Waaaaay back in February of 2006, I decided it was about time that The Second Life Times settle down and have its own office. So, I fired up the Search and went and bought some first land. I had a pretty good list of land choices, and I looked around at other sims before I chose a parcel in Areumdeuli.
Fast forward to today. Second Life now has over 2 million residents. This creates a problem with First Land: there isn’t enough to go around. Earlier today, I fired up SkyTimes News Chopper and flew over to where I heard about a dozen first land parcels were still available. These parcels were all bought up in just about 15 minutes. A large area of 34,304 m2 sat in the middle of the sim, wating to be split into the 512 m2 parcels of first land. When I arrived, there was 60+ people in the sim, looking for land. If Linden Labs had gotten around to it, the 34,304 m2 could have been divided up and those residents who were looking for land would have almost all been satisfied.
But, they don’t. This has caused a incredible soar in land prices. Two parcels that had already been bought had been split in two, and the four resulting parcels were being RENTED out for L$200 a week. Smart newbies could buy a parcel and sell it for twice as much as they paid for it.
Prokofy Neva has a pretty good article on this situation at the Second Life Herald.
