East River Community Shrinking Following Major Landowner's Departure

 

One of Second Life's longtime urban areas, the East River Community on the continent of Sansara, is retreating to a fraction of it's former self. In December, it was posted in the forums, "The ERIA city area, with the big airport and tram system, apparently reverted to (Linden Lab)." Someone else responded, "one or two major landowners left, and one of those landowners had the land that the airport was on. Apparently they weren't able to find new investors to save it. As of a week ago, it was predicted they'd be losing about 75% of the land in the community, but I don't know the current status. Hopefully they were able to save a smaller area to regroup and continue on."

As the days went on, land began to be cleared, and "It's a mess now. The RapidER transit system still has a few stations and tracks, but they're not connected. Roads end in midair at the edge of properties in Grizedale and Helvellyn. Somebody is starting to build where the East River International Airport used to be, but it's very basic building. East River Municipal Airport is intact, for now. The big suspension bridge and its roads, which are not Linden roads, are still up, with signs for places that no longer exist and bits of RapidER track." There were a couple auction winners whom wanted to preserve community builds.

In March, it was posted more land was reclaimed. When Daniel Voyager visited, all he could see was the Villas of Helvellyn.

The Free Town of Helvellyn is a charming community with a distinct Southern European flavor. We are a nautical community and a safe harbor for your Mainland cruises. We offer art galleries, a cafe, live events, residential and commercial

Dropping by Helvellyn myself, at (203/154/23), much of the area was still intact. This included the Rill'Arts Gallery, a couple ships, a drawbridge not far away. But it was clear much had been lost. To the northwest, there were segments of bridge, and some buildings were floating or on rough land without any sidewalks or anything next to them.

Most of Murihead was gone, save a stretch of beach, roads ending just past the sim border and the terrain dropping in height. Much of Munck was gone. Brooks was cleared and bought by someone. Kirkstone seemed mostly intact, but a stratch of bridge was missing and a building looked partially disassembled. The southern part of Grizedale looked like someone was rebuilding the area. Most of Hardknott looked cleared, though there was a wooded area left, and the coast had some walkway and beach. Whinlatter looked intact.

It should be noted, East River was threatened with trouble like this before. In Feb 2017, Daniel Voyager reported that the founder of the community was having to soon stop his land tier payments, and was hoping others could take over. Thankfully in that case, others were able to take over and give the place as it was  Sadly, while it seems East River will survive this crisis, much of the land will be gone.

Hat tip: Daniel Voyager

Source: Second Life Forums

Bixyl Shuftan
 

Pokemon GO Numbers In Decline

Pokemon GO was the game of the summer. The number of users of the mobile ap augmented reality game skyrocketed since it's release on July 5th to close to 45 million in about two weeks. But that's as far as it's numbers got, and it late July and August was steadily getting smaller. More than 12 million have stopped playing, "Data from Sensor Tower, SurveyMonkey, and Apptopia," stated Luke Kawa in Bloomberg, "show that Pokemon Go's daily active users, downloads, engagement, and time spent on the app per day are all well off their peaks and on a downward trend."

So why the decline? Over the weeks there have been a number of cautionary stories in the news about careless Pokemon players getting into accidents or getting robbed. But the real reasons for the decline appear to be shortcomings in the game itself, not much you can do with critters once they're caught, no quests, no way for players to duel, the gameplay seemed to be centered on capturing "gyms" that were held by monsters that were of a level unrealistic to reach by casual players. There have also apparently been server issues that have been quite irritating to players.

Hamlet Au predicted that eventually the userbase will settle to a dedicated core of about fifteen to five million. Certainly not a bad number for a game, but he felt Pokemon GO's decline would have a negative impact on the augmented gaming market that it had earlier sparked interest in, To succeed in a truly massive way, an AR game needs to be linked with a massive, well-established brand that has a 'fantastic, invisible parallel world' premise well-integrated into its branding."

Kawa suggested that over the long term, the augmented reality market would remain smaller than the one for virtual worlds, citing one analyst, "The Google Trends data is already showing declining interest in augmented reality, whereas interest in virtual reality remains high."


Sources: New World Notes, Bloomberg, Yahoo, PC Mag, Arstechnica 

Bixyl Shuftan

Cartoon of the Day

From Xymbers Slade

Meanwhile Back in Azeroth: Pandaren Snapshot

Blizzard recently released more screenshots of their upcoming expansion "Mists of Pandara," including one of this lady Pandaren, whom looks more like a farmer or brewer than a monk. The response from World of Warcraft fans seems healthy enough, the forum post this picture was found in had almost 4,000 responses as of March 22.

Blizzard is hoping the game can boost WoWs still gargantuan but shrinking membership. In February, numbers had dropped about 100,000 from 10.3 million in November to 10.2. And the November numbers are almost a million smaller from 11.1 million three months earlier in August. The company can still boast a few successes, such as about one million signing up for their "annual pass."

WoW's smaller numbers haven't gone unnoticed by Blizzard. Also in February, the company laid off 600 employees. While World of Warcraft is still the undisputed giant among Massive Multiplayer Online games, there have been some cracks in the armor. Still, with a peak of twelve million players, no one is doubting it's place in gaming history , "WoW isn't going to die so much as it may eventually peter out, and by that time, you and I are likely going to be well past middle-age."

Sources: Massivley.com, BBC

Inworldz Reaches 50,000 Users, OpenSim Shrinking

According to a recent post by Daniel Voyager, the virtual world Inworldz recently hit the 50,000 mark in the number of it's registered users. Considering this is double what it was thirteen months ago, reaching 25,000 in Dec. 2010, this would suggest the future of the alternative virtual worlds is a bright one.

Hamlet Au's recent article on OpenSim, however, suggested this was not necessarily the case, at least with all of them. In June 2009, this original of the alternative virtual worlds based on Second Life's open source code had nearly over 33,000 total users, close to 10,000 whom had been active in the past month. Today, OpenSim has a greater number of regions and their total number of accounts has more than doubled. But, the number of those active within the past thirty days is just under 3,300. A shrinkage of active users by about 66%.

Exactly why this many have stopped using OpenSim one can only guess, although this place lacks an inworld currency, and therefore has a limited economic potential. It should be noted that OpenSim is just one of a number of worlds that fall into the list of "Open Simulator" based worlds, including Avination, which although is currently the second-largest of these grids is thought to have a stable, if not growing, population. And this world, like InWorldz, does have an in-game currency, as well as boasting combat systems, and has been attracting events. And there's that Avination's viewer has a Macintosh version. One needs a PC to get to OpenSim.

Hamlet Au thought OpenSim's decline was important to pay attention to. With people looking at ways to get around their high tiers, particularly during the persistant bad economic times, some have suggested OpenSim. But to paraphrase Hamlet, such a move would shrink one's potential market of users. While one can (and some are) making accounts in both Second Life and one of these other virtual worlds, not a great deal many are doing that.

Although InWorldz is still growing, its success is not being repeated in most other open virtual worlds. And even then, it's number on at any one time remains small compared to Second Life, which will continue to be dominate other Grids in users for the forseable future.

Source: Daniel Voyager's Blog, New World Notes

Bixyl Shuftan