Land Turnover & "Squatting"

Hello,

This is a question that I think only the older experienced players can answer...

In the area where my friends and I bought our "first land", it is now all gone and we are in the first buildig cycle. There are three "first land" parcels however, that were bought on the first day and then never used again. The players have naver come back.

So two questions:

1) How does that land turn over and when? Like under what conditions does it usually happen and hwat can I expect in terms of whether it is auctioned (usually without telling anyone but the realtors) or just put up for sale?

2) Unfortunately, the original owners did not put on "return objects" on this property so people have been "squatting" on it. Filling it up with junk and buildings. Obviously the next owner can delete all this stuff, but again how likely is that to happen any time soon? Is ther any way to get LL to put return objects back on? Or are we stuck with the trash until it sells?

Looking for the voice of experience here, anyone have this happen to them?

Thanks for any replies

Dianne

Hello



Land is reclaimed by the Lindens only if an account is cancelled, either deliberately by a user, or through non-payment. Non-payment land stays for about 3 months to give the user a chance to come back.
Realtors are not given advanced warning of plots being put for auction.

Welcome to the SL trash heap... sorry.

Some simple things to do:

a) write to the landowner and ask them to return the objects and ask them if they'd like to sell if you have a use of the land and they don't

b) write to the prim owners and ask them to fetch their stray prims, send them a landmark to help them

c) look up the land owner. If they are no longer in the list of people, that means their account expired, so write to the Lindens and ask them to reclaim and auction the land. This can take months.

Varian is right. Contacting the individual object owners, and the land owner are the only real way. As long as the land owner exists, the Lindens will not go and start removing objects from his or her property. I have had this happen before, and I just ended up getting in contact with the land owner, and bought it from him. Then I deleted all the objects. Good luck with this, its a pain in the butt to resolve this type of situation.

Thanks for the help, but this sounds rather hopeless.

AS far as I understand these replies, even though these accounts are obviously dead they simply stay active forever? And if the people who own them are not around (they have never shown up for a single day yet), then eveything just stays that way?

I mean obviously I cant get a hold of the owners if they never show up. Also, the "squatters" are my neighbors who just see it as "free land", so that is a conversation it is very hard to have.

It's kind of like the "ugly build problem", but I feel especially put out to have ugly builds pressed up against my property when the builders dont even own the land they are building on.

Not that I disagree with the information, but would this not make large parts of SL unuseable? The amount of dead space would increase as time goes by.

Did you forget D, Prok?

D) Also, if you do not receive any feedback over the issue within 5 minutes, tripple neg-rate! Alts may come in handy with this.

No, not forever. I believe the time limit is 3 months, though check with a Linden..

It is possible for people to go on vacation and their account gets suspended due to non-payment. Or for whatever reason their account gets suspended. The Lindens allow a cetain time for users to come back and re-claim what they had. But it is not forever.

If the account still exists, send an IM once a week. If not, then the Lindens will reclaim the land eventually.

this is an area where you need great patience. I had this for ages in Tehama but now i own most of the area thats available to own. many persons dumped things, some removed them when asked off absentee owners land some refused. some were abusive and said who cares, ask a linden, and didnt care to come move them. Lindens often looked, but mostly did nothing unless objects abused by being inside other people's objects partly. Occasionally a Linden would remove all objects except those of the absentee owner and set auto delete.. but thats very rare, you need a nice linden whos in a good mood. Unless the land owner replies, you have to.... WAIT...

one by one my problems went, either landowners sold to me, or they left and i got their land by luck or auction. Often I would have to wait many months t rid myself of some unkind and non caring person's junk when they culd have taken it back in 2 minutes.

In the end, it was worth it,, well for me...sometimes a landowner will come back clear the patch set auto delete for u and vanish again..sometimes you need to wait for their a/c to be cancel.

Other ideas - send an abuse report.. dumping is possible abuse

or (not very official advice) just make something Better to COVER the rubbish and IM the owner who's absent to tell them u have done that to preserve the land with something better than dumped rubbish. Land that looks vacant gets dumped on land with green lawns and trees often doesnt.. so.. plant a tree !! or a LOT of trees

It sounds like you are assuming the person is not playing the game anymore. Some people buy land and do nothing with it because they don't know what they're going to build. Some people buy land and just let it sit there because they're planning on selling it in the future.

Another angle is that there might be something about them that you don't know. For instance I am on the opposite side of the world from the U.S. and I leave home for 30 at a time where I don't have access to the game. If I bought land this week, nobody would see me on it 'till next month, and only if they were playing around 2am.

Keep in mind that this person is still paying their monthly fee for that land. Unless they have a very good reason not to keep track of what they own, I can guarantee you will see them some time.

No, that wouldn't be my suggestion. I'd give it at least 7-10 days maybe more.

And I triple neg-rate only for really severe view-blockers, i.e. the kind with the spinning cubes and lights and height and deliberate griefing with a huge price tag on it (or none, but just ugly to make a statement). Even there, it might only be just a build negrate. Who has the time and money?

And I wouldn't use alts and have like a 9-negrate because that would not only be a waste of money, but would be buried in the numerous negs that a griefer like that usually already has. I'm still for adding to his negs, but not at cost.

Triple negs on alts are saved for really, really egregious offenders, IMHO absent other game mechanisms. They work great.

P.S. Looking to upgrade your status to a triple-triple?

Well if you've exhausted all the other remedies now is the time for a negrate and a pointed barb.

Sorry, but that's been my experience, and it works great.

Nothing brings somebody out of hibernation in a hurry than a neg and a barb.

"Could you clean up the mess on your property? We're tired of looking at it *negrate*" can work wonders where all the politeness in the world just doesn't work.

JERRY! JERRY! JERRY!

I guess I should qualify my remarks a bit (especially in case my neighbors are reading.)

It is not so much incredibly ugly, just annoying. Most of the builds are up in the sky not on the ground, and perhaps ... maybe ... I am being a leettle bit OCD about it.

It just really bugs me to have junk hanging in the sky (some of it scripted junk) that could be deleted in a second. And from an ethical point of view, I just would NEVER build a platform over someones house, even if I could, and even if they were not home or would never know etc.

It just doesnt seem right.

Squatting in the real world is by necessity and I support it, but we are all pirveledged rich westerners here, it is not really a valid thing to squat on property you dont own when you are not poor, not disadvantaged etc..

Negrate is your best friend in a situation like this, for the squatters and the owner.

i just joined and i doesnt say how to get in the online world

ROFLMAO

Hi, you have to first download the client, or game program, and then click on it to make it go through all the screens and it will prompt you for your name and password. You don't enter from this site, you enter from that downloaded program which make an HTML page on your your hard drive to click on and then connect to the game's servers.

Here is one last thing you can do that worked for me. Build a tower on that persons land that encompases all the little annoying objects on that land and hides them. This way, the objects are hidden inside the tower, and when the landowner comes back, they will just autoreturn al your objecst of the tower, and the other owners items too. That would be my last resort. I personaly wouldn't negrate anyone.

ooh, what a good idea. Only I think I shall cover the neighborhood eyesore with a large hill instead.

This thread has greatly outlived its usefulness and as such is being closed. If you are unable to maintain respect for the opinions and positions of other people, you may wish to reconsider posting.

To answer the original question - as long as an active Resident is paying for their account and land it will not be reclaimed. We do not require any Residents to 'use' the land they have purchased in any specific way. When a Resident is no longer active, their land is only reclaimed and reset for sale or First Land after their accounts have been deleted.