Ciaran Laval

There’s an interesting thread over at SLUniverse regarding the trials and tribulations of buying mainland, deeding mainland to a group and moving land from one group to another group whilst at the same time trying to avoid incurring increased fees by tiering up.

The process is fraught with danger and confusion and Linden Lab should take a look at that thread to understand the challenges people face. The old old official Second Life forum archive had a sticky by Skye Whitcroft with some advice on how to move land around without tiering up, here for example is an explanation on how to transfer land from group A to group B, or in other words, transfer land from one group to another :

HOW TO: TRANSFER LAND FROM GROUP A TO GROUP B
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1. Set Destination Group as Active Group
2. Donate/Transfer Tier (Set Land Contribution)
3. Transfer Land to New Group

SET DESTINATION GROUP AS ACTIVE GROUP

Choose Edit >> Groups. In the box highlight the group TO which the land will be transferred. Click Activate.

DONATE/TRANSFER TIER (SET LAND CONTRIBUTION)

If you have donated tier to Group A for land and you need the tier in Group B, remove your tier donation in Group A.

1. Select Edit >> Groups from the menubar. The list of the groups you belong to appears. In the new pop up box, highlight the group where land currently is held (Group A). Click the Info button. The Group Information box opens.

2. Go to “Land and L$” tab. In the white box next to “Your Contribution” change this number to zero to remove all of your tier from group, or subtract the amount of the land you will remove and click “apply”.

3. This puts Group A into negative tier and gives warning message. Don’t panic. It will be OK for a few minutes to have negative tier in Group A to complete this transaction.

[N.B. You can simply sell land to yourself and tick the “remove contribution from group” box EXCEPT that if you do not have sufficient tier to cover buying the land back out of the group, you are bumped up to the next tier level. These steps help ensure you do not incur a higher tier charge]

4. Add tier (if needed) to Group B. [If Group B does not need tier donation, skip to steps for Transfer Land to New Group.] Select Edit >> Groups from the menubar. The list of the groups you belong to appears.

5. Highlight the group you want to donate to (Group B) and click the Info button. The Group Information box opens.

6. Click the “Land & L$” tab.

7. In the Your Contribution box, enter the amount you want to donate and click “Apply”

TRANSFER LAND TO NEW GROUP

1. Go to the land and right-click it. Select About Land from the pie menu.

2. Click “sell land”

3. In the new box, type in agreed price for land (can be 0).

4. MOST IMPORTANT STEP!! Choose “SPECIFIC USER” from drop down box. In new popup box, type your own name and click on “find”, then click “select”

****If you choose ANYONE from the dropdown list, and you are selling below the market price for land, you’re almost guaranteed a bot will buy your land. In effect, you are telling Second Life that you are selling the land to anyone in the game for the price you have just typed and that means anyone can buy it.*****

5. Choose whether you transfer the objects with the land.

6. Click “set land for sale”

7. Go to the land and right-click it. Select Buy Land from the pie menu.

8. Click on “Buy Land for Group” <— Double check you have correct group active!

9. Watch for the transfer message. If Group B does not have sufficient tier, you will get a message saying the transfer failed.

Now some of the information may be a little dated due to how the viewer now works but the process remains complicated. Skye’s old guide also includes the following information:

• HOW TO: TRANSFER LAND FROM INDIVIDUAL TO INDIVIDUAL
• HOW TO: TRANSFER LAND FROM A GROUP TO INDIVIDUAL
• HOW TO: DEED LAND TO A GROUP (TRANSFER FROM INDIVIDUAL TO GROUP)

These are tasks that many Second Life residents want to engage with but are put off from doing so due to issues such as group land carrying a 10% bonus, which means if you try and sell said piece of land back to yourself, you lose this bonus and may need to tier up to buy your own land, which is confusing to say the least.

Continue reading “Moving Land Between Groups Leads To Headaches”

In rather surprising (to me) news, Landon Donovan won’t be part of the United States Squad for this summer’s world cup in Brazil. The 32 year old striker who has been capped a staggering 156 times will have to watch the world cup at home.

However better news for another Landon, with Landon Linden explaining the reasons for some of the recent woes of the Second Life service. This is the sort of blog post I like because it explains some of the difficulties the service experienced as well as pointing out some of the reasons, warts and all.

This blog post exemplifies why I have been so critical of Linden Lab’s lack of communications over recent years. Yes the subject matter is sore and yes users have had a hard time of it, but sitting down to explain why helps customers understand that the Lab are aware of the problems and are prepared to make moves to rectify them.

The blog post explains that the root cause of the problem was created a decade ago. This also highlights how difficult it is to maintain a service as dynamic as Second Life, what worked a decade ago is simply not the ideal way of going about things today and again the blog post explains this well:

Our intent at this point also is to remove the identifier assignment service altogether. It not only was the ultimate source of this outage, but is also one more single point of failure that should have been dispatched long ago.

Continue reading “Landon Explains Technical Woes”