How long / how much

Hi,

I'm completely new to second life, and I have a few questions about buying land and building on it.

How much would it cost / how long would it take to buy a small plot of land, and build something like a small art gallery / showcase on it.

Are there more expensive areas than others? Are Islands more expensive?

Do you have to pay a running fee per month?

I would just like to put something in place that probably wouldn't change much once it was built. A place where anybody could enter when they wanted.

Can your buildings get vandalised etc?

Like I say i'm completely new to this concept and it would be great to just get an idea of what it involves before i begin.

Any comments would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

Tom

You can buy a land parcel on mainland or on a private estate.
Mainland is a little cheaper but there are as good as no regulations. So you never will know what someone will build next to your parcel.

Most private estates have covenants with building rules to keep the look of the sim, keep lag low, ...

Another reason why people choose for a private estate is that they can contact the owner of a sim or his staff and are helped within a few hrs. When you send a support ticket to Linden Lab it can take weeks or even months before they give you an answer.

If you buy land on mainland or a private estate you have to pay a weekly/monthly cost to use the land. On mainland to linden lab; on a private estate to the estate owner.

To give you a price idea: We rent 1024sqm parcels for 500l$ per week; 1/4 sim for 7000l$ per week, ...

On most private estate you don't have to pay for the land. Most land is set for sale at 0l$ or the first week/month of rent.

On our website you can find also more info: http://www.ZoHa-Islands.com

Great, thanks for the info.

What does 'sim' mean? And does building the building cost anything? And how customizable can the structure be?

Cheers

Tom

A sim is a sort of island in SL.
Size is 256x256m or 65536sqm.
There are around 30,000 sims in SL.

If you build your own house only your imagination can stop you. Building itself does cost nothing. You only have to pay 10l$ if you want to upload a texture that you want to use. But there are a lot of free texture packs in SL also.

You can also buy a pre-made house. Most sellers allow you also to modify it.

Ok, so just to clarify, the 1024m parcels are just areas of land that you build on - you don't need to buy the 1/4 sim aswell?

Cheers

Tom

SIM

SIM:= "Simulator". This is the technical word for "Island". SL is build upon ten thousands of such islands, each has size 65536 virtual square meters... Many of them are owned directly by LL, this is "mainland" and can be rented. Private sims are often also for renting, but they will typically be more expensive due to understandable reasons. Occasionally you can find very interesting offers for reasonable prices. Just note, that a full sim can be rented for about 300 US$ per month (plus an initial fee of which i believe it is around 700 US$ ) and that includes up to 15000 Prims to be used for building. There is also an offer with reduced number of prims (not sure if it has 7500 or 3750 prims per sim).
So if you can afford that, it is your cheapest option regarding cost per prim and cost per square meter.

You can rent a full SIM from LL within a day or so. You can rent parcels of almost any size (although 512 sqm seems to be a reasonable minumum) from private owners instantly. Many owners have automatic renting systems installed. Just click on the "rent" button and go ahead...

Please note, that there are a few "sand boxes" available. This are SIMS or parcels on a sim, which have been opened for public building. Your creations are volatile though. So better save them in your inventory before you leave the place again Sandboxes are typically for free usage. The owners might ask for donations which is legitimate as somebody has to pay for anything you see in SL (although it often appears to be an entirely free environment)

Building

Building itself is free. But typically you will get a limited amount of Prims (primitive objects) which you will be allowed to create on your rented land. You will have to take care about the rules and the pricing though. Some land parcels are even rented not on the square meter amount, but on the used amount of prims.

structure

The sructure is as customizable as your fantasy can go. well, not 100% though. There are limitations of course. For instance there are 2 types of objects, which you can create: Prims and Sculpties. While prims can be created instantly in world, sculpties are created outside of SL and their construction is a more tedious process. There are tools around though.

Don't you have any friend, who can guide you online ? It might make sense to arrange an appointment in world... If you like so, we could arrange something. I am typically in world around 1 PM SLT, sometimes i can manage to get in earlier. If you are interested, don't hesitate to IM me in world.

Thankyou very much. I'm from the UK, and SLT is GMT-7 right? In which case, 8pm my time is 1pm SLT time?

I'll send you a message later.

Cheers

SLT is based on PDT and is 8 hours behind the UK, except for few weeks around Daylight saving time changes, as the US daylight Saving kicks in on different dates to the UK.

Has anyone bothered to point you to the SL Knowledge Base? These are VERY basic questions, exactly what the Knowledge Base is there for. Take a look at https://support.secondlife.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=4417.