on august 13th, i posted a graph showing the loss of 3,000 private sims from SL over the last two years. that’s an average of about 125 sims a month
so what happened in the last 30 days or so?
as of july 31st there were 22,272 private sims, but yesterday (august 31st) there were 21,897 private sims! that’s 375 private sims gone!
maybe i am looking at Tyche Shepherd‘s numbers incorrectly? the last time SL was this low was around june of 2009 (6.14.09 – 22100)
©Tyche Shepherd 2012
And in the boardroom they are asking themselves
“What can we do to attract more users?”
When they should be asking
“What do our users say we should do to attract more users?”
Sarge Misfit
1 Sep 12 at 12:36 pm
I dunno, I think they should prolly be trying to answer “How can we stop losing all these customers?” However, they don’t seem to be concerned with losing customers, only gaining fresh ones to squeeze like lemons. They’ve moved completely into a game provider mentality, which historically only expects to keep a small percentage of consumers long-term while the majority of players come and go. It’s no longer a community or even a platform, but an “amusement” to be replaced by the next thing to come around. I’m SO glad they don’t have any real influence on the virtual worlds sphere anymore, it’s sad enough to see them outside it but to allow them to corrupt the rest would be heartbreaking.
ELQ
1 Sep 12 at 1:05 pm
The big drop off will occur from 2013 onwards unfortunately as the educational regions that were renewed at the old price for two years come up for renewal at the doubled rate. I just confirmed this week with Linden Lbs that they will charge the full rate and they will not negotiate a discount for educators who have had large numbers of regions for many years.
Ai Austin
1 Sep 12 at 2:55 pm
ELQ, for some reason the thought/image “Ellis Island of the Metaverse” came to mind as I read your comment.
Sarge Misfit
1 Sep 12 at 2:59 pm
“Dear Linden Lab, I thought I’d get in touch to ask some questions about educational projects in Second Life…..” OH wait! I gave up on them ‘getting it’ and supporting the community in 2010! ;)
My second last sim was one of those what went poof in the last few weeks. Sadly even owners like me who had a largish group of long term, reliable edu tenants its just getting impossible to justify the expense vs. performance and a shrinking community of educators working and meeting in SL.
We’re hanging on to one sim, which supports our last remaining projects and is a sandbox for our own learnings (ok ok its a place for me to play mesh dressups alot at the mo too.. teehee). However, its almost impossible to justify starting new projects there – so many reasons for educators to head to opensim and soas(and minecraft!!), so little budget for tier!
I think AI is right.. the decline will continue.. especially in eduland, with discounts finally disappearing for the last remaining lucky ones. Long Live Opensim! ;)
jokay
1 Sep 12 at 4:37 pm
This decline has been going on for some time now and I think it will continue. The loss of education regions almost certainly accounts for quite a lot of the losses but I think even the land Barons are feeling the pinch of falling traffic. A casual look at the SL map shows an awful lot of yellow coated vacant property. There are apologists for Linden Labs however who seem to find all sorts of reasons to justify LL’s excessive charging and dismiss the falling region count as – mhm – consolidation. Yep, they explain that merchants are now sharing the cost of regions rather than having a whole region to themselves. But would this account for the steady drop which is now in order of 50 sims a week and above (375 in the past month alone)?
I don’t think so.
What I think is the competition is increasing for Linden Labs and it’s not all coming from the Opensim grids. Sure, on cost alone a lot of educational institutions are exploring Opensim but Unity3D is a strong contender and now there is Cloud Party. Oh, and what about the cute little Teddy Bear on the new 3Di web page Unity viewer? He is sure to win the furies away from SL!
I think us bloggers should all add the 3Di app to one of our pages while it’s free and hold weekly meetings at set times to, you know, slag off Linden Labs and generally natter about the Metaverse, the meaning of life and anything else that takes our fancy. We could put the week in focus and invite people who read out blogs to drop in and heckle us *laughs*
Well, I mean, the folks at 3Di are calling it a virtual viewer for bloggers.
Gaga
1 Sep 12 at 6:16 pm
Looking around Cloud Party, there seem to be a few people with private islands who were once artists in Second Life.
Looking at profiles, I noticed one of my neighbours is a Facebook game enthusiast, but another has an academic SL background.
There really seems to be a general drift away from SL.
keith selmes
2 Sep 12 at 7:58 am
I think it has to do with word-of-mouth, Keith. Someone gives something a try, like Cloud Party, they have a good time, chat about it for the next few days (and never really stops), others hear about the good time, give it a try and so on. People are hearing about and trying other virtual worlds. And they are talking about it.
Sarge Misfit
2 Sep 12 at 9:53 am
Only 1 reason behind all this!
Path finding and navmesh roll out that made a lot quit due to exclusive lag and lots of nasty bugs being revealed!
Sad, cause now, Sl is becoming really more stable and starts to make sense being there again!
Happy for once to be premium, got some lovely small (73prim) abandoned mainland in Satori continent, just on road 8!
And really sad, cause mainland is where LL should be making all the efforts, it is a wonder to rezz a bike, hit the roads, do more then 40 cross sims till found a amazing airport, rezzing a big jet there, fly it for more then 60 sims and land near our Blake sea home, then rezz a boat and be there!
How many can say that they can do this without a crash or a tlp needed?
If LL put a true effort on solving the cross sims and lag, optimizing mainland, creating more open areas to connect more then Satori, Nautilius, Corsica, Gaeta and the blake sea (When will be a sea route from Sansara to those or to Zindra?), users would still be in World, not on private sims, but on where it counts really, Mainland!
But LL decided to roll out path finder, navmesh and screw 2 much in 2 short time, so now that things are really improving, 2 many left already and many more will follow, cause Homesteads are really bad now, see the countless Jira’s open about so many problems and being utterly ignored!
I have no doubt now that waht was said here is the simple truth, LL is not caring anymore with its main asset, its user base!
And its so sad, as when one decides to make the big move to a viewer that works (latest tpv based on latest dev code) all the hidden beauty and treasures of Sl are revealed!
ZZ Bottom
3 Sep 12 at 8:56 am
I’d guess it was educators too, all the colleges and unis who prepaid to receive the discount for two more years are now coming up for renewal and we’ll be dropping sims just like everyone else.
No one really cared when they eliminated the 50% discount for edu and non-profit users, in fact lots of people celebrated it, said everyone should pay the same. Well, my guess is, the impact of that decision will be coming in the next 4-6 months as you see all those projects actually finally leave SL.
Fleep Tuque
3 Sep 12 at 12:01 pm
Well LL is in need of a new Ceo, that is a fact if Rod does not rectify this before its to late!
ZZ Bottom
3 Sep 12 at 1:30 pm
thanks Fleep – i did not realise the ed discounts were expiring now (i thought they already had) – that certainly has an impact
i think the economy in general is a large factor (maybe even more than LL themselves) =p
those are great reasons to be inSL – vehicles and being able to find places where you can fly, drive, or boat for dozens and dozens of sims
one of my fave things to do inSL was to fly helicopters =)
Ener Hax
3 Sep 12 at 6:34 pm
Two things:
1. Linden Lab – no s.
(sorry, it bugged me)
2. Paying a crapload in tier with monthly choke hold? Might I interest you in $35mo all you can eat playtime, 20 expandable regions, CEO & Dev who actually care, and lots more awesome people these days? Kitely.com
okay 3:
3. LL losing more and ignoring their base? hahahah…writing’s on the wall.
Virtual Clover
4 Sep 12 at 3:59 am
yep Virtual Clover, writing on the wall and far too expensive – i mean who has $295 (plus VAT) to just do an online social thing?
it’s too hard to try to make money inSL (well, it was for me anyway) and just too expensive for a hobby!
Ener Hax
4 Sep 12 at 7:40 am
Many (much more then we realize) really make some sort of small profit with Sl that helps in their Rl income!
LL already show no care for education, for sure nor for Users that have a smaller benefict of using second life economy!
AS i consider SL a tool that is for the good of All, i really wish that it’s owners has a mentality of goodwill instead of squeezing the juices!
I can only hope that Sl user base that depends so much, will have the strength to endure and still be on it!
Or that kitely, Inworldz or any other commercial grid will offer the same at much less costs and the ones that fear open sims or other closed grids, start noticing that they can made a better income there!
ZZ Bottom
4 Sep 12 at 8:56 am
Just my own point of view: (note: I’m 6 yrs older than my rez date.)
Pretty simple:
CEO came from gaming community.
Now we have nav-mesh so combat bots can be added. (think First Person Shooter,FPS).
SL is empty compared to what it use to be. Content is KING so add bots to make it LOOK/FEEL more alive << i.e new type of content.
New CEOs slant is win/win for SL. Unfortunately, he doesn't have a clue about the "CORE" people who made SL work.
So (future SL) A place where you can "make your own game" replacing real people with bots. (just look how popular Counter-Strike is/was.)
What a joke… << most A.I. navigation systems use 30-40% of the processing power of the game server. If you add enough bots to make having bots around, interesting, you get a 30-40% degredation of your sim. WONDERFUL FUTURE!….unless of course you upgrade ALL of your servers to handle the load. Do you think SL will DO that? LOL.
Be well and safe.
Carious Lordhunter
14 Dec 12 at 1:24 pm
yas ZZ, there are many that do depend on income from Sl but LL doesn’t seem to want to help them
OpenSim isn’t yet there as far as tight permissions go but will eventually get there with HG but when is the question
accurate perspective Carious and i think you summed it up very well – those core people, the ones that built so much content and very cool places to visit just are not getting the support they need from LL. less lag, maybe increasing the prims per sim, anything like that which could help fan the fire that SL once had
SL was THE place six years ago and anything seemed possible
LL simply has not dome much to help loyal customers hold on to their success and it’s all withering on the vine, which is a shame since LL is the one that created all this very cool technology =(
Ener Hax
15 Dec 12 at 3:55 pm