The New Continent with Free Houses for Premiums

Come now - you don't really expect them to respond to any of the non-bubbly-glowing responses, do you?

only with bannings possibly

the reports Ive suggested state that lindens do not regard premiums as their 'mainstay' naturally they wouldn't admit it if they did.

Online gambling gets six-month reprieve in U.S.
By COVERS.com STAFF | December 14, 2009 | 11 comments
Internet gambling in the United States has been saved - at least for the next six months, anyway.

U.S. Representative Barney Frank (D-Mass.) has successfully convinced the Obama adminsitration to delay a federal crackdown on illegal Internet poker and casino sites, the Boston Globe reported Monday.

Frank requested the six-month reprieve so he could work on a program that would legalize online gambling. Although the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee is not a gambler himself, he believes the government should not tell citizens how they should spend their money.

On three separate occsions, Frank has introduced legislation to overturn the Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act, which Congress passed on the final day of the 2006 session. The act prevented U.S. credit card companies from processing transactions from Internet gambling sites.

The law, designed to cripple the $16 billion-a-year Internet gambling industry, was scheduled to go into effect on Dec. 1, 2009. But the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department pushed back the date to June 1, 2010, to give Frank time to draft legislation that would make online gambling legal and allow the government to regulate and collect taxes on it.

The move comes on the heels of a report from the Joint Committee on Taxation that shows the federal government could reap a $42 billion windfall over the next decade by taxing online gambling sites. The next step is for Frank and supporters to convince opponents of this course in an election year.

DOES THIS MEAN WE CAN GAMBLE AGAIN

WTF does this have to do with this thread?

It means Lindens are trying to throw a spanner in the works

Where does it say there's a limit?

Most mainland sims are limited to 40 people or so. with 50+ houses per sim, that 40 has the potential to be hit pretty quickly.

No.
LL will wait to see what the regulations say. And then the casinos will probably have to be registered with state agencies for taxation and regulation.

The GP was referring to a time limit, not an avatar limit.

Edit: and as for gambling, anyone who thinks Zyngo isn't gambling is fooling themselves.

I misunderstood the question then.

I just wandered about all the places this morning. Very interesting I agree with a lot of people here - true newbies who use this are going to leave with very unrealistic expectations about prim limits, house spacing and being able to run to the Linden landlords every time something goes wrong. HAHA the Lindens are going to have to be landlords!!

Most of the houses bugged me with their high ceilings and/ or wasted space, but that might just be me.

In fact the whole thing felt to me like an MS Windows Demo - you know where the demo is all peachy keen and then your trial period is over and you shell out the money and it doesn't actually do what you thought it was going to do ?

However it IS a good marketing ploy for a Premium membership drive, I guess. And anybody moving from there will want at least 1024 of land to get close to what they had in the demo prim wise and space wise

I hope that the "not working yet" house controls include window controls - did anyone besides me have visions of acres of newbies pixel bumping at ground level with the windows wide open?

Overall its not something I'd be interested it, and I only have about ~150 meters in spare tier. But I think it might be fun to visit once its up and running.

Does anyone know if there will be parts of these areas for ships and clubs and the like? Or are they all info hubs and residentials?

No such commercial or recreational places. 100% residential suburbs, with maybe an LL-owned info hub here and there.

I was referring to someone in a previous post mentioned they should be "booted" out after 30 days.

I do wonder though, since there is no time limit stated, what if they are just satisfied with their Linden Home and want to just stay there forever? Would that be ok too? I guess it wouldn't matter really since they get a 512 anyway with their premium membership. Just seems like after awhile, you'd want your 'own' stuff more, own house, a little outside land (even when I had 'only' a 512 on mainland, my house was small enough to allow me some outside yard space too.) But everyone is different and having the Linden Home and never moving on, may be ok for some, I dunno.

As long as they're paying for a premium membership, what reason is there to kick them out or impose some time limit on occupancy?

For some people, I'm sure. I might get my alt one, she just needs a place to show off the freebies she gets on hunts.

Yeh, I saw that, then I saw yours, and I thought "wait, have I missed something?" Cos that doesn't seem to make much sense.

To me this small plot and tiny house is just not worth $10 USD a month..if you just want a place to change clothes and open boxes, why not rent a small condo, stay free account, and pay $100 L a week...(40 cents)

To me its just a way to get more premium accounts paying in, and hope they get hooked on buying more land and have to pay teir as well, if the house is more than 50 prims you won't have much more than most rental places charge for $100 a week anyway.

I am not sure i'd get a prem account just to do this...just doesn't sound cost effective.

A premium account doesn't cost $10 a month. The stipend offsets almost half that, even if you're on monthly. If you're annual it's more like $1.00 a month.

If they want to stay there indefinitely and eventually figure out that paying yearly is the best way to go then LL only makes about $1/month/premium (or about $64/sim) which is a bit low on the low end .

Last i looked it was $9.95 a mo heh, $10 bucks, minus the 1200 L you get in stippend, still comes to about $5 a month..which is still higher than 40 cents a week..guess it all goes to where you want to put your money. Of course that does not mean you cant cut that back by paying by the year if you can afford to do that.

If there isn't a time limit on occupancy, then once the hoopla is over will LL keep creating new continents to bolster premiumship again? If yes, does that make any sense when there is all this mainland available. If their ultimate goal is to steer folks to mainland, then they REALLY need to be educated on what to expect and the unexpected.

Yeah I just had a wander round. It's basically four huge housing schemes on a square continent. It starts out nice enough at the infohub - there's some quite good sculpty candles and bottles and things you can grab. You can catch fairies to win wings (they wouldn't rez for me, but the fairy jar was fun), and I bumped into Mari, which was nice. There's lots of purple crystals that sort of remind me of something ... but anyway, quite picturesque in a hobbity way. I like the fantasy buildings, but they are way too densely packed.

Then there's the Endless Desolate Wasteland of Triangular Houses and the Endless Desolate Wasteland of Square Houses. These areas feel like suburban business parks or perhaps Butlins. They'd feel a bit more residential with a scattering of dogsh*t, a few cars on bricks and the odd broken fridge.

The Japanese housing is prettier, but again, too densely packed and too sprawling.

I hope LL are going to set home automatically for these newbies and provide prominent information about the ways to find "home". There's been a couple of "I can't find the land I bought" threads on here. I can foresee a flurry of "how do I find my Linden Home?" posts on the flogs.

Linden Homes ... this is housing, not homes. I wish they'd reread their Jane Jacobs.

As for the covenant ... no skyboxes and no sandboxing? So basically, "here's your home, now sit neatly and enjoy it"

Possible new growth areas ...

- low prim furniture built to match the themes
- skybox rentals by the hour (can you do this on Mature these days?)

I took a few pics and will try to upload this evening.

That would be L$5200 per year, whereas the membership, if paid yearly, only actually costs you about L$3800 per year cuz of the stipend they give back.
($72.00 * L$270 rate = L$L$19440 - L$15600 stipend)

The houses in the Linden Homes area do not count towards the 117 prim limit of a 512.

Actually you are getting a house pluse 117 prims for L$3800 per year, or L$73 per week.


ETA: If you pay monthly or quarterly, then your net cost will increase to L$167 and L$320 per week respectively. In those cases, you are paying more than the L$100 per week. HOWEVER, can you truly rent a home PLUS 117 prims in SL for only L$100 per week?

I know quite a few premiums that would like to have a place to call home w/out having to part with any of their weekly stipend to get it and they would be very happy to have one of these homes.