So, after years of anticipation, the long awaited Splinterlands "LAND" has launched and production is ongoing.
Now that I have basically placed all the cards I intended to place on my land, for now, I might as well talk about the big expansion.

• The Presale 1120 days ago:

The presale for Land begins in 2020 with a lot of expectation. Land management is starting to be the talk of the town in the Web3 gaming ecosystem.

I grab a tract and to save a 100 dollars, the frugal dumbass I am, I buy it as a part of the bigger region through a pool. This meant that my tract was locked in with 9 others and I couldnt sell until the next Land update that wasnt coming soon.

• The Pump:

Splinterlands hits insane heights after release of SPS during the last bull market. Land prices skyrocket. Tracts now sell for 80 000 USD. A 100x increase from presale values. 1 region sells for 700k USD.

The frugal idiot cant sell his tract now because he needed to save those 100 dollars.
He DMs Yabapmatt and tells him to please let him get his tract somehow out of the region because Matt held the keys for the pooled regions. Matt is silent. 😂

Not lying, this here is the single biggest regret of my life. (so far lol)

• The Dump:

SPS drops from $1 dollar to 1 cent. Land is delayed. Plot prices fall by 95%. My tract is unlocked, I now control it, but its worth 1/10 of the ATH. Its not worth selling anymore. I accept my foolishness even though the scars will never heal. 😅

• The Release 28.11.2023:

After months on the testnet Land 1.5 is finally ready to go. We have now had 4 days since release. So what do I actually think about Land?

The GOOD:

Well... First of all its fairly obvious that land is an integral piece of the Splinterlands economy. Its supposed to lock away as much DEC as possible and lead players to burn their SPS to get to DEC once DEC goes over 1 USD.
That has in some way started happening already as SPS has been pumping quite a bit.
Its up 65% in 1 month.
That has massive implication imo for any potential investors looking at high quality WEB3 game tokens (SPS) to invest in.
Land also locks away excess cards that had no use case sitting in their bags.
Now that Land is in place its kind of even more telling of how needed land was earlier in the SPS distribution to offset the high inflation.
I have always said that Splinterlands has by far the best tokenomics out of any crypto game I have ever seen.
I stand by that firmly even though the delivery of some core building blocks should have come a bit sooner.

The MEH:

I wouldnt call anything about Land "BAD" so ill just go with MEH.

• The UX is not terrible but its not great either. Im not a fan of how some information is presented.
  If you dont know where something already is, you will have a hard time finding it.
  Some of the information shown on one page is shown elsewhere in a better way. Some information is missing.
  The statistics that are provided to you dont show some essential things like grain/HR cost total. So you have to pull up peakmonsters or other third party sites to organize your production properly. Grain cost when placing on single plots isnt shown either, so you have to guesstimate.

• Some of the items sold prior to release were either poorly implemented or too expensive.
  Building in a box was placed randomly when surveying tracts. Not a single one of the 20 BiBs i bought will be in use and I cant move them.
  Without time crystals you cant even start working and they're very expensive. 1 of my plots I didnt use TC on I need to wait 70 days to be cleared.

• There are things that complicate the game without that actually adding much fun to the game or land management. I have this feeling that we could have easily went without some things at the release and the development might have been faster because of it.

1. Penalties and bonuses on plots based on Geography. It adds nothing to the game for me, only makes it an annoyance when placing workers.
2. Additional rarities like Occupied or Magical I think could have been added later on or simply the bonuses added via building features or unlocks. Maybe it being a path choice for your plot. In practice there is no difference between a common Occupied and a Legendary plot if you are mining.

• The plot supply is probably much higher than the demand will ever be.

CONCLUSION. Is it all worth it?:

Its a complex question. For the overall game health I would say that its absolutely worth it but for me as an individual player, if we are just looking at land itself, I would say, "Unclear yet". 😅

If taking into account prices at Land release it would take me a bit less than 10 years to get the money I would have gotten now If I got rid of everything and bought and staked SPS.
If taking into account the actual initial investment it would take me about 1 year, which isnt bad.
So im not sure what happens here. Its a mystery really. You obviously would have been better off if you held SPS instead of Land but if others looked at things like that, obviously SPS wouldnt be positively affected either.
Thats why I always hold and do a bit of everything. I think that is ultimately the best idea. You never know what happens tomorrow.

If I look at land as the essential part of the Splinterlands economy that it is and at the indirect effect its having on my staked SPS and other assets then I would say that the 60% pump that happened because of the Land release this month, added card use case made up for all my expenditure on land and those 3 dollars a day are just a sweet bonus.
Everything else land will do over time, with land 2.0 incoming, will increase that positive effect many times over. Especially because of the increased SPS appeal.

LAND = GOOD