Second Life News 2018 w43

Servers

A roll was made to the main channel Tuesday, #18.10.04.520268. All internal fixes.

The three RC channels and Snack also got updates, #18.10.19.520868 for Blue Steel. Le Tigre and Magnum were not ‘determined’ as to which version they would get. Snack is getting an EEP update, 18.10.19.520844 (?).

vers....

vers….  (Cloudbreak)

There was some mix up in which version of EEP was going out. Some little glitch in operations gave Rider Linden an opportunity to get a newer version of EEP on Snack. So, the 520844 version is probably not the version rolling out. That the region Denby (URL) is running Second Life RC Snack 18.10.20.520891, is a good indication 520891 is the version actually rolled. With the EEP viewer you can see EEP on the main grid.

The fun stuff is still over on the Preview Grid, ADITI. Continue reading

Milestone for Tyche Shepherd

Grid Survey Milestone – You may know that Tyche Shepherd maintains a survey of regions in Second Life. You can find the latest information at GridSurvey.com.

Elina at Burg Adenau 07102018_069

Elina at Burg Adenau 07102018_069

But, the milestone is the update published at SLUniverse, New SL Sims in past week. Daniel Voyager noticed the 100th post in a thread started in 2008.

If you have ever wondered which regions are in a particular RC channel, Tyche provides the best information available. It isn’t a perfect list of RC channels as things change quickly. But, it is the best available.

Daniel Voyager noticed the milestone…

Statistics: Second Life, OpenSim, World of Warcraft

Hypergrid Business keeps many of us up to date on happenings in the OpenSim side of virtual worlds. They currently have an article up on expansion and contraction in the OpenSim worlds: Regions, grids hit new record highs.

Garden Party

Garden Party by Gorba McMahon, on Flickr

It is a good headline. In the first paragraph Maria, author, points out that active users on public grids fell by 909 to 30,000. So, even though I consider Maria a bit of a fan-girl for OpenSim, I consider her reporting accurate enough to give us the good and bad news.  Continue reading

Second Life: Who is Using Which Viewer?

We seldom get stats on how many are using which viewer. But, there is a post over on Gaming World about the Imprudence Viewer and they include the most stats I’ve seen in a long time. Or so I thought. This page just popped up in my reader, but it is dated 2/23/2015… and the data seems to be much older.

It Can Be So Nice

It Can Be So Nice by Mr S. is looking at you, on Flickr

See: Gaming World Imprudence Viewer. (read on before you click) If you are clicking to the page, WARNING: be careful where you click. The page is full of ads and most clicks will speed you to someone’s ad site.  Continue reading

Blog Stats

THE CLOCK TOWER

THE CLOCK TOWER by RAFTWET Jewell, on Flickr

A key to knowing what people are interested in reading about are the search terms people use to find a blog. But, things have been changing. Posted by Worldpress:

UPDATE: In September 2013 Google started to rapidly expand the number of searches that it encrypts, which results in a higher proportion of “Unknown search terms” in your stats.  According to some sources, this expansion will eventually result in encryption of all Google searches.  This is being done for privacy reasons by Google when someone searches at Google.com, before a visitor arrives at your WordPress.com site.  Therefore we don’t have any way to unhide the search terms.  We recognize this means a loss of stats information for you and we will look for other ways to show you how users arrived at your site.

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Second Life 2014 in Review

Writing the annual review is a lot of work and takes time I will be using for RL projects. Ciaran and others have written their reviews of 2014. I’m going to skip mine this year. But, I do have some thoughts on 2014 and the coming 2015.

I have been tracking concurrent user numbers for the past 3 years.

Concurrent Users 2011 to 2014

Concurrent Users 2011 to 2014

There has often been a discussion about whether or not there is a seasonal aspect to the use of Second Life. I think the chart answers that question. It shows most clearly in the peak concurrent users line and a bit less in the minimum line, but it is still there.

Notice that about July-August of each year there is a low point in the numbers. From then to February-March the numbers increase to a peak then start to fall to the February-March low point. It seems pretty consistent from year to year for the last 3 years.  Continue reading

The Dark Metaverse

Daniel's Stats

Daniel’s Stats

That sort of sounds like a title for a science fiction movie… I think this, Dark Metaverse, is a term coined by Maria Korolov of Hypergrid Business in: Estimate: 50,000 regions in ‘dark metaverse’. Daniel Voyager comments in the article and takes the stats a bit farther in: Updated graphs on the size of SL and OpenSim grids 2014.

The idea behind the name, Dark Metaverse, is that there are more virtual worlds out there than we know about. Those not reporting stats are ‘dark’, meaning we can’t see them. We just barely know they exist. As to how many users and how much use they get, we can only speculate.

In Daniel’s article he makes a statement similar in concept to something we often hear; ‘I do hope for growth in Second Life regions this year or next year because that will be good for the Second Life economy as a whole and good in terms of numbers.

While people leasing more regions is good for Linden Lab, I’m not sure that more regions are good for the virtual world; Second Life. The more room residents have to roam in, the less likely they are to meet others. We have the Chun-Yuen Teng’s and Lada A. Adamic’s published paper: Longevity in Second Life to show player retention is very much a factor of how many interactions a player has.

There is probably some balance point at which more regions decrease player retention and below which crowding causes enough unpleasant interactions to decrease retention. I have yet to find that study. So, we can only speculate. I thing we are most likely above the balance point. So, I am not convinced more regions is a good thing for SL’s player retention.  Continue reading

Some Stats 2013-28

On Plurk I noticed Hamlet’s article: New SL User Retention is 20% (Wha?) I mentioned that stat in one of my ‘Rod Interview’ articles. Rod had said of the 400,000 new sign ups to SL each month 20% stay longer than 30 days.

Stats - Do they Work?

Stats – Do they Work?

Hamlet was thinking about that and wondering about the numbers. Hamlet had thought about past numbers and remembered that previous monthly sign ins was in the range of 500,000+. If there are 1,000,000 sign ins per month now and 400,000 of them are new sign ups each month, Then that means SL has only grown to 600,000 over a number of years. How can 20% stay and not drive up the sign in count? That should add 80,000 users per month.

Continue reading