Eye on the Blog: Group Limit Extended to Sixty for Premium Accounts

Late last week on May 28, Linden Lab announced they were expanding the number of groups for premium accounts. The new limit for these has gone from 42, which remains the limit for normal accounts, to sixty.

Today we’re thrilled to be rolling out another perk for Premium members: now you can be a member of 60 groups! Groups have been a consistently popular feature among the Residents of Second Life. It may not be obvious, but group membership can have an impact on the performance of a number of systems. That's why in Second Life's early days, Residents could only join a maximum of 10 groups. Over the years, we've made improvements that enabled us to raise the group limit to a maximum of 42, but we know that for some power users, even that isn't quite enough, and today we're happy to raise the bar for Premium subscribers.

The Lab stated while they would like to raise the limit further, "We must make sure that the recent gains in group performance are not jeopardized." The group limit raise took place immediately. The Lab went on to say "Downgrading from Premium membership will not remove you from any of your groups, but it will mean that you cannot join any new groups until you remove yourself from enough groups to get below the Basic account limit, which remains at 42."

Daniel Voyager wrote on his blog that over the years, the group limit has gone up over time from Second Life's beginnings. When the Grid officially opened, residents were limited to just ten groups. Compared to today, some of today's residents would consider this a ridiculously small number as there's all kinds of groups, for music and dance clubs, combat roleplay squads and platoons, estate community announcements, breedable pet fans, political discussion clubs, stores, even for Second Life families and circles of friends. Jo Yardley commented in the official blog that she thought "I think we have almost 20 just for our sim alone."

But over time, the limit would go up. In 2004, it was raised to 15. In 2006, it was raised to 25. In 2011, it was raised to the limit it was for all accounts until recently, 42.

Linden Lab has tried a number of ways over the years to encourage residents with basic free accounts, which were introduced in 2006. This has included offering them free gifts, sims only residents with premium accounts could access, discounts for the first month when signing up, and more. Some residents have commented these perks have seemed a bit small. But for some whose group limit keeps maxing out, raising it to 60 may be a very welcome convenience they're willing to pay more for.

For the comments in the Linden forums, Click Here.