Liralyn Lyle

I had a premium account that I let lapse and was no longer accessible. So I created a free account. Later, I contacted support and about my original, premium account and it was restored ruthed with no inventory. The free account has always been available with no issues, despite long lapses between log ins. Moral to this story: Never go premium.

LOL about the "game" flack, but as a gamer, you know that attitude exists in all games, generally by people who consider the game serious business. It's a bit worse in SL, and I'm guessing it's because that for some people, it literally is serious business. There are people who make a living in virtual real estate or selling their creations, who are just as much fun to run into as gold farmers are in MMOs. Then there are those who aren't from the gaming community and have never heard of a sandbox game. With respect to your question, SL wasn't that much fun until I started spending money on it. As an old school gamer, buying gold with real money just wasn't legit. It took me awhile to realize that in SL, it's no different than paying for a monthly subscription, although at the time I started playing SL, you'd lose money if you paid for a subscription, unless you wanted to own Mainland land, i.e., you'd get more lindens for $10/month if you just bought them instead of subscribing. And if you did want land, it was cheaper to rent land from Estate owners than to buy and pay tier for Mainland. And get better customer service and controls on being griefed by your neighbors besides. As many have said, there are a lot of freebies. Not only is there free content in SL, there's also free content available on the web, such as http://www.lindakellie.com/ or http://opensim-creations.com/ . However, playing "paper dolls" palls after awhile, and I'm not much for socializing. Too much drama. I do enjoy building on land though, which gets expensive. So I spend more time on my own sim or on OSGrid using Opensim, both of which are free. However, if making avatar-related stuff interests you more, then you're better off on SL. Having access to sandboxes (areas where you are allowed to build things for free, although your builds will be returned to you after a certain period of time) will suffice for making avatar-related items. If you have an interest in making anything though, I recommend you visit the Ivory Tower on SL to learn how. There's a sandbox next door where you can practice, too. Ironically though, I recently read that the original creator of the Ivory Tower is now on an Opensim grid.

I've just recently returned to SL and looking for property - renting/owning land and building on it is the only that interests me in SL, so I guess I'll come back later when they have this fixed. It's too much of a pain to shop for land right now.