Mainland vs Private/What is the truth?

It seems that many have differing "opinions" on this subject. I hope to hear a reply from someone who actually "knows".
So... What are the actual differences, when it comes to supposed "lag", sims per server, parent/child agent issues? Is one actually better than the other?

Thanks!

The one true difference is that with mainland, your landlord is Linden Lab. With private estate, your landlord is another resident. All the differences and variations stem from that. There is no clear one better than the other, without considering your preferences, what you are willing to pay, and how much you trust your potential landlord.

Private estate owners have more controls than mainland estate owners. They have extra tools, although I saw a comment from a very eloquent resident on a blog that the mainland sim of Lusk has estate controls.

Then the lag issue, a private estate landlord can say "stop it", Linden Lab control mainland and many people will say they don't say "stop it". I know of one sim where a sex club on part of the sim makes the rest of the sim very much unusable, that is highly unlikely to ever happen on a private estate because nobody would pay for rental space.

That's not to say mainland can't be managed well. If one person has control of the sim they can impose rules and say "Stop it". If you have nice neighbours, and there are many, mainland works well.

A poorly managed estate sim can have just as many lag issues as a poorly managed mainland sim, it all comes down to management and estate sims have the upper hand there because they have greater management controls.

There are plenty of mainland rentals, mainland landlords have their hands tied more than estate landlords though because they are reliant on Linden Lab.

Pick any mainland sim and pick any private sim put those sims in the middle of any other group of surrounding sims..........now magically duplicate exactly what is present on each sim (including all the avatars with all the same attachments, bling, etc) and swap them to the other. The lag will follow the content of the sims.

Lag is caused by what is present on the sim.........not the sim itself. Private sims tend to have covenants which often are developed with lag in mind. Mainland has no such covenants. The private sims with restrictions on particles, scripts, builds, etc will tend to lag less than a mainland sim without such restrictions.

That's the picture as I understand it.

That makes more sense....that the sim estate covenants can regulate what goes on in a sim that causes such issues. Where as the mainland has less restrictions.

Thank you for your time!

for the first two plus years in SL i owned land on the mainland, a pretty big piece, almost a whole sim. but there was no privacy, and people were always putting stuff right at the boundary lines, i was pretty miserable. for almost three years now, ive owned my own island, that has made ALL the difference in the world for me in SL. so my opinion......buy an island if at all posible.

lizzie

I have lived in both and still can't decide.

I like the freedom to be different on the mainland, or at least try to be. I am currently on mainland again, but it does seem very laggy and I'm running just 2 or 3 scripts on my parcel.

The island estates have been less laggy and more visually appealing, but I've had to stay within a theme which is usually okay too.

Don't mainland sims still have a hardcap limitation for the number of avatars that can be in the sim? Estate sims don't which can be both bad and good. More avatars can equal more lag, on the other hand you hear a lot about mainland residents complaining when they cannot access their land because some event has capped out avatar limit.

That goes back the concept that estate land is generally covenanted. It tends to prevent a lot of builds that are ugly or simply inconsistent with the look of the sim as a whole, and a residentially zoned sim can ensure you don't have to deal with night clubs or other similar lag inducing and noisy venues as your neighbor. The drawback is of course your creativity in your build can be similarly constrained.

Another important issue to consider is trustworthiness and reliability. Linden Lab is generally as or more reliable and trustworthy as your landlord with mainland ownership than an estate owner may be with estate land conveyances. Open Space Sim ownership on the other hand......

Spot on. On the mainland the avatar limit is set by LL to something that a sim can handle. As private region owners can change this limit they often raise it. Which allows more avatars onto the sim along with the resulting lag.

I've heard people say a few times that mainland is very laggy. This is completely untrue as a sweeping statement. It depends what's ON the sim. Just because it's mainland doesn't mean it's laggy. A private region can be just as bad.

One thing to be very cautious of when renting on a private region is making sure it's a full blown private region. It could be a cheaper Open Space sim or one of the new Homestead regions. Open Space regions are not designed to be lived on. Homesteads are allocated less server resources than a full private region and CAN be lived on, but need to be limited accordingly.

From my experience:

In both cases you are renting land, even if you pay an up-front purchase fee. On a private island you are renting from a third party and on the mainland you are renting from Linden Lab.

Key advantages to living on the mainland:
You are renting directly from LL. Unless the whole company goes bust you are unlikely to be unceremoniously kicked out on a whim. There are barely any limitations on what you can use your land for or what you can build. You can sail/walk/fly all over the mainland from your home.

Key disadvantages of the mainland:
Anyone can build anything next door. There is as yet no zoning on the mainland so your beautiful country home can be right next door to a mall or nightclub. You need to pay to be a premium account holder.

Key advantages to living on someone else's private sim:
Most of these have zoning laws so there's some assurance that you won't have a huge eyesore built next door. You don't need to pay to be a premium account holder.

Key disadvantages to a private sim:
The sim owner can kick you out whenever they want and ban you. You have no rights to the land in LL's eyes, no matter how much you paid to 'buy' it.

So really it's all just down to a matter of preference. I prefer to live on the mainland as I love sailing the oceans there and the relative security of renting off LL rather than a third party.

For your comments! Your thoughtful answers are most appreciated. This topic is something that I have heard argued in SL for as long as I have been here. To me, now, the choices are clear.

If you look around quite a few Long time landlords on private estates no longer charge anything as a *get in* fee, I havent charged more than a monthly rental for the longest time. On a new development I charge 500L to *take* the parcel, which is then refunded when the monthly tier is paid - this prevents opportunists from taking it, then dumping aload of rubbish for a short time and upsetting other residents.

Personally back in the day when i rented land on a private estate,I actually preferred the *get in fee*, it meant (usually) only those that really wnated to be there- that really appreciated the covenant and would adhere to it- seemed to come- a bit exclusive I guess..but even with no fee now, if your landlord actually ENFORCES the covenant that you want to adhere to (ie;themed,build type)- then you should always be living in an area you like.

The day of actually charging anything other than rental on estates has really been over for a longgg time. There are also a lot of good Landlords who own full sims to rent a parcel of land from...ones who have done this for quite some time..and do not kick people off *on a whim*...check out full sim owners who have also bought an openspace for their residents to sail on..gives you another avenue rather than being stuck on a landlocked piece of beach

I would gently put forth that private estate owners were hit with an incoming 66% price increase and performance caps on openspaces that very few residents were willing to pay for. This was not the estate owner's choice, and it was not the estate owner's pricing mistake either. A lot of very reputable people couldn't survive that change.

There are a lot of spectacular stories of regions going under, but if anything, the quiet unspectacular story is that estate owners generally did all they could to take care of their residents in the face of force majeure. I'm personally absorbing a 10,000+ USD hit due to the openspace debacle, and no resident has lost their land due to anything I've done. I'm not alone in this. A lot of other estate managers have done the same.

The reason I could absorb such a phenomenal hit (I assume most of you don't have 10,000+ just lying around for grid disasters) was because I did historically charge up-front fees for rental rights, and still do on new regions. This is why my estate is still standing, with the same amount of territory as before: I was able to weather the crisis from a position of strength, and actually gained residents as other less prepared estates collapsed. Again, I'm not alone in this; other surviving estates have had similar experiences.

Go gently with a lot of the surviving land barons; some of them have made remarkable sacrifices for residents that don't even realise what was done.

Merry Christmas, all.

Wow... I would have thought my opinion of Desmond as a landlord couldn't get any higher, and yet now I have to ratchet it up a notch again. You rock, Desmond. Your tenants are truly blessed to have such a conscientious landlord. Merry Christmas, indeed. And a happy new year to you and your tenants, and to all on the Grid.

Personally, I was ripped off for around $300.00 USD on a private estate last year (a story I've posted on the forums previously and won't go into again). It made me come face-to-face with the fact that I have no recourse with against another resident if they take my money and don't deliver on their promises. Linden Lab does not help with resident disputes, and other residents' anonymity make legal action impossible.

At least with Linden Lab, I know where they are located, I know there is someone I can sue if I had to, and I know how to use consumer protection agencies to my benefit for cases that aren't worth the expense of suing. I have confidence that if I have a dispute with Linden Lab, I can get it resolved.

I understand that there are honest private estate renters out there, and probably most are honest. Without meaningful dispute resolution, though, I feel like I'm playing Russian roulette trying to find them, and if the wrong chamber comes up, I'm dead.

That said, I did recently try renting from a private estate owner two more times, paying no up front "purchase" fee and weekly rent (to minimize what I can lose if I get ripped off.) Both times I rented from Sarah Nerd; both times she had to close the sim down due to unprofitability (the recent one to the Openspace price change), and both times she made immediate refunds available to me without me asking. So certainly the honest estate owners exist; you'd just have to do hard research to find one and make sure to not pay too much at a time to minimize potential loss. But for me, I think I've decided that it's just easier and less risky from to buy from Linden Lab from now on.

Just to clarify, my comment about Open Space Sims was a jab at Linden Lab's reliability and trustworthiness to estate owners not about estate owners to estate tenants. In short, in some circumstances Linden Lab is less reliable and trustworthy than many estate owners. In fact, some estate owners will go further and be more responsive and supportive to their tenants needs and problems than Linden Lab ever has or would to mainland owners in many situations.
Case in point. Linden Lab would never refund people if something it implemented was not profitable. On the contrary it would simply price gouge them to cover the diference and refuse to reimburse them on the product....oh wait they just did that...