Old accounts that could buy land without being premium

I've been able to buy land without being premium for a long time.

That's how it used to be for folks that opened an account for 9.95.

I've owned land in this manner before. No premium fee, but no stipend over my 50 linden stipend.

I went to the auction page to investigate another user's problems and logged in successfully but got a message saying "Only Residents with Premium memberships are eligible to purchase land in Second Life. Upgrade here."

Have they finally revoked this longstanding "able to buy land without being premium" status?

I wasn't planning to buy land anyway so it doesn't necessarily matter too much to me but it would be nice to know for sure.

I guess maybe if people weren't using it it's just an extra complexity to the system. Like The lifetime land offers, how do LL know they are dead? Will there still be parcels owned by dead people in 2050?

In the absence of a clear answer from the Linden staff or word from someone whose tried it I won't really know.

The thing that failed was a web based auction.

I guess I could go partway through buying some land inworld with Linden dollars.

I think that ability was only for some of the very earliest of residents (2003). I have several friends that date back to mid 2004 that had to go premium to buy land. Some did, some still haven't.
Even my earliest account (which dated to end 2004) could not buy land without going Premium. These were all paid for $9.95 accounts as all accounts at that time were.

I started on December 22, 2003. I bought land as a non-premium.



The ability for accounts created when that policy was in effect persisted for years, and might well be in effect still - to some degree. The land auction page I went to may be bugged.

Or LL might have decided to stop taking the trouble to code in the exception for us oldtimers. We are a miniscule percentage of the userbase. What difference does it make if a few of us are a little aggravated?

My alt from 2003, Dagon Grimm had land to before they de-activated his account in 2004 thus I lost all my land..
I didn't know members from 2003 who were active when beta turned to public could still own land.

my first acct. (Toy LaFollette) started in feb 04 and had to have premium to purchase land. However it seems to me some early beta friends were offered a one time $195 acct. and it was for life. I dont know if that had anything to do with land tho. Perhaps the web based aution is different Suezanne, perhaps it had to be set up that way with one check. I suspect you will be able to still buy land the old way.

When you win an auction the land is automatically and immediately assigned to your avatar and your tier is bumped up if you don't have enough.

This would not work if you weren't already premium. If you are not premium you can still buy land into a group or you can still buy estate land but you have never (I think?) been able to buy mainland for yourself.

I'm not exactly sure how you can own land if you don't have available tier maybe there's something but it seems unlikely.

Sue is older than the established norms for land ownership.

As I understand it ...

Basically an account from those days had three possibilities.

1) Charter membership, 500 Stipend (was supposed to be 1000) and 4096 tier free for life.

2) Premium membership 500 Stipend (was supposed to be 1000), 1024 Land for the "9.95 a month" (YES not 512)

3) Basic non-premium membership 50L stipend and still gets that 512 land bonus.


My guess is the website she refers to is just not set up to accommodate people in her situation, which cant be a very large group of people.

You have detailed it exactly. As far as I know, these percs are still in effect. My oldest account can still hold 1024 w/out having to pay tier and gets the 500$L stipend. Only reason she still exists