Should I get a premium account???

I've been thinking about it for a bit. I just want a little bit of land to call my own for as cheap as possible so I can like build a house or something. I've currently got 20-something days left on a small parcel rental with a pre-built house on a sim that belongs to one of the many RP groups I play with, but I find having to pay rental fees to other people to be a bit of a hassle (despite the fact that alot of these landlords have nice systems set up for rental payment, I'd just rather not have to remember to pay someone some L$ every so often.) Either way, I'm probably going to end up leaving that place due to the fact that many of my friends refuse to visit me because they hate the other people in this particular group.

If I do get a premium account, I'll probably go with the quarterly plan since it's cheaper than monthly and there's NO WAY IN HELL I'm dishing out $72 at once to an online game.

I would love some advice from others on getting a premium account vs. finding a good group in SL that'll rent me some land somewhere. (Seriously, I'm having some trouble finding cheap parcels. I don't want to pay some ungodly amount WEEKLY!)

regarding premium - if you pay the 72 you get most of it back in stipend. it balances out to about $6 US per month, overall.

if you want to have some land to call your own, with all the control, definitely consider going premium.

i hear there are plenty of awesome landlords though, many through these forums. perhaps you just need a new landlord.

i am considering doing the opposite of you - downgrading to basic and renting from someone. that way i can pull out anytime and not really lose anything if i can't find a seller.

I'm having trouble finding a landlord group that rents parcels for a weekly or monthly amount that I'm actually willing to pay. My current parcel is only L$300 a week (with a pre-built house on it... I'd kinda like to build something myself...) and I can't find anything near that cheap.

And my issue with paying annually is just the idea of dishing out $72 all at once to an online game. That just strikes me as ridiculous. I'd be more comfortable with smaller amounts (like the $15 a month I pay for WoW. Yeah it adds up to more in the end, but I'm not paying too much all at once.)

$22.50 a quarter is not bad at all. You get 300 lindens weekly stipend which is a little less than 4 bucks a month............or 12 a quarter. So your real outlay,counting your stippend "discount" is about $10.50 a quarter. Not bad for a game at all, in my opinion. That's the main reason I remain premium (though I get a higher stippend than you......you still are getting a deal).

Buying land is really just a process of lookng and being patient. You probably won't find a beach front plot for anything under L$25,000 but you can find some nice inland plots on some of the older continents that are quite reasonable. A lot of people will tell you to watch out for ugly builds and clubs........I say find a place you an afford and go for it. No matter what is built in the area already.........that will change quite regularly. I've had clubs, a small mall, castles, forts, and nice homes come and go all around me in the 3 years I've had my plot.......and you can always move your house up (or down) to get away from annoyances.

I say go for it.........and good luck.

from another premium member, I too say go for it

choose whichever plan works for you

I am on a yearly plan on this account and my alt is on the quarterly.

(yes I have 2 premiums, some folks have even more LOL)

I get a higher stipend on this one than my alt as she went premium after the stipend dropped blah...

the nice thing about owning the land is no one can tell you what you can do with it (other than LL and their rules of course) and no one can kick you off the land (other than LL of course, but don't break the rules and you will have no problems)

I would not worry about location as much as just getting that first piece of land, and there are some very good prices right now out there

good luck and if you have any questions don't hesitate to ask

This recent thread addresses the premium account issue: /327/40/296416/1.html

I suggest trying one month. You can always go to quarterly if you wish to continue.

There are a number of landlords who will rent plain land for that price, but that is usually just a 512 lot or so. If that's all you need, then going premium at the quarterly or annual rate is your best bet.

If the cost of land is a concern then think about going up in a skyhouse. Up in the sky it doesnt matter what the ground looks like. You can get a 512m on a garbage sim cut to pieces for around 1600-1700L just by searching in Land. Cheaper even if you approach a land dealer. Quite a few land dealers always got junk they happy to get rid of.

Before you buy is best to sit on a box and use your Edit controls on the box to go up and have a look in the sky first (the Z position). Set your camera to 512m so you can get a good look at whats around up there at different heights. Is alot of sky up there now (4096m) but is worth having a look first anyways before you do buy.

Is also lagfree heaven when you find an empty sky. Is great =)

I have not yet regretted going premium either. I like the freedom of being able to build what I want without worrying about falling foul of a covenant. I love my little 512 on the mainland, in spite of being surrounded by ugly cr*p a lot of the time - I love the continuous geography - roads that go somewhere.

One word of caution though - if you do go premium and then change your mind, make sure you downgrade your account properly - don't just let the payments lapse or you risk losing the entire account.

Sure, why not? A quarter's subscription is pretty cheap, and the $22.50 it costs will net you L$1000 + (13 * 300) = L$3900. As has been pointed out, land is very cheap right now, especially if you aren't too fussy where you live.

Your subscription will allow you a 512m parcel (560m if you can find one, and form a group with an alt) for now extra cost. If it all goes pear-shaped you can abandon the land (or sell it for a pittance) and drop back to a basic account. If you're very lucky land prices might pick up (not holding my breath) and you might make a few L$ profit.

I'm premium and I like it.

You will ALWAYS be paying money to somebody. Either your landlord or LL. The only exception is if you go premium and ONLY need 512 square meters. You use up the prims and the space pretty rapidly, believe me. Personally, I find that I need about 8192 m2 to keep me happy.

There's a way to get more "tier free" land to live on, but it's kind of involved. Make some alts. Make them all premium members. Form a group with yourselves and pool your tier. Buy a larger piece of land and live on it as one big happy family. Remember, each alt will be collecting 300L a week in stipend. You can use this to finance your shopping expeditions, or save it up to help defray the next round of Premium membership charges.

/me scratches her head as she checks 3Ring's math.

i think i was wrong. if you sign up for the whole year, the 72 is pretty much refunded to you (via stipend) except $6 overall, right? in other words, you'll have paid $6 for the year, not month. is this right?

Using L$260 = US$1, it works out to about US$10/year for premium - just under US$1/month.

US$cost - (stipend * weeksInYear / exchangeRate) = US$yearly premium cost.

72 - (300 * 52 / 260) = US$10.

That's what I do on a smaller scale. Two premium accounts paid yearly, both grandfathered at L$400 tier and grouped for the extra 10%. 1120m of land and it virtually pays for itself.

52 * 300 = 15600 linden. Averages on 59 dollar (with 265 linden in a dollar). Based on yearly membership, you pay 13 dollar per year.

But that also included a tier free 512 m2, so in the end premium delivers more value then it actually costs.

No one knows how much land you need though. Yesterday I built an entire shop on a 512 and still have prims left. Now that new shop is one prim plants, which does save a lot, but the same amount of 1 prim vendors would have worked just as well. Making a house with low prim furniture would be very easy to achieve as well.

Funny thing is that I am premium, but my main parcel is on estate. The reason I am premium, is because the effective costs are low, I am showing my support for the platform, and I get the best level of support from LL. Live Chat really does make a difference.

So...Yes, go for it. Try a quarter, but if you like it go to yearly. Seems much money but is by far the cheapest.

And alo keep in mind that if you pay for a year upfront, and decide to downgrade or leave totally, you do not get any refund.

I just sold a 1536 sqm beachfront for 5376L. It all depends on how quickly the seller wants/needs to sell. There is also a 512 sqm beachfront on my sim listed for approximately 15,000L (it keeps changing, so that's an approximation).

On the subject of Premium - when I began SL I rented a very large studio for $150L/week and 128 prims. I haven't looked at rentals in a long time but I think that price is very rare now. Going Premium, at least for a smaller parcel (and I recommend starting out small to see how you like it) works out less expensive I think.

I've never regretted going Premium. I *did* regret purchasing more land too quickly that pushed me into a tier bracket I wasn't comfortable with before I had really established my business (the purpose of me purchasing more land).

Czari, that rental price is at cost for a full-sim tier. If the studio building prims are not included in that prim allotment, then it is below cost to the landlord (e.g., bad business unless it's a loss leader of some sort).

To answer your question, hells no.

Question to Lindal, what do you like about it? Not being important or giving up your money for nothing?

I know nada about the rental business and just about as bad in math. lol

You're right, though. The rental was part of the rp community I was then a part of and only members of the community could rent there, so it was likely a different situation from regular community rentals.

At the time, the community owned 8 sims which has now grown to something like 20, so the apt. rentals were probably a very low cost factor. Most of them were empty as a majority of the community owned their own estates, castles, etc. so I had almost virtual privacy in my lil studio.

I guess that was an apples to oranges. Sort of in a "mind-muddle" today.

Hmm...

Well I've decided to put off on going premium for the moment since I found a 816 sq. m. parcel for rent for L$500 a week and I'm allowed 250 prims on it, which is great (I've never been allowed that many prims before!) L$500 a week isn't too much higher from the L$300 a week I was paying for 512 sq. m. and only 115 prims.

I'm sure it's even cheaper when I get a premium account and put my stipend towards the rental but meh. I'm just content with having a nice house I built myself (with Christmas decorations too!) and the landlord seems really nice (renters aren't allowed to deed items to the group due to issues that the group had in the past, and since I don't own the parcel myself I needed to deed my Youtube media player to the group in order for it to work. The landlord was nice enough to do it for me when I asked him about it.)

I'll get a premium account after I FINALLY find a part time job and have extra dough to waste on it.

if there should ever happen to be a glitch in your payment you could lose your avatar.
This is the penalty that premium users get for being premium. I intend to down grade to basic when my term next come around. I've invested far too much in this avatar to risk it being destroyed by 'outside circumstances'. Later if I want, (if i can) I'll make an alt and have that be my premium, but i won't deck it out or use it except for the land and support factors.

IOW, make an ALT and get premium on the alt if you've already invested heavily in your main avatar. then have your alt make a group and grant full permissions and offer no join group options. when you get land your 1st can the set it as home because it group land.

Also, by making a group and making the land group owned, you will have a slightly larger allotment of tier free. It's what I did with my shop.. besides, I wanted RL friends and my alt to have a home too.