The First Land For New Residents Programme

Hi, why can I not buy any first land, and why don't tech support or live help ever answer any questions about the subject, what is going on? I only upgraded to premium to buy some land and now whenever I search there is none available. Have I been taken for a ride by the Linden boys, is this a virtual scam?

I have ssen a post that they cannot create it fast enough, sorry that is not good enough, I paid my subscription and I want my land now!

You're being taken for a ride by greedy Players who are creating one-month Premium accounts, camping on Search until they can locate and scarf up the first available piece of First Land, regardless of location or quality, reselling it at a huge profit, and then cashing out the Premium account and cancelling it.

Because the Lindens are doing NOTHING to prevent this rape of their own land sales program, honest people like you can't get what they paid for. And the practice is helping to make land prices insane for all of us.

The Lindens could fix this in a heartbeat by not allowing First Land parcels to be sold or transferred for at least 90 days after purchase, or by requiring any Premium account to be at least 90 days old before it can sell land purchased as First Land. Either method would instanly kill the profitability for those who are creating Premium accounts solely to rape the land purchase program for a quick profit.

Ramesses, I know that it's frustrating not to be able to find First Land. However, Linden Lab does not promise that First Land will be available to you. First Land is something that they try to create, whenever they have time and resources available. And it's something that they certainly could do better at (as per Ceera's recommendations). However, it really isn't all that it's cracked up to be anyway. Yes, it's cheap. But you get what you pay for.

Right now Linden Lab is overwhelmed taking care of new island purchases and upgrades to the grid infrastructure to support the surging population. They are grossly understaffed and I don't expect that this will change any time soon. I know, it sucks, but that is the way it is right now.

Rather than be frustrated, why not search for the least expensive 512m2 parcel you can find, and buy it? It will almost certainly be in a better spot than first land and you can get started learning how to build right away.

That is what I ended up doing when I first joined up last month. I searched for a day or two for First Land but never saw any available. I didn't know anything other than what I read in the FAQ etc, I hadn't found these forums, but I just basically concluded that either there wasn't any first land available, or if there was, it was being grabbed before I could find it. I didn't want to keep waiting though, I really wanted to have some land of my own, so I searched out and found a plot I liked that wasn't too expensive.

-Atashi

Did you not look through these forums or blog entries or ask around in-world before going premium? Lack of 1st land isn't overly new - how did you miss that?

I think Linden Lab should just discontinue this effort. It is clearly confusing to people and probably causes more frustration that it is worth.

Ramesses, bear in mind that you do not have to buy First Land as your first ever land purchase. If you want your land as soon as possible, you can buy any other parcel of land in the world that takes your fancy. The downside is that you will have to pay the asking price for that land, and you won't be able to take advantage of the L$512 First Land deal later on - which is very unfortunate but that's the tradeoff for having the land immediately.

It isn't a scam at all - the Lindens work as hard as they can to keep First Land available for everyone.

As far as I'm aware it has never been guaranteed that First Land will be available for you as soon as you go Premium - it used to be the case that it was only created every couple of days. Remember that every new sim of First Land requires Linden Labs to actually buy and set up a new computer, and that includes the time it takes for it to be delivered from the factory, etc, so most likely they'll have a backlog from the holidays too.

Rather than abolishing it, though, I'd like to see a system where new Premium accounts are automatically booked a piece of First Land when they go Premium, rather than having to pay L$512 for it (the L$512 could be deducted from the starting payment). It's not worth going Premium just for the stipend any more, after all. You could argue that the existing system gives people a choice about where they have their First Land but that basically comes down to the combination of which parcels they can get to first (largely randomly determined by the time the Lindens set up the sim and the user's real life and time zone), and who the neighbours are going to be in 6 months (totally random).

(On that neighbours issue by the way, in my case with my first land (Falcaria), a club bought up all of the adjacent parcels to mine; they made a fair offer for mine, which was fine so I sold to them, but when I went there to set the parcel for sale, they had already - ie, before knowing that I would sell - built the entire club around my parcel, with the dance floor continuous with my roof! Good job I wanted to sell )

Maybe "Please note: First Land plots are subject to availability." should be in bold or flashing watermellon colors or translated into other languages or something but it seems pretty clear to me. There's only a few lines of text and nothing prevents non-premiums from searching for and looking at 1st land before going premium. The Linden Answers forum (and others) has people complaining about the lack of 1st land almost every day.

As I already wrote in another thread, I sold my parcel of First Land. Whgen I was buying a new parcel, I was told that this would be my first land purchase and that I should better try to buy First Land. This looks as if you can buy First Land anytime you don't own any land. If this was the case, you could buy it, sell it for 1L$ to a "friend" (your second account) and buy the next parcel. One person could buy all First land or even a whole new server within minutes and sell it later at a nice profit. If that worked, it would explain a lot.

No, this is not true. You can only buy First Land if it's your first land purchase ever since you became Premium. Buying any other land will disqualify you, even if you sell that other land later.

I DO hope it is so. But the dialog box told me different.
Well, hopefully just another bug.

Do you assume this or have you ever tried it out, Yumi?

First Land is only useful if you're extraordinarily fortunate in finding an attractive plot that you want to keep or if you want to sell it for a quick profit. In the latter instance, you're just becoming a land speculator, like all the other people who are supposedly "scamming" the system.

As a newbie, I probably could have made a quick profit if I'd had any idea what I was doing during my First Land search. But oddly enough, I simply wanted a nice place to live and the First Land that I found was all extremely unappealing, so I didn't buy it when I had the chance.

In fact, I was rather bewildered by all the AVs who immediately approached me and said "I'll pay you L$XXX if you buy this plot and sell it to me." Why would I want to buy First Land and sell it to them? Okay, I was a noob. But again, I didn't want to waste time being a land speculator; I wanted a place to build a house and settle in.

During my searches, I found a lovely plot on a mountainside, with a gorgeous view. It cost a lot more than First Land, but it was a place that has provided me with a quality of life in SL. I could stop my frantic searching and get on with my plans for learning how to build and script.

I've never regretted that decision.

Far too late for me to test this but if you're right, it's a very serious bug..

The intent is to give premium members a chance to get a small piece of land for cheap money. They are only, in theory, allowed to do it once. If you deed m2 or buy any land, First Land or not, you should not be able to buy First Land again.

What would work would be if LL assigned a plot of first land to each new premium account (no land purchase on the player's part involved) as well as implementing Ceera's suggestion of the 90-day bar on resale.

I agree with the suggestion that people who sign up for Premium accounts should also get their 512 parcel of land pre-selected by Linden. A new preimum member could be given choices as to the location, or simply just be given it. The 90 day resale thing is just awesome...great idea!

I've been a premium account holder for a few weeks, but I outright bought my land, because I couldn't find any 512s.

I definitely understand the frustration! I looked for hours to find a piece of land that I liked. Most of the land I REALLY liked, was outrageously priced...ridiculous!!

I do think that Linden should just take out that incentive of land altogether, and just simply say that a person with a premium account can be a landowner. Everyone that's been pissed off (including myself) about this land fiasco, wouldn't be pissed off if the incentive wasnt there.

Just my 2 cents worth

I lucked out with my first land because I read in these forums that they had been releasing plots at odd hours. It's so random... if you really want first land, you have to check every 10-15 minutes. You never know when they are going to release it and it gets snatched up very quickly (and turned over, too).

I got lucky with First Land. A friend who talked me into signing up for SL told me to just keep searching when I complained that I couldn't find land.

So, I did as I was told and used the search function whenever I got the chance. 3 days later, I was amazed to see the list populated and instantly teleported.

But, this is still no guarantee that you'll get land. Whenever this land comes up, it's a race to get it and it won't last 30 minutes.

I got a great ocean front lot and had 3 offers to sell it within the first minute that I owned the last. I declined the offers because I had every intention of keeping the lot. Unfortunately, I soon realized that the 512 lots have too few prims to actually do anything and sold it.

I too have been looking to buy first land,or something affordable. I signed up for premium and paid for a year in advance.....don't get me wrong,i love SL,and didn't sign-up just for land.I was hoping that after a couple of weeks i would be able to find land so that i could put a home on it....Still looking but losing hope.

I'll just chip in that I kept checking the search for first land many times a day for over a week when I first upgraded my account. And there was always nothing.
Then suddenly there were 3 plots in the list. I rushed over and chose what I thought would be the best of the 3 and bought it immediately. Within a few minutes to other 2 lots were sold. I am 2 plots away from a Linden-owned beach and on a hill with a great view.
It's been over a month now and some of the 512 plots around me have been merged into larger parcels. The neighborhood is still pretty nice. I am bordered on one side by a large area of Linden Land which I suspect might become first land parcels sometime.
I've only been asked once if I wanted to sell and I don't know how much they would have paid.
Maybe my story will help someone decide what to do.

My experience of purchasing my first plot of 512m was very different. As newbs often do, I had no idea about First Land, and the land I went to see which now on reflection was First Land I was extremely repelled by in terms of land, neighbours and more importantly the quality of their builds (and to be fair mine were similarl also at the time - lol).

More by luck thank any judgement, I wandered onto a plot of land that yes was 512m but was not First Land. It was in a lovely mountainous sim on a parcel on a flat ridge with great views and sunsets and with a long strip of Linden Land in front (since turned into a Linden railtrack). I fell in love with it and bought it, even though it was several times more than 512L.

I never regretted that decision even after I found out about First Land afterwards and learned I could have saved a lot of money. For a first 512m plot of land, it was perfect and although I eventually expanded on it then sold up and moved on, I always remember that place with fondness.

The point is, I would recommend this approach if you're disheartened by First Land. Yes, it costs several times more to buy the land in the first place but think about it you are a premium member and you've already paid money for that privilege and if you like SL you will probably at some point tier up and have to pay money in monthly...and for the meantime you will get to play for free tier each month. You will probably get some/all/more money back when you do sell up.

My experience is not for everyone, but it did work out well in terms of quality of experience - I've had friends on First Land plots and I really did not like how those regions turned out.

P.S. to add to the above, I ended up buying over 4000m of land in stages all linked from that first 512m plot of land because I was worried about clubs, malls etc. Again I never regretted it because you always need more prims. I met with my neighbour and found out he was a similar kind of guy and he bought up a lot of the sim too...eventually when i wanted to move out, I just mentioned it to him and he happily bought my land up completely and for a very generous amount which meant I got way more than I initially invested. Goes to show how far some clever *ahem* ok ok fortuitous (in my case) buying of land in a good quality sim and becoming friends with your neighbours gets you.

Your experience is interesting to me, Leo, because I'm just starting out and you are many stages ahead of me. I am hoping to figure out how to someday be sucessful like you.
But I can't help but wonder, you could have bought some awful first land plot for L$512 and then still done exactly what you did as well, right? You would only be out an extra L$512 and the first land probablywouldn't be worth any less than what you paid for it.
I'm not normally the kind of person who buys something I don't need just because it's a bargain... but somehow it seems like a waste not to take advantage of this particular deal. And if a new person isn't in a hurry eventually they might even get a good piece of first land like I did....

Hi Leo, you interest me with your use of the past tense there. You have wtinessed the usual 'growing pains' of First Land plots. I however, held on to mine, watched many neighbouring plots get sold and resold at escalating prices but slowly settling down to a few pleasant neighbours (one entirely absent one!) and a nice neighbourhood. I've now had two neighbours asking if I'd be prepared to sell my plot for their expansion.
I've been offered free residence on a RL friends private island on estate but am strongly tempted to just hold on to my little cottage with the nice neighbours.
I am in no way trying to convince anyone this is the usual trend. I have seen disaster areas and lag-creating camping casinos spring up also. I've just been one of the lucky ones.

Well there's no secret really, just look for good quality land preferrably with protected land on a border and make sure you're not shortchanged (hard in these times). Timing moves from one land to another is also important. I've gone through a whole set of changes of land from that first 512m plot to half a sim in various parts and then to an entire sim and am now back to half a sim. It does get expensive...but at the start you can if you play your cards right not have to fork too much out.




I *could* have done but I didn't know better lol. If you can do it in such a way of course you can do the First Land thing and then move on to what I did AND make money from the first land - in fact it may help to offset the cost of the second land that you buy. In fact you could develop your own building skills on the First Land and then sell when you feel confident and then move to a nice 512m plot in an nicer place with some skills to make a nice home.

However, I wonder how many people at the start would be so clued up, unless they read a post like this, and how many people who buy First Land get disheartened by the whole process and either revert to basic accounts or leave SL altogether? But sure if you can do it in a calculated way AND you can find First Land (not a given at all these days), the way you suggest is the way to go.

I really do believe this.

I happened to be online AND searching for FL just as some appeared last night. I would say maybe 20 parcels total, in maybe two or three different sims.

It was unfortnate to see this first land IMMEDIATELY turned over for between $9,000-$12,000L. And I do mean immediately; I had TP'd onto a property from Search and by the time I clicked the buy land option, the land already had its new price tag.

In addition, I noticed many security scripts or whatever they are called, being used immediately after a purchase as well. I was booted off a first land property I had TP'd on to from Search, because of a security script. Are new players savy enough to use this technology immediately after purchasing a property? Possibly ... but it still smelled of land-snatching pros to me.

I've only been in-game since the beginning of December, but the first land thing really sucks for those of us who just want a cheap plot of our own to practice building on or to possibly call home. The experience last night really soured me and I wouldn't be surprised if it puts off other newbies as well.

Thanks for your insight Leo. My son and I are trying to figure out the best way to proceed. He hasn't upgraded to a premium account yet and he wants to do it as advantageously as possible. As Erised's experience points out SL is a lot like FL, and we're probably not going to find an super easy way to prosper, lol.