May Someone Explain to me the "Rules" Governing this Game?

[charicific]

I find it inappropriate for me to ask for help with basic stuff as a new player since wikis provide a reasonable amount of help. However, my questions are a bit of a niche, and I hope you can bear with me in this game's introduction.

I just hopped into the game, read some basic guidelines, but I am still having a hard time understanding how this world operates. How are people connected to each other. Are destinations unique and one of a kind? Or are they distributed on a server based manner? Or even totally random. I have no idea.

How is housing managed? Is it like a specific region or destination that is exclusive to private houses? What are the limits on such thing?

Finally and most importantly, self created content. From what I understand, I need to pay rentals if I require housing, pretty much like real life. But what if I want my own created housing? Is such thing even possible? I'm thinking that I can create my own meshes and upload them to game..since it's my own creation, it would mean I'm free of renting the building? Whether that's the case or not, how do you "choose" where to plot your creation (if at all possible) -- How are things ruled in this world :matte-motes-confused:

Terribly sorry, If such post is to be deleted, I totally understand...

[Taeem]

Welcome to SL and the forum.

First of all, don´t be surprised if people jump at you, when you call it 'a game'  Many don't consider it a game but a virtual environment, some see second life as legit and real as first life, depending in what company you are there might be few people who agree on it being a game.

It´s a vast world with many rules, and not the same rules are valid in all places, so it´s about impossible for one person to explain the 'rules of the game' to you, you´ll need to collect knowlege as you go. I´m picking up one aspect to answer.

You can create your own meshes and upload them, right - but you have to pay for uploading meshes (and you need to take a multiple choice quiz before you are entitled to upload them, which is to make sure you understand copyright stuff, you´ll be prompted to go to the quiz website when you try to upload your first mesh). And you need a place to put them, if you only want to rez/rezz=set them out to look at them, you can do that in a sandbox (type sandbox into search under 'Places' tab and tp to one) but if you want a house or to have some selfmade object inside SL permanently, you need a place to put it that belongs to you, you can rent a place from LL themselves (you´d get a place with a free house and 117 prims to put into it -or- the right to buy an empty space of 512 square meters that can support up to 117 prims without having to pay additional tier for it automatically if you pay for premium membership monthly/quarterly/yearly) or you can just rent from a 'landlord' without any subscription and pay weekly/monthly (see the threads here under 'Land Forum'. Usually there will be a slurl (link to a place on some SL-sim) given, so you can teleport to the place and see if you like it.

Prims or LI (Land Impact) is the term used to describe how 'heavy' your item is on the land/the sim. 512 square meters will give you 117 LI/prims to put there, a whole full region has 65,536 sqm and supports up to 15,000 LI/prims see here: https://secondlife.com/land/pricing.php). That list is for mainland, SL consists out of mainland and privately owned regions, see here: https://secondlife.com/land/privatepricing.php?lang=en-US. But you don´t have to 'own' mainland or a private region, you can rent just about any size/prim amount place from landlords who themselves pay Linden Lab.

It is complicated and you´ll have to read through a whole lot of stuff if you really want to know about many aspects.

edit: There is a test-grid that allows you to upload meshes to check them, before you pay L$ to upload them to 'the real SL', see here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Preview_Grid

[Freya Mokusei]

Imagine a vast continent, divided up into equally-sized regions, which are too sub-divided up into 'territories'. Each person renting owns a territory the size of which they can afford (provided the space is available, not already rented). These territories are called parcels, and the number of objects you can 'rez' (build) on them is proportional to their land area.

That is, to be clear: you pay rent on land, not objects such as houses. The more land you own, the more you owe in Tier. This Tier is always paid to Second Life's operators, Linden Lab - but if you rent land from another user you pay rent to them and they pay Tier from this rent.

Now imagine there are actually half a dozen of these continents, each made of hundreds of regions (and thousands of parcels) making up the mainland, and in addition, there are thousands of 'private regions' that run on their own, away from the continents - many also subdivided into parcels which can be rented. Now, finally, imagine each region is a processor core, belonging to a large multi-core server. The regions run on these cores all day, every day, building Second Life into a persistent world - the Grid that we call Agni (and that noobs call Second Life )

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Your other questions:-

'Destinations' aren't controlled in any way - you can build more or less whatever you like (given a couple of exceptions) and call it whatever you like. Land can be used for any purpose - as long as you obey the covenant - the contract that states the terms of your lease (some land renters don't allow sub-leasing, for example).

Uploading a mesh will cost you money, but to live inside it you'll probably want to buy land (and therefore object-space) on which to rez it. You'll end up paying rent to either LL (in the form of Tier) or to another user. If you upload or buy an object, you don't need to have it rezzed - your Inventory is free forever and infinitely sized. Homes are entirely optional in Second Life, as is eating, or pregnancy.

You can go shopping for land by searching the map, using Search, or buying it at a Linden Lab auction.

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Second Life is tricky, but it's one of the best places ever once you settle in. It's well worth the learning curve.

[Venus Petrov]

I despair when a new resident joins SL and does not feel inclined to explore (in wonder, amazement and sometimes disgust) the world.  You will learn things as you go along. It may take many months to learn some things. For some things, you may need (mostly free) classes offered inworld.

Just enjoy the experience.  Meet friends if you care to do that, learn to build and/or script or to DJ (as I did). Shop until you drop.  Rent and own land.  The possibilities are endless.

[charicific]

Those are some rich responses! Thanks, my confusion is cleared now.

I visited this simulator with a friend thinking it would be a casual role playing character interaction game. As you can tell, I never expected it to be THAT realistic and complicated.

It does sound intimidating to casuals, I'll say that -- but I think we are ready to commit!

[Taeem]

It´s as complicated as you want it to be actually, you can just roleplay too, well, of course all the roleplaying sims do have their own sets of rules they require you to read and stick to, ranging from 'dress according to the theme and be nice' to very complicated  

[kinda Fallen]

Really not a lot of rules Char, its one big happy land of free enterprise. If you wish to have a home in SL, and even then, thats totally unnecessary, you can make your home at one of the hubs that SL provides. Its one of those places you land in where theres a bunch of strange avatars milling around. Or if you want your own place, you may rent or "buy" a sim, or a peice of a sim, and buy or create your own house structure. There are 2 sorts of sims, mainland or private region. Mainland is attached to vast continents of land, private regions are like stand alone islands or with others that have been fused together. Each sim can be subdivided into parcels, which will cost less to buy or rent than an entire island.

Yes theres lots of freebie stuff in SL, but the really good stuff all the popular kids have, costs Lindens, which is Second Life money.

So i guess the main rule in SL is, if you want something, be prepared to pay for it, or better yet, learn to create the stuff everyone wants, and then they can pay you.

Hope this helps, may you grow and prosper in this incredible world.

[MissTeriMahn]

Rules? We don't want no mutha***bleep***ing rules round here!

Teri

((There do, however, exist the Unholy Commandments.))

[MissTeriMahn]

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charicific wrote: How are things ruled in this world

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I rule.

Teri

((The GD Forum, anyway.)

[Amethyst Jetaime]

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MissTeriMahn wrote:

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charicific wrote: How are things ruled in this world

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I rule.

Teri

((The GD Forum, anyway.)

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No one rules the forum except the community guidelines and moderators that enforce them.  Points to the top right of your screen.

[MissTeriMahn]

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Amethyst Jetaime wrote:

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MissTeriMahn wrote:

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charicific wrote: How are things ruled in this world

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I rule.

Teri

((The GD Forum, anyway.)

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No one rules the forum except those who ignore community guidelines knowing that moderators are unable to enforce them.  Points to the continuing presence of this poster.

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FIFY!

Teri

((If sent to stand in the corner, urinates there.))

[charicific]

Mmm...We're actually enjoying our experience so far by a huge margin.

I don't mean to digress, but I would like to ask one small bit of detail around making money. I understand that one of the "Skilled" ways to make earnings is by content creation -- Models, Animations, etc. As you recall, I did want to create my own architecture; I also want it to be my source of income. But from what I understood, the rental that is paid is technically valued by the piece of land, not the mesh. How can I make earnings from my meshes if I still can't sell them in forms of estates? I don't think I am able to afford a piece of land, build on it, then rent it. I can only work with meshes here, what can I do with that?

Thanks...

[Theresa Tennyson]

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charicific wrote:

Mmm...We're actually enjoying our experience so far by a huge margin.

I don't mean to digress, but I would like to ask one small bit of detail around making money. I understand that one of the "Skilled" ways to make earnings is by content creation -- Models, Animations, etc. As you recall, I did want to create my own architecture; I also want it to be my source of income. But from what I understood, the rental that is paid is technically valued by the piece of land, not the mesh. How can I make earnings from my meshes if I still can't sell them in forms of estates? I don't think I am able to afford a piece of land, build on it, then rent it. I can only work with meshes here, what can I do with that?

Thanks...

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Houses, etc. are sold as "objects" that can be placed on land by their end users - they don't have to be sold along with the land underneath them. There is an online "marketplace" where creations like houses can be sold without the seller needing land, but it's a crowded field and you may have trouble being noticed. Also houses are the sort of thing most people would be reluctant to pay much for without seeing them in-world. Many homebuilders have in-world stores where customers can see "model homes" (very literally) - the customers then buy copies of the house and place them on their own land.

[DejaHo]

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Amethyst Jetaime wrote:

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MissTeriMahn wrote:

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charicific wrote: How are things ruled in this world

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I rule.

Teri

((The GD Forum, anyway.)

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No one rules the forum except the community guidelines and moderators that enforce them.  Points to the top right of your screen.

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Technically, I could thrash you within an inch of your life for that comment, but I don't have a ruler.

 

[DixonHill Hawker]

Welcome to SL,

see, thats the amazing thing about SL, it can just be a "casual role playing character interaction game", if you wish that for SL to be for you

However you will find, that it can be pretty much anything you can imagine. Its quite unique, and there is hardly any other, uhm...software compareable in terms of "rules" and "game mechanics" out there.

I am glad to see, that you seem to already be past the critical point of logging off after 5 minutes because "the grafix and controls of this game suck and are super outdated" ;D

[Roche Runo]

There are three types of rules

Linden Lab  Rules such as terms of servcie,  Rules for the adult contientent. etc

Land owner/renter rules:  What you can or can do on your land

Real Life Laws (that apply)  Such as Chid avatar sex  Copyright theft  etc

I have been in SL for 8 years and enjoy it thoughly 

I like to think of it as a life simulater   and personaly  i belive  its the emotions that are real.   The visual part is just a visual aid. an so to me not real  at all.   It just pixels.