okey-dokey, got some questions, please help...

1 - i'm wanting to buy land. do i NEED to have the $9.99 monthly payment thing to buy it? and if so, do i need to buy land seperatly, or does it come with the payment?
also, if i cancel my monthly subscription (low on money), would my land go away too?

2 - be honest. if you do not have ANY money to spend in-game or irl for the game, what is there to do other than socializing? i am not a people person, and typically solo in every mmo i play (EQ2, PSU, etc). if i run out of money for the game, is there anything an anti-social guy like me can actually have fun with?

You can rent some communities have private sandboxes like Etopia, some don't.
Some let you build and don't have preset homes or conditions about what do
with your lot.
I am not people person either I build and create stuff.
I am usually preoccupied in ideas, creating and learning most of time.
Social settings I can't really do to long without going back to all my ideas and
wanting to create stuff most of time.
Just not very social in traditional sense of the word social.
If I didn't have land I have to find public sand boxes.
Public Sandboxes have issues.
If I want to around others and risk dealing with possible learning environments
I check out classes.

To buy mainland, you need to be premium. You can rent land without being premium. You can cut the cost from 9.99 by buying an annual premium membership, which is $72.00, but you still need to be premium to buy and sell land.

You pay for the land separately. The more land you own, the higher your tier is, so you will be paying an additional monthly fee beyond the 9.99 or the annual premium for any land you own beyond 512m2. It can range from a couple bucks to a LOT.

2 - Explore, build, fly freebie vehicles, learn skills at various classes. Lots of social things, of course, but there's plenty you can do on your own.

1. Not technically, you can rent land from other people without having a subscription. Either way, you will have to continue paying every month for it.

2. Really - people say this a lot, but SL is not a game. There are plenty of things to do, some involving money, some not, some involving socialising, some not. It all depends on what it is that you like to do in general as to how much you will be able to enjoy things without paying money.

1. Whether you need a Premium account to buy land depends upon from whom you want to acquire land.

A premium account is required to have land on "Mainland." Mainland is land maintained by Linden Labs.

You do not need a premium account to acquire land from Private Estate Holders. They are residents who have purchased sims and run them themselves in Second Life.

This thread will quickly fill with discussion of advantages and disadvantages between Mainland and Private Estate.

Here's the key one: If you pay 10,000 L or whatever to "buy" land from a Private Estate today, and the Private Estate owner reclaims the land back from you tomorrow and keeps the land, there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. You're out the money, and Linden Labs won't get involved in the what they consider a dispute between residents.

If you want Private Estate land, the best thing to do for yourself is to rent it only. The Private Estate owner can make you the "owner" of the land for the purposes of you doing whatever you want with it (pursuant to the Covenant). However, there is no reason you have to "buy" by paying a sum up front. You'd be paying monthly tier only. By renting and not buying from a Private Estate, you limit your potential losses from either being ripped off, or the victim of an honest mistake.

Other than that, do a lot of research before buying land, not just a day's worth, a few week's worth.

2. There are many, many, many things to do in Second Life without spending money.

I honestly can't think of anything (other than shopping, of course) that requires you to have money. Very few places have entry fees.

There are enough legitimate free objects, clothes, animations, etc. available that you can do pretty well for making yourself look good without spending a dime.

The good advice is don't spend any money at all while you're new. At least take some time to figure out how the Second Life "economy" works before spending money. You absolutely do not need to spend money to enjoy Second Life.

Edit: Yes, as has been mentioned, if you acquire land from a Private Estate owner, you have to pay monthly for it. You don't need a Premium account to do so, though you do need to have a way of buying Lindens to pay for land in Lindens, though some times Private Estate Owners accept PayPal.

A Private Estate Owner can reclaim your land for any reason. Hopefully, they are honest, and only reclaim it if you fail to make your timely payment (usually monthly, sometimes weekly). Mainland will be reclaimed when Linden Labs doesn't get their money. You don't have to log in to keep your land; you just have to give them the money. Your account is not deleted from inactivity. In fact, it can only be deleted by your request (or if you break the TOS and are banned or something).

@ all the 1 responses - ok, let's say i spend $9.99 for a month, and buy some land.
if i cancel my membership like an hour after paying the monthly fee/buyign land, would i still be able to use my land i bought until the month ends (as other mmo's work)? or would it just flat dissapear the second i cancel?

I'm fairly certain that it doesn't go away until next billing cycle.

If you pay a month in advance for Premium today, then cancel your Premium membership tomorrow, then you're still Premium for the rest of the month. It goes away on next billing cycle. In fact, you'll probably get the e-mail from Linden Labs inviting you to renew it before the month runs out.

You'd still have to pay tier at the end of the month when they billed for it. And you'd basically be throwing away the money you paid for the land.

wait, to buy a private region, is it $1000 dollars, or $1000 lindels?

also, where can i find info about the renting places?

EDOT; crap, it's $1000 us dollars
also, renting land costs a minimum of $40 that i can see, too much.

isn't there some cheap way?

You don't need to buy an entire region. Use the land search or map in-world instead of the Land Store or auction page.

If you buy mainland then yes you need to pay the monthly fee for the premium account, plus you pay an additional monthly fee (tier) if the land you buy is more than 512sq.m If you stop paying the monthly subscription then yes, you will lose the land and you won't get the money back that you paid for it.

You can "buy" or rent land from a private estate holder on an island - for that you don't need a premium account but you will still have to pay a monthly fee, typically that is higher than you'd pay for the tier on mainland. You have less control of the land on private islands - the island owner may decide to quit or sell up without notice and you would have no recourse to getting your money back. The advantage though, is that islands are usually nicer places, you would not suddenly find an ad-farm next door for instance, as you might on mainland. My advice is go for the island but look for a rental-only deal without having to pay an up-front fee.



Being honest - if I were not a sociable person I do not think I would have stayed in SL as long as I have. The main reason I stay is because of the friends I've made here. However there ARE things you can do alone, if that's what you like. There are various solo sports like fishing, sailing, driving, skydiving, you can pick up freebie vehicles (even aircraft) that you can drive round in. There are places you can explore that resemble places in the real world. Dublin is one, Venice Beach is another. I know there are more - it might be fun to find them all. If you're into graphics or photography at all, SL is a great place for taking snapshots. Personally, I get bored to death with anything I do on my own. If no-one else is involved I do it once and that will be it.

If you're into content-creation that is very much a solo pursuit. You can make anything you can imagine, whether it's little bits of jewelery, or hundred-meter-tall castles. If you're creating things like textures, clothing or animations these are activities that you generally do in other programs outside of SL, and upload them in when they're finished.

Last year I bought a 1 year premium membership. I paid the $72. At some point, a few months back I think, I cancelled that premium membership to go back to Basic(low on funds too). BUT...since I had paid for a years worth, the system wasnt actually going to take me back to basic until that year was up. Make sense?

So...I think going by that, that if you cancelled and went back to Basic, you'd still have that land until that month was up.

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As for the "what to do here in SL" thing, one thing you can do is in-world, go to SEARCH and find a sandbox. You can play and build there... Be careful because there are different kinds of sandboxes. Some dont allow weapons, some do...just read the description.

You can have a blast building things...and writing scripts to put in them...

One tip...go to the Blog section and find Torley Linden's video tutorials. There's a bunch of them and you'd be amazed what you'll find there to do..

Isa

I was throwing out arbitrary numbers.

If you buy land from a Private Estate Owner, the Private Estate Owner sets the fee. The fee is tied to the amount of land you buy. 512 sqm is cheaper than 8096 sqm.

Like I said, I wouldn't recommend "buying" from a Private Estate Owner, only paying tier (the continuing monthly, or weekly, payment).

The Mainland you acquire is most likely not bought from Linden Labs directly. You'll buy the mainland directly from another owner who already has it and has put it up for sale. The current owner can set whatever buy price he or she wants. (I think an average is something like 7 L$ per square meter- so if you get a small 512 parcel, the "buy" price is around $3500 L$.) In this case, the money you pay to buy Mainland goes to the resident who owned it last. After you buy it, you will have to pay a monthly payment to Linden Labs, called Tier, to keep that land.

Most land buying and selling occurs in Linden dollars. So to see how much real jack you're spending, convert the Linden dollars to real dollars in your head. It will probably cost you around $13.20 USD to buy 3500 L$.

Now, if you have a Premium account, and buy a 512 sq m plot of Mainland, you have free tier on that first 512 sq m of land. That means that you have to pay Linden Labs no extra money to keep it, after you bought it from the last resident to own it. If you acquire more than 512 sq m of Mainland, then you have to start paying additional money for tier.

And the tier rates and so forth are on the Second Life web page. Look there for info on buying mainland.

If you are going to get a Premium account anyway, buying 512 sqm is your cheap option for land ownership. You need to sink that initial payment to buy it from the last landowner ($13 USD, more or less), but then you have no additional monthly payments. Theoretically, you can recover some of that money buy selling the land to someone else when you are done with it. You can exchange your unspent Linden Dollar balance back to real world money.

hmm, what if i rented a piece of land from a rela estate owner (aka not linden labs), would i still need premium membership? since the land isn't mine, do i still need premium?

No in that case you do not need to be premium. But but private landlords can pretend you "sell" you land, take your money, and then kick you off. And that has happened. So it's good to rent from someone with a good reputation.

No, if you are renting from someone, you do not need to have a premium account.


As for things to do, I often don't feel like socializing, but there's alway something to do in SL. There's tons of places to explore, things to see, games to play, inspiration to find and builds to build. I also like going to live music events. To enjoy those while feeling non-social, just fly up about 100m above the event. You'll still hear the music stream but not all the chatter. You can pan the camera down to the stage to watch the show.

how do i find out about that?

EDIT: anyone know if Sensual Casanova is a good renter/buyer from? they got a good deal going on atm, but i never heard of them

You have to talk to people who've rented and see who they recommend. I don't know much about it except that I would trust Desmond Shang.

Before you jump in and land buy, work out exactly what you want the land for, and similarly, how much you think you will need. For me, it generally seems to be take the number you first thought of, double it, and add on a bit more, but then I like pretty things!! Chances whatever you buy won't be big enough. If you just want somewhere to call home, then you could probably get away with 512 if you're clever with your prims. If you're looking to do something a bit more extravagant, then you'll need a larger plot.

There are loads of rental properties out there, from small, cheap houses or skyboxes to whole islands, probably. Have a look in the Rental Directory or Homefinders. If you're not sure, rent somewhere for a week or two, see how your prims pan out. Lots of places to 1 week rentals, and that should give you a good feel for things.

Jen

Never rented from Sensual, but I know her through business. She has a good reputation, and has been doing biz in SL quite a while. I feel safe in saying she'd be a good person to rent from.