Premium

[milania15]

I have been thinking of getting premium membership recently though it may be costly due to the coversion rate of USD to JMD but i would like to know the pros and cons. Is it really worth it?

Edited June 13, 2020 by milania15

[Drakonadrgora Darkfold]

you get a stipend of some lindens each month, you get faster access to full sims, you get a little quicker support from csr's, you get a small piece of mainland that you can use as your own home space. 

cons.. the price.. and the false belief that it makes you any more important to ll then someone who is not a premium member..still just a number to them..

[Bree Giffen]

You can access sims that are otherwise full! Also something about last names.

[Sylvia Tamalyn]

9 minutes ago, milania15 said:

I have been thinking of getting premium membership recently though it may be costly due to the coversion rate of USD to JMD but i would like to know the pros and cons. Is it really worth it?

I think it is. I enjoy having the land allowance and/or Linden Home (the new Linden Homes are really nice), the stipend, the extra group slots, the access to Live Chat for support, the ability to more easily get into busy events, and probably some other perks I'm not remembering at the moment. For me, it's mostly about the land, but I do enjoy being able to use Live Chat and actually converse with someone when I need assistance. 

[LittleMe Jewell]

23 minutes ago, milania15 said:

I have been thinking of getting premium membership recently though it may be costly due to the coversion rate of USD to JMD but i would like to know the pros and cons. Is it really worth it?

The "is it worth it?" question is really a personal decision - you pretty much need to consider each benefit and decide, for you, is it a true benefit.  Some people find no benefit to the additional group slots. Others have no interest in a Linden Home or other Mainland, etc....

The things you get with Premium:
- L$300 weekly
- L$1000 signing bonus after 45 days
- Up to 70 groups
- Live Chat
- Expanded Support categories
- Ability to own a Linden Home and Mainland - with a 1024 sqm tier allowance.
- Premium only Sandboxes - I really like this for when I need to rez something that might not fit right on my land
- Other Premium only areas
- Ability to possibly get into full regions easier - Basically the region gets a 10% bump in allowed avatars and those extra slots are reserved for Premium members (if the region holds 40, then it could actually hold 44 with the extra 4 being reserved for Premium members).
- Periodic Premium gifts -- some folks love these and some folks don't care.

That's as many benefits that I can think of currently.  Pick the ones that would actually be a positive for you and then weigh all of them against the Premium cost.  If you do decide to go, annual is definitely the best pricing option.  If you just want to give it a try, you need at least 2 months to get the L$1000 bonus.

[milania15]

Thank you guys so much, you have certainly given me lot to think about. 😁

[Sylvia Tamalyn]

Oh yes, definitely the sandboxes! (Thanks, Lil, for that reminder.) Premium Sandboxes are so peaceful and mostly empty; I use one a lot. Public ones can be a hot mess with all the griefers. 

[brodiac90]

Just to echo what others have said really. 

I recently upgraded to premium and so far I have been loving my house boat (I know! I managed to get one). You actually get around 550 prims once you factor in the home and landscaping. Not just the 1024 parcel and 351 prims you can use. Also, if you get a house boat, it offers a really cheap alternative to getting access to sailable waters. Parcels on the Blake Sea are extortionate. This is my Loonetta yacht outside my red barnacle house boat. 

I also find premium especially useful because it means the L$1200 lindens I get each month are locked in at the price I bought my annual subscription at, and not the fluctuating rate. This is particularly useful because normally I get hit with a GBP to USD conversion fee and then a USD to Linden Dollar transaction fee. Premium can therefore make a lot of sense if you're not in the US. 

Buying land on mainland / from the Labs is always cheaper than buying from a rental company because they obviously have their mark up too. I've therefore saved a lot of lindens from using my house boat instead of having to pay rent on somewhere else. The labs offer a lot more stability too. 

Other benefits include premium voice morphers, more groups, a one off sign up bonus after 45 days, access to premium only areas such as the runways, race tracks and sand boxes, additional support, premium gifts etc. Sure I've probably missed something. 

Edited June 13, 2020 by brodiac90

[Istelathis]

It is probably worth it, if you want the premium home.  I think the typical asking price for rent in most places is about 1L per 1 LI, so an equivalent piece of property would cost you 350L a week which is 18,200L a year.  There are some cheaper, some more expensive, but in general it seems to hover around that price range for rent.

18,200L a year equals to about $74 USD which is cheaper than the premium, but you have to think about the weekly 300L you get with premium.  For the cost of your typical rent, and the  the equivalent stipend from premium you would have to spend $136.89 USD to match what you could get with the premium.

To be honest, the cost of land is outrageous in second life.  I can get four regions on an open sim for $20USD hosted and maintained, with no down payment,  it is mind boggling how much Linden charges people.  I currently have three premium memberships, at the previous rate of $72 a year, which to me was more reasonable.  Needless to say, at the new rate I'm dropping two of them. 

 

I'll keep one of them because I do like second life, and having my own home here and find it cheaper than paying for rent for something similar to what I get with premium, and paying for lindens.

Edited June 14, 2020 by Istelathis

[ItHadToComeToThis]

8 hours ago, Drakonadrgora Darkfold said:

you get a stipend of some lindens each month, you get faster access to full sims, you get a little quicker support from csr's, you get a small piece of mainland that you can use as your own home space. 

cons.. the price.. and the false belief that it makes you any more important to ll then someone who is not a premium member..still just a number to them..

I have seen so many outraged forum members over the years who believe this. "AND I AM A PREMIUM MEMBER!!". Usually around the time LL releases a new feature or changes something. Its like there's a weird rock out there somewhere where they all crawl out from under like "change....CHANGE......" (Think zombies saying "brains")

[Drakonadrgora Darkfold]

9 minutes ago, ItHadToComeToThis said:

I have seen so many outraged forum members over the years who believe this. "AND I AM A PREMIUM MEMBER!!". Usually around the time LL releases a new feature or changes something. Its like there's a weird rock out there somewhere where they all crawl out from under like "change....CHANGE......" (Think zombies saying "brains")

yep, and when you tell them any different they become even more outraged over the truth because they think that consumers are always in the right and always get what they want when they want because they want. which simply is not true.

[Drakonadrgora Darkfold]

double post..new peeve.. slow forum software..

Edited June 14, 2020 by Drakonadrgora Darkfold

[ItHadToComeToThis]

50 minutes ago, Istelathis said:

It is probably worth it, if you want the premium home.  I think the typical asking price for rent in most places is about 1L per 1 LI, so an equivalent piece of property would cost you 350L a week which is 18,200L a year.  There are some cheaper, some more expensive, but in general it seems to hover around that price range for rent.

Much less than that. You can privately rent a 1/4 sim for as low as 3500L a week if you look around. Land has gotten a great deal cheaper since I first started in SL 13 years ago. I remember the days of 1k+ USD setup and renting a 1/4 sim from a private agent for between 7 - 9k linden a week.

50 minutes ago, Istelathis said:

To be honest, the cost of land is outrageous in second life.  I can get four regions on an open sim for $20USD hosted and maintained, with no down payment,  it is mind boggling how much Linden charges people.  I currently have three premium memberships, at the previous rate of $72 a year, which to me was more reasonable.  Needless to say, at the new rate I'm dropping two of them. 

Thats the most common thing stated by those who want land to be cheaper in SL. "Oh but on open sim...". The fact is SL is not open sim. Open sim are a cluster of companies and people hosting their sims on their own computers / servers. They don't have the overheads / expenses etc that LL has to contend with. LL have full time programmers, graphic designers, marketing, public relations, network engineers, the moles etc etc that they have to provide wages for. Open sim also doesn't have the expanse that SL has in the sense of it all being contained in a single company. in SL there are thousands of sims, thousands of users, billions of pieces of content, transactions etc etc. Let's say SL closed its doors tomorrow and the entire population of SL flocked to the closest to SL, open sim grid that they could find. I guarantee you that within about 10 minutes their entire service is going to sink hard because it is just not equipped to handle 40-100 thousand residents being online all at once, let alone the storage space required for all the new content. You have to understand that LL has all of this, transfer to the cloud ignored for a second, in literals server farms that also cost thousands in up keep per year. We can shout all we want about land being cheaper but the catch 22 is.....if they start doing four regions for $20......then SL will be gone within months.

Edited June 14, 2020 by ItHadToComeToThis

[Beth Macbain]

8 hours ago, Drakonadrgora Darkfold said:

cons.. the price.. and the false belief that it makes you any more important to ll then someone who is not a premium member..still just a number to them..

What? Every night @Ebbe Linden calls to tell me a bedtime story, @Quartz Mole arrives to tuck me in, and then every morning @Patch Linden calls and sings “Good Day, Sunshine” to me just before @Soft Linden arrives to make my breakfast and draws a bath for me.

Everyone knows we get one personal Linden or Mole at our beck and call for each premium account we have, right?

What? Nobody else gets that?

Never mind.

[SpiritSparrow Skydancer]

9 hours ago, Bree Giffen said:

You can access sims that are otherwise full! Also something about last names.

I have yet to find this to be true.... I was trying to get into an event a few weeks ago and it was full, I tried for 10 min to get into it and I eventually gave up and signed off.

[SpiritSparrow Skydancer]

6 hours ago, brodiac90 said:

Just to echo what others have said really. 

I recently upgraded to premium and so far I have been loving my house boat (I know! I managed to get one). You actually get around 550 prims once you factor in the home and landscaping. Not just the 1024 parcel and 351 prims you can use. Also, if you get a house boat, it offers a really cheap alternative to getting access to sailable waters. Parcels on the Blake Sea are extortionate. This is my Loonetta yacht outside my red barnacle house boat. 

I also find premium especially useful because it means the L$1200 lindens I get each month are locked in at the price I bought my annual subscription at, and not the fluctuating rate. This is particularly useful because normally I get hit with a GBP to USD conversion fee and then a USD to Linden Dollar transaction fee. Premium can therefore make a lot of sense if you're not in the US. 

Buying land on mainland / from the Labs is always cheaper than buying from a rental company because they obviously have their mark up too. I've therefore saved a lot of lindens from using my house boat instead of having to pay rent on somewhere else. The labs offer a lot more stability too. 

Other benefits include premium voice morphers, more groups, a one off sign up bonus after 45 days, access to premium only areas such as the runways, race tracks and sand boxes, additional support, premium gifts etc. Sure I've probably missed something. 

And how do you get 1200L a month?

[Istelathis]

32 minutes ago, ItHadToComeToThis said:

Much less than that. You can privately rent a 1/4 sim for as low as 3500L a week if you look around. Land has gotten a great deal cheaper since I first started in SL 13 years ago. I remember the days of 1k+ USD setup and renting a 1/4 sim from a private agent for between 7 - 9k linden a week.

Thats the most common thing stated by those who want land to be cheaper in SL. "Oh but on open sim...". The fact is SL is not open sim. Open sim are a cluster of companies and people hosting their sims on their own computers / servers. They don't have the overheads / expenses etc that LL has to contend with. LL have full time programmers, graphic designers, marketing, public relations, network engineers, the moles etc etc that they have to provide wages for. Open sim also doesn't have the expanse that SL has in the sense of it all being contained in a single company. in SL there are thousands of sims, thousands of users, billions of pieces of content, transactions etc etc. Let's say SL closed its doors tomorrow and the entire population of SL flocked to the closest to SL, open sim grid that they could find. I guarantee you that within about 10 minutes their entire service is going to sink hard because it is just not equipped to handle 40-100 thousand residents being online all at once, let alone the storage space required for all the new content. You have to understand that LL has all of this, transfer to the cloud ignored for a second, in literals server farms that also cost thousands in up keep per year. We can shout all we want about land being cheaper but the catch 22 is.....if they start doing four regions for $20......then SL will be gone within months.

Fair enough, It all goes well beyond my pay grade and I don't work at any capacity for LL  so I can't put up an argument against the rates of second life.  As far as the capacity of opensim, that too is beyond my knowledge.  Land  is expensive though, at least from my perspective, which I'll admit is entirely subjective.  When I compare it to opensim, I am amazed at the price difference and did decide rather than pay for three premium accounts, on top of $7.00USD a month on 4096 parcel of land it was far more convincing to pay less than that for 64 times the amount of land.  

With that said, I love second life and don't want it to go anywhere.  I will keep my one premium account, and be happy with the 1024 premium home and love it for what it is. What second life has, is a very large and diverse community of people, a thriving creative base, a ton to explore, and so much more.  To me, the premium account is worth it, but the cost of land is way too expensive.

Edited June 14, 2020 by Istelathis

[ItHadToComeToThis]

21 minutes ago, Tarina Sewell said:

And how do you get 1200L a month?

Stipend...average 4 weeks in a month. 300L a week, 1200L a month

[SpiritSparrow Skydancer]

39 minutes ago, ItHadToComeToThis said:

Stipend...average 4 weeks in a month. 300L a week, 1200L a month

Ahhhhh, hm, I never even notice that we get that a week, I thought it was a month. I never notice when it comes in!! 

Interesting!! Thanks for the clarify. It's so much nicer than laughing at people when they ask a question. ; )

[Sylvia Tamalyn]

Yep, it's funny when the answer is right here in the thread but some people can't be bothered to read.  

[brodiac90]

1 hour ago, Tarina Sewell said:

I have yet to find this to be true.... I was trying to get into an event a few weeks ago and it was full, I tried for 10 min to get into it and I eventually gave up and signed off.

Even if you're premium, a sim can still be full if other premium residents are trying to get in too. For example, if a region allows 100 people then an additional 10% (10) premium members can join. So if there are 110 on the sim even if you're premium you won't be able to get in. 

[SpiritSparrow Skydancer]

6 minutes ago, brodiac90 said:

Even if you're premium, a sim can still be full if other premium residents are trying to get in too. For example, if a region allows 100 people then an additional 10% (10) premium members can join. So if there are 110 on the sim even if you're premium you won't be able to get in. 

That was the first experience I have had with it.... I suppose that makes sense. 

[SpiritSparrow Skydancer]

7 minutes ago, Sylvia Tamalyn said:

Yep, it's funny when the answer is right here in the thread but some people can't be bothered to read.  

I do not know if I am being extra sensitive tonight or if that was directed at me. 

[LittleMe Jewell]

1 hour ago, Tarina Sewell said:

I have yet to find this to be true.... I was trying to get into an event a few weeks ago and it was full, I tried for 10 min to get into it and I eventually gave up and signed off.

For really popular events it only sort of helps.  If the region holds 40 avatars, then there will be 4 additional slots for Premium folks.  However, once the 44 are there, you'll still only get in when another person leaves and you happen to be the first to hit the TP at that very instant.  It really just means that non-Premiums will not get in until the number falls under 40 again.

[SpiritSparrow Skydancer]

1 minute ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

For really popular events it only sort of helps.  If the region holds 40 avatars, then there will be 4 additional slots for Premium folks.  However, once the 44 are there, you'll still only get in when another person leaves and you happen to be the first to hit the TP at that very instant.  It really just means that non-Premiums will not get in until the number falls under 40 again.

ahh that is good info!!