Free Land & Free House from LL

An e-mail sent to new residents on a basic account who joined Second Life recently.

Hello! I'm Lauren Linden. I'd like to invite you to take part in a bold experiment in virtual living. As a participant, you'll get a free home in a new Second Life community for just the cost of a Premium Account.

Choose from 6 classic home styles, including a spacious ranch house and a stylish 1950's modern house, each with yards out back for BBQs, each on a comfy 512 square meters situated in a beautiful new neighborhood lined with trees and sidewalks. Just upgrade to a Premium Account and within 24 hours, you'll receive the DEED to your new home.

These houses are in VERY limited supply, and the special offer expires in 7 days.*

Claim your piece of the Second Life dream.

This is the first time Linden Lab has offered free land and a free house to residents.

As a Second Life land owner, you'll receive:
L$1,000 bonus upon purchase
L$500 week spending allowance
Exclusive Premium Account offers and promotions

Own your first Second Life home today!

*Offer expires Wednesday, November 23rd at 11:59 PM PST or while supplies last

Lauren Linden
Second Life Surrealty
[email]surrealty@secondlife.com[/email]

So do they actually get to own this land that the house is on? I mean, like land for the landless, but without having to pay the L$512? And what is to stop people just deleting the houses if that's the case?

Will they get to keep it forever if they chose?

Hallelujah! Why must LL independently discover that which was already obvious to us back in 2003?

I just went and took a look at the place and the plots are in fact 512 and the name on the parcel shows the new resident to be the sole owner. The ones that I did find all had the "Edit Land" button unchecked but that doesn't mean they can't turn it on.

My guess would be that they cannot teraform and they cannot remove the house.

Looks like the residents own the homes, what happens if they intentionally or accidently delete it?

Nice speed limit

Aye.



Timing was especially funny because I saw Sensual zoom on by very quickly and past the "happy fun land" sign as I was driving back inwards.

Terraform limits may be zero to stop changing the land but if they're down as the owner of the parcel, all they'd have to do is do a return to return the house, surely? Unless the Lindens have a feature that we don't know about *shrug*

Primglue! Sticks your prims solidly to your land and each other. Permanent bond. Originally designed to combat random primdrift, but found to have a wide range of everyday uses.

Warning: Do not use on attachments. If you get Primglue on your skin, seek medical advice. Not that it'll do much good. I just said it's permanent. So be prepared to be ridiculed for your new permanent pine box shaped head.

Haha... sure, we already have "Force Sunset", what about "FORCE HOUSE"! Hahaha.

Resident sez, "I don't want this house on my land!" and readily goes about and demolishes. Maybe even unlinks and makes it Physical.

Linden activates FORCE HOUSE... house comes back, Resident cries in despaire. "But, I don't want this house on my land!"

Much sobbing, and submissive reconciliation with one's perma-abode follows.

Interesting. Looks a lot like a planned community, perhaps specifically zoned for new residents mainly with the hopes that they want to add more land and tier up / group up and move on to a diff SIM to gain that land. Mayby there are stipulations on the free land that it cannot be sold to anyone else (it does look like they are getting the land and house for free) that it gets returned to the Linden's to be turned around to the next new resident.

Terraforming is deactivated. *EDIT* The houses sitting on land owned by residents are also owned by those residents. So apparently they can delet them and build thier own. I imagine there are some residential guidelines but I haven't found them yet. ha ha ha ban lines ha ha ha *EDIT*

My hope is that, when someone abandons one of these lots, it will revert to first land status and some Linden will drop another prefab on it so that the hood stays intact. A few of these grouped around a quadsim community area would serve hundreds of incoming newbies until they were comfortable moving on to land rental or ownership elsewhere.

I was going to scream about how much money and time we've spent on the Boardman and Brown sims, and how LL is devaluing that land and such drivel to make fun of people who argue against p2p but I won't. That would just make me as silly as them.

Actually it's great to see LL trying new methods of managing the world. Experiments are good to conduct whether they succeed or not. We always learn something and at least gain a few new ideas.

I also wanted to ask, wasn't there a Linden contest to be the builder of the houses for this SIM idea??? I remember reading about it in the announcements....I think....

As I understand it:

The house and lot is free.
You get your choice of one of six style houses.
The houses are copy/mod, but no transfer.

These houses are six which were obtained after a call for content for this promotion was announced in Announcements. I made a house for it, and mine is one of the six.

There were very specific specs for these houses: they had to be no more than 14 x 14 meters, with at least one 10x10 room; one-story only; and fit on a lot of specific dimension with exact numbers of meters between the house itself and the front and each side of the lot.

Then they took the houses, and made changes on them, so that, although there are only six houses, there are many variations of the houses. As I understand it, people can choose which style of house they want.

I saw this neighborhood with three other of the house designers, and it's terrific! Like Boardman, only not for millionaires! We all wanted to live there ourselves!

coco

As I understand it - and this may have changed - a person can sell his property after being there for a minimum of three months. (This is to prevent instant land flipping.)

I don't know if there are any zoning rules. In any case, people can remove the houses and put their own houses out. So this will be a very interesting experiment - to compare the sim as it looks now with how it will look months down the road after it acquires that lived-in look.

coco

Very interesting. Linden Lab is making a grab for someone else's pie again.

This offer does take the place of the first land, not add to it, is that correct?

dang i'm a noob...i just upgraded to premium....I want one lol

It would be nice if it did. Maybe it would help cut back a little on the First Land abuse? Not sure though.

These are beginner, inexpensive houses in tract situations ... like public housing or FEMA trailer camps, they provide a foothold for the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

If this was part of the commercial "pie" for someone, it has been eaten, but one must remember that in a feudal monarchy, the Sovereign can choose at any time to compete with the merchant class. May be smart, may be dumb, may be good for the huddled masses and not for the landed gentry, but it happens.

Remember the day when Mike Doonesbury woke up and read in the paper that Microsoft had bundled free with Windows a product functionally identical to what his little software company was selling? And that "sucking sound" as the value of his little companies stock went to zero?

Yet one can compete with the "gov-ment" by providing better services and targeting the higher-margin customers who want faster or custom work. Just look at FedEx and UPS, who compete effectively with the heavily subsidized but slower US Postal Service.

It happens in the best of lives. Pray for the sovereign to be merciful and for the competition to be resourceful.

Frank

And I get shouted down as a socialist for advocating a modest increase in stipend tied to tier level? Hell I alte least would make the residents buy their house and land. While I applaud the notion of making SL more attractive to the casual player. I think giving away a $512 Linden property and a $3500 prefab home (in todays market lol) is going a bit far.

People forget that there ALREADY ARE free prefab homes in our inventory.

Bottom line is if this experiment succeeds in retaining more SL residents then we ALL win.

You know, it stuns me that I didn't realize the incredible insight and value of your posts until this morning. I don't think I can ever quite stop thanking you for this moment...

My first post.
I joined on Nov.1st and was planning to upgrade this weekend and begin looking at first land. This comes along it it seems attractive to me. I'm simply looking for a place to put a house at this point.
I haven't received the e-mail. Is this offer by invitation only? I wish there was someplace with addition information.