Jack Linden in his quarterly blog posting just dumped a HUGE bombshell on private sim pricing.

Island Pricing

Our new Land Store is moving through testing and will be launched in April, perhaps within a week or two depending on how final testing goes. It will be cross browser compatible and will provide nearly instant delivery of a new island after completing checkout.

For Q2 our Island pricing is changing. New islands will be USD$1000 and this change will go live upon the new Land Store being launched, so before the end of April. Orders placed before the launch will be at the current USD$1675 pricing. Monthly fees will remain the same for Q2.

No doubt there will be lots of questions about how this affects those residents that have ordered islands very recently, and how it affects Openspaces or the Educational pricing. I will follow up with a much more detailed blog post in a day or two, so well before the new Land Store is launched; do please be patient while we get all the information finalised for you.

At the end of Q2 we will review pricing once again and post a similar update including pricing information for Q3.

Anyone who has bought a sim in the past 30 days can cancel it. You lose $100 restocking fee but you come out $595 ahead. The Linden blog wont tell you this, but its policy.

It is interesting to “watch” the SL community complain. LOL – sorry, if you think your virtual land really has value, you are crazy. Land in RL has value due to location and scarcity. “Land” in Virtual Worlds only has value based upon what is there — and if some one else wants it.