I went to SL19B to meet the Lindens! Patch Linden gave an exciting interview with hints about the upcoming Premium Plus membership, which will be available on June 23rd, 2022. At first glance, it appears that nearly all of the benefits will be doubled, but the cost will be TRIPLED. Premium Plus will be $29.99 per month or $249 USD/per year. For 30 days, the introductory price will be $24.99 per month.
I was disappointed to learn that the new Premium Plus benefits will not be available to region owners. We are the biggest spenders on Second Life land products, and we have received no love! I think if you own a full region, you should get a basic Premium membership for FREE. In addition, Premium Plus members should be allowed to buy a standalone Homestead region. These are benefits that residents have been requesting for years.
I took some notes of the features for you to compare Premium & Premium Plus. What do you think of these features? Will it prompt you to upgrade? Watch the full interview on YouTube.
Premium
Benefits:
- 1024 sq. meter Mainland Tier¹
- Stipend L$300/per week²
- 70 Groups
- IM Caps 80
- Upload Fees (L$10 and more)
- Group Creation Fee (L$100)
- Attachment Limits
- 1 Land Experiences
- Recurring Events Price (L$50)
- Sign-Up bonus, L$1,000
- Support Phone Line
Linden Homes Benefits:
- One Linden Home per account
- 5 Linden Homes “rolls” per 24-hour³
Premium Plus
Benefits:
- 2048 sq. meter Mainland Tier¹
- Stipend L$650/per week²
- 140 Groups
- IM Caps 160
- Upload Fees (FREE)
- Group Creation Fee (L$10)
- Attachments Limits Fewer
- 2 Land Experiences
- Recurring Events Price (FREE)
- Sign-up bonus, L$3,000
- Concierge Support Phone Line
Linden Homes Benefits:
- One Linden Home per account
- More Linden Homes “rolls” per 24-hour³
- Claim/Request a specific Linden Home⁴
- NO prim increases on current homes (512/1024)
Future Benefits:
- 2048 sq. meter Linden Homes
¹You can split this and have a linden home and use the rest for tier.
²Grandfathered residents receive L$500 and L$400 stipend now. Patch did not confirm if they’ll get double that amount, but it would make the most sense.
³For the price, I would expect the number of tries to be at least 15 or more per 24-hour period. This confirms that Linden Lab loves GOH players!
⁴Patch said that you can submit a ticket and as long as the home is available during the duration of the ticket, a land team staff will assign this to you. This would only work well during a massive theme release, IMO. The idea behind this is for friends to be neighbors, etc or for people to get to pick the home of their dreams unless a bunch of people also pick that location. Prediction… residents will claim favoritism unless this process is completely fair and transparent.
Odd time with world conditions for LL to get greedy.
i agree sade. we truly miss ebbe! for the lack of upgrades to the current second life game, i feel they want the players to foot the bill! second life has grown so fast in just the 15yrs i have been a member.
So…double the perks, plus a very few things that don’t really add up to much (no upload fees are nice, but I upload a lot and that’s still not worth it; request a house, what, maybe once ever? especially since they are getting to the end of the themes; and cheaper group creation and I’ve created I think 2 groups in over 15 years…) for three times as much?
I’d been seriously pondering plus, depending on what was on offer- but I’ll pass on this. Too bad.
The attachment limit is fewer on the Premium Plus, than on the regular Premium?
I worded that oddly – so you get fewer limits.. LOL, so you get MORE attachments. It’s just based on what they call it – Attachment Limits (more), if I did that, people might think more limits.
Patch mentioned the possibility of getting some PP items ala carte. If I could get a 2048 and 100 groups for $5 more a month, I might be persuaded. Otherwise, they should have just named it Business Premium. None of the other ‘perks’ appeal to me.
The only thing I see that is even remotely nice is doubleing the groups. the rest is just not worth nothing.
Yeah that is a lot of money for barely anything I’d be interested in at all. I mean this will knock a lot out of the ballpark with price. I’ve been premium for long time but to do 299 a year thats over 400 australian dollars. No shot
WHOA NELLY!
Why not just institute a lower than premium level, premium level and business premium (premium plus) level? Eliminate free accounts.
As for the $299 USD annual price? Just NOPE. Not with the state of the world these days.
It was foretold that any of the grandfathered stipend accounts (400L/500L) per week would LOSE that original stipend if they upgraded to Premium Plus and later downgraded.
1048-2048 s/m? How is that a premium for 3X times more money? Again, it was foretold that the land would be “at least doubled”. Better to upgrade an alt account and get 2096 s/m for 2X the cost.
I forsee a price increase for the premium level this year.
For me as a creator it’s way more than double the perks. The #1 benefit for me it uploads for free. I spend about 100$ (US) per year on uploading textures, animations and sounds for my merch alone.
$100 on uploads….. compare this Premium Plus with Basic. That’s then $249 a year. $149 a year MORE than you are currently paying.
Ok, so lets look at some of the others:
Make cheaper groups. Pointless. How many people create hundreds of groups? Very few create more than a handful a year – if that.
More offlines: Businesses prefer notecards anyway – and who wants to go through all those extra offlines (that are 90% adverts anyway)?
Extra land: 2048 is still too small for many people. I have known many people who have premium (out of habit) but ignore their tier as they rent land from other residents / businesses that doesnt require tier. For many people this extra tier (which is worth around $7 a month) will just sit there doing nothing.
I stopped my premium years ago – and the ONLY thing I’ve noticed is the lack of ANY support at all. I rarely need it.
Larger stipend? Look at current buy rates, L$650 is around 2-3 bucks – cant remember exactly. When I looked at the difference in prices for buy now on L$ it was around $1.45 for the L$350 extra you get from plus.
Premium only locations and items? Aren’t these a joke? Empty places that will stay empty (mostly) because people dont do premium as much these days. Places where your friends cant join you unless they also pay for premium, and low quality “freebies” as a special bonus.
Premium USED to be worth doing… when you couldnt rent land from anyone but LL and you had to have premium to have tier which you had to have to have land. Now? A lot of people dont bother with it.
i totally agree with you glenys. like i said i may be dropping my premium account as well, soon. i am not a content creator, i do not have a business, i am a blogger but that doesn’t require me to upload images. i do retexture full perm clothes for myself but the amount of images i upload are not out of my budget. like i said in my comment: if i can’t afford to play second life the way i want to play it, i will just discontinue it as it is an not essential to my existence in the real world but a pleasant distraction.
No way are the offerings worth 299 a year.
The price doesn’t justify what you’ll be getting in my opinion. I was thinking it would be around the L£129-L$149 for the package, which is what I’d be willing to pay. I’ll make do with what I pay now.
It will be interesting to see how this will go down.
Disappointed.
I own a full sim and a homestead. I like the idea, but I already pay a lot. Now if they would up the prims on the homestead I might think about it.
i do believe that i will not be upgrading to premium plus! i do not want a linden home as i love to decorate and the primage is minimal at the least. i do not care for the stipends. if i can’t afford to play second life and need the lindens to give me a small amount of lindens than i will not play. after all the money and increases in the real world, i do not want to increase my pleasure gaming either. i may just drop my premium account as well. i am still thinking about it, tho. i once owned my own sim, but found that to be to much money for my needs. i am a 65 y.o. 15 year second life player. i like how my second life is right now.
As a grandfathered account (17 years), I currently get 500L weekly stipend with Premium and for an extra $150USD a year with Premium Plus we still only get 650L. It’s not worth it to me. The rollout and features of plus isn’t desirable at their price point. I really hope they reconsider that price especially with the state of the economy. I rather pay $5 more for groups. That’s all I care about.
It is still cheaper to just rent land. Premium+ is very overrated and you pay a lot to get little in return. I just stick to normal Premium as the benefits aren’t that impressive.