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Today Linden Lab announced that they have lowered the land setup fees!
I quote from the announcement on the SL website;
Linden Lab on
We are pleased to announce two changes that make it less expensive to get your own Private Island in Second Life!
Price Drop for Land Set-up Fees
Effective immediately, all new Private Island set-up fees are up to 40% cheaper! Whether you’re looking to expand your estate or just getting started with your first Private Island, it’s a great time to buy.
Here are the new, reduced set-up fees:
- Full Private Island – previously $1000, now $600
- Developed Full Private Island – previously $1029, now $629
- Homestead Private Island – previously $375, now $225
- Developed Homestead Private Island – previously $395, now $250
- Openspace Private Island – previously $250, now $150
Qualified educational and nonprofit organizations will continue to receive a 50% discount off the applicable set-up fee (as well as 50% off ongoing maintenance fees). For more information about our discount program, please visit this page.
If you have paid a region set-up fee in the past 14 days, you will receive the difference in fees back as a credit (in US Dollars) to your account balance.
I think this is a very, very good idea.
The costs of land have in the past stopped me from expanding my project and I am sure it has kept many from even starting one.
It will make things just a bit more attractive for people to take that big step and start their own sim.
I have suggested lowering and even scrapping these setup fees in the past and am happy this is now happening.
I don’t want to be rude and look a gift horse in the mouth but I still think it is too expensive, $600 bucks is a lot of money especially as the tier remains the same and we still don’t have the option to for instance buy half or even a quarter of a sim, or maybe sims that are only online in the weekends.
Something I’ve also suggested in previous posts here and here.
But nevertheless it is a great step in the right direction and it makes things a lot more attractive for those of us owning sims and wanting to expand and those who are thinking about starting their own sim.
And who knows, maybe more news like this will follow and other prices might start going down as well.
I for one am keeping my fingers crossed.
Let’s see if the amount of regions, which dipped below 25.000 recently, will now go up again.
Jo Yardley's Second Life 
Lindens are a bunch of scammers with their project Scamsar
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You’ve seen it yet?
You know what it will cost and how it will work?
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This is a direct result of the amount of regions dropping, as well as the result of Sansar about to break through. People aren’t going to be paying $1k startup fees with a new generation virtual world around the corner.
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This indeed a step in the right direction but I do not see it stopping the bleeding of regions. Yes you save $400.00 set up, but long term….it is $3,540 more or less for one full region over a year. That is one full region. You can get 16 regions with 120,000 prims for $480.00 a YEAR in opensim, it will be a harder sell. Linden Lab are not the only ones with skin in the game now. There are alternatives. Besides opensim, high fidelity, reaction grid and a possible virtual experience with facebook and oculus are just over the horizon. Oculus releases 1st quarter of 2016. Lets see how long before facebook tries to start making money back on that 2 billion dollar oculus buy. Besides, what is SL. SL is a virtual version of facebook. Stripped of the visual, you have a network of people linked to each other, able to share photo or stories and information, plan events. A social network.
Lets hope Linden Lab goes bold. From now on, it will be fighting for a market share it once dominated. Market will ultimately decide, as with any service offered. I love SL, I am just hoping they are ahead of the curve on this one.
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I am not sure Opensim is competition, people are the main reason I am in SL, there are more of those in SL than there are in Opensim.
For the last 6 years I’ve managed to make my sim pay for itself so the high costs are not a big issue for me although I still think SL should be cheaper.
But yes, I agree, new worlds are coming and it is sink or swim for LL.
Either they go big and Sansar is going to be a big hit, or it fails and then we’ll stick in SL till they turn off the lights.
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I have a parcel in Opensim on Kitely and yes, there are way fewer people there. That said, its a decent platform and really pretty much just like SL. Opensim is growing, and SL is shrinking. I am not saying there is a correlation, but I do believe cost will have more and more of an impact on where people will go as more options come available. I will keep in SL, but I also want to look at the other options.
Latest Opensim growth stats and includes InWorldz.
http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2015/11/opensim-passes-70000-regions/
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People are the only reason to go to secondlife. Everything else is out of range. Or not intressting without owning land. a sim is better because you have access to some use full extra things. experiences, more stats. better control.
But Secondlife is to expensive, I think sims that get enough income to get payed by them self are lucky. But for some people a very stressfull hobby to find the funds every month.
I can easy say that secondlife got boring because it’s keeping creative peopl e from really creative. $$$$$ and moves like this not going to help.
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The drop in setup costs for secondlife looks more like move you expect when a cat is stuck in corner.
Other words, this is complete useless action, secondlife is not getting cheaper because this decrease in setup fee. you still need to pay $295,- month. And that is to much. and if you can pay every month $295,- then $400,- setup costs is not really a killer. The whole setup cost linden lab have is close to scam. because you not get your own dedicted server. you still share resources. And the ask the setup fee over and over again for the same server hardware.
Opensim is nice i use it for years, but small user base. and like secondlife a few things i do not like. especially the wrong scaled buildings and camera angle.
Then with high fidelity yu feel really home when your inside yor own scaled building. I hope sansar is scaled to, it’s so much nicer. sansar also need to drop the prices so it’s in the price range of opensim and high fidelity where you can run your own place. Would be nice if that would work in sansar too.
Anyway, and frustrating secondlife keeps to expensive todo what i want. So the hope is aimed on high fidelity or sansar. Problem is what people are goig todo. Some say i stay in secondlife, mabye the change mind.
This change linden lab made is not help to slowdown the drop os sims. And i wish sansar where open, to finaly get a good compare with high fidelity.
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Pingback: Why lowering setup fees in SL isn’t as great as it sounds | Jo Yardley's Second Life
And in the last week the price of L has doubled…what was costing me 40 bucks last week to upload is now half of what it was last they are still making every penny and ripping us off elsewhere, stealing peter to pay paul much?
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