Why You Shouldn't Buy Land in SecondLife Right Now.

Remember when I wrote 'Landbaron Merlin Getting His Just Rewards?'. The technology arms race continues.

Apparently, the members of a group called 'Best in SL' are pulling the same trick on other people that was played on Landbaron Merlin. The quick switching of prices caught Muratus LosAngeles for 43,000L today when he was buying a piece of land at 4,300L. A 512 m² piece of land. That is a 38,700 Linden dollar difference. That is approximately $139 US.

That is a big chunk of change.

Muratus swears that the confirmation screens all said 4,300 Lindens, and he said he has the snapshots to prove it. Is he the first person to get caught? No. Sergio Sobocinski was the first victim of this - and there have been others whose permission I do not have to use their names.

And remember what Linden Lab's Cory Linden said in response to Chaos Mohr:

[12:28] Jeska Linden shouts: Chaos Mohr: What is being done to address land database issues which result in things such as parcels being paid for and not transferring, parcels being sold to multiple people etc? This seems to be a major technical issue which keeps cropping up and hasn’t been fixed yet.
[12:28] Cory Linden shouts: These are likely symtpoms of the broader stresses on the central db and transactions..
[12:29] Cory Linden shouts: as I mentioned int he blog post, we are attacking these problems in two ways, to first identity weak spots in the current system and to build a better transaction system as well.

Meanwhile, Linden Lab continues to flood the market with simulators regardless of a land system that is increasingly being demonstrated as flawed. If this is happening to experienced users - what could happen to the less experienced users? We're not talking about legal liability (though a few people have been chatting about that) - Linden Lab cannot admit liability because that opens up a can of worms - but they certainly aren't doing a great job of denying it if this is true. If people can switch prices faster than the confirmation screen comes up - that is a bug.

So what to do? If you search for the group named "Honorable Land Dealers Association', you'll find a list of people who maintain a good reputation with land (and who would get booted if they act improperly). That is a lot of work to make sure that you don't lose $136 US on a simple land transaction. Or you could buy estate land¹.

I'm staying out of mainland's land market right now because the risks are too high. I have one lone plot in Avignon which will just sit there. Maybe what people need to do is stop buying and selling land until Linden Lab has enough time to respond to what could be very serious glitches.

Maybe that is what they want?

¹: Shameless plug: There is still some land on Sentience for sale.