diamond Marchant

Parable of MoneyBags (apologies for being off topic) Let's pretend... You found the perfect 4096 parcel on mainland but to acquire it, you must come up with the purchase price plus $34 ($29 if you subtract stipend) a month for Premium membership and required tier. You meet a rando named MoneyBags who promises "ownership for Basic members". You bite. You pay for a land group and invite MoneyBags as an Everyone member. MoneyBags contributes 3724 sqm to the group (costing them $9.55 per month due to buying tier in bulk). Adding in the 10% group bonus, you purchase the 4096 sqm parcel. You pay MoneyBags a deposit (1000s of Lindens) and pay L$899 per week ($17.38 per month). In summary, you pay MoneyBags $17.38 per month rather than $34 to Linden Lab. MoneyBags is getting $17.38 per month at cost of $9.55. Seems great! What could possibly go wrong? Recall that Linden Labs does not get involved in resident disputes. 1. MoneyBags could poof. You are back to square one and could lose your land and purchase price if you can't replace the group contribution within 72 hours. 2. MoneyBags could start raising your monthly fee. 3. MoneyBags could fail to return your deposit at some later time. 4. MoneyBags could come under the scrutiny of Linden Lab, who might decide that the financial service provided is in violation of TOS or an amended TOS.

1. We seem to be off topic. 2. The scheme described by beethros exploits the strange tier pricing curve of Linden Lab where those in the half region and less range pay more for tier on a per sqm basis. 3. A typical method of lowering your tier bill is to exploit the fact that “premium included tier” is also cheap, hence, people have multiple premium alts, aka “premium stacking”. 4. I prefer to concoct my own schemes

someone or something that is an original or originator and especially one that is highly respected or regarded

For yearly memberships, always the least expensive way to go... Option 1: Premium Plus (2048 tier) + 2048 tier addon is 250 + 156 = 406 Subtracting off the stipend is 406 - 124 = 282 Option 2: Plus (512 tier) + 4096 tier addon is 66 + 264 = 330 Subtracting off the stipend is 330 - 28 = 302 YIKES! It is actually MORE expensive to downgrade to Plus because of the way tier is priced. In order to get from 512 tier to 4096 tier, you must purchase the next tier level, which is 4096 (because tier increases by powers of 2 until you reach a half-region). I feel your pain.

If you really want to pay the least amount to Linden Lab for a 4096 tier... that would be creating 3 alts and giving your main avatar and each alt a $99 yearly premium membership. Each alt contributes their 1024 tier to a common land group. Premium Plus membership appears to be "worth it" only if you value the other perks it offers. It does not help you with getting land for less. Total cost for the entire year is $396 (4 x $99) minus the L$1200 per week stipend (which works out to L$62,400 or $232 at today's rates/fees). Total cost per year is 396 - 232 or $164/year or $14/month. Subtracting off the stipend is necessary for a fair comparison. I usually wind up spending my stipend on shoes and boats. You would also be giving up flexibility and must know how to set up and use land groups. However, as you have noticed, doing things the easy way is often more costly.

That info about the highlighted text being non-plain-text was useful so I did get something out of this topic. The closest thing I have ever seen to "tourism" is the ferry boat rides given by DR Ferry Services, and other things like that. I tried to do something similar in February, 2010 called Diamond Sailing Charters. It was an abject failure. One assumes an actual SL tourist would use the destination guide, but who knows. Other than as roleplay, the idea of for-profit "hotel owners, receptionists, travel agents or hotel bloggers" seems clueless. And we are not the metaverse (yet). The residents here do recreate things that exist in the real world. It's what we do. This is a sandbox game. I've got a scale model of the inner solar system and a model of a spacecraft in orbit around the sun.

The regions in the above map represent various estates (e.g. Blake Passage, New England, Second Norway, Sailors Cove, Honah Lee, Blake Estates, NYC Estate) which have covenants (reducing the chance of out-of-theme builds). They are all connected by "sailor friendly" water, hence, the chance of being taken out by banlines or orbs is less than other mainland regions. Most sailing routes are within reasonable draw distance of the shoreline, hence, you can see things. The regions have been built out by many residents, so compared to places like Bellisseria, the landscape is not as repetitive. Finally, there are hundreds of regions, so a cruise can be as long as you wish.

The covenant language... appears only in the Bellisseria covenant. If you go to a Linden Home that is not in Bellisseria, you find this language (which does not mention scripted agents).

Traffic is computed by summing up visit times that last longer than 5 minutes. So it is possible that a parcel could receive a bunch of sub 5-minute visits that would not be reflected in the traffic statistic. Yesterday, I hosted a party on a mainland parcel attended by approximately 20 people for two hours. The expected traffic number would be in the ball park of 2400 (120 minutes X 20 people). The actual traffic number I see today is 2234, so the traffic statistic seems to be working (at least on April 16 in my region).

Teresa is absolutely spot-on. For me (not you, me), my plan decision is dominated by lowering the cost of owning less than half a region of mainland. I have posted about this extensively (8x10 glossies with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back explaining each one) and find annual Premium (actually Premium stacking via multiple alts) is the right choice for me. You do what is right for you.

It appears that Linden Lab is allowing bots to operate on mainland parcels and this IS FAIR because they are needed for giving avatars (e.g. renters, DJs) permissions in an automated way. This IS NECESSARY because the LSL API does not provide this functionality. It is unfair to accuse LL of being unfair with respect to bots remaining on mainland. Better to accuse LL of having an inadequate scripting library.

Just about anywhere on the World Map below is scenic. There are other scenic places obviously but in this part of the grid, EVERYTHING is scenic.

I would appreciate it if the World Map would properly render mesh objects in the landscape such as roads and also support an API for creating HUDs that put info overlays onto the World Map. Or how about letting a script set a beacon without popping up the World Map. These enhancements would benefit games/activities involving navigation, even for old crusty residents.

During the Christmas 2022 sales season, I upgraded a male alt for FREE with a / HEAD / lel EvoX QUINN and a [BODY] Classic (m). Clothes are more of a challenge.

Check the Bellisserria Events group for notices. There is a party on April 14 (today) at the Chippewa Junction community center. No clue what the Lindens are up to but in the past, they have done stuff.

To commemorate the 4th anniversary of Bellisseria, a bit of region history. In late March 2019, 50 regions popped up to the west and northwest of Nudibranch and Undine. These are shown on a Leeward Cruising Club chart (with region borders added) for March 26, 2019. The northern most regions are Agathy and Whitecap. These 50 regions were rezzed as all water and terraformed at a later date. By April 15, 2019, residents could select the brand new Bellisseria Linden Homes, as evidenced by the claim date of a Kiva houseboat owned by diamond Marchant. A LCC chart from April 30, 2019 shows all the OG regions (except the 50 OG regions south of Kuga). Finallly, I show how the original 50 regions look on April 14, 2023.

That's the way uh huh uh huh I like it uh huh uh huh

hopefully, nobody lets randos join their land group :)

Not getting it... please elaborate.

A group joiner script can use llDialog which, in my opinion, works well. For example,

Also Premium residents have priority when teleporting into nearly full regions. If you are Basic, it takes longer.

This used to happen a lot in olden times… a ghost of your avatar persisted after a crash and you could not login for a while. Probably not that. Make sure your internet is fully working. Or perhaps SL has transient issues. Usually waiting a while resolves this. While waiting, check SL grid status (google it).

You didnt mention if you asked them (politely) to move the skybox upwards. There is a lag reduction argument for that. Also, I assume the skybox had no windows or view, so it really wouldn't impact their experience. They likely are always TPing to it also. My standard draw distance is 128 and this solves numerous problems like this on mainland.

I think this is the golden age of Second Life and I hope to enjoy it for as long as it lasts. Am amazed that it is still here actually. Everything changes, nothing stays the same. Opinions about builders being "equally enabled" seem to miss the point. There are builders, good builders, and great builders and they differ by skill (not tools).

Yes. In my case, I have other alts that can check out homes. My point is that my expectation is to have FULL use of a service until I reach the end date, regardless of renewal status.