... The monthly tiered fees to Linden Labs, that is, I am not going to go into any land market discussion ...
Considering that SL is a unique service (all the open source clones don't offer anything near the quality of SL in any respect and in that light land-prices have to be considered even more expensive in alternative grids) the answer is clearly no, otherwise the demand would not hold up in the way it does.
But what about the creator's perspective? Once you got used to detailed building - maybe fell addicted when playing around in a standalone Opensim, where prim count doesn't play ANY role at all ... it's hard to keep up with land purchases if one wants to make and use prim intensive creations in THE main grid.
Since my new installation of standalone OS isn't running as desired anyway, I was going through a bit of a prim turkey, so the fresh construction site mentioned in my last post comes as a welcome opportunity to tinker with some stuffs I hope Pinkpink is going to find useful and/or inspiring in her efforts. ... I am not so sure about that 300 prim truss I built today though ... But it turns out to be easy to prove to her that 1/8th of a sim is NOT actually really BIG for a project like a gallery ... some truss here, some fish there, and half the prims are a gone. LOL? or WTF?
While not surprising me in itself, it still reminds me of my own chronic shortage on prim allowance and also brings to mind Ann Otoole's blog-post in which she compares SL to RL costs.
So, do I wish monthly land fees would be lowered? YES? But do I also want LL to invest in modern servers and other infrastructure that will keep the grid running and improve on it? Um, yes too! That means I cannot answer my question "Is Land too expensive in Second Life?" myself ... I politely pass it on to Linden Labs then ...
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Oh give me a fucking break, the land costs totally outshadow server costs and blow clear past room for reasonable profit too. They only charge this much cause they can get away with it.
I agree with the comment above. Second Life over-charges because the users who use the service willingly give their money up and pay the over-priced fees. Unfortunately it makes it very difficult to even have a "backyard" in second-life without it costing a ridiculous amount of money. The prices NEED TO BE LOWERED.
There are users out there that are tired of blind lap-dogs willingly supporting Second Life despite obvious rip-offs in money. Over-powered land-barons who can take users money and at the same time kick/ban a user and delete all their belongings for little to no reason at all. Personal belongings that a user has purchased gone in a matter of seconds on a piece of land. Or, be under LL directly and pay an arm and a leg just to have little to no real customization space for land at all (under the spying eyes of AR happy residentials who have nothing more in their lives to do but waste it all on virtual nothingness). Want a private/personal space off the mainland? Too bad, you have to buy a full sim which costs at least $300 dollars a month. Then, adding the cost of a home-sim which is an additional $200+ dollars. It is a TOTAL rip-off and Second Life is nothing more than GREED. The servers are more than fine, this virtual simulator has made more than it's due to support itself and is freely taking advantage of it. It's absolutely disgusting that Second Life at one point was a place for creativity now has been reduced down to paranoid,greedy residents who throw their money at the feet of the bigger greedier boss. Linden Labs. Now people flock to Second Life for their cheap substitute as a Second Income and is all about money. Virtual Reality shouldn't be mixed so carelessly with reality.
Um yea it is too expensive..even 10 L for a texture is a ripoff or getting a cut from your marketplace sells is a bit much. They want too much of the pie in my opinion. They have monopolized it so that only the people with $L can afford to really get involved and make something of it. People that have no money really don't even get to taste what second life has to offer. But they really don't matter because they don't have anything to offer the Second Life bank's account either.
I feel really sad when an individual who provides a service like a sandbox can't stay afloat. In my opinion there should be a different source of revenue. It would be nice to see large open public spaces and also nice to not feel bad for the different services and venues who could generate revenue another way.
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