Sparkle Bunny

Oh, it's not that many people with premium alts in the double figures. Three or four, maybe? Except that this then adds up to 30-40 premium accounts, which is... a couple of sims. Throw in everyone who has to have five or more because they need to own a house in every style, and that's a few more. And I do know of people who routinely invest in last names for their premium alts; same as they kit them out in L$5k mesh heads and bodies, which also isn't necessary to get a home. It's just another way of showing off how much money you have. That's an integral part of the game for some, just as it's important for certain people in RL.

No, that's not the max. I spent more than that on my annual premium and I didn't even buy a last name. Not everyone is in the US and prices vary. Obviously if you're paying from month to month it works out more expensive, and obviously if you're also getting last names for dozens of premium alts we're talking thousands rather than hundreds. Now, that would be a ridiculous amount of money for me to spend on pixel houses, but as I said I don't know everyone else's individual circumstances. Believe it or not my concern isn't primarily for myself; it's for people who hear about the new homes, go to the land page and find only old 512s they can't even use for a skybox. They're paying for premium too. They may have been paying for it for many years, but apparently they're less deserving of a new house than some random's eleventeenth alt, because they don't necessarily have a spare couple of days to spend refreshing the land page. It's OK, I get it. I do understand that a lot of people prefer living next to empty houses, because more privacy and less lag, and that they like homes to be in limited supply because it makes them seem more desirable. How boring would GoH be if there were always Bellisserian homes on the land page? So yes, collectors are being helpful in that respect. I still think it's going to result in oversupply in the long term, when GoH gets boring, but we'll see.

Yes, it's silly to claim everyone wants exactly what the OP wanted. It was just very unfortunate for her that her tastes happened to coincide with the hoarders.

Given the defensive vitriol aimed at anyone who dares to criticise the practice, I don't have a hard time believing it at all. People spend silly amounts of money on their hobbies all the time.

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I really do think that the fun of it for a minority of people is taking the homes so nobody else can have them. I'm not talking about the GoH players who fish for homes as a sport and throw them back as soon as they've taken a picture of their latest catch. That seems kind of pointless to me, but it doesn't really harm anyone. It's more the ones who have far more houses than anyone can possibly have time to decorate or enjoy, and just hoard them. I mean, yeah, when there's enough homes for everyone, knock yourself out, but in the meantime don't pretend you're not being selfish.

There are two massive assumptions here: one, that all wealth is earned through hard work, and two, that all of us have the opportunity to go and earn more money through said hard work. Nope, and nope. People are born into money, people marry money, people win the lottery, people have disabilities, people have caring responsibilities, people are living through a global pandemic which has led to their industry shutting down. I don't pretend to know the individual circumstances of every premium member, but I suspect the percentage without full-time RL jobs is rather higher than the general population. Most people with well-paid RL jobs don't have the time or the inclination to invest in pixels, let alone monitoring the land page 24/7.

I like the pods for mainland. I do not think they belong in Bellisseria. I'd have no issues with automated trains going up and down the tracks at intervals, but any attempt to introduce other in-theme vehicles is going to contribute to lag.

my understanding is that any kind of signage is OK in an RP context. I've even seen it argued that rental boxes are permissible as long the property is staged as a hotel or rest stop. But advertising your SL business is kind of a grey area and I wouldn't bet on it staying around if your neighbours decided to AR.

for 30L Saturday, they have various other Gothic bits if that's your bag.

last year my main was sitting on her porch swing in Edgar and this pervert jumped on and started animating them together. he said she 'looked sad'. she stood up and told him to gtfo but couldn't eject him because not the property owner. nevermind, he is now banned from every house i get. DM me if you want his name; he has a bunch of paedo groups so I use the word 'pervert' advisedly.

a skybox with a ban orb would probably do the job, tbh

Just put an alt on monthly so she could join some extra groups and she caught a Vic in Bennet, with steps, next to a bridge and a pond. I lived in Bennet when the Vics first came out, so letting this go and hoping she can get a camper.

With the old Linden homes a lot of people just used them as an emergency landing spot if their main home location was down. After all, most long-term premium accounts upgraded so they could buy their own land. People who own full regions mostly aren't interested in living on housing estates in close proximity to others, but if the Lindens are offering them a tier-free bolthole they might as well take it.

I saw a Christmas house today so evidently they're not overly strict about seasonality. It was quite sad, really -- all lit up outside and a tree visible through one of the windows. It made me wonder whether something had happened to the owner to prevent them coming back. (Or maybe they just really like Christmas.) I'll get my autumn stuff out around mid-October, probably. Depends what the RL weather does.

one place in Bingle currently in maintenance 🙂

well, it acted like a real rental box when I clicked on it, right down to the option to pay for multiple weeks. (obviously I wouldn't have bothered AR'ing it if it was just a decorative prim). I don't find green boxes with hovertext especially realistic compared to a 'to let' sign, but to be fair I haven't been to America for a decade...

there are actually only about 75 prims spare so I sincerely hope so.

If anyone's desperate for a Vic there's a flat above a cafe in Hawkesblood going for a mere L$1500 a week! (yes, I AR'd it, no, nothing happened, so while this is the first rental box I've seen in Belli it's unlikely to be the last. 😞

You are going to get people in here arguing that they are actually performing a service for the less fortunate by grabbing all the lovely homes and re-releasing them one by one, at times when there is nothing else available. They have a point, tbh: I don't think I've ever managed to get a home that wasn't an abandon. At the beginning I was just grateful to grab anything. I'm pickier now, but I'm still nervous about abandoning a place I like in case I can't get anything better. It took about six hours of refreshing to get my current one, I think. There is enough stock now that eventually you will get something. Even the 'scraps' are miles better than the old Linden homes. Is it annoying when people have dozens of houses and hang on to them indefinitely without even bothering to decorate? Well, yes, but that's kind of how capitalism works; rich people can do what they like. In an ideal world every premium member would be allocated a 1024 automatically, without having to refresh for hours, but it's in LL's interests to encourage people to invest in premium so the trend for more and more alts is not going away any time soon.

People around here seem to get very defensive if anyone criticises those particular individuals (I haven't even been inworld to see Whither and I know exactly who you're talking about.) When you're dealing with people with industrial numbers of alts it's generally wise to assume you're addressing them directly at all times.

Because you can't downgrade if you still own land. The problem the OP was having was that they couldn't get inworld to abandon the land, so downgrading wasn't an option and LL was going to keep charging them indefinitely for a service they couldn't use.

Yup, vintage-as-hell Victorian is about as Capricorn as you can get. I had a Hardy with velvet couches, lace curtains, Millais paintings on the walls and a kitchen straight out of Downton Abbey. It was sumptuous, but I ran out of prims by the time I got to the dining room. (I squandered about twenty on an antique four-poster bed.)

Fire = Aries, Leo, Sagittarius. Lavishly furnished house with a summerhouse, swimming pool, BBQ AND a hot tub. If they have a trad, it's a Winchester with add-ons. Earth = Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn. Has a Victorian or log cabin with extra Mole flowers in the garden. Bought all their furniture that time Apple Fall reduced everything to L$50. Air = Gemini, Libra, Aquarius. Has ten alts and switches houses daily. Addicted to fairy lights and porch swings. Water = Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces. Probably lives on a houseboat. Has that 1 prim freebie aquarium and a pool deck from What Next. The Scorpio has added some neon signs.

I'm Taurus with Capricorn rising and a Cancer moon, all of which combine to make me somewhat change-averse. Apart from a couple of insta-throwbacks, the shortest time I've spent in a home was the month in a camper. I'm drawn to water, especially the sea, but the last time I caught a houseboat I couldn't face the prospect of being without a garden again. On balance, the Vics are my favourites because they feel the most substantial of the house types, and the landscaping saves me having to expend too many of my own prims on trees and flowers. (Earth signs are frugal, as a rule. This is also why most of my furniture comes courtesy of 50L Friday.)