Ciaran Laval

We would like to wish everyone a happy new year,it has been an interesting year and one in which our trust for Linden Lab shrunk to a big fat zero. Actually the end of year total is an improvement, in November it peaked at minus 273. However some redeeming features emerged after that.

All I will say is that anyone considering investing in this world does their homework and only invests what they are prepared to lose. Hopefully our 2009 end of year message will be more upbeat.

Win a Space in the Second Life Holiday Marketplace screams the official blog. There is a good concept somewhere beneath the surface of this, alas it’s well buried and needs dusting off, repackaged and delivered next year.

The infamous bag of swag, that I first heard about when Jack Linden asked if we’d like one after the Estate price drop seems to have seen the light of day. The problem here isn’t the concept, the concept is a good one. However it’s the delivery. The blog title to me reads like it’s going to be a competition for residents, it is a competition of sorts, it’s an auction. They don’t hide this fact but it begs the question how much is it worth bidding for sixty days of tier?

We don’t know how big the parcel will be but I can pickup a 1024m parcel for what, L$4,000 these days and I get to keep that without increasing my tier payments and I can sell it when I’m done with it. Not everyone will be in that position but like Bay City and Nautilus what sort of promotion is going on to make this worthwhile? Read the rest of this entry »

Laval’s estate and Land Rentals have pondered for some time the decision on openspaces. We have often pondered with our head in our hands whilst listening to records by The Smiths. We have come to the conclusion that the time for pondering is over.

We hereby denounce the decision by Linden Lab to increase the pricing on openspaces. We denounce it in the way a middle ages witchmaster denounced witches. This means we are very strongly denouncing the decision, please be in no doubt that we are strongly denouncing this decision. That’s enough denouncing for now.

If it were possible we would allow our shareholders to vote…however we have no shareholders, we’re an evil dictatorship but this doesn’t mean we aren’t outraged. Whereas the impact to Laval’s estate and Land Rentals is minimal, our faith and trust in Linden Lab has been shattered, to put it another way: “In Linden Lab we don’t trust“. Read the rest of this entry »

The City of Dee is now open for rentals …well it has been open for a while but this is the official announcement because I forgot to blog about it. A loosely themed medieval city, very loosely themed because I don’t have time to do a proper themed sim it has business and residential plots, two markets, a maternity cottage, a church, a castle that I’m not sure what’s happening with and not one, but two taverns for drunken debauchery.

Quaintly Turqiri was offered a job as a buxom barmaid but  she failed the interview because she’s way too cheeky. Never offer to test her rug in her home, that’s all I’m saying! Read the rest of this entry »

The Openspace fiasco leads me to wonder whether the Lindens actually talk to each other. If they do, you have to wonder if they really do know their arse from their elbow.

Do Jack and Zee talk? I mean in July on this blog post Zee states:

“Land mass grew over 44%.  The total number of regions owned by residents increased 44.2% over Q1 to just over 1.5 billion square meters.  Our growth was due to the popularity of our newly launched “Openspace” land product along with a change in pricing to make the purchase of land more accessible to first time buyers.  “Openspace” regions are full 65,000 square meter regions with an upfront fee of $250 and a recurring monthly fee of $75.”

Indeed in that very blog post there is a comment from me, negative Nancy as usual decrying openspaces, indeed I said:

“You’re playing an extremely dangerous game here, devaluing assets, increasing land mass with regions that are by official Linden blurb not designed to be used for the purposes they are being used for and mainland is not recovering at the rate at which it decreased.

Lots of semi filled islands and mainland parcels is likely to lead to the mother of all crashes.

However thanks for the heads up that islands are likely to devalue again, there’s a lead balloon around somewhere.”

Pretty ironic that around six weeks later I finally caved and decided to buy one but there I am, pointing out how they were being used. It’s also ironic that by the time I purchased one Linden Lab seemed to have noted a defect in the product in terms of its likely resource use, but continued to sell them.

However back to the Lindens and their communication. Hamlet Au has a post including a quote from M Linden where he says:

“We understand that this price adjustment will affect businesses and other projects of some our Second Life Residents,” and emphasized the cost increases were only directed at select landowners, who have until January 2009 to adjust themselves to the new rates. “To be clear,” Kingdon continued, “this price adjustment affects only a portion of land in Second Life; it does not apply to private islands or regular mainland property. We made this change to ensure an optimal Second Life experience for all Residents.”

Has Zee talked to M? Has he told him about how excited Linden Lab were about openspace sales? Has anyone told M that openspace owners have to own a full sim first and therefore it affects a lot of people. Has anyone told M just how many Openspaces are on the grid? He really doesn’t seem to grasp just how widely used openspaces are.

Jack of course was pointing to the knowledgebase article in his last post. The article ignore by so many, including Linden Lab. Does anyone seriously buy the issue that they were intended only for forests or open waterways? Is anyone seriously suggesting that Linden Lab didn’t know what the driving force behind the growth of this product was? I mean come on, this is absurd.

Personally I want Linden Lab to grandfather existing owners in. Change the price today on new openspaces or stop selling them. They really shouldn’t be encouraging further use until the issue is sorted out but most important of all I want Linden Lab to take resposnibility for the boom they created, Linden Lab so far have refused to acknowledge any responsibility and instead are pointing fingers at the very residents they were crowing about in July. That more than anything else is what Linden Lab should be ashamed of.

Oh and they should also spend the majority of any increased profits on some customer service training, because customer service is severely lacking.

I’ve said for a while that too many geeks spoil the broth and so it seems again that this is the case as I read on Prok’s blog that there’s a project to redesign landmarks and navigation.

This might sound promising given a cursory glance but it ignores, yet again, business interests. This isn’t the first time and nor will it be the last time that business interests are ignored in Second Life. The estate price drop ignored inworld business interests, the new search ignored business interests and the showcase, although useful, ignores business interests because there’s no way in hell that fashion would be in there if one iota of respect was given to inworld business interests.

What’s wrong with the project you may ask? Quite simply put landmarks are used in all sorts of product designs, it’s an easy point of reference and the notion of taking away that side of business quite simply beggars belief. Read the rest of this entry »