Tag: Premium

Second Life: significant SL fee changes announced

Posted on by Inara Pey

Update, June 1st: Following the amount of feedback concerning the planned reduction in the Basic account group allowance, Linden Lab has amnnounced this will not now be changing on June 24th, 2019. See: Group Limits Update: No Changes for Basic Members (Linden Lab) and LL reverse planned Basic account group limits reduction (this blog).

On Wednesday, May 30th, Linden Lab announced further changes to Full private region fees, significant changes to Premium subscription fees and to credit processing fees, and changes to some Premium and Basic account capabilities.

As detailed in an official blog post, the changes can be summarised as follows:

Full Private Region Tier Change

Source: Linden Lab

The Lab notes that:

  • These fees are exclusive of VAT, where applicable, and do not apply to Skilled Gaming region.
  • Education / Non-profit (EDU/NP) discounted Full islands will be re-priced to maintain their 50% discount off the regularly priced Full island fees.

Premium Subscription Fee Increase

In the same blog post, Linden Lab have announced a re-structuring / re-pricing of Premium subscriptions as follows:

Source: Linden Lab

Notes:

  • The monthly fee increase represents an annual increase of 26.21% (from US $114 pa to US $143.88 pa).
  • The annual increase represents an annual increase of 37.5%.
  • Quarterly subscriptions are to be retired as an option for users wishing to upgrade to Premium, but will still be available to those already using this plan. The fee increase of US $22.50 to US $32.97 represents an annual increase of 46.53% a year (US $90 pa to US $131.88 pa).
  • Both monthly and quarterly subscription fees will be subject to VAT, where applicable.

With regards to these Premium subscription changes, the Lab note:

To help with the transition to the new pricing, starting June 3, we’re offering a limited-time opportunity for existing Premium members to lock in their current rates for one more billing cycle, including extending an existing monthly to use the current full year rate by upgrading now to annual. Simply renew before June 24th to extend your current Membership at the same low rate. For example, monthly members will be billed at the lower rate for one more monthly billing cycle, while annual members may renew (or monthly users may upgrade to annual) early to add one more year to your existing Membership at the current lower rate. We will update when the option becomes available on June 3rd. Until then – if you are not up for renewal already, you will not see the option to lock in your current price. Keep an eye out for updates.

Credit Processing Fee Changes

In what will be seen as a further blow to those regularly / routinely cashing-out from Second life, the blog post also announced changes to credit processing fees, to wit:

Effective June 24, the fee for processing credit transactions (i.e. paying real money into a PayPal or Skrill account) will be 5% per transaction with a minimum fee of US$3 (there is no maximum fee).  The fee is currently 2.5% per transaction. This fee change offsets increased regulatory and compliance costs to Linden Lab and is in line with our continued commitment to the long-term successful operation of Second Life.

Change to Premium and Basic Account Capabilities

In order to try to offset some of the negative feedback these changes have already cause (as per at least two forum threads, here and here on the topic), the Lab also indicated increases to a couple of perks available to Premium members, together with a decrease in the same capabilities available to Basic account holders, a per the table below.

Source: Linden Lab

Note that group membership will not be revoked for Basic members who are involved in more than 35 groups at the time this change comes into effect. However, Basic members will be unable to join new groups until they reduce their group enrolments to below the new 35 group limit.

In addition, the Lab indicate that further improvements to Premium memberships  will be announced later in the year, as will a new Premium membership level, “for those who want to get the absolute most out of their Second Life.”

Thoughts as Premium Member

As one who is a Premium Member, I’m not entirely sanguine about the pricing increase – although I appreciate that in trying to pivot revenue generation away from a reliance on virtual land fees, Linden Lab must ensure any potential shortfalls are adequately guarded against. I’m also aware that while the Premium fees increase does hurt – it is actually the first such increase I can recall for a long time.

How this effects Premium level overall remains to be seen; however, my personal feeling right now is that unless the to-be-announced Premium membership level is truly exceptional in terms of benefits and opportunities, it is going to be hard to justify making a leap to it based on the prices announced with these changes and what might be taken from them in estimating to potential cost of any new membership package.

Those who are likely to feel particularly aggrieved are those who do routinely cash-out from Second Life, given credit processing fees have seen a number of increases over the last few years. While the Basic account changes come across as punitive in nature.

Please refer to the official blog post for the full text relating to these changes.

Saving your Bellisseria house designs for re-use with a rezzing system

Posted on by Inara Pey
A rezzing system / scene rezzer can allow you to save all the décor designs you create for your Linden Home / Houseboat and have them available each time you opt to re-use a particular style of house.

As we’re all now aware, the new Linden Homes are provided via a rezzing system, allowing their owners to live in any one of four styles of home for each type – and to freely swap between house styles whenever they want. This makes the new Linden Homes both flexible and user-friendly: tired of the house you currently have? Then simply clear it out and replace it with another from your parcel’s mailbox or lifebuoy (or swap the house / houseboat style and re-orient your furnishing to suit).

However, if you do like swapping between house / houseboat styles, manually re-doing things each time can be something of a pain. The most obvious way to avoid this is to use a rezzing system or a scene rezzer. Both sound the same – and some systems may well offer both functions, but for the purposes of this article, I’m going to differentiate them as follows:

  • A rezzing system allows you save the furniture and décor (and things like your garden furnishings, any add-ons you’ve purchased / made) for a house / houseboat as a single package, which you can pull from inventory and use to re-rez that particular design / layout whenever you opt to re-use the style of house / houseboat for which it was created. My personal preferences for tools of this type are:
    • Builder’s Buddy, a free system. You can get the raw scripts from the Second Life wiki (just copy / paste the two scripts from the wiki pages into appropriately-named new scripts in your inventory), or via the SL Marketplace.
    • The Rez Faux system by Lex Neva. Primarily intended for creating packages of goods you’ve created and wish to sell, this costs L$600, is available in-world, and works perfectly well with “personal” projects.
    • Note that I am not endorsing these options over other rezzer system products, they are simply the two I personally use.
  • A scene rezzer can allow you to save multiple design / décor layouts for multiple homes, and have them all available through a single in-world device.

Which approach you take is down to you:

  • Use of individual rezzers tends to be quicker and easier than using a scene rezzer, and offers greater flexibility when adding or changing things within an individual design.
  • Using a scene rezzer means you can quickly access all your layouts at the cost of only 1 or 2 LI without having to fiddle around with the correct placement of the individual rezzer. However, updating a saved design is a lot harder, as it can require re-saving the entire design, rather than just adding / swapping individual items.

However, the most important thing to remember is that, in order to work, the items placed within any rezzing system must be both Modify and Copy. You also need to have a basic understanding of editing objects in Second Life. Also note that due to the way the majority of these systems work, if you opt to physically relocate to another parcel in Bellisseria, you will most likely have to create new rezzers for that parcel. Also, note that I’m not referring to “temp rezzers”; these are both against the Bellisseria covenant, and should in general be avoided as they are horrible resource hogs.

The following notes have been written to help you use the above-named systems.

Builder’s Buddy and Rez Faux – Individual Rezzers for House layouts

Creating the Rezzer and Adding Contents

  • Builder’s Buddy: Create a default cube. Drop the Builder’s Buddy Base Script into it. This is now your Base Prim – the rezzer.
  • Rez Faux: rez a copy of the Create A New Package object – this is your rezzer for Rez Faux.
  • Both:
    • Rename your new rezzer according to your needs (e.g. “Winchester House With Party Add-on” or “Barnacle Houseboat Mango Interior” or some such).
    • Position the rezzer object you’re just created towards the centre of your parcel, then copy the X, Y, Z position coordinates from its Object tab and paste them into the Description field of the General tab.
When you use something like Builder’s Buddy or Rez Faux that uses positioning relative to the rezzing item, it is essential the X, Y, Z coordinates of the rezzer are saved (e.g. by using the General tab’s Description field). Note that two Edit floaters are shown in this image for the purposes of illustration only

Continue reading “Saving your Bellisseria house designs for re-use with a rezzing system” →

On the road in Bellisseria in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
The boathouse at Fourze, a way point on a drive around parts of Bellisseria

Since it opened, Bellisseria, the new Linden Homes continent, has started to develop into a thriving community of those not only interested in having a home there, but also in developing a community spirit. To assist with this, the Lab incorporated a number of social areas throughout the continent, such as the pool area in Gaim, which serves both the coastal houses and house boats in the area, and – most recently, it terms of this article – the Squishy Pickle bar in the houseboat regions added in May 2019.

However, residents have also added their own, creating the first public rez zones in the continent on their own properties and their own social spaces, such a pubs. where people can gather. As such, I thought I’d take a little road trip around the continent, using some of these locations as way points.

The beach-side pool at Gaim, the starting-point for my little drive

My starting point was the pool area at Gaim, selected simply because it is the closest public social area to my houseboat. From here, I took the coastal road north, heading up to Normandale, a region with several public spaces within walking distance of the local houses, including a picnic area looking out towards the Coral Waters airstrip off the coast. From here, and before reaching New Bigby, with its extensive west-facing beach, I turned inland.

The route led me past one of numerous show homes scattered across the continent. Like many such house, this one, by Apple Fall is open for people to come in and get ideas for interior décor for their homes. Sadly I couldn’t stop as I’d risk seeing my car go poof, so I continued east, passing through Greenbow, then taking a short run through the still-to-be-named SSPE228 with a brief turn north into Rockham and then east once more to Fourze.

The Apple Falls show home, one of many scattered across Bellisseria

This took me past a riverside seating area before turning north along the coast, past one of the many little boathouses that are open to the public (as which I thought might be earmarks to become rezzing zones at some point); this one, pictured in the banner of this articles, looks out over one of the lighthouses that do have rezzing areas. Continuing north took me through Kiva and on to Maple Cross, with its hilltop garden area (which perhaps could use a little smoothing in some of the terraforming).

One of my primary destinations for this trip was Buitenwijk, and the Red Lion pub. Now, I’ll be honest, whenever I hear or read the words traditional English pub, I tend to shiver, as so often the words don’t tend to measure up to what we in the UK might regard as a “pub”. However, the Red Lion’s owner, Matty (Matty Luminos), is also from the UK, and the Red Lion does indeed offer the look and feel of a modern boutique-style pub, where a selection of beers, ales, wines and more might be pleasantly imbibed either indoors or out in the garden. With its riverside location.

The Red Lion pub

While the Red Lion offers open rezzing, calling-up a car in the garden would be rude, so instead, I resumed my travels via my trusty Roadrunner scooter, by Ape Piaggio (see A Second Life Roadrunner for more). Riding this, I again headed north, passing the impressive arc of the Capitol Springs Bridge, before continuing on through the houses to the rez point at what is currently called SPPE133. At this point, I cheekily swapped my scooter for my MD900 helo (which I quickly shoved onto the grass alongside the road after sitting in it!), and took to the skies for a quick flight back to my houseboat.

I’ve seen Bellisseria being referred to by some bloggers as a “ghetto”. I’m not sure where that perception comes from – outside of perhaps not having visited. Yes, the styles of homes are (for the present) somewhat limited (four variations of house and four variations of houseboat). But as any trip along the roads or waterways of Bellisseria or flights across the continent demonstrate, there is already sufficient variety of house style, coupled with people’s approaches to decorating their homes and gardens – including the various “extension” and “party packs” for interior / exterior supplements – to make Bellisseria a diverse and pleasant environment, entirely undeserving of the epithet.

Capitol Springs Bridge, one of many landmarks in Bellisseria

For my part, I’m becoming increasingly persuaded by the attractions of Bellisseria and the growing community spirit within it – hence why I’ll be writing for The Bellisserian, the continent’s new resident-run newspaper.  I plan to spend more time travelling through Bellisseria and, from time-to-time writing about places of interest within the continent like the Red Lion and the various Linden / Mole defined public spaces. In this, I would perhaps like the Lab to make the land-based rez points more obvious – it’s great having Yasmin’s HUD (see Finding rez zones in Bellisseria – Yasmin’s free HUD for more) – but having the rez points marked by a sign like those found on other mainland continents with road routes, would be handy – and could be done at the humble cost of 1 LI apiece.

In the meantime, my thanks to Gingir Ghoststar for her note card of points of interest and to the folks of the Bellisseria Citizen’s Group for pointing out additional public places they’ve discovered.

More houseboat decorating in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Trying on the Barnacle houseboat for size…

It’s now just over a month since I snagged my Linden Home houseboat shortly after the new Linden Homes continent was officially launched (see: Lab launches new Linden Homes). I initially settled on the Windlass houseboat design to turn into a second home (see Making a (Linden) houseboat a home), but this week, because I like fiddling with things, I decided to try out some of the other designs, starting with the Barnacle.

This is the only design in the initial batch of houseboats that has an actually room upstairs, giving it an interesting differentiator to the other three designs, and gives it a little extra floor space. This makes it an excellent choice for developing a cosy home design, hence my interest in it.

An element from Blush Bravin’s Party Pack for the Barnacle makes a great wall divider when creating a cosy lounge area, thw warmth increased by the Lab’s sunflower interior wall colour.

Another aspect in my decision to play the the Barnacle was Blush Bravin’s Party Boat add-on. This is one of a number of kits Blush has produced specifically for the new Linden Homes, all of which are available via her SL Marketplace store, and on the strength of the Barnacle kit, I’d say they are well worth the minimal investment of L$250.

For the Barnacle, the kit includes a range of items: internal room dividers, décor highlights, and external elements, such as a trellis for the upper deck and a porch for the front door, and a small room (bathroom?) that tucks into one side of the main floor. Everything is supplied in a rezzing system (which admittedly can require careful placement to avoid fiddling with bits post-deploy).

A snug living room

A HUD is also supplied for applying textures, although this didn’t want to work for me, so I relied on manual texturing. This wasn’t a problem as for my purposes, I only really required the room dividers and the brick wall panel from the main deck interior. One of these, with ceiling-height wooden slats, I combined with a humble prim to make a room divider to split the lower deck in two, giving me a lounge area and kitchen / dining space. The brick panel and smaller divider, became a breakfast bar for the kitchen.

I don’t usually go in for kitchens in SL houses (we don’t actually eat in SL after all), but there are some nice low LI mesh kitchen sets available, and I wanted to give the houseboat a homely feel so I picked up a nice kitchen and additional elements from [DDD] ~ Dysfunctionality: the Cozy County Kitchen wine rack, Christine fireplace, Heph’s Kitchen Counter, and Captain’s Lanterns, which together with my existing items from Cory Edo’s Trompe Loeil and a few other pieces from assorted sources allowed me to create the kind of look I wanted.

I don’t usually go in for kitchens and bit, but these houseboats call for them at times

Given there are four variations available with each house type which can be swapped with a simple set of clicks, swapping between them has already proven popular. Providing the fixtures and fittings used are both Copy and Modify, a rezzing tool such as Builder’s Buddy or those available on the Marketplace, makes the storing and placement of interiors for each style of house an additional breeze when swapping back and forth.

Just set your décor and layout items (piers, garden furnishings, etc.), use the rezzing system to record and store the pieces, make sure you also record the position of the rezzer (I use the Description field in the Edit floater), and – providing you don’t move to another parcel – you can swap between house styles and interiors in less than 5 minutes.

There’s even room for one of my beloved pianos – my Culprit Sonata Baby Grand. The small step between the two living spaces is to help break things up a little

The above is probably a case of preaching to the converted for some, but is does make swapping between house designs and layouts and lot more fun – and obviously, there’s no reason why you can’t have multiple layouts for any given house / houseboat type.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I might go and have a play with the Wallower houseboat 🙂 .

Gone in 27 minutes in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Motoring through some of the new houseboat regions

A total of 709 new Linden Home houseboats were made available on Wednesday, May 15th, 2019, after a build-up of expectation.

I had wondered if the new regions, that arrived alongside Bellisseria, the Linden Homes continent might see one more move prior to being opened, but as was quickly shown, this wasn’t the case. This does leave the new regions supporting the houseboats looking – at this point in time at least, but who knows what might come in time – looking like a bit of an after-thought bolt-on to the continent, but there can be no doubting their popularity: all 709 were gone in just 27 minutes.

(l) the line-up before the release of the new houseboat regions; (r) the situation a few minutes after the launch with people at their new houseboats, even as the regions were being restarted (those in red)

The release saw a huge build-up along the north-eastern side of Bellisseria, the closest point to the new region, with two regions in particular – Graff and Dorma – bearing the brunt of the interest, each having in excess of 50 avatars in them in the hours leading up to the release. A lot of this saw social interactions, although I opted to watch via the Map while paying a visit to another region.

The Houseboats are available to select as we release them via the Linden Homes Land selection page, and access to the continent addition is open. We will have a set of region restarts to go through, so please bear with us as that happens if you enter the regions right away.

We know they will go very quickly, but as time goes on we will get more out, and hopefully faster.

Our next focus will be to bring more Traditional Homes plus more Houseboats in another smaller launch while working in parallel to a larger launch and an exciting new theme.

As usual, stay tuned here for more updates!

Patch Linden’s forum announcement that the houseboats were available

The Squishy Pickle bar: the social hub of the new regions

The houseboats were released via the Linden Homes web page at 10:00 SLT, together with a warning that some of the regions were being restarted. But the latter didn’t dampen any of the desire to obtain one of the new units: within seconds of the opening of the doors, people were literally pouring into the regions to see their new houseboat – and fortunately Caitlyn was among them as well.

In commenting on the state of play, Patch noted that there was some churn during the 27 minutes: people grabbing a houseboat, checking the location, then abandoning it in the hope of getting a better spot. How many may have missed out on an opening as a result is hard to say, it’s possible some people may have come away a little disappointed – hence the comment from Patch of the focus on making a further “smaller launch” of houseboats and houses.

The new houseboat regions and landscaping

There had also been some churn in the lead-up to the release with some people with Traditional Homes abandoning them in favour of being ready for the houseboats, as was noted on various forum threads.

I took a boat ride through the new regions following their release, and the level of activity was pleasing to see as people set about decorating their new homes, together with a large uptick in conversation and activity in the Bellisseria in-world groups – and the founding of a residents newspaper The Bellisserian – of which more anon!

In the meantime, congrats to all those who snagged one of the new houseboats!

Linden Homes houseboat expansion arrives off Bellisseria – but may yet move?

Posted on by Inara Pey
The “houseboat expansion” regions, still with test elements in place, appeared off the north-eastern coast of Bellisseria on Monday, May 13th

Update #1: ah well, was a nice idea, but apparently, it’s been confirmed the new houseboat regions are in fact in their intended location.

Updates #2, via Patch Linden: Howdy everyone! While I’d love to give more notice than this, it is looking like we will have another batch of Houseboats ready for release within the next 24 hours.  This is as much of a forewarning I can provide, because of the complexity behind the work that is going into these releases.  Each release requires the coordination of several teams, and having all of the resources line up to hit the “go button” is pretty organic.  As soon as we are able to do so, I will post another update [in the forum thread linked to above].

The “houseboat expansion” regions appeared off the eastern coast of Bellisseria on Monday, May 13th, sparking speculation that the new regions could be made available “this week”.

However, while they might be made available soon, I’m not convinced that where they are currently sited will be their final resting place (so to speak).

The new 48-region houseboat expansion appears off the north-east coast of Bellisseria.

I say this because – as others have pointed out* – the “houseboat expansion” appears to be fairly identical in shape to an existing part of the the completed Bellisseria continent, as seen with the overall SSP region design on the world map, as shown below.

The new houseboat regions collectively share the same shape as a part of the completed Bellisseria continent as represented by the current SSP test / development regions

As such, it would seem possible that the new regions will yet make a further move prior to being make available.

Such as move would both allow Bellisseria to remain true to the original design of the continent, as presented by the the SSP test and development regions (as per the image below), and provide a far more natural location for the new regions, rather than simply “bolting them on” to the side of Bellisseria.

Bellisseria (l) showing how the houseboat regions might “slot in” to the continent, compared to the overall layout of the continent as seen in the develop SSP regions

The coming days will obviously reveal whether this will be the case, but given the overall size and shape of the “houseboat expansion”, I’d be surprised if we didn’t see something along these lines. Something which in turn begs the question as to how soon might it be before we see an expansion of “central” Bellisseria to match the SSP regions?

In the meantime, those interested in obtaining a new Linden Home houseboat should keep an eye on the development at Bellisseria, the Linden Homes forum category, and the Linden Homes selection page.

* I cannot provide full credit for this image, as the link to it was supplied to me sans context of posting, etc. If anyone does know who posted it and where, I’ll be happy to update this piece with proper credit.