Day: October 29, 2011

Tyche Shepherd has issued a revision to her initial findings following last weekend’s land sale by the Lab.

When first surveyed, some 30 minutes after the sale had finished, it appeared that some 322 private regions were added to the grid, leading to a net gain of some 311 regions.

However, a later survey revealed that in fact a staggering total 689 regions were added to the grid as a result of the sale and sims returned to use, leading to a net gain of some 508 private regions after accounting for losses.

Of the total number of sims added to the grid:

• 464 were open to public access, and so could be surveyed with:
  • 343 being full regions
  • 117 being homestead regions
  • 4 being OpenSpace regions
• 225 remain closed to public access and have yet to be surveyed as to type

The 464 accessible regions were purchased by a total of 381 individual estates with 252 purchasers having no other holdings. Only five of those purchasing multiple regions brought more that 3.

The revised totals are liable to be the focus of further debate around the “new” and “used” land markets – and those seeking to offload sims to other users may well feel every harder done-by on seeing these revised figures. Those who have paid the set-up fee, and who that have to recoup that on top of the cost of tier might also be aggrieved by these results as well, particularly if the new sims coming into the grid as a result of this sale are used within the commercial / residential markets.

It will be interesting to see what the overall impact of the sale turns out to be in terms of LL’s thinking. 689 regions does make even more of a powerful case for the set-up fees to be reduced (if possible) to something reasonably sensible, as I ruminated on when reporting the original figures released by Tyche.

Of course, the precedent for lowering set-up fees has already been set. Leave us not forget the fee for a full region was once $1675, so on the surface at least it’s not unheard of for LL to adjust this figure in line with costs. As such, it is something the company may opt to do again, and it is certainly more palatable to them than lowering tier, as some are calling for within the community.

Tier is something that will have to be reviewed; the case for reductions being needed in the future is growing. but for now, given the outcome of last weekend’s sale and that it is a) it is easily reproducible as a promotion and b) will likely achieve the same level of success if repeated in a few months time should a boost in revenue be required, one rather suspects LL may well sit on their laurels for a while longer and not hurry into any moves as regards tier or set-up fees just yet.