Homesteads, and why they aren't available to all

[Phil Deakins]

I'm puzzled as to why LL won't sell homesteads to all who want them, and only sell them to those who already own a full private sim. I can't think of any major reason for holding them back, so I thought I'd start a thread to see if anyone has any thoughts on it.

 

I can come up with a possible minor reason, which may actually be a possibile major reason:-

If LL allowed anyone to buy a homestead island, it may not be long before there wouldn't be very many private full sims left.

Right now, a store owner, who wants a full-size sim for the store, pretty much has to have a full sim, and extra homestead sims are usually unnecessary, so, as far as stores are concerned, full sims rule. But, if everyone is allowed to buy homesteads, then perhaps most of those full sims would be handed back and replaced with several homesteads, so that homesteads would rule by a very long way.

The rental market is different though. It may be that, as far as multi-sim landlords are concerned, rental sims are already dominated by homesteads. After all, renting a quarter sim with 936 prims is far more attractive that renting a 4k parcel with 936 prims. I think I'm right in saying that, for every 4 homesteads owned, 1 full sim must also be owned. If that's so, then the number of full sims must be at least a quarter of the number of homesteads, and the number of full sims that LL take tier on is maintained. But, if everyone were able to buy a homestead, then a great many of the current rental homesteads would disappear and be replaced by non-rental homesteads. And, with the disappearance of so many rental homesteads, a great many of the rental full sims would also vanish.

All in all, LL could well be a lot worse off if they sold homesteads to anyone who wanted one, AND they would be maintaining a hell of a lot more sims for their loss of earnings. Perhaps that's the reason why they won't do it, or perhaps I'm not thinking very clearly.

[Void Singer]

actually they make more cash per server core on homesteads....

problem being, homesteads are by nature less stable, since they are packed in multiples, which makes troublleshooting and service a problem...

 

I don't ever expect SL to break out of the niche market until they can come up with a lower cost solution to connecting to other grids securely, and a way to manage those connections in a sane manner. until then there's not enough portability to scale up much further.

[Phil Deakins]

Server core? Isn't that where Klingons go when they die?

[Melita Magic]

They are catering to the big land barons, in homage to the (RL) 1990s, I guess.

[Void Singer]

sort of... it's what the regions cling on to

theoretically, a server of 8 cpu cores hosts either 7 full regions... or at least 21 (and probably 28 @ 3-4 per core) homesteads, the last core is reserved for management utilities.

the cost of the server for LL is the same either way, and the traffic bandwidth consumed is theoretically comparable (but may in fact be higher for homesteads), but each of the 3-4 homesteads on a core affects the others (lag one, the others feel it, crash one, the others may go with it)

[Orca Flotta]

We might take a look back into SL's history here:

Homestead sims were originally named Open Sims by LL, and they were intended to serve as additional sims for owners who already had a full sim. They were never meant for shops, clubs or even rentals, but for the sim owner to add a park or a lake or something with only small usage of scripts and very little traffic. What we see nowadays happening with the homesteads is in fact "abuse", as Jack Linden (remember him?) called it. The result was a steep increase in tier fees but unfortunately not a technical solution to get rid of the lag problem. 

A problem all we abusers had created.

[Faithless Babii]

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Orca Flotta wrote:

We might take a look back into SL's history here:

Homestead sims were originally named Open Sims by LL, and they were intended to serve as additional sims for owners who already had a full sim. They were never meant for shops, clubs or even rentals, but for the sim owner to add a park or a lake or something with only small usage of scripts and very little traffic. What we see nowadays happening with the homesteads is in fact "abuse", as Jack Linden (remember him?) called it. The result was a steep increase in tier fees but unfortunately not a technical solution to get rid of the lag problem. 

A problem all we abusers had created.

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I believe they were first labelled *void* sims....and then open spaces. Your right about how they got abused...they were never intended for rentals or clubs...or even as living spaces...just waterways or light landscape greenery. Then it came to light how they were being misused and wham..we all got lumped with a higher fee for them regardless if we were doing it or not.

[Phil Deakins]

Void/Open Space sims were intended as open spaces with very little on them.

Homesteads were intended as living places - homesteads - which were always rentals, of course.

Homesteads weren't "abused". It's a while ago now, and my memory isn't 100%, but I remember very clearly that the sims were put to uses that LL staff said they could be used for, having been specifically asked before purchase - even with the words, "That's what they are for". Then LL decided that they'd got it wrong, because their "homestead" system couldn't handle it all, so they accused people of abusing them. That accusation was false.

But that's history and not really pertinent to this topic, which is about possible reasons why LL won't sell homesteads to all who want them. The result of that history was that homesteads were re-specced, so that they could be used for any purpose that fits within their specs. They have a 3750 prim limit and a very low avatar limit (10, isn't it?). It's those re-specced homesteads that I'm wondering why LL won't sell to all who want them.

[ralph Alderton]

Linden Lab really do need to FREE THE LAND MARKET and release the grid from the absurd historical situation whereby you have to have a full sim before you can buy a Homestead

It's a real blocker on the Lab's most desirable product - The Homestead

The Lab are not protecting the big estate owners by keeping this blocker in place - they are just stagnating the grid and preventing the growth of Secondlife

You know it, I know it, all of the wise Lindens know it - The current Land pricing structure and model needs a complete overhaul, it's 10 yrs out of date and too expensive for the core customer base

Nobody wants to be squeezed on to a 4k plot or rent a quarter sim even, everyone wants CONTROL of their own Homestead

When Linden Lab corrects the broken pricing structure (read .. make it much cheaper) and let's anyone buy a Homestead, then and only then wil we see real growth in concurrency and the grid

[Qie Niangao]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

Then LL decided that they'd got it wrong, because their "homestead" system couldn't handle it all, so they accused people of abusing them. That accusation was false.

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That accusation was made, but I think if you go back to the records you'll find it was never actually a Linden making it. Not that the Lindens were blameless in this; they marketed a product they simply couldn't deliver in quantity for the price at which they offered it.  Rather than raise the price, they changed the product definition.

The Homestead avatar limit is 20; OpenSpace sims are limited to 10.  (Private full-primmed sims are limited to 100, which is much like imposing an occupancy limit of 100 for a phone booth.)

To the thread topic: yeah, I'm sure it's all about the Estate barons and their belief that making Homesteads available to the masses would cut them out of a profitable business.  The thing is, LL had an ideal opportunity to make everybody happy when they raised Homestead fees the last increment.  Instead, they could have frozen those rates for Estates owning full sims, and made the product available at the higher fee to everybody else who wanted one.  I honestly think the grid would be larger today -- and LL would have more revenue -- if they'd done that.

Incidentally, the folks who'd be the market for standalone Homestead sims are currently split between Homestead renters and Mainland owners.  I don't really think it's worry over the fate of the Mainland that prevents sale of standalone Homesteads, but there'd be yet more attrition, and the Mainland is woefully vacant already.

[Phil Deakins]

The mainland *needs* to be "woefully vacant" the way some people use it; e.g. creating big wooden prims and  then losing interest so the they leave the garbage is plain sight of neighbours, and completely flattening small parcels, making an unrealistic area of land. I hate all that stuff, but that's just me

You are spot on that LL had a good opportunity to get it right at the time of the Homestead fiasco. And you are probably right that it was users who used the word "abuse" when describing why it all went pear-shaped. But it was LL who said that people were using Homesteads for things they were never intended for, and that's the statement/accusation that led to the word "abuse" being used. However, it was LL staff (Lindens) who confirmed, in advance of purchse, that Homesteads can be used for some of those things, even saying, "That's what they are for". I'm not saying that some people didn't go over the top with Homesteads, but many of the things that LL later claimed they were never intended for, were specifically given the go-ahead by LL staff, and in advance of purchase.