Second Life Land Mass is … void?
December 25, 2008 10:25 pm
Due to the OpenSpace issue, near the end of November, Second Life land mass was already shrinking steadily with people converting 4 ‘Voids’ - each counting for 1 simulator/island - into ‘Full Sims’ - also counting for 1 simulator. More recently Raul Crimson redid the numbers and found almost 15% of Second Life’s total land mass as it was before the Openspace pricing & policy change is now gone; the incredible shrinking land. But “Do not panic!” is what Lindens said:
Please be aware that the Islands Added figures are not currently an accurate reflection of short term change and are therefore misleading. This is because of the way in which they are calculated and will tend to cause the figures to look significantly worse than they actually are (either by overcounting in some cases or under counting in others). In addition, the many Openspace conversions will significantly drop the total island count exaggerating the change in numbers. We are looking at changing this page to provide more accurate data soon.
We were already wondering how Lindens would turn this numbers to “the optimistic side” using the Art of Statistics, leaving out the voids converted to either Homestead or 1/4th a full simulator, the openspaces that are abandoned or ordered to be put to sleep by it’s owners. But I guess however they did it, they did it wrong: Miss Tateru over at Massively reports that Linden Lab just between December 22 & 23 Linden Lab has decommissioned more than 23,000 simulators in the space of 24 hours. The economics stats page now shows that “islands added” for the month of December stands at “-24562″ which leaves 0 “islands owned” by the Residents. Better log in and go check if your favourite islands are still there? ;)
Really, Lindens, when gaming the numbers, one normally makes it such that the numbers are positive! Might there be a big red button that says ‘emergency exit: delete all’ that was pressed by accident? Or is this a human error or machine bug? I hope this is NOT ‘the more accurate data’ Lindens are talking about. Regardless, if possible, dear Lindens, please return the numbers to their normal state showing “islands bought - islands dropped = islands added during month” so we can continue panicking over what you’re ‘openspaces pricing & policy change’ has caused. Kthxbye.
14 Responses to “Second Life Land Mass is … void?”
Okay, so the land is shrinking and we don’t know how many of those are being converted to 1 huge sim. But what we also don’t know is how many of those open sims were just water? People who created private homes? Or those who were renting them our for business use.
Nexues, I don’t know how much time you spend in world, but I haven’t been much in-world lately. Yet, I’ve met a lot of people in the past two months that were abandoning voids, stopped renting them, … . Yeah, some get converted, but from personal observation that’s only a minority.
Oh, and the “-24562 islands” is a Linden fail regardless. I’m glad for you that you’re still optimistic. Although I hate to be wrong, for once, I hope you’re right. But err…. .
Would be great if Lindens showed us exact numbers for dec-january:
I don’t think they will, though.
Well I guess that number is completely wrong, updated and it’s not - some five digit number, but - some 4 digit number.
Numbers fixed & Lindens are monitoring:
(End of Month)
(During Month)
Vint,
I shouldn’t worry. Put the numbers down to Xmas excess at LL.
Doubtless Kingdon will order a recount and the numbers will be game….adjusted….the other way in accordance with his AIWISL* policy. We’ll then have Katt post another KLiPP** to confirm this, with an invitation for people to pass comments and be ignored in the official forum…
* AIWISL = “All is well in Second Life” = Mark Kingdon’s unwritten law (based on his posts to the official blog)
* KLiPP = “Katt Linden Pointless Post” - as evidenced in 99% of her waffle posted to the official blog.
And obviously, AIWISL overrides any concerns you and I have; after all, fiction is way more important than the truth.
As an aside, I’ve often felt that rose-tinted glass must sell in huge numbers in the shops around the Linden Research offices….
And yes, there is just a *small* dollop of sarcasm towards LL in the above (excluding the reference to KLiPPs - which *are* a matter of record…).
Quote from Miss Tateru on Plurk:
It’s surprising, really. I thought the Lab was just being *really* efficient for a change.
I applauded the irony, she repeated she was _really_ serious. (And that lindens are way behind on ‘processing’.)
But no, I was serious, Vint. Last I heard they were *way* behind on the processing.
So it will stay ‘looking forward to get good numbers ASAP, until we have, we do it with these, and that means a drop of 14% in private owned land mass compared to end of October.
Yeah,
My comments were aimed more at the fact that once the glitch is corrected, the genuine underlying & continuing downward trend will be hyped into something positive, together with the overall downturn in in-world economics being “good”….
[…] is due to disappear next month, as its creators can’t keep up with the rent. More generally, hundreds of sims are being abandoned, after Linden Labs increased the tier fees and decreased the prim allowance on the class of land […]
Checkout time. Second Life is not a roleplay game, not a flight simulator, not a shooter. Indeed, not much of anything at all. It might have been many things, but is not. The world’s most expensive chat room. Shouldn’t a ‘platform’ have something standing on it?
And now there’ll be even less to stand on. The Princeton Void sims (i.e. AM Radio’s The Quiet; Douglas Story, Desdemona Enfield, Dizzy Banjo & Poid Mahovlich’s DynaFleur; Poid Mahovlich’s Triptych; Juria Yoshikawa’s Liquid Light; and Scope Cleaver, AldoManutio Abruzzo & Poid Mahovlich’s Ludovico’s Lament) are being decommissioned as of Monday.
Posted here: http://primperfectblog.wordpress.com/2008/12/28/crash-and-burn-iii-the-princeton-sims/
Oh, now it says: “Temporarily disabled. We apologize for the inconvenience. ”
Does that translate as “We really, really, really don’t want you to see the numbers on January 5th 2009″?
Vint,
Nah… more a case of “we really, really, really, don’t want you to see that a) we can’t count; b) however we dress things up, overall there is a steady and continued downward trend in…well, just about everything, really and M needs more time to “positive-ise” this for his next work of fiction…errr…..blog post…”
Did some calculations: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zonja/3161289874/
That’s a 15% decrease in two months. No wonder they want to make it up. *sighs*
And if Miss Tateru was right, and they are still behind on processing ‘decommissions” …. .
My estimate was that at the 66% price rise, 5200 voids may disappear before Linden Lab will notice even a single drop in revenue. But of course, due to conversion (-4 voids = 1 full sim), they may now loose more before they feel the hit. Pfff… . The Jira issue has 4102 votes by now (a record?) and still no sign of info on the script limitations. Bah!
Care to comment?