Free homes for all premiums

Jack has announced on the blog, which can be read here, that Linden Lab are embarking on a beta project that if successful will lead to all premium members being entitled to owning a Linden home on a 512M parcel, quoting Jack:

"If the beta goes well, we are looking to launch this as an entitlement for all Premium subscribers early next year. When launched, Linden Homes will join the Support services, stipend and free 512m of land tier that Premium members already enjoy."

The way I read this was that this will be in addition to the existing 512M free tier, however Jack has clarified this isn't the case: "The Linden Home land behaves like any other mainland as far as tier goes; the Premium member would still need 512m of free tier to own one."  The idea appears to be a long overdue replacement for first land, which I'm told was stopped because of serious gaming of the system. This time around Linden Lab aim to try and prevent some of the so called gaming by building these new homes on a new continent, restricting subdivide and resale and preventing people from removing the home. They will also disallow classifieds and events on these parcels. I'm sure someone will find a way of trying to game the system, but their options are limited.

There are definite pro's to this, it encourages people to take up premium memberships, it should encourage retention and it most certainly encourages the concept of owning a home in Second Life.

Most of the homes won't have anyone sharing a border with them. I'd say they are also trialling zoned mainland at the same time as Linden homes with this. If land is purely residential then you shouldn't need to list events and classifieds, so I'm assuming they will have some tools built into the system to stop people showing the land in search places or listing events for these parcels.

There are some cons, minor ones at the moment. There is competition with existing landlords, no matter what Jack says about there not being competition. However I see it as a small area of competition. Existing premiums won't be renting much mainland, I wouldn't have thought. The purchase price of a 512M of mainland is so low now that it makes little sense to rent a mainand 512 for a home. However there may be some who do that, maybe they rent a 512 in addition to their existing 512 plot, this will save them money if one of those plots are residential.

Then there's the prim allowance, now this is a competition issue, people get 117 prims and the home, nobody on a standard parcel can offer this, this is extra prims, I guess this explains why most parcels won't have direct borders, that's how you save prims, Jack explains in the blog comments: "Prim limits are the same as for any full mainland region, and because the Linden Homes are anchored to Linden land the owner will get the pull 117 prims to furnish with." Err Jack, that's not prim limits the same as any full mainland region, only those that allow extra prims (there are sims with double prim allowances) can offer more than 117 prims on a mainland parcel.

They could also be tempted away from estate land if they rent a 512, premium membership minus stipend is not expensive at all in net terms. The plots also have blurb that sounds more like an estate offering than a traditional mainland offering, restrictions, no borders, to quote Jack again:

"That parcel will have a beautiful but unfurnished home already in place, and most will not share a border with other Residents."

Also on the estate front if people own 1024M parcels, they may be tempted to cut back and go for one of these.

Then there's the issue of selling 512M plots, their value is getting lesser by the day already, this will make them even less attractive, although as I said earlier, they're ridiculously cheap already.

However as I said, these are minor concerns, 512 is simply not that popular a plot size on estate land and 1024 isn't that popular either. When people move to estate land they usually go larger.

The pro's currently outweigh the cons and the concepts seem largely well intentioned, I do have some concerns as to what comes next because there's an advertising market screaming out here for people to move to bigger parcels once they've found their feet, who will get access to that pool?