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November 15th 2006, almost three years ago and Linden Lab were being faced by angry residents over changes to private island pricing. Tier for new private islands was going up from USD$195 to USD$295, some people had sims on order and were outraged. Linden Lab then made some pricing commitments, they delayed the price rise, they brought in grandfathering. The blog post (and comments) can be found here and pretty interesting reading it makes.

Actually a lot of the blogs from three years ago make pretty interesting reading, not least because arguments about basic accounts and premiums were raging then and still rage today. There were also rumours that certain land barons had been tipped off and Linden's were rumoured to have been playing favourites, not much seems to have changed! However the pricing commitments were:

"First, we announced that going forward, if we plan to change a recurring fee for existing customers, we will provide 60 days notice at a minimum.

Second, as long as you continue to own your Island and its purchased at the grandfathered pricing, we will not raise your recurring fee at least throughout 2007. This was definitely received as good news at the meeting and I’m happy to make that commitment. Islands that are transferred to a new owner before February will also continued to be eligible for grandfathered pricing. After February 1st however, we may make transferred islands subject to the new pricing."

So here we are, roughly three years on and grandfathered sims are still grandfathered, they are still grandfathered even on transfer, this is way past February 2007. Now one of the arguments for keeping grandfathered status on transfer has been that class 4 sims are lower spec, even though some class 5 sims were grandfathered, the argument that class 4 sims were lower spec and therefore didn't offer the same performance levels has been the strongest argument for keeping grandfathered status on transfer.

However now that Jack has blogged here, that class 4 is going the way of the dodo and so is the class system in general, that argument no longer holds any water. I'm not saying that they should end grandfathering for existing owners, but why on earth is grandfathering inherited by the next owner and what possible excuse can there now be for preserving this deal?

People won't have any trouble selling class 4 sims if grandfathered status on transfer is removed as they will automatically become class 5 at a minimum, which is a sensible deal, this happens with mainland, people won't be stuck with old hardware. The time is right to announce that grandfathered status won't remain on transfer, I mean, they hinted this would happen in 2007 and now in November 2009 it still hasn't happened.

I wouldn't want Linden Lab to announce it was happening tomorrow, people have purchased grandfathered sims at higher market rates because they're grandfathered, but they could announce that in x amount of months tier will rise on sims transferred after a certain future date. Then grandfathered status will end naturally. I don't quite understand who Linden Lab are protecting over this issue any more. Grandfathered status for homesteads is scheduled to end in July 2010 so they are prepared to end grandfathering in certain circumstances, why not with full sims?