The Lindens have posted Improved Region Capacity and Access in the forum. They are raising the number of avatars a region can support. Not by a lot, but who can enter and when is changing a lot. I think for events this will be a big deal. If people actually kept up on Second Life development news, I think we would hear screams from the snowflakes.
Once the feature is rolled to ‘your’ region owners and estate manages will be able to enter regardless of the current avatar count. OK, that makes sense to me and shouldn’t have much effect on us non-owner-manager users.