SL Land, Prims, and Tier

SL Land, Prims, and Tier

When I'm talking to people who are new to the game, there are

terms that everyone finds confusing:
Land
Owning Land
Renting Land
Prims on Land
Tier Fees
Group land bonus

LAND IN SECOND LIFE:
All of us who own virtual land iSL are leasing CPU capacity from Linden Labs. Linden Labs owns it all, and grants usage rights to Second Life landowners, who pay for the land, and also pay additional monthly usage fees ('tier') to LL, depending on how much land we
own. For history buffs, this is of course similar to a feudal land system, with less bloodshed.

The SL grid consists of thousands of 'sims'. Each sim is measured in 'meters' - 256m x 256m, or 65,536m2. The smallest unit is 4x4 meters, so there are 4096 little squares per sim, 64 squares on each side. Each sim has a location on the grid, which you can see
graphically by pulling up Map in your viewer. Some of those sims are on one of the Mainland continents, and the rest are estate, or private regions.


OWNING VS. RENTING in SL:
When we buy land, we are paying for the rights to a particular location and area of the grid. You need to be a Premium member to buy land. Upgrading to Premium membership is done at the SL website, and buys us the right to buy 512m of land.

Paying monthly tier fees gives us the right to buy more land - the more tier we pay, the more land we can own. The more land we own or rent, the more prims we can build or rez into Second Life.

On the Mainland we buy land either from another resident or from Linden Labs Auctions), we pay tier fees directly to LL, and our rights and obligations are to LL. We may rent this land to other residents, and set prices and rules for this rented land. If we sell this land to another resident, the new owner then pays the related tier fees directly to Linden Labs. Mainland has no building codes, and no rules outside of the LL TOS, though landlords generally set some standards.

We can also buy an Estate - also called private region, or estate island, from Linden labs for a flat fee or by making an arrangement with a current estate owner and paying a transfer fee to LL. There are also auctions to pay for reserving particular locations on the grid for future purchase. Estate owners pay higher monthly tier fees to LL, and have much more control ("Covenant" and terrain design) over their land than mainland landowners - enforcing building standards, or banning commercial activity, for example.

Estate land can be rented to SL residents the same way that Mainland is rented. Estate sim owners may also sell all or part of a private region, giving resale rights to the buyers, and charging monthly tier fees to the buyers. The buyers of this land do not deal directly with Linden Labs - their rights and obligations are to the estate island owner. Estate island owners are still responsible for monthly tier to Linden Labs - this cannot be delegated, unless the entire island changes hands.

Some things that affect the value of "rented" or "owned" "land" are similar to RL - location and pretty views. Value factors specific to SL include access to protected Linden water and roads, whether land is designated M or PG (no, I can't define it, either), references for busy or quiet sims, and whether we think a neighbor's build is beautiful or ugly. In general, good graphical design increases the value of a location, and bad graphical design decreases it.

SL LAND AND PRIMS:
The LL formula for the numbers of prims that come with land =
total m2 owned in the sim * 15000/65536, rounded down.

So a 512m piece of land has 117 prims, a 1024m piece off land has 234 prims, and so forth. If you own two 512m pieces of land in the same sim, you have 234 prims to use in that sim, and you can put those prims on any piece of land you have in the sim - you
could use all 234 of them on one of the 512m parcels, if you leave the other one empty. If you sell the empty lot, half of the prims on your other lot will disappear - some may show up in the Lost and Found folder in your Inventory.

Information about a particular parcel of land is found by right clicking on the land itself and clicking "About Land", or clicking on your menu bar: World - About Land.

The General tab shows descriptions, ownership, price (if it's for sale), and the area (sq. m).

The Objects tab has the prim information:
"Simulater primitive usage" shows the number of prims the owner has rezzed onto his or her various parcels in that sim as a whole, the total number that could be rezzed, and the remaining prims available. "Primitives parcel supports" is the number of primitives that
this parcel will hold, if it's the only parcel in the sim that you own. This is the number that a land buyer or renter should be looking at.

The next bits of information in this window tell you who owns the prims that are rezzed onto this parcel - the owner, the group that owns the land, or any other people who have put prims there. If you're the land owner you can click on Show, and those prims
will appear highlighted (all except Linden plants), which is handy if you only want to return some objects on the land. The Autoreturn setting determines how long a non-owner's prims can stay on the land, before being automatically returned. Any value over 0 will return objects in that many minutes. A value of 0 will allow non-owner prims to stay on the land indefinitely. If you want other residents to be able to function on your land, but not use up your prims, a reasonable setting is 15, with the settings clicked under the Options tab to allow Object Entry and Run Scripts.

GROUP LAND OWNERSHIP
If you contribute tier to a group, the group gets a 10% bonus added to the amount of land it is allowed to hold, rounded to a multiple of 16m (the smallest parcel size). It costs L$100 to start a group. The other members of the group do not have to be premium members, and can be your alts. You can contribute tier to a group without deeding land, and you can deed land without tier, if someone else contributes the necessary tier. Usually people do both land and tier together.

The Group window has tier information for each member under the Members tab. Group land and your tier contribution are listed under the Land & L$ tab (sometimes you have to open and close the window a few times to get it to load). If you buy or sell land for a group, it's a good idea to check this frequently, to make sure that tier levels cover the land purchases. Any owner of a group can buy or sell group land, as well any other members who have been granted that right.

If you sell group land, the money is distributed evenly among members who are set to pay group liabilities and receive group dividends. The transaction shows up at the website once a day. When my land partner and I sell land, we usually sell it to ourselves first (price = 0, Sell The Land To A Specific User) to take it out of the group, and then set the real price to put it up for sale to anyone. Be careful - if you make a mistake doing
this, a land buyer who uses a scripted object (a 'bot') could get your land for nothing.


TIER AND GROUP BONUS SUMMARY:
This is a chart of the land you are allowed to buy, at the various mainland tier levels. You can increase your tier at the SL website. If you buy land for yourself individually, your tier will be automatically increased if you buy more than your current tier level. A window pops up when you click on "Buy Land" to show your potential tier change. If you buy land for a group, this window does not necessarily pop up: be sure to check back at the website that your tier level is accurate, and check the group info to make sure land purchases are covered by tier. If you make a mistake, you risk losing land, or being charged for tier you didn't want, and the interface between information in-game and at
the website is buggy.

Tier$ Prem Tier Total Grp bonus Total

Prem $0 512m 0m 512m 48m 560m

$5/mo 512m 512m 1024m 96m 1120m

$8/mo 512m 1024m 1536m 144m 1680m

$15/mo 512m 2048m 2560m 256m 2816m

$25/mo 512m 4096m 4608m 448m 5056m

$40/mo 512m 8192m 8704m 864m 9568m

$75/mo 512m 16384m 16896m 1680m 18576m

$125/mo 512m 32768m 33280m 3328m 36608m

$195/m 512m 65536m 66048m caps at: 66048m

$97.50 per month for each additional 32768 m² increment


This post was written and edited 2007-09-26, and will not stay accurate for long. Here some of the official places to look up land information:

http://secondlife.com/whatis/landpricing.php
http://secondlife.com/community/land.php
https://secure-web3.secondlife.com/community/support.php
https://jira.secondlife.com/secure/Dashboard.jspa

There is also a Knowledge Base at the SL website that has information, but it's down this morning.

Ada Radius
2007-09-26

Cut out the first paragraph. It's confusing and completely unnecessary.

Kudos to you for doing this, but it is rediculous that residents have to take this into our own hands. If LL got its act together, they would be doing the educating, not us. They depend on premium accounts and land tier, so you think they would get some intern on it at some point.

And yeah, you could start your notecard here: "Paying monthly tier fees gives us the right to buy land - the more tier we pay, the more land we can own."

can we make this a sticky .... its quite consise

Thats pretty good stuff, just a couple of things I see if it helps.


I would rephrase this, it reads like you must pay tier first.



You could add that when land is either purchased for the first time or added to additional land, a message will appear inworld to make you aware that you are going to increase/add tier to your account if it is to exceed current tier levels.

Also, you need to be a premium member to buy land, I am sure I did not see that in your post.

I'd change the first sentence, when I bought my island I chose an available space and therefore had no auction and no auction fee. The auction fee is just if you want to reserve a space for future purchase. If you want to purchase it right away, there is no need for an auction and associated fee.

Most, if not all of this, is in the knowledgebase.

THANK YOU everyone. I edited the post.

I also test-drove it on some newbies, which is why I'm keeping the paragraphs on the structure of the grid.

It probably needs a few more editing passes, to see how non English speakers interpret some of the terms and syntax.

again, thank you!!

wonder how many people in SL even know we have that, where that is or how to access info there...

Well, anyone who has pressed F1 for help inworld, or clicked on Support on the web page for sure.

I pressed F1 and got to a page where I needed to LOG IN to get any information!

As do I, not sure what your point is... I thought the page was pretty clear on the fact that there was a knowledge base, what it was, and to log in to access it.

(You also had to log in to post to the forums.)

the Knowledgebase shouldn't require a login. What's it got, State Secrets? It's GENERAL KNOWLEDGE, LL. Who cares who sees it? Jesus.

True, it didn't used to. But just because it requires a log in doesn't mean it is either hidden from residents or non-existent. The first thing on the page is a mention of the knowledge base and when you click on it it describes what it is.