Landless Subcriber Prohibited from Buying First Land

I upgraded my account to Premium status three days ago, on Aug. 28, 2006. My partner also upgraded her account at that time as well. The prospect of purchasing First Land was the primary motivation for upgrading our accounts, and we formed a group in order to enable us to build on each other's property. Initially, we were under the impression that we would need to cede our land tiers to the group, but it became clear that we would need to take back our land tiers in order to purchase First Land individually.

The problem occured when I attempted to purchase a plot of First Land, and was prohibited from doing so. A system message claimed: "You have already owned land in Second Life, and are ineligible to purchase parcels reserved for new users." Since I have never in fact owned land in SL, I contacted Live Help. A Linden representative told me that SL considers ceding an individual account's land tier to a group to be the same thing as "owning" land, even if the group never attempts to use that land tier to actually purchase land.

In proceeding with our plans, I consulted the following Second Life Knowledge Base articles on the SL website:

"Finding Land": http://secondlife.com/knowledgebase/article.php?id=146
"Land Buying Advice for New Users": http://secondlife.com/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Land+Ownership+Guide#id61917
"Donate Tier to a Group": http://secondlife.com/knowledgebase/article.php?id=268
"Group Contributions": http://secondlife.com/knowledgebase/article.php?id=129

These articles explain in detail how to purchase First Land and how to manage land tier donations to a group. It is clearly stated that land tier may optionally be ceded and taken back from a group at any time without penalty. However, none of these articles make any mention that according to SL's idiosyncratic definition of "ownership", ceding land tier to a group makes you a "land owner" who doesn't own any land. Neither does the in-game Group dialog provide any warning that ceding land tier to a group has the hidden side-effect of voiding your new-user option to purchase First Land.

I think this definition of land "ownership" is clearly counter-intuitive and unfairly victimizes new users who cannot reasonably be expected to become experts in SL landowner policy before purchasing First Land. The lack of documentation and absence of in-game warnings on the irreversible hidden side-effects of an otherwise freely reversible game feature is misleading and hazardous. Even though I am now personally aware of this in-game pitfall, I have no systematic way to search the SL website to find an explicit statement of this policy. I have no doubt it's buried somewhere, but I cannot provide a link.

Caveat emptor, indeed.

same thing happened to me

SL support responded quickly to my complaint and reenabled my First Land privileges. I'm a happy camper now on my new patch of land.

How do you even get first land? I upgraded to premium just to get some, then when I followed the instructions the website gave, I realized there isn't any to be had. I asked online help and they said there isn't any and to try looking again in a few days. Nice of the website to mention that it might not be available.... Nice way to misrepresent the service.. I'm not a happy customer right now..

There is a Linden in charge of setting up new first land. I'm sure he will set up some new first land to purchase within a day or two. When it goes up, it lasts for at least a couple of days.

To answer your initial question, I suppose you have to wait a few days. I don't think you can have a go a LL too much unless you're in the same position in a week. To contradict the online help, however, I would recommend you don't wait a few days, but keep checking, so you get first pick of available parcels.