Are there terms or conditions involved? You must read and approve of Region FAQ: Link
Are there special conditions I have to meet to qualify for a region purchase? All current Estate purchase rules apply, including creditworthiness and a clean disciplinary record. Linden Lab reserves the right to refuse your application and refund your purchase if your account is not in good standing or you do not meet our minimum criteria for region ownership.
Simply click where you want to buy or reserve a region on the map. If the space is available, click Add to cart.
Once you've picked all your spaces and go to checkout, you'll be brought to a screen where you can choose either to reserve or purchase the spaces you've picked.
If you choose to reserve the spaces, then an auction will start with you as the high bidder on the spaces you've picked. Otherwise, if you choose to purchase the spaces, you will simply be billed, and the island will come online usually within 7-14 business days.
What exactly is a reservation? A reservation guarantees your right to build on a certain space. Reservations are a good alternative to buying land if you are not sure you need the land yet, but want to make sure you can build there in the future.
Note, you currently must be a concierge user in order reserve a region.
If and when you finally decide to build on a reservation, you will have to purchase the region for a flat price. (Currently USD $1675 )
What is a concierge user? A concierge user is considered a user who pays over USD $125 of land maintainance fees per month. For example, a user owning exactly one region is a concierge user because the monthly maintainance fee he pays is USD $295
The webpage says: Each Region is USD $1675. A region will give you complete ownership of each grid space you purchase. Each Reservation starts at USD $30. A reservation will allow you to a save a space to build on. What does this mean exactly? When you outright purchase a space for USD $1675 you get immediate ownership of the region. The location does not go up for auction, and your future island goes there (with no further cost other than the monthly maintenance fee)
Auctions begin only when a space is reserved, at the starting auction price of USD $30.
What is the auction system intended to do? The auction is there to allow for conflict resolution between two residents who wish to reserve the same space.
Can you reserve next to another reservation? Reservations cannot be placed beside other reservations.
あなたは別のものの横で予約を控えることができますか? 他の予約の横で予約を置くことができません。
Can someone reserve a space next to me without my permission? Just like the current standards, Linden lab will not place another region next yours (no touching borders) unless you give your permission.
Do you have to renew your reservations (and hence go to auction again) every 3 months? As it currently is designed, you do not have to return to auction to renew your reservation.
After the 3 months are up, which price do you pay, a flat $10 per month or the price you paid when it went to auction the first time? Currently we plan on charging the overall average auction price as the renewal fee.
How does an auction allow for conflict resolution in the instance when two grid spaces are reserved with a grid space between them? The auction that begins first will prevent the second auction from starting.
Private islands in the red grid area are protected for a year. What happens when that year is over? All existing private islands are in a protected area. This area will be protected until March 14 2007. During this period, PI owners may ask us to move their regions out of the protected area and into the reservation area free of charge. Once out of the protected area, they can add regions or reserve grid spaces at their own pace using the Land Store. Current PI owners may continue to *attach* new regions within the protected area using the old way - contacting islands@lindenlab.com. Current PI owners cannot add new noncontiguous islands within the protected area.
Are corner-to-corner regions adjacent and part of the reservation or grid placement? Corner to corner are not considered adjacent. Only regions which share a shoreline are considered adjacent.
What if someone uses this tool to harass me? Misuse of this tool constitutes a violation of the Community Standards policy on Harassment and will be dealt with accordingly. Bidding on auctions alone does not constitute harassment.
If someone tried to make a reservation ring around an estate -- would that be considered violating any agreements and prevented (if reported by the estate holder? We would take action on a case-by-case basis. One of the maxims we tried to maintain when building this system was to keep the rule set as simple as possible and err on the side of simplicity.
What is the difference between "Region Name" and "Estate Name"?
Region is the name of each particular area/region/island
Estate is the name for a collection of regions, i.e. "Mainland", etc.
「領域名」と「地所名」の違いは何ですか?
領域はそれぞれの特定の領域/領域/島の名前です。
地所はすなわち、領域の収集、「メーンランド」などのための名前です。
If I will only own one island then the region name is the same as the estate name?
They don't have to be. However, they certainly can have the same name.
Can I name the region what ever I want?
Regions must be no more than three words, and may not be the same as any other region currently in the grid. No special characters may be used.
Can I name the region when I reserve the space?
No, reservations alone do not allow you the right to name a region. You must convert a reservation into a region purchase to name the region.
How does the new reservation system affect new islands/continents that are created to be permanently hidden--never to show up on the Second Life Main Grid map?
Invisible islands show up in the land store as grayed out regions with the annotation "This grid space has already been built on."
Initially, we left the islands invisible on the Land Store map. However, we soon discovered it made reserving space an exercise in hunting for apparently free regions that were in fact not free.
No information about the invisible island is given, and they are indistinguishable from each other.
新しい保留制はどのように永久に隠されるために決してSecond Life Main Grid地図で上がっているショーでないのに作成される新しい島/大陸に影響しますか?
目に見えない島は「この格子スペースは既に造られた」注釈と共に領域に灰色にされるように陸の店に現れます。
Do the new land reservation system fees apply to permanently hidden, location non-specific regions such as these as well?
Yes, all region purchases and reservations will be expected to go through the Land Store when it leaves its beta period, with the caveat that current island owners in the protected area who want to expand contiguous regions will be required to contact islands@lindenlab.com.
Should we treat this tool in the same way as Preview? Or are these purchases considered real? If you have problems how will they be resolved?
The only way properly to test this system is if we are dealing with real reservations and purchases.
This is not a preview. We are however prepared to remedy any problems caused by the system. However, we feel confident that the system is ready for a beta period and that any problems that do arise will be solvable.
A Recap from Ryan Linden
Private island orders have been steadily increasing month over month. As you know, the process to order an island was somewhat difficult - you had to send mail to islands@lindenlab.com . You would then be sent an email asking you to choose the island type, the rating, name and list other special considerations. Your request would then be put in a queue and someone would fill it within in a two week period. We frequently got requests to put an island in a location - "can you put my island in the south near X?" As a matter of policy, we did not do this. Instead we tried to give people some room to grow while still keeping all estates generally in the same area. On many occasions people outgrew their area, wanted to expand further but could not because of other estates nearby.
Which brings me to continent building. It has become clear that building competing visions of the mainland, ones where different rules or zoning regulations apply is becoming a viable business model for estate owners and Residents are perceiving these services as a value add. This makes sense, as many people are strong community managers instead of strong modelers, textures artists or animators. We realized that the friction inherent in the island ordering system might be impeding the growth of these communities, or raising the barrier to entry for people looking to plan ahead before jumping into the waters. Competition is desirable, as it will force continent builders to add value to their services in order to win the trust and money of consumers.
So, how do we allow people to order islands or build continents at their own pace, without Linden standing in the way and how do we allow people to choose where *they* want to build these continents? The Land Store was conceived to address these needs. While thinking about how to do this we asked ourselves "how do we let people grow their continents without having to make a sizable investment at the outset? Also, "what do we do when two people value the same location on the grid?" Grid location is really only relevant when touching cardinal borders however people have an emotional attachment to their location on the grid just as they have an emotional attachment to where their parcels are within the continents. Having Linden decide where others grow is not only opposite our philosophy of a user created world but not scalable from a resource perspective. This does not mean that we plan to abandon the mainland. We have already designed terrain for 1000's more mainland regions. As you can see on the Land Store homepage, the southern area has been protected for future Linden mainland expansion.
It also occurred to us that unscrupulous people might use the Land Store to grief others or bully them out of the continent building business. However, we thought about the SL community and realized that these attempts would be transparent and in most cases obvious. Which is why we plan to deal with any and all appropriately just as we do now when someone tries to checkerboard parcels within a region or bully others to sell land using lag inducing measures.