By Prokofy Neva
It's still hard to make sense of the "signals from the environment". I don't know if I can go on keeping track of them or blogging them.
o a few people moved into larger rentals from smaller ones. Why? I don't ask as it isn't my business really. You can't pry. Maybe I will start a poll or a survey.
o a new tenant who owns his own land gets a mid-sized rental. Why? I can't really say. Bellisseria is not for everyone because you can't put your own house out.
o some tenants in cheaper rentals left them because they have no cash now they said
o a person paid ahead into a 50L room but couldn't figure out how to join the group by clicking on the joiner and pulling it from chat, and then refunded
o two people bought two of my gatchas for 10L each at EPIC. Whee! I now have 8 cents US. That is not enough to buy a postage stamp or offset a texture upload. It does not cover the cost of having pulled for them and can't pay for my rent at EPIC. I knew that going in but it's important to keep documenting this.
o a bunch of partiers showed up on Belarus, bought some props and the $1600 feed but really only as a gag once they found out what sion chickers are. I gave them 4 free eggs. I explained that their food will run out by the end of the year; I have only a few months of supply, so the ethical thing to do is not raise them. They gabbled on in edgy RP mode for an hour in a group chat to which they invited me while I explained to them various things and about the gatcha policy which they had not heard of. Don't assume everyone in SL reads the web site or reads the forums. Some will find out the hard way when the machines are returned to inventory or even deleted by Linden.
o We are all watching what Winning Witte does with Campbell Coast, the premiere Mainland artist community which the original developer had to put on the block due to RL illness. She had poured enormous amounts of time, treasure, and talent into that project. It's a project that can't pay for itself, being Mainland, or at least, very slowly or only with very mundane rentals which she didn't do. I could explain a lot about this but I'll cut to the case: the new owner says he hopes to make it profitable, meaning it wasn't before, and that was clear from the vacancies and the parcels for sale for $7.5/m which astounded me. I bought a few, and got them rented out after I enjoyed living there myself for some months but I don't justify busman's holidays for long.
I noticed that he redesigned some lots, took content off, made them slightly less heavy, some sold and I see now one going for resale for $34m which is insane for Mainland. Oops, make that $48/m even as I write. There is one 3000+ plus lot left there for 3.9/m likely to be gone very soon. The rest are actually rentals put to sale to advertise them. That could only reflect the possibility that the owner will no longer sell parcels from it on the open market which of course was an insane thing to do and crazily worked only because BJoyful is the kind of force of nature and cheerful personality that can pull this out. I personally don't sell charm. I sell rentals. But charm doesn't pay tier always.
I found from the BBB news, which is one of the few sources of any hard news inside SL or out, that first, BJoyful sold this, and I immediately found out to whom myself, and second, that WW is charging artists now $200/wk for rent, and they are busy helping each other and trying to find patrons. I wouldn't have opened with that frankly; the artists are the chief prime content on those sims and the draw -- the rent should be charged from the regular people who move in there or the artists' friends or whatever. I would have subsidized them for longer. But whatever, he is more successful than I am as a result, and that's fine, and look, they paid, as that is not the rent most gallery owners charge, PS, important point. Charge people reasonable rent, they pay, who knew! Most galleries charge 10 times that and have high vacancy rates as a result.
This Campbell development sale began before the gatcha collapse but actually only a month before, as other signs in the economy were trending downward since the new Linden Lab owners came in, did not say hi, did not issue a roadmap, mouthed platitudes at the SL18B interview, sent Patch out to deliver this awful new policy -- and that's it. Oh, and VP of Engineering is not hired since Oz left in February. All of these are red flags of concern for anyone in business. New owners should address all these issues and oh, fix search, too, if they want consumer confidence but they may not feel they need it.
o In between stints publishing anti-vax conspiracy dreck, Daniel Voyager has been publishing notices about the magic Bellisseria houses coming soon. The Lindens will have a shiny to distract people from gatcha with. All of a sudden, all of the air has gone out of the tires of Magic Belli for me. I already have a cabin I haven't decorated which I will ditch as I need the tier.
o But...Just in time for Magic Bellisseria is an event called Wizarding which I think has no relationship to anything in Bellisseria but who knows it is well timed. Harry Potter and Harry Otter are ubiquitous but this content is better quality, subtle and hence is a very high quality and every interesting event, I think a new one. Because:
- the last of the gatchas are 75 a pull there, that's high, not 25 as in stores; Half Deer, you dogs, you! Why no 25L gatchapon? My supply of two-headed cats is about to become critically low and fortunately few people on that quest at Shaman's Hut ever find the clue there so I have only awarded then one or two times.
- merchants clearly took their original gatcha sets planned months ago and quickly converted them into fatpacks or theme packs -- that's obvious to see there. How will that work?
- they are priced sometimes low at $500 or high for $1200 or whatever
- so like you can get this fluffy hamster pet thing for $500 and 37 prims (!) who does a lot of tricks. That's a lot for a pet. Before, he might have been a rare in a gatcha. Generally, except for Clover, people didn't sell pets like this, they sold them in gatchas or as long-term propositions like KittyCats. Here there's a gatcha with the fluffies for just 25L but they don't do all the stuff and aren't animesh. My 25L Forest Fluff is the only thing I got at this event. That's it. That's the shopping basket. Will I ever buy the $500 guy? I doubt it.
- Speaking of Clover, her Spirit Rabbit is only $299, lower than her past pets from what I recall, and ordinarily I would get this without a second thought but now I don't buy a thing unless it has an actual immediate real use or I think it won't be on sale after the event. A dirty little secret of SL is that most of the things on reduced price at events in fact are still available at those prices long after as they didn't sell so well. Maybe just before the event ends I will buy it? Or when it is $399 at her store? I don't know.
- DRD has a gorgeous set chunked up into packs as they all do with no visible discounted fatpack. So $425 for a magic stone circle strikes me as lower than such things used to be and a decent price. How many people will buy packs and not gatchas? DRD stopped doing gatchas long ago as all the big hot male designers did and they sell packs and usually overpriced for what they are but their look, which is like somewhere between an Amsterdam weed cafe and the Apocalypse, is popular in SL
- my heart contracted seeing designers who used to make gatchas and walk away with some real cash from an event like this now selling single items not on transfer or packs not on transfer for $400 which won't sell in the sea of Harry Potter stuff because it can't be re-sold.
It's over. It cannot be resold. That means in a sea of Harry Potter they have to stand out and that is supremely hard, when even 20 of the top artists here are frantically trying to stand out from each other so that at least one of them might make a sale. I often bought at events to decorate rentals or sometimes I could resell a gatcha rare. Now I simply am not buying anything unless I can immediately apply it to a rentals area that I know will rent. I already have 12 tarot sets and dozens of potions and crystals. How many can you really honestly put out? How many other people are like me?
o The Linden continues to be devalued with the inability to instantly get 240 and now 241 or 242 is the norm and you lose on cashout to pay tier.
o At Okinawa the other day, I had bought some kind of Japanese hut for $390, some tart for $300 and a who what game for $400 I think it was, that is all in Japanese but involves some sort of flamingos, hammers, and winning a soda which I put at the Flamingo Court and the Dessert Outlook which I am renovating and hoping for more rentals there. That all is likely to be my last "major" purchase for some time.
Usually the Flamingo, at 50L a week, stays full. I don't know why some very long term tenants left there in recent months. In this last year, when tenants who have been with me for years disappear, I suspect COVID if they never log in again, but maybe it's just unemployment. Some could be happily moving on to Bellisseria or some other cheap rental but I don't see any other groups in their picks, they seem inactive. But in all my years of business, I have never known any 25L or 50L rentals area to stay empty so they will fill up again. Every other one is full now. A hotel is not the best proposition for SL. Who wants to be next to other people? It works because "other people" are on other times zones and aren't visible. Here you can tint your windows and most people use it as a crash pad to dress up or sort inventory and their actual lives are elsewhere. It's for some alts I suppose. Some people who lived here for years just didn't want to spend more on SL and were very happy. Some 10 years ago, when they built Zindra and insisted that adult activity move there, I took the other hotel here and moved it to Zindra, then finally dumped that because I really do not care for adult activity and don't want to be on a continent with it. Let others do that. I kept literally one 4096 which now has like 10 cabins on it that pretty much stay full. I then turned that land to small skybox parcels as in "M," there is tolerance for non-public adult activity by individuals -- how much more, I guess we will soon see as the new owners may make other changes. I doubt they will get into this as they don't wish to utterly destroy the world. Believe it or not, there are actually a lot of singletons that rent skyboxes with no adult activity or partners because they just like peace and quiet to build or dress or whatever before they go elsewhere.
I have three types of rentals here: $50/75 motels rooms, $100 skyboxes, and $100 or $150 houses with skyboxes in the "Hot Springs" part (did you know that a hot springs was discovered here 10 years ago and thawed out all the permafrost). Strangely, the Hot Springs are full and the cheaper things are not, who knows why, maybe I failed to advertise them enough. You can't do enough in SL of this type of thing and I put these on self-service and if eventually I find they don't rent for long periods I delete them and try something else. I decided to give one last shot at renovating this area which has gotten somewhat inactive to see how it does as I like it and so do existing tenants. I would tend to keep most of it and dump only some portion if it failed to pay.
o Speaking of "inactive," I visited Quixotic Gallery again, the Gallery that Time Forgot in Keuka, which is an amazing place, and showed a friend this find. I have visited it for years. It used to be updated. Now sometime in the last few years? I don't know? Its owner disappeared, and most of the artists. They are gone from People and their links lead to abandoned land. You can still buy art works there although those Lindens must not reach them now. I bought one work; they are kind of high priced there at $500 or $750. Only three of the artists I have contacted of the dozen or so there answered. One had only one line and no further comment and no interest in his works there. "Good people leave SL." Another showed me his RL art site and said he could sell me copies of the RL items within SL. Still another said she didn't make art anymore in prims because no one wanted it since mesh came. It's an amazing slice of history. The Lindens will come for it and put it under the bulldozer soon no doubt. Visit it before they do.
o I directly asked a Linden whether they are speeding up their uptake of Abandoned and auctioning. My impression is that the Lindens are moving like Sherman through Georgia all over Mainland around me. To be sure, as a friend said, we suspect they sometimes they put on the auction the fallow land near us hoping that a) we will buy it b) other people will buy it to be next to our nice land. Some people literally think I am "protected land" now I am so old. They are unlikely ever to answer me. I could try submitting a formal ticket but I find that is not the place to get pronouncements on larger issues of policy and philosophy. Perhaps MonCierge is but I can't get to things like that during the work day often. Someone should ask them? What I see here doesn't relate to me, I don't think, but an overall trend which comes from a mandate: get rid of all abandoned land, or we will delete the sims into the Linden sea. That's my hunch.
Is that possible to do? Delete the interior of Corsica and stitch it back together? I think it's possible, though time-consuming, in a contiguous virtual world where the land is already on different servers, and now at Amazon. The auction list looks a lot longer to me, but I don't follow it closely. Anybody?
o a point of data from the other day, but right after the big gatcha announcement, which I truly marveled at. The Communists near my Memorial to the Victims of Communism -- which sprang up there precisely because of their own loud propaganda venue -- have sold out to a large RP guy.
Were the Communists secretly paying for their land with gatcha re-sales? Hard to believe.
My first sign of this came with the return of a willow tree and an Anti-Communism sign which mean there was new ownership on the abandoned land.
I never heard of the big RP group, which sounds like a cross between and old Christian born-again camp meeting Upstate (which we used to go to 50 years ago now and listen to Sister Cornwall and Brother Cornwall preach, boy they could sure preach the Word of the Lord good and the fried chicken was tasty too) -- and that horrendous GTFO operation in some kind of residential living form, i.e. but with miles of concrete and moving machinery and -- well, I don't care. It's some kind of big RP thing that people like. These towns spring up and are somewhat strange to me because I never see the people who live in them. I don't know if they are an entire fictitious town in the imagination of only one guy, like the ones Dougie Flossberg makes which are very cool (and he is back BTW). In this one, the group land owner, the sheriff, the public safety officer, and the husband of Adorable Amelia are all one person. I personally think mixing land ownership with governance is not a good idea but I don't make giant weird RP villages that look like Sherwoodville if not Trumansville...
So long story short, this chap IMs me and asks me to sell my land and he will give me an attractive price, he says, triple its worth, $3/m LOL And he's right, as interior Mainland cannot sell even for $1/m often, and more like 0.3/m to a land dealer who MIGHT buy it but often not. I said no, it's my Memorial to the Victims of Communism. Once, I had an ordinary uninteresting few rentals there. The Communist nearby began to swoop in and harass me and call me an evil capitalist. Some GIANT rentals thing opened on the next sim. So I abandoned everything but one lot which became my Memorial, which has been griefed and trashed and bullied for years. I have staying power in SL and this was nothing compared to many other things I've suffered.
"No," I said, explaining this history.
"The Communists have sold out," he informed me matter-of-factly.
Everyone has a price. I knew others had tried to get them to sell because they were so obnoxious in that area. A few sims away, there are nice art galleries and the Lindens built a nice new road through these sims, all of which have the names of Russian provinces which is why those idiots showed up next door. No, they are not Woodbury, that's a separate opera, the appear to be PCP or Italian communists or whatever. Serb maybe.
I said I could only sell if they were truly gone.
He told me only one lot was left, "which appeared to be anti-fascist and anti-communist so maybe you can leave now." He was hazy on the difference obviously as many people are.
I explained to him that anti-fa is not anti-communist, ever, as the Comintern, a Soviet front organization of decades ago that even the Soviets scrapped as too liberal, invented anti-fa during the time of the Spanish Civil War -- but dropped it when they began themselves killing foreign communists that questioned them. Read Orwell or Hemingway on this subject, please. No doubt Russian trolls still harvest anti-fa to goad Americans in the US, and in Europe, they are decidedly pro-Kremlin and pro-DNR and an obvious bad actor. In the US, they are more confused and milder.
He wasn't familiar with this history -- few Americans or even Europeans are -- and I confirmed that anti-fa held that lot, and while they had removed the most obnoxious signs, they were still very much what they are.
So I told him I was not leaving. I took down my most lurid signs with skulls and "Communist Kills" put in the air to counter the former CP big propaganda screams. I rearranged the shrubs and the trees. I gazed out at the huge, flat, taiga that makes up those sims and saw a lone furniture sim that hadn't sold to Mr. RP -- yet. He seemed very courteous and I figure he will make my land into a cemetery in his somewhat creepy village if he has to or put a wall to disguise it, it's not a problem.
Communists have no scruples, but don't sell out in cheap interior mainland, until somebody actually makes them an offer they can't refuse.
I figured, as long ago as...last Thursday, August 5...that this guy and his pals were moving in for the duration.
Not so, his land is set to $1.3/m now -- an entire sim, nearly for a mere $60,000 -- and the prairie grasses are now growing again as the concrete parking lots are gone. Except...they aren't, and his build is still there and the land is still labelled "Phase 1" and I think more than likely, he knows that at $1.3/m his land will not sell and he can keep using it as a sandbox anyway.
The life of a sim can be fascinating and the rule is, you can never see all of it. This could have come and gone and I would never have seen it as I rarely go out there unless someone tells me it is being griefed.
Something with a name like Billionaire Car Truck, Inc just bought a huge tract of land on August 5 but it seems to be different people, maybe Mr. RP sold some of his holdings?
There's a nicely-built mall here that is 3/4 empty here, with traffic of...13, with a claim date of 2018 -- some people can play store for a very long time without having tier paid by their sales I guess. I totally understand this. The ability of people to pay for SL sustains the world -- until it doesn't. If that three-year-old empty mall is here next month I'll be surprised, however.
There is a near-total sim that was abandoned in this area on July 27, a long term community called UUTopia that I don't quite follow. A lone Syldavian flag is on the sim -- Syldavia is some other RP thing which I have seen here and there and they seemed anti-communist or pro-Serb and maybe are Serbs or who the hell knows but not a very nice bunch.
A tiny parcel at the corner says, "A very peaceful corner of what is left of the former UUTopia" which is related to the Unitarian Universalist Church. How those lefties relate to these right-wing nutters in Syldavia is a mystery. I thought maybe these Unitarians didn't understand what a Syldavian flag is and just through it was cool, but the owner is Isador Velinov of UUTopia news.
Syldavia is some kind of right-wing furry outfit.
The list of things they are against is so long it includes you and me likely, although it's a gag, and the list of things they are for is also silly, so it's some kind of LARP lark only virtual.
I have reached my spare time to study this further, truly, and they can bark about how they have been misportrayed or whatever, but let's zoom out further and say: why was this very old group in SL, since 2007 or early, who had land and projects for years and years and even like 4 sims in this Russian area, forced to abandon their land, just last month, before the gatcha policy? The pandemic?
Empires rise and fall in these worlds, sometimes with no one noticing a furry falling in the forest.
So Communists selling...gatchas going...Guy Linden in my backyard...the world is changing, people. Quite a bit.
Dear Prok. Forever in your thoughts. Nolan.
Posted by: Nolan McMullen | 08/28/2021 at 05:53 AM