The Tier Is Too Damn High

April 4, 2016

Grandfathered Tier Rates Now Available For Second Life Regions For A One Off Fee

Linden Lab appear to be unleashing evil plans to make some of the protest gnomes redundant with a new announcement regarding a way of reducing tier payments. The reduction does come at a cost, but let’s look at the blog post : Want Lower Tier? Now You Can Get Grandfathered Land Rates!

In November, we lowered the set-up fees for land purchases by 40%. Today, we’re introducing a limited-time offer that will make land even cheaper by allowing you to lower your monthly tier payments (aka land maintenance fees).

From today until October 4th, 2016, you can “buy-down” your Full Islands and/or Homesteads to the grandfathered maintenance rates. By paying a one-time fee up front, you’ll be entitled to lower tier rates on your land for as long as you hold it (and remember, we now also allow transferring grandfathered land).

The pricing for this offer is as follows:

Full Island:

One-time buy-down fee: $600
Grandfathered maintenance fee: $195/month (regularly $295/month)

Homestead:

One-time buy-down fee: $180
Grandfathered maintenance fee: $95/month (regularly $125/month)

Note: This offer cannot be combined with our Education and Non-Profit discount program, and cannot be applied to Skill Gaming Regions.

If you plan to hold onto your land for longer than 6 months, this is a great deal for you!

To take advantage of this offer, you’ll need to submit a Support Case using the Land & Region -> Region Buy Down case type. In that case you can provide us with the names of the regions you would like to buy down, and we will assess the appropriate buy-down fee per region.

This is certainly a good deal if you have the upfront money and plan to hold your region for the next six months. The overall cost for the next six months would be the same as if you were still paying your current tier rate, but you’ll pay the one off fee and then see $100 knocked of your tier bill (for a full region). After that six months, you will start making savings.

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November 18, 2015

Linden Lab Lower Land Setup Fees For Private Regions

Several have asked if this is in some sort of panic move in response to poor sales. This is absolutely not the case, in fact sales of islands have been very consistent through Q1; we sell between 100-110 islands per week plus a fair number of Openspace regions.

Technology and service costs vary over time and we as a business have to respond to that in sensible ways. In addition, we have to continually assess our business model and make changes where we need to. By and large we have worked hard to keep prices static for long periods, and when we have had cause to increase prices in the past, we allowed grandfathered monthly fees to continue because we value the time and energy those people had put in. Nearly 18 months on and that grandfathered pricing is still in place for many island owners.

This was the right time to reduce the setup price of an island. As any business would, we will review the effects of these changes over the next period and make adjustments or leave them unchanged according to how it goes. If we are able to make savings, then we feel that passing those on to our customers is a good thing.

The above is a quote from Jack Linden in a blog post published on 10th April 2008; Details on the Q2 2008 Island Price Change. The headline news was that the setup fee for a private region had been reduced from US$1,675 to US$1,000. This was a controversial move and generated a lot of positive and negative feedback.

Yesterday, more than seven and a half years later, Linden Lab decided the time was right to reduce setup fees further; Decreased Land Set-Up Fees and Changes to Transferring Regions. The new pricing structure is :

Full Private Island – previously $1000, now $600.
Developed Full Private Island – previously $1029, now $629.
Homestead Private Island – previously $375, now $225.
Developed Homestead Private Island – previously $395, now $250.
Openspace Private Island – previously $250, now $150.

Along with these new reduced setup fees we’re also seeing the return of Grandfathered status for regions when they are sold on. However this comes with a twist in terms of vastly increased transfer fees if Grandfathered status is required on transfer.

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November 10, 2015

Second Life May Be Losing Regions But It’s Not In Betamax Territory Yet

“Betamax? Is that still around?” I pondered today as I read news on The Guardian that Sony are going to stop creating Betamax cassettes in March 2016. The main reason that Betamax appears have continued long after many felt it had departed is due to the use of Micro MV cameras, which use Micro MV cassettes in Betamax format. However all good things come to an end and over 40 years after its release and almost thirty years since Betamax lost the video format wars, Betamax finally seems to be going beneath the technical waters.

Which brings us on to Second Life. Daniel Voyager recently reported; Second Life regions drop under the 25, 000 mark. Daniel’s blog post was based on a report by Tyche “Statto” Shepherd over at SLUniverse, where Tyche announced :

Well as I predicted , a milestone of sorts was passed this week as the Grid dipped below 25,000 regions for the first time since June 2008.

The scores on the doors on November 8th were :

24,985 Regions
17,888 private estates
7097 Linden owned

The net loss of private regions for this year stood at 712 on November 8th. However let’s compare this to some previous years to try and get a picture of what’s going on.

11/11/2012 – Total Private Regions 21,334. Year to date loss of 2,523 private regions (-10.58%)
10/11/2013 – Total Private Regions 19,462 . Year to date loss of 1,530 private regions (-7.29%)
09/11/2014 – Total Private Regions 18,735. Year to date loss of 538 private regions (-2.8%)
08/11/2015 – Total Private Regions 17,888. Year to date loss of 712 private regions (-3.8%)

Therefore we can see that this year we’re seeing an increase in the rate of net losses of private regions compared to last year, but the rate of losses is still a lot lower than in 2012 and 2013. Let’s play about with some more figures.

Continue reading “Second Life May Be Losing Regions But It’s Not In Betamax Territory Yet”

September 22, 2015September 22, 2015

Mont Saint Michel In Second Life Set To Close At End Of September

Mont Saint Michel in Second Life is a region that is so beautifully picturesque that even Linden Lab use it in their promotional materials. Unfortunately being beautifully picturesque is not enough to keep paying the bills and Hamlet Au over at New World Notes has blogged; Second Life’s Beloved Recreation of Mont Saint Michel Soon Leaving SL for “Economical” Reasons.

Hamlet’s post links to a Flickr post from Moeka Kohime, owner of the region, which has a caption with the word “close” and 2008-2015 on it. That Flickr post simply says :

Le Mont Saint Michel SIM 2008-2015 CLOSE

Schedule at the end of September 2015.
Economical reason.

*Edelweiss* is immortal forever 🙂
I intend to consider the temporary Main store to be Akiba SIM

So fans of the inworld fashion brand Edelweiss need not panic, but for fans of Mont Saint Michel, it is indeed sad news.

Continue reading “Mont Saint Michel In Second Life Set To Close At End Of September”

January 6, 2015January 6, 2015

Second Life Grid – Rate Of Net Private Region Losses Slows During 2014

2014 was a year when the Second Life grid shrunk in terms of private regions and yet, the number of adult private regions rose. However there were signs of encouragement in terms of the rate of losses during 2014, especially when you compare the rate to 2013 and 2012.

The person to turn to for more information is of course, Tyche “Statto” Shepherd. The big blow for Linden Lab during the year was an expected one, at the end of July, Tyche Shepherd reported :

As slow as this years losses have been it still means that this weeks changes bring Private Estates below 19,000 for the first time since 15th June 2008. Net Private Estate losses for the year to date amount to 285 regions which is a 1.5% loss.

Tyche Shepherd’s grid survey report for the week ending 28/12/14 gives us the chance to look at the figures for the year as a whole and what we see is a very dramatic slow down in the number of net losses in terms of private region losses, during the year as a whole, although there were more net losses in the second half of the year than the first half.

A note on the charts in this post, they are published here due to the kind permission of Tyche Shepherd, they are Tyche’s work so please respect that. We’ll start with a chart showing the big picture .. well it might look small in this post!

Chart Should Be Here — Net Change In Private Estates

Now if you having trouble reading that the scores on the door are a net loss of 673 regions during the course of the year, or 3.5%. At the end of December private regions stood at 18,600. This is still around the levels of June 2008, the reason for this is because June 2008 was a time of unbelievable boom for Second Life, for example Tyche’s report of 8th June 2008 told us that 613 private regions had been added to the grid during that week. At this time Linden Lab were also still able to auction off new mainland sims and were building new mainland continents. Therefore don’t expect the number of private regions to drop to April or early May 2008 levels any time soon.

Ok, back to comparing this year’s private region net losses with the previous two years, If we look at last year’s stats we see :

A Chart Should Be Here — Net region losses 2013

A total net loss of 1,719 private regions, or 8.2%. That’s a net loss of 1,046 more private regions during 2013 than 2014. This is demonstrated well in the above chart because you see far more weeks last year where weekly losses were over 40.

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