I think its time to bring back "First Land"

SL needs a shot in the arm. Not everyone can come in a buy a sim and people need a inexpensive "buy in" to SL.

Dispite anything you can say about the old First Land program, one fact stands true. Those first land sims sold and usually pretty darn fast. SL never had the growth of premium accounts that it had back then ever since they dropped it.

A large percentage of people after having a taste of land ownership moved on to larger parcels or bought out neighbors. Sure its more profitable to sell a whole sim and its less work setting up a sim for first land sales, but SL needs a shot in the arm and SL growth is good for everyone.

I started out with a First Land, many others did also. It brought me in and got me to invest in SL. Going on three years and I am still here but I saw a decline when the program was stopped and now we are at a standstill. The big momentum is at a standstill.

We need the influx of new people. No amount of land management for new continents is gonna do this if we don't have an influx of new people to buy them.

I wouldn't mind seeing it come back, if it wasn't gamed to death like last time.

If you want to raise this to the Lindens, a good starting point would be to list the problems with the last version of First Land and suggest ways to keep it from being gamed. I guarentee that LL won't revive it without remembering the old problems and having solutions to them.

It will just get gamed to death, any feature to give newbies a boost will result in people taking advantage of it, especially while they continue to allow unlimited unverified free accounts.

Keeping it from being gamed is easy: uncheck "Allow Resale" on First Land sims. You can only buy them from LL and they can only ever be abandoned back to LL.

An additional precaution would be to disallow "Buy for Group" so multiple premium accounts can't stack up prims either, or transfer land by transferring group ownership.

Ideally the LDPW would landscape the sims some to provide a narrow 4m² buffer between each 512m² parcel instead of just blindly cutting it into 120 512m² parcels.

There were loads of great ideas for first-land at the time before LL just decided to remove it entirely. My favourite is basically you can only sell first-land back to Governor Linden as first-land, and only as a 512m plot. That is; in order to sell it you need to re-join your parcel into a contiguous plot that contains only first-land. It would not be possible to join a first-land parcel to other parcels, but the prim-count would be shared as normal, to avoid the complexity of selling a plot of mixed regular and first-land, without hurting the advantage of owning extra land.

It shouldn't be possible to deed the land/buy as group (though you can set as group as normal). The purpose of first-land is just to give you a little starting point once you go premium, once you outgrow it you can then move on to larger plots of "regular" land, retaining the first-land if you so-wish.

Basically, the plot would behave such that it can't be sold like regular land, only abandoned back to Governor Linden as a full-plot for L$1/square metre (L$512). This way it can then be inhabited by other new premium accounts.

if they ever do reactivate first land i fully expect them to give me the first land they falsely advertised to get me to go premium.

I spent a while looking for it, there was still a lot of blurb around about first land when I joined.

SL needs a shot in the arm.

Not sure what the deal is in ''gaming" first land as you have to buy a premium account and you can only buy one first land. Never did understand how LL could ever lose on this as we all know the real money is in the tier. If someone wants to gamble a premium account on this spectulation I really don't care. The bottom line is sims are being sold.
A premium account plus 512L equals the equivulant of 3152L. Thats 6.15 Per square meter actual cost. We can only hope that mainland is ever worth that again to make it worth "gaming".

So as a couple suggested, no, I offer no "solutions" to the percieved "gaming" problem that in my opinion never even existed. It was too much trouble subdividing the sim and selling it in little pieces back at a time when whole sims were sliding off the selve as fast as LL could sell them. There was NEVER a gaming problem, you just bought into that for LL's reason to drop the program.

Now if your refering to the people who came in and bought out a First land for 2k and then sold it for 2500 or 3k, thats not gaming, thats real estate. That is still an active part of the game. If fact go below a threshold and you won't even see a real person buy it, a bot will beat them to it. But once again, who cares. Many would take that and buy a bigger land. Consider it a new account bonus.

Back when SL was growing, LL was working to make it grow. Then it had a momentum of its own for a long while. Well that party is over, time for LL to work again to make it grow and if that means subdividing sims and offering a cheap land bonus to new accounts, if it works, do it.

I like Kitty's suggestion. I would only add that the land has to turn over every few months to keep things fresh and under control.

And perhaps change the name to First Leased Land. Both to alleviate any confusion with the First Land program and to be more accurate of a description.

I believe the issue was more to do with alts getting cheap first land and buying it for a group and making a good markup, which meant the intended audicence for first land, real bona fide newbs, weren't the people getting the perk.

People are not gonna buy into anything but full ownership and there is no reason at all not to offer it. Unless someone can explain to me how someone can "game" this where LL does not see profit and we do not see growth.

You had to buy a premium account anyways, even if you created an alt. Still looking for who loses here... LL made a premium account and got back 512L, they also have teir for 512m so unless they resold that real fast, it would cost them another 10 bucks the next month too.

Chances are the person on the next 512m lot is gonna buy it and will have to increse their teir.

No one is losing here, SL is expanding no matter who buys that lot. No one but a new person is going to buy that lot in this day and age as there is a land glut as there is. That is why no new mainland sims have been sold for two months now.

Its not a matter of creating new land, its a matter of creating a really good deal so they get their foot in the door in the very first place. I would have to look really hard to find someone who is still on their old first land today. They either left or chances are they are on a bigger land.

Let me tell you about my first land, it was in Yucca. I started buying out my neighbors and started a business. I expanded into the next sim that wasn't a first land. Then I met some people who also started on first lands and they had expanded also. We got together and went in on a sim. Then I bought one out and they went and bought their own sim. Their group ended up buying another sim. I would argue that if it was not for that first land program, chances are history would not have been as it was and there very well could have been three less sims today.

First land was a cheap foot in the door to really see what SL is all about. You either loved it and stayed and maybe expanded or you left. It was fun watching those first land sims grow also. And I would argue that they spured grown across the map.

It wasn't just alts, people would instantly flip their first land parcel as well (either voluntary or because they were scammed by a landbaron).

Actually I would always suggest to new people to buy a first land even if they were going to buy a larger plot. I saw first land as a new player bonus. They could make a couple k fast and the next door neighbor could expand as well. I saw this as a win-win situation, not a drawback at all, especially when they took their small profit and bought a 4k lot instead. No one is lossing here, sims are being sold, new tier is added to the pool, SL is growing. After the first land program was dropped so did premium memberships and it never stopped dropping.

You are wrong. Very wrong.

People would buy a piece for 512, flip it instantly for 6000-10,000, get the 1250 signup bonus and then renege, cancel the account and disappear. The profits in doing that far outweighed the costs. There were certain land barons taking advantage of this fact and buying up a lot of first land this way. Now, there is no more first land, and the bonus takes 45 days to kick in.

Well, I seen as high as 6k back then but I think the average was 2500-3500. Not sure about the renege part though, that sounds like fraud and illegal. But like I said, we can only hope to see the day mainland would command 6-10k for a 512 again. Those old economics just don't play today so the incentive to cheat on First lands are gone. The origonal reasons they were introduced in the first place are back.

The reasons to have such a program never went away. The cons just far outweighed the pros. The land was being used for profiteering of established residents through unaccountable alts. And very few legitimate new people were able to get their hands on first land. I was lucky enough to get a piece when I joined in Dec 06. And by then, yeah, the prices were 6k to 10k. Actually, true newbs who lucked out may have been offered 4-6k and then the land was flipped and put on the market for 10k. 10k for a 512 was not uncommon at the time I joined.

I'm too new to know much about First Land, but, from the outside looking in... It looks like First Land was needed when the service as a whole was still too young and shaky for people wanting to pour monies into a fixed piece of land with little predictable awareness of what kind of traffic they'll see or what kind of neighbors they'll have. First Land allowed for a very 'base-price' solution simply to add to the temptation of owning land. (^_^)

Why would that be needed today? How would it help? I don't see it. Really, lands with covenants, pre-determined themes, public works, and double prim would be (and is) a much more successful solution. The result may not be the cheapest land, but, the most attractive possible end-result. If LL were to continue like they did with Bay City with other themed works. Fantasy regions, city regions, boardwalks, jungles... Stuff like that. (^_^)

Maybe even more independent LL owned estate islands. Clumped together in groups of 4 or 8 sims per with Gov.Linden owned open spaces surrounding so that micro-nations can form. Who knows? Not me. (^_^)

The one thing I find most enjoyable about being in SL is experiencing it as a place. I have the most fun walking from store to store up a virtual sidewalk or main street. From what I saw in First Land, all those 512 parcels all butted together make for a teleport-by-teleport nightmare and really turns me off from considering that a worthy place to go and visit again. If I wanted to be in an environment that behaved like that... I'd be searching for Geocities pages in Google. (=_=)

My own parcel is in an independantly themed land. I'm surrounded by my best friend's park build and have my own parcel integreted in theme with the surroundings. There's a nice brick path that you can stroll around on. And, when the trains are running, there's a fun ride around most of the region. (^_^)y

Immy, there is nothing different about it from mainland today. First land was scarce and scattered throughout different sims. It's not like you got 128 512s each time they released FL. You'd get a few in one or two sims, and then a few large pieces of maintenance land would go to auction. It was the same patchwork that mainland is today, and nothing is different except the starting price.

/me votes against having restrictions on the land - I think that not being allowed to sell 'your' land or subdivide it or join with your neighbors or group it or anything would really lessen the value of it.

Only giving 1st Land to people who have paid at least 4-6 months would be ok with me, though. Pay premium quarterly/yearly, you get it right away. Otherwise, you've got to wait a few months to get it.

well ll could have solved any gaming by simply making the firstland parcels non transferable for x number of months.
but they didnt want to. thats what it really comes down to; ll just didnt want to do anything to keep the firstland program alive.

Ah... okies. (^_^)

So, First Land was more of a general offering... I guess it wouldn't be all that bad as long as resale was restricted. L$512 isn't THAT hard to come by for someone with the desire. Heck, I can do that in a week's worth of NCI contests without my current stipend. Limiting resale is totally reasonable for prices that cheap. (^_^)y

The bad thing is, we all know that 117 prims comes and goes quickly. What use is it to a newbie who's ready to grow bigger, if he can't unload the land he bought in a timely manner so he can buy his next piece of land? You've now got the land as an albatross around the newbie's neck.

The situation is just not ideal. The only way to control it would be to make all accounts paid accounts. But LL isn't going backward on that decision, and it certainly isn't going backward thanks to the open sourcing of the code and the opening of alternate grids.

You can give it right away if they pay their account. If they pay, take something of value and resell it at a profit, collect their money and cancel and renege on their payment, that is fraud, a crime, and they can be charged.

You can't expect people to wait three months... who would do that?? I know I wouldn't...

Has anyone even priced mainland property lately? I have never seen it so low. You would be shocked if you have not priced it in recent months. We talk about 5 to 10K for a 512 back then, you can buy a 1024 for 4k now if you shop around, maybe cheaper if you hunt. 512's for 2k. And there is so much, there are sims all subdivided and priced to sell with no takers.

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From the Blog:

August Mainland supply update
Sunday, August 10th, 2008 at 1:59 AM by: Jack Linden
A short post to let you know that after reviewing the current market, we are remaining unchanged on Mainland supply. There will be no new whole regions offered at auction. We will review the situation again at the end of the month.

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And it could get worst as I think a lot of the glut in land is people who have left. There is a lot of abandoned land on the existing continents. I know people are already selling at a loss. No, there is no room for anyone to profit off of First Land today and if it brings in new people, if it could bring in new people, it may be worth a try.

Heck, if it could get to the point where people have an incentive to exploit it, it can always be suspended again.