The New Continent with Free Houses for Premiums

They're children's land - or at least, PG - which is the same thing. Who wants that kinda land?

Ok, this is an absolutely serious question . . .

What's the point of owning a "house" in SL? Other than sex, I suppose, what on earth is one supposed to DO there?

I can very clearly see the point of having land: I'd love to have some that I could use to mess about with building. But what do I want with a living room, yet alone a kitchen, in SL?

I am clearly not "getting" something here, as so many people DO want a residence. So, what are the joys of home ownership in SL anyway?

Ummm, cuz furnishing and decorating it is cool. So you can have house parties. I'm punting here - I've have many houses and have never had a party and hate decorating. I have one cuz it just feels right.

LL "forgot" to mention these regions have a 55 avatar limit, you can see for yourself in the region/estate tab.

LOL

I get the decorating thing, actually. I did have a place for a short time, and had some fun setting up one of my two rooms with a sleek 50's style Italian bar and artwork. For this to work, however, you have to have sufficient money and prims, and a house that is nice enough to give you something to work with in the first place.

Do people actually have "parties" in their houses? Aren't they a bit cramped for that?

The land is actually all Mature sims.

Actually most people have parties AT their house, not IN them. Pool/hot tubs outside, dancing, etc... and then give tours of the house.

The Japanese neighborhood is by far the best in my opinion. Stone walkways between homes and all very well landscaped. I think I’m going to see about switching my home and region. Nothing in the FAQ’s that I can see about doing that so looks like I will be submitting a support ticket.

I went and had a look....very cramped...gave me a sort of *student digs* feeling..the whole thing felt to me a bit "cartoony". Seriously concerned about how people will feel when they try to replicate what they have with this in the real economy ie: the primmy house and 117 prims.

One other thought, where does the new resident get support? We spend time with our residents on ALL sorts of things, from media, to making purchases, to changing clothes, lost items, items theyve rezzed and cant find/pickup etc...they are lost, cant find their home..and yes, even their heartaches and loves...do they get referred to a wiki page? Or will a real live ready to asisst Linden turn up in a few minutes to assist them? I touched the light switch and got the *im not set up * message, with some sort of web page referral also...for umm something or other..

The 1-inch deep pools in the "California Modern" area will NOT prove to be a selling point.

yep ...



I'm reminded of the time I spent all night trying to find my tent at Glastonbury.

Some parcels that are unlikely to be hard to find: those on the edges of sims or the rivers.

There are some views here that you'd have to buy an entire island to duplicate--long vistas of parkland and water with nothing else in view.

(These will be used as incentives, I suppose. They're unlikely to be awarded at random to newbies...that's the way of the world.)

So it was designed by a machine ... that explains a lot.

The individual houses are fine for what they are and I really like a couple of the fantasy ones. There are just so many, packed so closely together. You turn slowly around and the view is the same in every direction, as far as the eye can see (I put my draw distance at 1024 to take the picture above). I found it extremely disoreintating.

Here's what you're supposed to do there ...


speechless ...

It's basically trying for the anticipated "Blue Mars" experience, I think, where you have to buy everything.

I loved decorating when I had land and a big house, I was always changing things around. It's true most parties and gatherings happen outside though. The first couple of Forum Cartel gatherings were held right on my back porch.

I didn't bother with a kitchen or bathroom, though.

I think it's a bigger matter than that.... I think that LL is looking at a flat growth rate and trying to figure out how to stimulate growth by bringing in a different demographic than we're accustomed to. The same demographic who doesn't want to learn to build or even use the Edit tools. A demographic who finds the current viewer a daunting interface. I think Linden Homes, the XStreet "cleanup", XStreet/Facebook wishlist integration, and the fabled upcoming viewer are multiple prongs of their approach to make SL "friendlier" to those users.

They figure those of us who have been around a while will be disgusted by some of it, but we'll hold our nose and stick around. Which, admittedly, is probably accurate.

Anyhow, I think that Linden Homes is probably the best idea of the lot that I've seen, but it's going to make for some interesting going when the newbies venture out into the real world of land rental and ownership and find out how different of the LL-subsidized suburbs. Makes me glad I'm out of the land rental business. I don't want to have to explain why their house counts as prims.

I guess I am in a mood to speculate, but long ago I had a fiercely love/hate relationship with Neopets. I think Neopets is the 10,000 pound elephant in the living room when it comes to planning online worlds and using them to make money. When I was a Neopian, 20% of users there were over eighteen. Neopets is a dirty, behavioralist, place. The behavioralism is what ultimately drove me out. Neopets is also a very controlled and profitable experience, a walled garden with spikes on the top.

From what I have seen and read about the Nascera, I think Second Life is taking a leaf out of Neopets' book. First, users with Linden Homes can't build on their land except to rezz furniture or open boxes. Second, the houses are on a separate continent. You can't walk to or reach the mainland without a landmark. Maybe you can go back to your old info hub and start walking if you are adventurous or try the Linden Showcase, but that takes work. The situation for Nascerites won't be that different from those on the education sims.

Third, there are no stores on Nascera now. Say this three times fast. XStreet just got "cleaned up" or will be soon which means small timers will be gone. Nascerites will be unlikely to know about.... What happens when Linden Labs opens up concessions for stores and recreational activities on Nascera? Will these go only to large corporations guaranteed a captive audience? That's my guess right now. The world of clubs, sandboxes, malls with stalls, Xyngo, or other forms of recreation, etc... won't be the world of those for whom Nascera dominates their experience.

Linden Labs can complete the sealing off by phasing out the showcase or making it only corporate. This means those settled on Nascera are unlikely to have landmarks. They are unlikely to know any one who builds or that they can build. They are unlikely to know about all the other varied parts of Second Life culture as well. The metaphor that comes to my mind is people who travel to Mexico or the Caribbean on cruise ships rather than staying in a hotel in those countries. They go on a trip, but they are in a safe bubble.

Second Life has all ready practiced dividing the grid with Zindra. It sort of divides it with the educational continents (NMC, Info Island, University of Texas). Nascera is sort of grid number four, home of the captive audience.

I have a certain aversion to the land texture used in the asian land. Looks like the skin of a tentacle monster.

I like the fantasy land best.

I no get invites to move in

This sounds not-unlikely to be true. (I've been writing about the need for Education for the newbies of Nascera, but it may well be that the focus of the Lindens is finding ways to KEEP the newbies from becoming educated.)

The physical location of Nascera lends support to your speculations. I don't believe any other LL initiative has been located at so great a distance from Mainland.

That's an excellent point, and I bet it's true.

It's also true, however, that growth in Premium memberships is occurring NOW among us old unreconstructed long-time Residents: just go to the Blogs and count how many people have written 'I've just upgraded to Premium; please pick me for the Beta testing!'

!!!!!!

Zindra.

/me raises hand.


I don't buy land because I know that my 1024M would soon be a whole SIM and I just don't want to go down that road.

The lag in the Japanese region was so appalling, I didn't even bother to look at any other areas.

Yesterday, I put on the most low-lag avatar possible (it has a verified ARC score of 1), Human, with no prim attachments, and no scripted anything, and no HUDs, and teleported to Kagero.

In my home sim, (which I designed and built), on a quad-core Windows XP PC with a moderately decent video card, while standing next to a 400-prim, incredibly detailed full-scale replica of Hikone Castle that I built, I was getting 38 FPS, and the client was drawing roughly 800 ktiris/frame.

I teleported to Kagero, and instantly dropped from 38 FPS to a pathetic 5 to 15 FPS and the client rendering over 2000 ktris/frame, depending on which direction I looked, or weather or not I dared to fly my camera up and back to look at the neighborhood (worst result, less than 5 FPS when I did that). No changes to my settings for graphics - This was just the sim's apallingly bad buildings and plants causing the lag. That is absolutely horrendous sim performance. And there were only 4 to 6 people in the sim at the time, and virtually no occupied homes yet!

So, why is it that LL can't seem to design and build a themed area lately without doing something screwy that drives the FPS right into the toilet? Zindra city was just as bad, though Nautilus City and Bay City, while a little better, were still below par.

Maybe it had something do do with the fact that their buildings and sculpt-heavy plants required the client to draw 3 to 4 times as many ktris per frame as in my home sim?

I made more detailed comments in the Blog thread about the new regions, but I think the above covers it. The area certainly looks like it was hashed together by a machine in minutes, and then given just a couple days of hand-work by the Moles to clean up the public areas. Pretty dissapointing.

I landed in a sim with hobbit-type homes (stuff like that) a couple of days ago and I found the lag to be *really* bad. I think there were just 3 people in the sim at the time. I didn't write anything here about it because nobody else had mentioned lag, and I thought that it's peculiar to me.

I don't see much lag in these areas, but I normally have my draw distance around 100. When I upped it to 512 for a flying shot I was freezing.

In the Japanese area at least, there's probably no reason to have draw distance over 64... you can't see that far anyway, but I would have thought o-o occlusion would have taken care of most of the objects at ground level.