Noob's POV

No, it's not wonderful. Don't be fooled by the giveaways. SL land is overpriced and just not worth it. Prim counts are atrocious. Prim limits are stupid. LL needs to let people learn about lag on their own when they're 20,000-prim object (yes, ALL linked) with 10 scripts in EACH prim running in a timer event every .1 seconds grinds the server to a halt. LL just doesn't want to deal with supporting idiots but too freakin' bad, LL. You're killing it for people who KNOW what they're doing by limiting us and charging us out our asses for something that is worth 1/10th the price at most. Active Worlds land (worlds) is (are) FAR more cost-effective. I won't be buying land until SL prices are at or better than AW's.

How on earth is a noob going to afford buying land and a house when they first come here, without any means of getting money.

Isn't this supposed to be a game to relax from RL worries and to have fun in?

I just started playing a few days ago, with the intention of updating my basic account to a premium one, in order to purchase land, have a home and start my little business. I was also going to have a friend join me, and buy land together to build something together. Seeing the state of things, I'm not so sure about that anymore.

I know noobs can by "First Land" or something similar, and I went to check the places. Most of the time I landed on someone's porch, or nearby. Once an owner of one of the houses nearby even teleported on me. Well, I figured "First land" isn't for me, and started checking Land sales. To my horror, I found the 512 m2 piece of land cost 4 k minimum, and even those were squeezed btw. other houses, malls etc.

How on earth is a noob going to afford buying land and a house when they first come here, without any means of getting money, besides the allowance from Linden. I tried free slots, which don't give terribly much, money chairs were a bore, and I sure as heck don't want to take part in a competition for a dancer with the least clothes on, and unfortunately am not able to design pretty clothes yet to start business (taking a class later on).

Are people speculating with land, hoarding money they get from it and not using them in-game, in order to exchange them to USD to benefit their RL finances? Isn't this supposed to be a game to relax from RL worries and to have fun in? IMHO, it's not the 50 L basic account holders get that makes the situation as it is. That basic money was what enabled me to start off buying essential stuff from vendors (female vanity) etc... See: noobs do circulate the money they get... unless they have to hoard it to save for basic needs, such as own land. Having incentives, such as the money, might help basic account holders see more of what this game has to offer and decide to pay for the premium account. It's not like the game has missions you can run to get money from...or does it?

I don't know if this ranting has a point, but just thought I'd offer a noob's POV on things, and hoping to remind ppl that this is just a game to have fun in and let others enjoy it as well. Game not meant for personal gain IRL.
Mia

Eep: It's not $10 for 512, it's about $3 for 512, since you get about $7 worth of Linden Dollars as well.

SL is overpriced, AW is a better deal, and yet, you're still here with a join date in 2004; so it's not like you have just sauntered in to assess the situation and have found it lacking. Your lingering presence says more to me in favor of SL than your words say against it.

Bury your head in the sand all you want, land tier is not US$10 per 512sm until the L$500 per week received as part of the premium package is rescinded as has been pointed out. Tier per sm decreases in proportion to the amount of land owned, as has been pointed out. Putting land owned under a group ownership also provides a 10% bonus in the amount of land available per tier level which further reduces the price of tier per sm of land.

Ah, yes, let's jump through hoops like good little marketable lemmings. No thanks. $L500 is nothing--what, perhaps $2.5US now? Big freakin' whoop. So tier is actually $8-7US--it's still a lot for hardly anything.

Because a typical First Land sim will be a patchwork quilt of non-matching builds, with no roads or anything breaking it up. It's not hard to see why that could be unattractive to a new player.

Just because I'm here doesn't mean I like everything about SL. Yes, I think SL is MOSTLY (but not COMPLETEY) better than AW, but AW is still better in a few key things SL is FAR behind in. I've posted about these differences before so search my posts if you're interested in learning more about them.

Ah, yes, let's jump through hoops like good little marketable lemmings. No thanks. $L500 is nothing--what, perhaps $2.5US now? Big freakin' whoop. So tier is actually $8-7US--it's still a lot for hardly anything.

If I want to make cool things, I use SL (and store it in my inventory). If I want to BUILD anything permanent, I use AW and store it on free/cheap land.

Umm, the L$500 is per week, not per month. The average monthly amount is L$2166, which at current levels is worth about $7.30 USD, which is more than the annual cost of a premium account if you pay yearly.

Using today's average exchange rate of 295 to 1, and factoring in the 3.5% LindeX fee.

L$2000 = us$6.53 (for a month with 4 weeks of stipend payments)
L$2500 = us$8.18 (for a month with 5 weeks of stipend payments)

So out of the us$9.95 month-to-month premium fee, only us$3.42 or us$1.77 is actually unreclaimable. (add us$1.00 for transfer-out fees if you take the money home with you, or not if you roll the balance forward to pay for future months of premium membership with it)

512sqm land allocation for roughly $2.50 a month?

Seems *very* reasonable to me. Are AW's rates better than that?

I hesitate to mention it but now that you have me doing math, us$72 for a full year premium account nets you 52 weeks of L$500 stipends. At today's rate that's us$85.04 after LindeX fees. Minus US$1.00 to transfer the money out.. that's a us$12.04 profit. That's a 16% yield! And the use of 512sqm for the year is included!

OK, so why all this hoop-jumping LL makes landowners go through then? Jesus freakin' Christ. This is why I HATE and DESPISE money. It is SO sneaky how people use it it makes me want to bash their faces in. Seriously, is it worth all the hassle to have to try and convert L$ to real $ just to pay for tier? I don't think so. *I* won't do it.

Well, nobody is suggesting you do it. I do it, and it takes about ten minutes of time, once a month. I pay $34.95 per month ($9.95 for account, and $25 for an extra 4096 land). That means that once a month, I have to spend 2 minutes figuring out how much L$ I need to transfer to Lindex at the current rate to get $35 USD into my account. This month, it was L$10,500 at L$295/USD which gave me $34.36 in my account, which when combined with the 62 cents I had leftover from last month, was enough to pay the $34.95 with 3 cents left over.

Yes, actually. AW's smallest world, 40,000m2 (puts SL's piddly 512m2 to SHAME!) with a max of 5 users allowed in it, is a measly $6.66/month (+ $5.83/month to allow unregistered users--tourists--to enter, but that's optional) so $12.49/month total--but that's just for the FIRST year. The next year the monthly cost is $0.83/month + $5.83/month for tourists = $6.66/month.

Compared to SL's pathetic 512m2 for $2.50/month, an AW 512m2 "world" would be about 16 CENTS a month for the 1st year and 9 CENTS a month thereafter (if I did my math right)!

1st year: $80 (1-time)
Renewal: $10 yearly thereafter
Tourist-Enabled: $70 yearly

World Servers Configuration and Pricing

Of course you still have to get hosting for the world server and "content" (objects, sounds, textures, avatars, anims) but that can all be hosted on YOUR computer, or elsewhere. And, of course, sounds and textures can be accessed from ANYWHERE on the web (though it makes more sense to have them in the object path to reduce cell data use).

If you want to be bothered to jump through the hoops and play accountant. No thanks.

That's fine if you want to play accountant. I don't. SL should do this automatically or, better yet, simply reduce tier cost accordingly.

I gotta take the obvious cheap-shot: If AW only bills annually, then:
For SL, 512sqm with unlimited tourists costs -$12.04 the first year.
For AW 40,000sqm for unlimited tourists costs $150 the first year.

Seriously though, I have scant interest in "doing the accounting thing", but it would be less effort than co-ordinating and supporting secondary storage for my world content. Makes me rather glad that SL supplies the storage and bandwidth for that.

I get your point: the main difference boils down to real estate.
(and SL's land-based prim limits)

But if it were only about affordable space to build in...
I'd stick to the level editors for some of my favorite games and save my money.

I've nothing against the people for which AW 'works' ... I'm just not one of them.

Doesnt matter to me if prices goes up or down or away. I'm having fun. And that's all that matters to me. Dont care if I make a buck or not. It's all "Do I enjoy this? Am I having fun?" So far.... YES!

It's similar to starting out on your own irl.

There are sandboxes for you to create in and free classes and tutorials to help you develop your skills.

Why do you assume that most monies earned are going for people's rl expenses rather than towards payment of their game expenses?

Even if so, why do you feel comfortable telling people who work hard enough to make a profit that their time should be spent otherwise and in accordance to your expectations?

Assuming you like working for it. Which I certainly do -- that's fun for me. If you need fun without working, I highly recommend you check out TSO --

But if you're looking for a quaint place where everything is free, in order to relieve you of the real life anxieties of having to work for things, this ain't it, sister. Those making their livings here are doing extremely demanding stuff, including those managing land and land sales. You're going to need to learn how to value that work if you expect to enjoy any luxuries at all in SL.

Yes, but the difference being, of course, that SL doesn't even HAVE tourists ("non-residents" so, to be fair, only non-tourist costs should be compared, thus making AW worlds even cheaper.

I would rather have MUCH cheaper parcel/sim costs and have to host it and the content myself (which is free anyway since my connection is always on).

Unfortunately, AW DOESN'T work as well as SL in some respects (physics, scripting, etc) so that makes SL, overall, better--but not COMPLETELY. :/