Its all gone quiet over there

Whether Nero fiddled whilst Rome burned is open to debate, but the lack of anything economy related coming out of Linden Lab is making me uneasy.

I've been hoping for some sort of land initiative, some pricing changes, some impetus and oomph and all I see is a blog that says "Coming soon, a new blog".

I have no idea how everyone's rentals are doing, I'm not one to say that my rentals are any barometer of the market as a whole, I'm too small for a start.

However, mainland is flourishing, I'm buying more mainland. Estate land isn't flourishing, I won't be buying more. I can pontificate on the reasons but I don't think it's really rocket science, mainland is cheaper.

I'm seeing more commercial ventures and less residential, not to say I'm not seeing any residential rentals, I have met some very nice Germans this week. I was aided and abetted by Pompeja Rossini whilst finalising the terms of the rental as my translator hud was only making so much progress, but they were keen and enthusiastic.

The problem with estate pricing versus mainland is that Linden Lab have their hands tied somewhat. I still don't think there's value in the USD$100 difference in tier fee, estate controls are great, the extra control is great, but it's not USD$100 great. However, I'd wager that the average mainland sim generates at least USD$295 in tier revenue due to the tier structure, so it's not an exact like for like comparison. I'd still like to see estate tier reduced.

Where we do have more of a comparison is with class 4 sims and I can't for the life of me understand why an end to grandfathered status isn't in sight. I definitely can't see why grandfathered status is kept on transfer, the reason for grandfathered status was to prevent those who had invested from jumping ship when tier pricing changed in 2006. When a sim is transferred that reason has evaporated.

Class 4 sims of course offer lower performance, so there is an argument that they shouldn't be the same tier price as a class 5 sim, but there should be some middle ground here and they shouldn't still be USD$100 cheaper once transferred, maybe USD$50.

However a two year plan to end all grandfathering, would that be so difficult? Unlike Linden Lab I don't agree with springing heinous changes on people, but to tell people that for the next four quarters class 4 sims will be gradually phased out and that tier payments will rise USD$25 a quarter would surely not be a bad thing, there's plenty of notice there. They could also say that transferring a sim ends grandfathered status right away.

Linden Lab just aren't very creative when it comes to pricing. Why aren't they offering existing estate owners a lower setup fee to try and encourage them to expand? I certainly wouldn't complain if someone who already owned ten sims got a better setup fee than me, tier is the long term cost, not the setup fee.

Why don't they spread the costs over twelve months and charge people USD$395 tier, the setup cost would end up being USD$1200 this way, they could disallow resale during this period so the only option would be to abandon, they've surely got some spare hardware after the Openspace fiasco so I think this is feasible. This may tempt people to invest in islands again.

How about offering lower tier for a few months for new purchases? Sure this would piss people off but business does this all the time, plenty of companies offer deals to new customers, the creative ones find ways of offering deals to their existing customers too, that way you keep them happy. They offer you X if you take out Y, so Linden Lab could say existing owners can buy homesteads at half price for the next three months, but the deal isn't open to new customers.

I'm hopeful that the recent survey is a sign that Linden Lab are taking inworld business needs more seriously, it may just be that they're looking at more ways to take a slice of the pie, but whatever they're upto, they need to make some noise.