Linden Lab Announces "Limited Availability" of New Private Sims

With Second Life's userbase increasing in recent months, most certainly mainly due to the Coronavirus quarantines, it was probably expected that there would be an increased demand for sims by the residents. On May 10, someone posted in the Virtualverse forums that the number of private sims had increased by 361 since March 30. Tyche Shepherd seems to be on hiatus, so we don't have his reports to go by.

With numbers like this when the number of private sims usually goes up or down by less than a tenth that, perhaps it should be no surprise to hear the latest announcement by the Lab. Yesterday on Thursday May 14, Linden Lab announced that it could no longer guarantee a new full private sim to someone who wanted one.

Due to the ongoing public health crisis, we’ve experienced an unprecedented surge in demand for new Second Life regions. While we are thrilled by the heightened interest, the increased demand has consumed our available inventory of full regions (there are still many parcels available on existing regions, both on the mainland and from private estates).  

We are committed to maintaining (and improving) the stability and performance of Second Life. So while we are very gratified that we can be of help to people in these trying times, unfortunately, our current server systems cannot accommodate unlimited growth without adversely impacting that stability and performance. This means that region inventory in Second Life will be extremely limited and may not be readily available until early fall.

The Lab stated that one reason for the inability to handle the increased load was their transitioning from their current servers to cloud ones, which hasn't been finished yet, "As a result, we are in the unfortunate position of hitting the maximum capacity of our “old” servers until the “new” cloud servers are fully operational."

While the Lab stated new sims will be made available as old ones are closed, this limited availability will continue until the new cloud servers are fully operational, which they guess will be "early fall." In the meantime, Linden Lab suggested alternatives to full private sims, such as land on the mainland, or renting from an estate owner.

So far, as of the writing of this article, there have been just a few reactions in the official blog and Virtualverse. But they have been positive ones.

Will the demand for new sims continue to outpace supply, or as the US and other nations relax restrictions imposed due to the Coronavirus, will demand drop? Time will tell.

Sources: Linden blog, Virtualverse, BBC

Bixyl Shuftan

Improved Sim Capacity And Access

It's an annoyance regular Second Life members are familiar with. You hear about a great event, and at the starting time you head over, only to find the sim is filled to capacity! You can't get in. Supposing you can get in, if the sim fills to capacity and you crash, the addition of one more means you log in at another location and can't teleport back. Even sim owners and managers aren't immune to this problem, meaning they could potentially be locked out of their own events.

Well, the Lab is making a few tweaks to sim capacity, which is good news if you have a premium account or a sim owner/manager. First, if a sim is filled to capacity and none of the residents inside are the owner or manager, then either can enter with the limit not applying to them. But this applies only for this first of these to enter. Since the sim is one over capacity, two residents would have to leave before any more managers could enter.

Second, an additional ten percent over the sim capacity will be allowed to enter, but only if these extra members are premium account holders. For instance, if a sim is set to a capacity of fifty residents, an additional five premium account residents could enter. This extra capacity does not apply to regular members.

Linden Lab has offered residents with premium accounts perks ever since the creation of free accounts. At first it was basically just the ability to own land and a weekly stipend of Linden Dollars. Later on, it was being offered gifts and exclusive access to a few sims. In 2015, they began allowing premium accounts to join an additional 18 groups, going from 42 to 60. It should be interesting to see how many premium accounts the Lab gets from this move

Read the announcement from Linden Lab: Here.

Bixyl Shuftan

Linden Lab Announces Option For Private Sim Owners To Expand Prim Capacity

It was a little more than a week ago when Linden Lab increased the prim allowance of private sims from 15,000 to 20,000. For those who want still more, yesterday on Wednesday December 7, Linden Lab began offering the option to further expand it to 30,000, a 50% increase. But there will be a price. The sim owner will need to pay a $30 USD fee, plus a $30 USD fee every month.


Starting today, Full Private Region owners now have the option to upgrade to an even more impressive 30,000 prims! That’s an additional 50% more room for creating, decorating, designing your own store -  whatever you can dream up!

Upgrading to 30,000 prims costs $30 USD per Region and will incur an additional monthly maintenance fee*. For additional information about Private Region management and this Land Impact upgrade program, please visit our Knowledge Base.

To request an upgrade, please submit a case through the support portal on the Second Life website under the case type Land & Region > Land Impact Change Request.

In the case of residential sims where the owners rent out parcels, most will likely request the increase in further capacity only if the renters are willing to pay for more. In the case of the Purrfection Estates, Nydia Tungsten is currently asking the renters how they feel about ding so. No doubt there are similar discussions going on between renters and estate owners across Second Life.

Sunweaver Estates Get Private Estate Prim Increase

On Tuesday November 29, Linden Lab announced it was starting the increases of the prim capacities of private sims. On Friday December 2, Sunweaver chieftess Rita Mariner announced to the community that it's residents now had it.

Sunnies/Islanders:  I went around and upgraded every ones rent boxes to reflect the new level of prims you get based on the extra prims each sim got.  Each 512m lot gets 156 prims now, That is a nice boost and it's free! Those of you with large parcels got HUGE bumps in prims, ENJOY!  The ER will be open for Prim OD's 24 hours for the next several days.

That evening, Rita told me she had finished in the morning, thinking originally each lot would get 152 more prims, but instead they got 156, "It was hefty upgrade per lot."

There have been a few people asking why the private sims get less of an increase than the mainland ones did earlier this month, as well as it coming later. The general feeling of those I've talked to feel Linden Lab is trying to encourage people to move to the mainland. But most are simply happy with being able to do more with their land.

Bixyl Shuftan

Linden Lab Starts Increasing Prim Limits of Private Sims

On Thursday November 3, Linden Lab announced that they were in the process of increasing the prim limits of Mainland sims. They also stated that while private sims would also be seeing a similar increase, it would not be right away, but "within a couple months." On Tuesday November 29, the Lab announced that they were finally starting these increases.

As of today, we are extending this benefit to Private Estate Regions. Full Regions, Homesteads, and Openspace Regions on Private Estates will get a 33% increase in Land Impact allowance at no additional charge! Now everyone will have more prims to enjoy!


As with the Mainland sims, the private island prim capacity increases are being done through their weekly rolling restarts. So the process should be done by next Monday.

Linden Lab also brought up their plans to allow private sim owners the option to boost their prim allowance by an additional 10,000 to 30,000, saying it would be "starting next week" and details would be soon. In their announcement earlier this month, they stated it would cost a $30 USD fee up front and a monthly $30 USD fee thereafter.

Among the first private sims to benefit from the boost is Purrfection Estates, best known for the "Happy Vixen" beach club. There was a general feeling of optimism that night in chat groups, though one person did express reservations, wondering if a few people might go overboard and engage in "prim wars" over the holidays, decorating their places to the max.

Do you the readers have any stories about how you, or your neighbors, are taking advantage of the prim capacity increases, or not? If so, let the us at the Newser know.

Linden Lab Gives Full Details On Sim Prim Increases: All Will Go Up, Eventually

And now we know. Yes, both Mainland and Private Estate sims will see boosts in their prim capacity. No, Private Estate sims will not be getting it for a while.

Over the course of Monday Tuesday and Wednesday, it's been revealed that Linden Lab was increasing the amount of prims that mainland sims could handle. The questions people were asking the most were would Private Estate sims be included, and just by how much would prim capacities be going up? But Linden Lab wouldn't say on those matters until yesterday, Thursday November 4 at 2PM when Patch Linden and Saffia Widdershins hosted an audience of about a hundred residents. Dropping in at 1:40PM, the place was already packed, with lots of grey lingering for a while.

Eventually, Saffia asked everyone to click on the white screen, asking people to check out (this video) if the screen wouldn't work for them. The recording was of a chat Saffia and Designing Worlds co-host Elrik Merlin had with Patch Linden (Dee Linden was there, but spoke little). Patch would go on to state that yes, the Mainland sims were getting a prim capacity increase, and so would Private Estates, homesteads, and openspace sims.

Mainland sims would get a boost from 15,000 to 22,500
Private Estate sims would go up from 15,000 to 20,000
Homestead sims would go up from 3750 to 5000
Openspace sims would go up from 750 to 1000

Patch Linden confirmed reports on the Linden Blog and elsewhere that Mainland sims were in the process of having their prim allowance increased, saying it was going up through their usual weekly restarts. For Private Estates however, the change would not come right away but "within a couple months, could be sooner, hopefully not later."

Patch also mentioned that eventually full Private sims would have the option for even greater capacity, but for a price. They could have their prim allowance boosted to 30,000, but only if a $30 fee was paid up front and a monthly $30 fee charged in addition to the usual monthly tier.

Patch stated Linden Lab would announce when they would be ready to boost Private sims and offer the further increased capacity on separate dates in the future.

Would there be a downside? Patch stated there was the possibility of older computers taking more time to process the extra prims, but assured Linden Lab had been doing much testing and felt the extra lag should be minimal to most.

After the meeting, I asked Saffia about these changes, she answered, "I'm really excited by this. I think it opens up huge possibilities for creators - both in building more objects and in building with better use of LOD."

Inara Pey of Modem World posted about the time of the meeting an interview with Patch Linden about the Prim increases. Linden Lab would also mention it on their latest blog post.

And so, we have the full story on a topic that's gotten Second Life abuzz all week.

Bixyl Shuftan

The Big Change? Mainland Sims, Possibly Private Sims, Getting Prim and Land Impact Increase, Possibly 50%

Maybe this was the "important development from Linden Lab ...  that will change your Second Lives forever" that was talked about on Monday.

On Tuesday November 1 on the "Deploy Plans of the Week 10-31" thread, someone posted about what he noticed on his sim, "my 1024 sqm parcel there is showing a capacity of 351 PE when it should be only 234. Is there some bonus I don't know about or today's restart just buggered the land for the better?" Others noticed something was going on as well, and one stated, "I asked about the capacity increase on Live chat and the Linden said it is not a bug, that there was a roll to increase the prim useage on Mainland and that there would be a blog post from LL soon." This was followed by a message from Patch Linden.

Hi!  Over the next couple of days there will be some changes coming. The deploy will happen in stages. So as you see these changes rest assured it is normal and is happening as intended.

On November 3, we will post an official blog along with a video where I will have all of the information and details regarding these changes.

Keep an eye on the Official Blog, on Thursday for more info.

So it looks like there's going to be an increase in how many prims a sim can hold, at least for mainland. Kultivate Magazine claimed that not just mainland, but also private sims, both estates and homesteads, would get a 50% prim capacity increase. The growth would be 22500 prims up from 15000 on full private sims, and 000 prims, up from 3750 on homesteads, "Keep in mind that these prim increases are on some mainland regions, so your sim may not have been upgraded yet."

As of the writing of this article, there is no official word from Linden Lab. But there is plenty of chatter on both the thread of the official forums, and the SL Universe forums. Details will have to wait until the special announcement at 2PM today.

Image Credit, Inara Pey, Pussycat Catnip

Sources, Kultivate Magazine, Modem World, New World Notes 

Bixyl Shuftan