New resident, Greetings

Hello everyone
I am a new resident in SL. I just started about 2 days ago and I like it so far.

One thing I am looking at doing is create an office building for my gaming network ( http://games-overview.net )

What do I need to do that?

Hello Avguste, welcome to SL.

First thing you will need is some land.

Once you have that, it's all good.

Hello Avguste, nice to meet you.

There are a few options for owning land, but I will focus on the ones that are a good way for beginners to start.

1) Rent land from a private landowner.
You do not need a premium membership to do this. You usually will need to pay your landlord with L$ in the game. Renting does not give you the same privileges or security as owning, but in most cases it also does not require significant up-front payment on your part.
- Note: you can rent either on the mainland, or on a private estate.

2) Purchase land on the mainland.
You will need a premium membership for this, which gives you:
- the right to own land
- 512 sq. m. worth of free tier (see below)
- L$300 / week as a stipend
- a higher level of support than non-premium accounts get

Tier is a monthly tax that you pay in US$ to LL for the land that you own. A premium membership includes 512 sq. m. of tier, so you may own that much without paying any fees beyond your membership payment. If you own more than that, LL will bill you for the additional tier amount.

Although you get 512m free tier, you still need to purchase the land. Land prices have gone down recently, so the cheapest 512 will cost you about $12 USD (~ L$3200). When you decide to sell your land, you will probably be able to recoup some or all of this cost.

A 512 is not at all large, being sufficient for a building the size of a single wide mobile home. Another concern is the prim (object parts) allotment, as all land can support a limited number of prims. A 512 supports only 117 prims, which does not go far.

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There is more information to share, but I will leave that to others with better knowledge than I have.

Welcome to SL!

Welcome to SL.
Seems like you got your questions answered.
Sometimes finding a generous friend with spare land who wants to support your project you can do so for free works too.

Welcome to SL, hope the platform does for you what it has done for many others in the past and present.

First thing you are going to need is some moneyyyyyy. As described above, there are for and against where you purchase. You might like to create some sort of 'game plan' that shows your intended markets, especially as there are no forms of gambling allowed. Read the forums for posts about what the community like and dislike and develop a strategy to gain long term customers/participants.

Checkout the forms of advertising available to you, target those which will apeal to the market you are after and set your budgets.

If you need a building, there is a prolifercation of 'ready built' units on offer (use ingame search or the many websites that advertise ingame wares), or you can engage the talents of the many builders ingame (again using search or websites) to create a bespoke building. You can of course try your hand at using the ingame functions and build your own, that can be fun.
Scriptors can assist you in making things actually work (interact) and there is a whole raft of media potential (movies, music etc) available along with the ingame 'hardware'. There are classes run that will show you how to to many of the basic functions like, building, scripting etc... although it can be quite a steep learning curve.

It's a big world, with plenty to see and do, take time to get to know the people and some of the spectatular builds the many talented creators have crafted. It would be a shame to only live in a cocoon. Like RL, there is the very good, and the not so good, either is a matter of opinion and choice.

/me waves Hello. Someone will be by with your Pie shortly.

/me waves : welcome!
First off if you haven't already look around what's already been done. Then decide whether you want to build the building yourself. If you do perhaps even take some building classes or head over to the Ivory Tower or Prims for tutorials. Then you can build your project in a sandbox. If you're still having fun get some land as per the tips in the other posts. Small note: gaming is not actually allowed.... *ducks and hides


/me pouts : i never got any pie

if you decide to rent a plot of land, be sure to read the covenant as some land is for residential use only, and some for commercial use only. Also check if its mature or PG land, as this can effect the sort of business you are allowed to run, and the customers that you are likely to get. Be sure to use a reputable landlord.

Good Luck

imogen

Nice to meetcha, Mister Arashi!

Mari

I would also like to recommend the website SL Exchange (often referred to as SLX):

http://slexchange.com/

They offer alternative forums and a currency exchange, but I find the marketplace is where they shine. Even if you choose not to buy items through the web site, it is an excellent to search and browse for items for sale. MUCH better than the in-world search.

Here is a link to the "Structures" category, so you can browse the pre-made buildings that are already for sale:

http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&CategoryID=31

*waves to Avguste*

Welcome!

I'd also recommend exploring around before you do anything wild and crazy like attempt your own build. There are some really excellent examples of architecture and grounds layout that are MUCH more interesting that a lame "big box" building. If you make your build interesting, and a tourist attraction as such, you'll get many more clients than if you just have the traditional "office building."

Actually, from the website, it appears to have nothing to do with that *wagering* sort of "gaming" to which we've been sensitized here of late.

One minor tip about "office buildings": Chat travels 20m in all directions, including through floors, so office towers are not really very practical. If you look around SL, most tall buildings are just for effect, and largely vacant. So unless there's a real compelling reason for that effect, it's just not worth the prims. (Also, because of the inherent impact of avatar count on sim performance, high-density occupancy is just impossible, so stacking offices on top of each other isn't driven by a need to get lots of people in tight proximity, as one might otherwise expect in a "midtown" sim.)

Greetings! Welcome to the madness!

Tons of good tips here so far so I won't add to the info overload. Look me up in game if you have any questions and I will do my best to confuse you there

Avguste - welcome. Tip: Get out now while you still can. Ever hear the song hotel california? Second life is sorta like that... ))



Qie - I respectfully disagree - somewhat anyway. While this may be the case for class 3 and 4 sims (and perhaps some crappy class 5 sims), I have found that class 5 sims are pretty good about not being bogged down by avatars. I'm not talking stats - i mean pure feel.

My main parcel is on a beautiful sim that hosts two very successful clubs, that has an average traffic count of 2500-7500 each, and this is without campers. The sim regularily is maxed out with avatars, and I almost never experience any noticeable lag at all.

If I were to meter the sim and compare to others I might find that it is impacted by so many avatars, but I can tell you that I never *feel* it...

My experience is that scripts cause the biggest impact to many sims

Couple things here. First, it's definitely possible to crowd a couple hundred avatars (preferably sitting) into the corner where four sims meet (like auditoriums), achieving a pretty high density in that little space, but doing that leaves vast expanses of sim practically empty... so you can do that, but I was trying (ineffectively) to explain that one just can't end up with a whole "midtown" with that kind of avatar density across the whole sim--and hence, there's sorta no economic justification for building high in order to achieve that density. (But if you can go to one of these events--a Town Hall or the like--and not be lagged, then you must share your secret!)

The thing I'm puzzled by, though, is the statement that scripts cause the most lag to sims. Admittedly, scripts can *do* stuff that causes lag as side-effects (like make physics happen, rez stuff, push textures onto a vendor, etc), but the script execution itself will always have the lowest priority of all the tasks in the scheduler. There can be hundreds of scripts doing math in tight loops to the point they're lagging each other, but if some physics needs to happen, those scripts won't slow it down at all. If you have fifty avatars bumping into each other, chatting, and downloading everybody else's textures, however, I think the stats are gonna be pretty ugly even on a class 5 sim.