The much awaited blog from Jack Linden is up and there’s goodish news for those who were of the opinion that at least Dick Turpin wore a mask when considering their recent estate purchases:
“For anyone that has bought a normal island in the seven days prior to Mondays announcement, including any awaiting delivery now (so any orders placed in April PST), you will be offered a choice between:
* Your order cancelled with a complete refund of the amount paid, allowing you to re-order when the price drops if you wish to, or:
* Keep your order and get a free Openspace region with it. The Openspace would have no setup fee and no monthly fees for a period of 6 months after which normal monthly fees will apply.
For those that purchased a normal island between 11th and 31st March 2008 you will be offered a free Openspace, with no setup fee and no monthly fee for a period of 3 months after which normal monthly fees will apply.
If you have purchased an Openspace region since the beginning of April 2008, you may cancel that order for a full refund.”
Meanwhile earlier in LL, like quite a few others I attended Jack Linden’s office hour. I’ve only been to a few of Jack’s previous office hours and these were back when he hosted on Friday at around 7am SL time, so I was the only one there.
Not so this evening, standing room only, even for Jack. Pitchforks were produced (no really), torches were produced (no really), someone even had a huge hammer (If I had a hammer, I’d hammer in the morning…).
The meeting however was well mannered, there was no lynching, there was also no compromise. I asked more than once for a commitment (and not a promise as promises are hard to keep) that a 40% devaluation wouldn’t occur again, this wasn’t answered. I asked that Linden Lab are made aware that some of us consider estate land as an asset, this wasn’t answered either. Jack did ask someone why he considered he’d lost $5000, and then asked if he bought and sold islands and really, despite other bloggers saying this, despite others telling me that this was the case, the penny really did drop. Once an island leaves LL’s hands, they don’t place any value on it. Sure they charge tier, but they don’t see it as an asset and don’t seem to understand why a user would either.
Linden Lab of course have to do what they consider best for their business and if that hurts your business, so be it. I was in a debate on the forums the other day when someone pointed me in the direction of a marketing essentials document on how to maximise profit. Now lots of people have different opinions, however Robert McKinney advises:
“McKinney’s First Rule of Business: Customers must be richer after doing business with you”
Interesting because those unhappy with the island pricing do not feel richer after doing business with LL. However prices drop, infrastructure changes yadda yadda yadda.
I’m not sure where Jack gets his land data from because when I suggested mainland prices are tumbling he told me they weren’t and that they were steady, which isn’t what I see in the land search but maybe the first three or four pages don’t touch the sides.
So then the meeting got into talk about rewarding loyalty, owning x amount of sims for x amount of time and receiving a loyalty bonus was mentioned and then Jack pulled a rabbit out of the hat:
“what do folks think about swag by the way.. tshirts and stuff for estate owners?”
I’ll pass thanks Jack, I’d rather you took onboard that your customers value assets but I can now see that’s asking too much. I’ll just go and remove my tier from the ninjas (I asked Skye nicely if this was ok) and with the rest of my spare tier, I’ll tier down half a sim’s worth of land and take stock of the new risk strategy of expecting to see my assets devalued at a much faster rate of knots than I previously envisaged. Reality bites.