With Second Life having recently turned 20 years old, one might wonder how have the sim numbers been lately? According to an article by Daniel Voyager, based on statistics from Tyche Shepard, there's been an overall increase in the number of sims since January. But the rate different kinds has been going up has been uneven.
According to the article, the number of private and Linden-owned sims combined, as of July 2, is 27,690. This is 31 sims higher than the figure of 27,659 on January 1. The growth was due in part to more Linden-owned sims, notably the ones in Bellisseria, from 9289 to 9360, an increase of 71. The number of private sims shrank a little from 18,370 to 18,330, a decrease of 40.
Of the numbers of people getting online, there's been a slight drop. In March, the concurrency averaged from a minimum of 28,000 to a maximum of 52,000. In July 2, it had gone to an average of a minimum of 27,000 to a maximum of 49,000. Daniel commented this was no reason for worry as this fit typical tends each year of fewer residents in the summertime, and more coming in for fall and winter.
It was stated since the start of the year, 200,000 new accounts have been created. How many are alts and how many new people stayed is unknown.
With the amount of work being done on Bellisseria, it should come across as no surprise the number of Linden-owned sims has been growing. In a recent post, Daniel Voyager stated that on January 2, there were a total of 27,231 sims, with 8909 of them Linden owned and 18,326 private. In Tyche Shepard's latest report on her Grid Survey on July 24, there were a total of 27,575 sims, with 9249 of them Linden owned. The number of private sims held steady with a very tiny drop from 18,332 to 18,326. This is an overall increase of 344.
The number of Linden-owned sims will continue to grow as Bellisseria expands. As for private sims, Daniel Voyager speculated there was the potential in real life of rising inflation, recession, or both in the near future. This could lead some landowners to cut back, which would result in a decrease in the number. If not, there was the probability of the total number of sims approaching the 28,000 mark. Second Life hasn't seen a total number of sims of that size in about a decade.
Coral Estates is born in 2007 renting private islands in Second Life. We love to manage our estate where you will find full prim islands, homesteads, commercial, or residential even light residential or even land parcel from 1024sqms to 65536sqm.
All days we are on Second Life to provide the best land to our new customers or a good daily help to our continued residents which trust in Coral Estates.
Checking Tyche's chart, April and May saw huge increases in private sims compared to typical changes, with 176 in the week of April 19, 192 in the week of April 26, a huge growth of 352 on the week of May 3, and 268 on the week of May 17. But this period also saw the greatest drop, a decline of 179 on the week of May 10. These huge numbers were likely why Linden Lab made their announcement saying they couldn't guarantee a new sim for everyone. From the week of November 15 to the week of December 6, there was another period of growth averaging 80 a week. This followed the Lab's announcement that they had more sims available for sale, though still in limited numbers. But in late December, the Lab put further purchases of private sims on hold, at least for now, due to maintenance of it's land store. So the number of sims dropped in the last week.
So what will happen in 2021? Presumably once the bugs are worked out with Linden Lab's move to Amazon Cloud servers and anyone can get a private sim when they want, their numbers will continue to grow. But if glitches cause them to keep new land purchases limited, the increase will be small.
Second Life is no doubt the most successful of virtual worlds. But some people want something a little more. What about one's own private server? This is possible in Opensim in which the servers aren't owned by Linden Lab, but by someone else. In this article, Angel Fencer (Ender Leven) explains just what Opensim is, and a little about what can and can't be done there.
In Tyche Shepjerd's latest Grid status report in the Second Life Universe forums, he found something interesting on the northern part of the map. There's a new area made up of eighty sims, named from SSP1 to SSP 80. The landscape appears to be a mix of sea, river, flat land, and hills. I couldn't get into them, so apparently they're closed to most. Most likely, these are run by Linden Lab, possibly as part of some upcoming project.
Tyche also noted the number of private sims went up by 18. Looking at past recent weeks, on August 12 he reported no change in the number over the past seven days. On August 5, there was an increase of 28 private sims (including 12 academic). July 29 saw an addition of one private sim. July 22 had a loss of 20, but if one leaves out the Relay for Life track sims, the number would have been an increase of eight private sims. For July 15, there were 35 more private sims than the week before. For the week before, it was 34. So five out of the past seven weeks have seen a small increase.in the number of private sims.
So it appears that Linden Lab's tier reduction that took effect July 1 may have halted the overall long slow decline in the number of private sims over the past several years. There could be other factors at work, such as increased interest in virtual worlds, new users of virtual worlds whom looked at Sansar or VR Chat first and moved on from them to Second Life, more Second Life residents with better confidence about the economy in real life, or perhaps some combination of these. We'll know more as the months go on, but for now there is reason for optimism.
As for the eighty SSP sim region, Linden Lab will probably have an announcement concerning it soon.
It's been about two weeks since Linden Lab put into effect their reduction in what they charge for land tiers (for non-grandfathered sims), while raising the fee to buy Linden dollars. While the Lab gave no clear reason for their move beyond "to keep Second Life a vibrant world," it's strongly believed the reason for this move was to stop the overall long slow decline in the number of sims. A recent report by Tyche Shepard, who keeps track of new sims and sim numbers in Second Life showed something promising. Total numbers of private estates show growth for two weeks in a row, 35 the past week and 34 the one before for a total growth of 69 sims.
We are now two weeks into the new pricing regime for Private Estates and this is now the 2nd week of positive growth of the grid
Net Growth stands at 35 regions this week (last week was 34) All this week's net growth was among private Estates .
Overall , taking into account last weeks closure of the 24 Temporary
SL15B regions , Net Change in Private Estates since the new prices
stands at 94 New or Returned Regions
I've no record of Region type at the moment, and therefore no estimate
of overall change in revenue for the Lab, but the initial change in
demand doesn't seem enough to increase overall revenue at this stage.
Two weeks is obviously too short a time to declare the slump over, but it does raise hopes that the long slow decline, from over 25,000 in June 2010 to just over 16,000 now, might, just might, be over. We'll need at least another two weeks or so before we can say so.
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, pleasesubmit 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.
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.
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.
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."
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."
Yours truly hasn't played the MMO World of Warcraft in a while. But while I was on, I'd heard people have mixed feelings over some changes, such as certain progression systems removed, the end of the three leveling trees, the simplifying of the pet care system, etc. Many felt World of Warcraft had lost something from it's older days. I'd heard of private servers in which players could go back and play the game as it was, but never checked them out. The big problem: they were technically illegal. Blizzard never authorized any, and each was subject to being shut down.
Nostalrius was one such server. A relatively new one, it quickly became one of the most popular. According to Kotaku, it had close to 800,000 registered users and about 150,000 active users, up from 5000 in May 2015. Unfortunately, it caught the attention of Blizzard, whom handed it's Internet hosting service a "cease and desist" order. The server's managers then reluctantly made the decision to shut it down, telling it's players the last day would be on Sunday April 10. In the final minutes, hundreds of players gathered in spots to say goodbye to one another and to wait out the end.
The server team also sent Blizzard a petition, for the company to bring back the World of Warcraft of old in "Legacy" servers, saying the sheer numbers of people whom were in Nostalrius was evidence of how many players were seeking it. "Do you think that a policy change can be made regarding legacy servers based on volunteers work, for very old no longer supported game expansion? Or do you think that legacy servers are doomed by definition since, in the end, it's hurting Blizzard trademark and communication more than anything else?"
It's been just several months since World of Warcraft's numbers had dropped to the point Blizzard would no longer publicly give out it's active user numbers. It could easily be argued that's a good reason for Blizzard to consider legacy servers.
If you have a private region in Second Life, there
are several special services you might occasionally need, like region
moves and name changes.The charges for these services depends on the number of
private regions you have, and to make it easier for all of our customers
to understand the fee structure, we now have laid it out in this chart
in the Knowledge Base:
The second blog update deals with the new Communications Hub, or Communications Hub User Interface aka CHUI as the Lab calls it. In an update, it was made part of the main viewer. It rearranges some features, as well as adding a few new ones. Among the changes, "Busy" becomes "Do Not Disturb," and the user is notifed of all IMs made once it's turned off. Local chat could be put on the same window of one's list of IMs.
DrFran Babcock reviewed the CHUI while it was being tested on a beta viewer last month (article March 4). While she liked it, she noted the majority of other testers didn't like it as well as the old interface. Checking the official forums, there were several threads on the subject, the longest one Here. Once again, the complaints outnumber those who like it, one person saying they were switching to the Firestorm viewer because of it. Complaints that yours truly has heard of the most are of bugs that interfere with one's Second Life experience, including crashing just after starting, freezes and crashes when IMing someone, or just more frequent freezes and crashes altogether. Fortunetly, I have the Cool VL viewer to use, which has been starting up faster than the official one.
