How to Rent Second Life Land by Lizard Howl
There are all kinds of ways to get Second Life land. In this article I will discuss some of the risks involved in renting land in Second Life, and what you can do to minimize those risks.
Whether you decide to rent Mainland or rent Estate land, be forewarned. When you rent, you are at the mercy of the landowner. Expect to pay enough for the landowner to make a profit, because if your landlady doesn’t make a profit, how is she going to pay her tier to the Lindens? And if she doesn’t pay her tier, guess what happens to your land? That’s right – you will lose it. This is true, even if your own rent was paid on time. I am not telling you this to scare you, but because it is important for you to understand. You could make your own rent payments on time, and still end up losing your land. It isn’t fair, but that is the risk you take when you rent.
There are some things you can do to make sure you minimize your risk of losing your money on your Second Life land rental. The first thing to do is find out as much as you can about whom you are paying rent to. Does he own the land himself, or is he renting from someone else? If it is Estate land, are you dealing with the Estate Owner directly, or through a third party? How long has your landlord been in Second Life? How many tenants do they have? How much land do they own? How long have they been renting Second Life land? Do you know anyone who has done business with them? Do they have referrals you can talk to? How is tier paid, weekly, monthly, daily? Do they accept PayPal? Do they accept payment in game currency (Linden dollars)?
Yes, it can be a bit of a hassle to do that much research before renting land in Second Life, but it will be worth the effort in the long run. You have much less risk if you are renting from someone who owns the land, rather than through a third party. Think about it. If you pay the landowner directly, there is only one layer between you and Linden Labs. As long as your landlord pays his tier, chances are your land will still be there. If you rent from a third party, you are now three layers away from Linden Labs. You are now depending on your landlord to pay his rent or tier, AND the landowner to pay Linden Labs. If something happens to your landlord, you will be at the mercy of the landowner, who may not even have been aware that your landlord was subleasing! At the very least, get referrals. Also, if you are renting from a third party, make an effort to contact the landowner. If the landowner knows about the subleasing, he may be more likely to work with you if something happens to your landlord.
You may prefer to do business in Lindens, but look for someone who accepts PayPal. Why? Because in order to accept payment from PayPal, your landlord will have to reveal their email address. Someone who is out to scam you or steal your money isn’t likely to reveal his or her real life identity.
Finally, especially if you are new to renting, pay the least amount of tier up front that you can. If your landlord wants you to pay a month or two in advance, just remember that once you have paid, chances are you will never see that money again. I have seen it happen many times where someone pays rent for a month or more, then *poof* their landlord disappears with all of the rent money. Sad but true.
I hope this article helped you understand the risks involved in renting Second Life land, and how you can minimize those risks.
See you in world!
IM Lizard Howl for all your Second Life land needs.
www.SegarraEstates.com
Monday, May 19, 2008
Monday, May 5, 2008
Second Life Land: Swimming in Openspace Sims by Lizard Howl
Second Life Land: Swimming in Openspace Sims by Lizard Howl
Hi everyone. Right about now we will be seeing the influx of Openspace Sims in the Second Life land market. I predict that within six weeks we will see that the market has been flooded, and we will be able to purchase these sims on auction. At auction they may go for as little as $50-$100 USD, instead of the $250 USD retail price. If you are considering purchasing an Openspace Sim and haven’t placed your order I have one word for you: Wait.
These full region, low prim allotment sims have been selling like cold lemonade on the 4th of July. My partner and I placed an order for four of these Openspace Sims soon after the new lower pricing came into effect. We have been told that there are something like 250 trouble tickets ahead of us, and I think it is reasonable to suspect that we ordered somewhere in the middle of the land rush. That will mean that there are another 250 orders placed after ours. Lets assume that in this first wave of orders for the Openspace sims there were 500 orders placed. I have a feeling that most Estate Owners did not order these one at a time. We ordered four, some probably ordered one or two, and a few probably ordered thirty at once or more. If each Estate Owner ordered just four of these Openspace Sims then a total of 2000 Openspace Sims have been ordered in the last two weeks or so. The Lindens are selling these at $250 USD each, which means they gained a cash infusion of $500,000 USD for selling this hot new kind of land.
Linden Labs places four of these Second Life land regions per standard server. This means that when you have your own sim, you are sharing the server with three other sim owners, and you have no way of regulating the scripts, colliders, or lag issues that the other sims will cause. The lag will affect your sim, and the other sims on the same server. As residents of these sims get tired of battling with the lag issue they will move back to Mainland or ¼ sims. This combined with the oversupply of means we will soon be swimming in Openspace Sims.
I predict that it will take three to four weeks for these Openspace Sim orders to be filled. We will see them come online in batches every day for a couple of weeks. Estate Owners will realize that they have ordered too many. They will start to abandon or sell off their Openspace Sims, which will lead to mass vacancies and virtual ghost towns.
What happens next? The Estate Owners will drop their rates to ridiculous or unprofitable levels in a desperate attempt to cover the $150,000 worth of monthly tier payments generated by these sims. Roughly six weeks from now, the Estate Owners who bought too many will start abandoning them, and a good percentage of the sims will bounce back to Linden Labs.
I’m waiting for them to come on the auction block for $50-$100 USD, then I might add a few more to my collection. If you heed my advice, you’ll wait too!
See you in world.
Lizard Howl
IM Lizard Howl for all your Second Life land needs!
www.SegarraEstates.com
Hi everyone. Right about now we will be seeing the influx of Openspace Sims in the Second Life land market. I predict that within six weeks we will see that the market has been flooded, and we will be able to purchase these sims on auction. At auction they may go for as little as $50-$100 USD, instead of the $250 USD retail price. If you are considering purchasing an Openspace Sim and haven’t placed your order I have one word for you: Wait.
These full region, low prim allotment sims have been selling like cold lemonade on the 4th of July. My partner and I placed an order for four of these Openspace Sims soon after the new lower pricing came into effect. We have been told that there are something like 250 trouble tickets ahead of us, and I think it is reasonable to suspect that we ordered somewhere in the middle of the land rush. That will mean that there are another 250 orders placed after ours. Lets assume that in this first wave of orders for the Openspace sims there were 500 orders placed. I have a feeling that most Estate Owners did not order these one at a time. We ordered four, some probably ordered one or two, and a few probably ordered thirty at once or more. If each Estate Owner ordered just four of these Openspace Sims then a total of 2000 Openspace Sims have been ordered in the last two weeks or so. The Lindens are selling these at $250 USD each, which means they gained a cash infusion of $500,000 USD for selling this hot new kind of land.
Linden Labs places four of these Second Life land regions per standard server. This means that when you have your own sim, you are sharing the server with three other sim owners, and you have no way of regulating the scripts, colliders, or lag issues that the other sims will cause. The lag will affect your sim, and the other sims on the same server. As residents of these sims get tired of battling with the lag issue they will move back to Mainland or ¼ sims. This combined with the oversupply of means we will soon be swimming in Openspace Sims.
I predict that it will take three to four weeks for these Openspace Sim orders to be filled. We will see them come online in batches every day for a couple of weeks. Estate Owners will realize that they have ordered too many. They will start to abandon or sell off their Openspace Sims, which will lead to mass vacancies and virtual ghost towns.
What happens next? The Estate Owners will drop their rates to ridiculous or unprofitable levels in a desperate attempt to cover the $150,000 worth of monthly tier payments generated by these sims. Roughly six weeks from now, the Estate Owners who bought too many will start abandoning them, and a good percentage of the sims will bounce back to Linden Labs.
I’m waiting for them to come on the auction block for $50-$100 USD, then I might add a few more to my collection. If you heed my advice, you’ll wait too!
See you in world.
Lizard Howl
IM Lizard Howl for all your Second Life land needs!
www.SegarraEstates.com
Thursday, May 1, 2008
The Future of Second Life by Lizard Howl
The Future of Second Life by Lizard Howl
Second Life has shown remarkable growth over the past few years. As a daily visitor to the online community known as Second Life I have my own opinions and speculations about the future of Second Life. When I first started Second Life, in October 2006, I used to see roughly 11,000 to 12,000 people logged on at one time. Over the following six months or so it crept up from 12,000 to 15,000. I stopped keeping close tabs on the growth after that, but these days I see anywhere from 49,000 to 51,000 people logged into Second Life at any time of day or night. No doubt about it that is a lot of growth!
Linden Labs, the company that runs Second Life, is going through growing pains of its own. Philip Rosedale, the founder of Second Life, recently stepped down as CEO and brought in a replacement from an outside company. As a Second Life user and virtual land dealer I sincerely hope that this new CEO can fix the leaks on the ship that is Second Life.
The new population seems to have the resources of Linden Labs stretched to their limits. Crashes, glitches, region down times, and other mishaps, are now nearly daily occurrences. The new trend in Second Life seems to be big crashes during the weekend, starting from Friday night and sometimes covering most of Saturday as well. There are many of us who are Second Life residences all week long, while thousands more are weekend tourists. I come from a beach community in real life and am used to dealing with the traffic and stupidity that tourists inflict upon the locals. But I sure don’t want to have to deal with that in the virtual world too.
Many Second Life residents are currently disgruntled, not only from the service issues, but also from Linden Lab’s attempts to cool the virtual real estate market by reducing retail pricing. Hundreds if not thousands of Second Life land dealers saw their portfolios lose 25-50% of their value overnight. Combine that, with the service issues, and the apparently overwhelmed Linden Labs staff, and it seems clear that Second Life has reached its peak.
There are already groups active who are developing and promoting virtual worlds that are very similar to Second Life. The two most prominent alternatives right now are based on open source platforms. While the open source philosophy is admirable, the open source worlds do not as yet offer the copy protection and robust virtual economy that Second Life has.
Earlier this year I thought that Second Life would last another 3 to 5 years in its current incarnation. Recent events such as the land devaluation, poor server performance, and personnel changes at Linden Labs, have caused me to revise my estimate. I have a strong feeling that Second Life as we know it will be gone within a maximum of 2 years. In 18 months or less there will either be a strong commercial alternative to Second Life, OR a major company will buy Linden Labs and make the kind of changes that will drive out the loyal residents.
This is entirely speculative on my part, based simply on what I observe as someone who spends far too much time in Second Life on a daily basis. As a Second Life land dealer I would love to see Second Life thrive for another 10 years or more. As a Second Life resident though I can see the writing on the wall.
See you in world!
Lizard Howl
IM Lizard Howl for all your Second Life land needs!
www.SegarraEstates.com
Second Life has shown remarkable growth over the past few years. As a daily visitor to the online community known as Second Life I have my own opinions and speculations about the future of Second Life. When I first started Second Life, in October 2006, I used to see roughly 11,000 to 12,000 people logged on at one time. Over the following six months or so it crept up from 12,000 to 15,000. I stopped keeping close tabs on the growth after that, but these days I see anywhere from 49,000 to 51,000 people logged into Second Life at any time of day or night. No doubt about it that is a lot of growth!
Linden Labs, the company that runs Second Life, is going through growing pains of its own. Philip Rosedale, the founder of Second Life, recently stepped down as CEO and brought in a replacement from an outside company. As a Second Life user and virtual land dealer I sincerely hope that this new CEO can fix the leaks on the ship that is Second Life.
The new population seems to have the resources of Linden Labs stretched to their limits. Crashes, glitches, region down times, and other mishaps, are now nearly daily occurrences. The new trend in Second Life seems to be big crashes during the weekend, starting from Friday night and sometimes covering most of Saturday as well. There are many of us who are Second Life residences all week long, while thousands more are weekend tourists. I come from a beach community in real life and am used to dealing with the traffic and stupidity that tourists inflict upon the locals. But I sure don’t want to have to deal with that in the virtual world too.
Many Second Life residents are currently disgruntled, not only from the service issues, but also from Linden Lab’s attempts to cool the virtual real estate market by reducing retail pricing. Hundreds if not thousands of Second Life land dealers saw their portfolios lose 25-50% of their value overnight. Combine that, with the service issues, and the apparently overwhelmed Linden Labs staff, and it seems clear that Second Life has reached its peak.
There are already groups active who are developing and promoting virtual worlds that are very similar to Second Life. The two most prominent alternatives right now are based on open source platforms. While the open source philosophy is admirable, the open source worlds do not as yet offer the copy protection and robust virtual economy that Second Life has.
Earlier this year I thought that Second Life would last another 3 to 5 years in its current incarnation. Recent events such as the land devaluation, poor server performance, and personnel changes at Linden Labs, have caused me to revise my estimate. I have a strong feeling that Second Life as we know it will be gone within a maximum of 2 years. In 18 months or less there will either be a strong commercial alternative to Second Life, OR a major company will buy Linden Labs and make the kind of changes that will drive out the loyal residents.
This is entirely speculative on my part, based simply on what I observe as someone who spends far too much time in Second Life on a daily basis. As a Second Life land dealer I would love to see Second Life thrive for another 10 years or more. As a Second Life resident though I can see the writing on the wall.
See you in world!
Lizard Howl
IM Lizard Howl for all your Second Life land needs!
www.SegarraEstates.com
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