with 30k prim they come for 16,950 L per week. But yes, I hear you and I agree with you. I even heard that some estates raised tier for existing contracts which is an absolute no go. A deal is a deal.

We took over an estate in distress last week and we still have some full regions left.

[Allen Parks]

On ‎9‎/‎3‎/‎2020 at 9:41 PM, Lucia Nightfire said:

Don't hypergrid worlds have even less people than Sansar? 🤔

The number of people  is not important,  If you bring your friends,  that is all that matters. Content  is plentiful  on  hypergrids  if you take time and look,  and  spending $200 per month on a full sim  that costs  SL  less then  10  per month  to operate  is just  silly.

[Alwin Alcott]

55 minutes ago, Allen Parks said:

  spending $200 per month on a full sim  that costs  SL  less then  10  per month  to operate  is just  silly.

yes that line is silly, because that aren't the costs for the region.

[Qie Niangao]

3 hours ago, Allen Parks said:

If you bring your friends,  that is all that matters. 

That may be the saddest thing I've ever heard

[Pussycat Catnap]

On 8/3/2020 at 1:36 PM, Chic Aeon said:

^^  We can hope.   At one time Ebbe said that it wasn't possible but things change.   AND Lab plans change also

Ebbe also said lastnames couldn't be brought back - and in the very same post he said it, if I remember right, he said how it could happen...

Ebbe wasn't an engineer - so I always felt that somebody in engineering told him 'impossible' for any task that would take more than 5 minutes of developer time, and he believed them. He may have been a nice guy compared to his predecessor, and well intentioned towards us - but he also had the savvy of a Dilbert Pointy Haired boss and it always seemed like somebody had another layer of wool over his eyes...

 

That said... the Cloud migration feels like one of those "soon™" things...

[Qie Niangao]

1 hour ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

That said... the Cloud migration feels like one of those "soon™" things...

Most of the SL services are hosted on the cloud already, and the one really challenging part - migrating the region simulations themselves - is already working on parts of the beta grid. Of course there are glitches, and no doubt there will be unforeseen bumps for Operations finally turning up the entire Agni grid on the cloud, but Oz seems pretty confident it'll be complete yet this year.

I mean, I expect it before a safe, effective COVID-19 vaccine, at least.