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Why is SL so empty?


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BobbyGeorge wrote:


Velk Kerang wrote:

The reality is SL is slowly dying and alot of people don't want to admit it

This.

It's indisputable that, compared even to 2013, SL has become a ghost town. Anyone denying this is simply kidding themselves, or not checking in inworld.

I joined in 2010, as part of a university group, and stayed on (as did others on my course) for a full three years, to the point I was quite heavily immersed. I rejoined this year (for nostalgic reasons) and the difference is as stark as SL vs Inworldz was when I left.

Whole regions - not just sims - are depopulated. Businesses have disappeared. I don't mean one or two stores closing, I mean dozens of once-thriving businesses. Even when re-establishing contact with a few groups I was in, I've learned that activities have tailed off and membership has bombed. Sorry to say it, but SL really is on its death bed.

That's basically the same experiance I am having more or less too mate.

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Alwin Alcott wrote:

as always sl is dying... it's going down a bit and we all die....

 

of course it's not a happy face but with this stats
  • Main Grid Regions:
     25, 223
  • Private Estates: 
    18, 098
  • Linden Owned: 
    7, 125 

.... it's not dead!

18098 x  295  = 5338910  a month is pretty alive... add the tiers from mainland ( ok not lots..but still ) ....add also Lindex exploitation and as long WE KEEP COMMING, SL will be alive. It's the negative attitude that kills it...

users still between 30 and 50k or a little more/less depending on time.

Don't see it too black/white. It's been always up and down with places. I am around for 10 years and also in the busiest times stores come and go...clubs come and go....people loosing interest in one will get other places they visit. Nothing changed.

It's not the negative attitude killing. You think I like saying that? I don't. I am just being real about it is all. Ya been in SL 10 years. Then you should know what is killing it is the lack of player base and lack of people willing to invest rl money into virual land anymore now days. Back then it was new and alot of people tried it out. When alot of them realised the take home wasn't going to be what they expected they dropped out. That simple. The people that stay they stay because they enjoy the game. The people motivated purely money are off on the next new venture. Such is life.

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MissOlaOfficial wrote:

Yeah it really is empty and a lot of people are just here for the sex. Just an observation.

Ya you gotta really watch out for those. SL ain't never had a shortage on perv central that's for sure. lol There are actually afew good rp sims out there left though. Your welcome to hit me up ingame if ya like depending on what you and your boyfriend are looking for I might be able to point you guys in the right direction. :)

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One of the sex sims that shut down used to be empty when I started going there three years ago, but since about a year or more it was nearly full all the time, so its not like empty sims are never going to get busy, what suddenly made it popular I dont know, the sex factor was always there but didnt bring in any one before.

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Velk Kerang wrote:


MissOlaOfficial wrote:

Yeah it really is empty and a lot of people are just here for the sex. Just an observation.

Ya you gotta really watch out for those. SL ain't never had a shortage on perv central that's for sure. lol There are actually afew good rp sims out there left though. Your welcome to hit me up ingame if ya like depending on what you and your boyfriend are looking for I might be able to point you guys in the right direction.
:)

Don't knock the kink dollar. We pervs need a place to rez our bondage beds and cages. We need privacy (apart from the exhibitionists!) and that means lots of land. We buy clothes, accessories and costumes by the folder-full - it just wouldn't do turn up to the rubber ball in the same a$$less chaps as last event. Some of us even buy normal clothes for the rest of the week!

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Did you not look at this earlier post: https://community.secondlife.com/t5/General-Discussion-Forum/Why-is-SL-so-empty/m-p/2967187/highlight/true#M215252 ? Maximum daily concurrence in Jan 2013 looks to  have been about 65.000. By  December of that year, after fluctuating to as low as about 55,000, it was right around 60,000. These days it's about 50,000.

Yes, it is declining and unless LL does something useful, such as working on helping new users (or by taking advantage of the massive number of current residents to accomplish the same thing) it will probably continue to decline. But all this talk about how there've been massive losses in population is just so much talk.

The numbers are right there.

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Kelli May wrote:


Velk Kerang wrote:


MissOlaOfficial wrote:

Yeah it really is empty and a lot of people are just here for the sex. Just an observation.

Ya you gotta really watch out for those. SL ain't never had a shortage on perv central that's for sure. lol There are actually afew good rp sims out there left though. Your welcome to hit me up ingame if ya like depending on what you and your boyfriend are looking for I might be able to point you guys in the right direction.
:)

Don't knock the kink dollar. We pervs need a place to rez our bondage beds and cages. We need privacy (apart from the exhibitionists!) and that means lots of land. We buy clothes, accessories and costumes by the folder-full - it just wouldn't do turn up to the rubber ball in the same a$$less chaps as last event. Some of us even buy normal clothes for the rest of the week!

I would never, never knock the kink dollar. lol I am actually refering to the pervs you catch licking the pixel glass window. lol Those dudes have issues. lmao :)

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Dillon Levenque wrote:

Did you not look at this earlier post:
 ? Maximum daily concurrence in Jan 2013 looks to  have been about 65.000. By  December of that year, after fluctuating to as low as about 55,000, it was right around 60,000. These days it's about 50,000.

Yes, it is declining and unless LL does something useful, such as working on helping new users (or by taking advantage of the massive number of current residents to accomplish the same thing) it will probably continue to decline. But all this talk about how there've been massive losses in population is just so much talk.

The numbers are right there.

Ya I saw it and?  I mean they can put any numbers up all day long and that don't mean nothing or garontee it's accurate especially given the amounts of alts the game has. SOE used to try and do that same thing with SWG back in the day to atempt to reflect the NGE wasn't a bombing hudge failure and it didn't make the world servers any less empty when you logged in game. So no I don't put alot of stock in web page stats sorry. lmao :)

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Velk Kerang wrote:


Ya I saw it and?  I mean they can put any numbers up all day long and that don't mean nothing or garontee it's accurate especially given the amounts of alts the game has. SOE used to try and do that same thing with SWG back in the day to atempt to reflect the NGE wasn't a bombing hudge failure and it didn't make the world servers any less empty when you logged in game. So no I don't put alot of stock in web page stats sorry. lmao
:)

Oh well, then. I mean if the SOE used to do that with the SWG to claim the NGE wasn't a hudge failure, than lmao. I mean come on. What was I thinking?

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Dillon Levenque wrote:


Velk Kerang wrote:


Ya I saw it and?  I mean they can put any numbers up all day long and that don't mean nothing or garontee it's accurate especially given the amounts of alts the game has. SOE used to try and do that same thing with SWG back in the day to atempt to reflect the NGE wasn't a bombing hudge failure and it didn't make the world servers any less empty when you logged in game. So no I don't put alot of stock in web page stats sorry. lmao
:)

Oh well, then. I mean if the SOE used to do that with the SWG to claim the NGE wasn't a hudge failure, than lmao. I mean come on. What was I thinking?

I was just explaining why I don't go by that. If ya never played it from day one to end I wouldn't expect you to understand, but imagine LL taking SL and dumbing it down to a point and click without the option to make player created content anymore and expect to succeed and then using web pages stats to say see our player base isn't so bad. lol Many mmo devs have done this in the past. So why would I not be leary of it happening with an mmo that needs to project the image of success in order to gain new player interest in an atempt to increase the buisness transactions conducted with in it? It all boils down to don't believe everything you read. And please don't misunderstand me I don't want SL to fail. I hope it does turn around. And if we are lucky it will. :)

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Sian Kyomoon wrote:

I first came to SL in 2006 and back then everywhere was full, I drifted away from SL for a number of years coming back to it again this year, and the difference is huge , back when I used to come on ,SL was full, in fact it was too full to be honest as lag was a huge problem at popular places and back then internet speeds were much slower, so if you went to a popular place it was probably so laggy to be no go anyway, but most Sims I went into would have a decent number of people, it was rare to teleport to one to find it empty, and the shopping area`s were almost always busy.

 
There are more than twice the sims as from back then. Clubs were new and everyone had them.

Since coming back i`ve noticed SL is in many places empty, there are loads of Sims which seem devoid of anyone, and even shops which I used to visit which were packed are now in the main pretty empty.

 
Yeah, people from around the world use SL.  They might be on a differrent time than you.

I think the main problem is that the number of people online in SL is much lower these days, when i`m normally online around 50,000, where as back in day it was around 400,000. SL has kept growing land, but with a reducing population it just means you are trying to spread to little butter over to much bread, and that leads to many areas which just don`t have any butter and those places that do get some just get a very thin coat.

 
400K?!?! are you on something? 50,000 people is a lot for an online community. How many frineds do you have? Try hanging with them.. visit new places.

I`m not sure there is a solution to the problem, the whole SL model was based upon selling land and growing the population and in the early days it worked fine because people were coming to SL faster than it could grow, but now the reverse is true, more people probably leave than come in or come back, so you have a shrinking population but the SL model still has to grow land, and that in effect counters attracting new blood back into SL as when a newbie arrives and finds so many places deserted they probably turn from a newbie to a never againer.

No it isn't.. SL is based on a community experience. Your world, Your imagination. Remember that? I see and meet new people everyday. Lots of them les than a week old. I give them a notecard with landmarks on it. Helping others helps us as it makes them want to stay. I also send them to my store for the freebies and group gifts. Newbies love free stufff.

 

 

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Why is it so empty? Thats so easy to answer, because people like me who want a 65k Play square to place another British Airways Airport in Blakes Seas, is being asked 800,000L$ .   My real Flight FSX simulator, Mock up of an A320 with addons ground handling  dedicated computer, and software can take me anywhere in  the world seamlessly, for which the whole cockpit and the Saitek controls, Two brand new 24 inch Widescreen monitors came to just over £600. Its mine to keep for ever, its not connected to any DRM its owned  by me alone.

With no one knowing just how long this archaic platform with its old fashioned grids, the same bugs it had in 2007 will actually keep going, It seems Ilogical for anyone to risk putting that much money into something that LL call a game and you have no rights whatsover if it closed tomorow along with your 36,000 inventory Like I have.

 

I now see more and more mega creators and Sim owners left on here since a quick return from 2 years break from it. For the normal general public who just want a 65k mainland to play around on, thats being increasingly impossible for many , because Real Life pressures on wallets have never been as hard as I know, since I joined here in 2007.  In 2009-11, I rented Two adjacent full Sims in blakes Seas for BAA land from a private landlord, which I managed to keep going, until the problem of planes that couldnt make it to my Airport because of the failure of LL to address the crossings of these more and more complex Aircraft meant, most days I never saw one plane, let alone a Queue of traffic waiting to land, hence it was impossible to keep the land without an income.

 

In the end the landlord also couldnt make ends meet, his long term partner who shared the 12 or so Sims he owned, upped and left leaving the one owner with all the maintainence fees to pick up.  LInden Labs being the greedy lords they are, refused to cut him a deal, so instead of LL making any money at all, he had to abandan them all, leaving land still like it was in 2012,now in 2015 still abandoned and LL cant even be bothered to put them up for rent or buy again,  3 years have passed, and they all still empty doing nothing, When I could rent them, if LL put "For rent" at such a such L$ per week.

 

To leave land empty for 3 years and not make them  for sale or rent seems to be a brilliant way of losing customers and income. Lag and problems rezzing items without crashing is not what you expect of software in 2015, even more so if your investing vast amounts of money into expecting the latest mesh Airliner, will do excaclty as you want it to do, and thats to fly from A to B 99% of the time, because thats what is expected of todays technology. 2006 has been and gone, but still inherent bugs and problems with Quicktime player, which is so out of date as a media player, it should be consigned to the Museum. Why not make VLC player the default, and also let us upload at least a minute or two of Sound. capping sound uploads at 10seconds, is proof that this platform is beyond its sell by date, and anyone daft enough to pay 800$ into such a dinosour now needs there head examined.

 

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No Honey your wrong, read the TOS, Linden labs names this as a game only. The L$ has no financial worth at all, It may be a virtual world to us, But for get out clauses, LL only recognises this platform as a Game only, nothing less nothing more, There is no contract with said purchaser  of land bought with real money, if the land was to disapear overnight, you have no legal recourse to any compensation what so ever. despite its so called real life economy its still based on you buying play money which is L$, it has no standing as real currency and never will do.

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But the majority of the Adult areas are so full, you have to queue for a long time, because sims are full.  Adult mainstream areas are where you likely find most avatars at any given time. In the days of the 12 sim NOR combat zones between 2007-2010, The place used to have up to 100 people fighting spread over all those sims. Whats keft of it now ,? go look up NOR and see if you can count 12 sims there now. LL also made a huge error letting the teen grid merge with the adult, meaning, adults who obey the rules put in to keep fair play, by using admins like myself, were not respected by teens, they caused almost all the urban combat sims to close, when once,  there used to be 10 combat areas of up to 6 sims each to fight on. The only ones that remain, because of there strict rules, is Gorean Sims, but even those have changed with only a few people logging into them. Im UK, I hardly see anybody in Second life on in the daytime, its hardly worth logging in, renting anything, it takes anything up to 24 hours to be added to group, because no ones online in  the daytime to add me. if you visit many sims and places to buy or rent, In European time. 80% of the time No one is available to talk to you, discuss terms or even get added to the land group, so you lose a day of your weeks rent straight away.

 

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Nah. Your experience is anecdotal and your claims are false. Since anecdata is neutralising...

I'm also in the UK and don't have these problems. My landlord is based within the UK and is responsive, and although many (most? I haven't counted) of my friends are westward there's always plenty of people to talk to during daylight hours (well, greylight - the UK isn't known for much sunshine).

The merging of the grids didn't cause any new rush of "problem users" - old people just like the convenient excuse of blaming the young. The Teen Grid encompassed, at its highest end, about 350-500 people. Thousands of people join Second Life's main grid each and every day. Assimilating the Teen Grid was a drop in the bucket.

Your experience of combat sims and Adult content in SL is also highly divergent from my own, and, I would expect, many others. Your suggestions that SL should swap from OGG/Vorbis to "VLC Player" is adequately nonsensical as to demonstrate that you don't really understand the tech goin' on.

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Obviously You havent been an Admin or a mentor or a faction leader, because I was in a position where i already had 3 years experience of Combat sims, at the time of the teen grid merging, two couples paid out huge amounts of cash to run two new combat sims, I joined, but was at the time still a leader of  a faction in another land, But I was getting lots of group chat from one of the new sims, I went to have a look, and it was chaos, The owners had to stop the meter system 4-5 times a day because of problem teens.

A few days later, I spoke direrectly to the owners, who tearfully said they just couldnt cope any more, despite it being open only 4 weeks, just around the same time teen grid was merged. sadly it was impossible for them to keep order and it fair for decent players and they had to abandan the whole project which cost them about 60,000L$. it only takes 500 kids to ruin, grief many many popular sims, and I think your like a Tory, completely out of touch with the real world, "in world"!

 

I dont see why the universal VLC player cant be used instead of outdated 32 bit Quicktime. There isnt even a 64bit version for windows 7 , even though 7 has been out a long time, without 64 bit quicktime, 64 bit computers like mine can not play video or parcel music in a lot of locations. Instead of making stupid remarks, perhaps you should put foreward your ideal media player and how to deal with unruly teens because they pose a real threat to people who want to run decent sims for decent people, but they no longer feel its worth the hassle. In the old days of busy combat sims, i would do a 6 hour stint as an Admin and having to sort out rule breakers & cheats and give out appropiate fair docks or 7 day bans.

 

I dont mind critisism, but not when its not backed up by likes of you who think I have a beef with youngsters , I dont, I used to teach REAL youngsters In a special school teaching them how to write and spell simple words, after they left school illiterate. My understanding of the Tech is fine, otherwise I wouldnt be producing my own video scenes using Loili game recording software, plus, I have my own production team, who look after set design and more, the only way for us to use any sort of media on 64 bit singularity  was to buy into Demios Tv, which works quite differently from normal media, and allows one to upload your own videos or musuc videos via the demios Website, but this cost us dear, around 7000L$ to buy all the pieces necessary to produce HD quality uploads we made to 007 facebook groups.  I dont agree that "Thousands of people join Second life each day", its the other way round "Thousands leave every day leaving vast swathes of areas like Blakes seas empty with countless yellow for sale places.  You Just dont want to admit its "sell by date has long gone my friend."

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Michaelatv Destiny wrote:

Obviously You
havent
been an Admin or a mentor or a faction leader, because I was in a position where i already had 3 years experience of Combat sims, at the time of the teen grid merging, two couples paid out huge amounts of cash to run two new combat sims, I joined, but was at the time still a leader of  a faction in another land, But I was getting lots of group chat from one of the new sims, I went to have a look, and it was chaos, The owners had to stop the meter system 4-5 times a day because of problem teens.

Why didn't they just make the land M or A? Seems like a simple fix to me.

A few days later, I spoke
direrectly
to the owners, who tearfully said they just
couldnt
cope any more, despite it being open only 4 weeks, just around the same time teen grid was merged. sadly it was impossible for them to keep order and it fair for decent players and they had to
abandan
the whole project which cost them about 60,000L$. it only takes 500 kids to ruin, grief many many popular sims, and I think your like a Tory, completely out of touch with the real world, "in world"!

 
Yo really are out of touch with SL and have really big blinders on. The teens never griefed sims en masse. 

I
dont
see why the universal VLC player cant be used instead of outdated 32 bit Quicktime. There
isnt
even a 64bit version for windows 7 , even though 7 has been out a long time, without 64 bit quicktime, 64 bit computers like mine can not play video or parcel music in a lot of locations. Instead of making stupid remarks, perhaps you should put
foreward
your ideal media player and how to deal with unruly teens because they pose a real threat to people who want to run decent sims for decent people, but they no longer feel its worth the hassle. In the old days of busy combat sims, i would do a 6 hour stint as an Admin and having to sort out rule breakers & cheats and give out appropiate fair docks or 7 day bans.

 
Not sure where you get your info but i have a 64 bit Win7 system and run a 64 bit viewer and never have an issue with video or music.

I
dont
mind
critisism
, but not when its not backed up by likes of you who think I have a beef with youngsters , I
dont
, I used to teach REAL youngsters In a special school teaching them how to write and spell simple words, after they left school
illiterate. My understanding of the Tech is fine, otherwise I
wouldnt
be producing my own video scenes using Loili game recording software, plus, I have my own production team, who look after set design and more, the only way for us to use any sort of media on 64 bit singularity  was to buy into Demios Tv, which works quite differently from normal media, and allows one to upload your own videos or
musuc
videos via the demios Website, but this cost us dear, around 7000L$ to buy all the pieces necessary to produce HD quality uploads we made to 007 facebook groups.  I dont agree that "Thousands of people join Second life each day", its the other way round "Thousands leave every day leaving vast swathes of areas like Blakes seas empty with countless yellow for sale places.  You Just dont want to admit its "sell by date has long gone my friend."

You obviously are a huge spreader of FUD. If things are so bad, why stay?

You know.. for someone who claims to have taught children spelling, you have a lot of mistakes.

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Michaelatv Destiny wrote:

But the majority of the Adult areas are so full, you have to queue for a long time, because sims are full.  Adult mainstream areas are where you likely find most avatars at any given time. In the days of the 12 sim NOR combat zones between 2007-2010, The place used to have up to 100 people fighting spread over all those sims. Whats keft of it now ,? go look up NOR and see if you can count 12 sims there now. LL also made a huge error letting the teen grid merge with the adult, meaning, adults who obey the rules put in to keep fair play, by using
admins like myself, were not respected by teens
, they caused almost all the urban combat sims to close, when once,  there used to be 10 combat areas of up to 6 sims each to fight on. The only ones that remain, because of there strict rules, is Gorean Sims, but even those have changed with only a few people logging into them. Im UK, I hardly see anybody in Second life on in the daytime, its hardly worth logging in, renting anything, it takes anything up to 24 hours to be added to group, because no ones online in  the daytime to add me. if you visit many sims and places to buy or rent, In European time. 80% of the time No one is available to talk to you, discuss terms or even get added to the land group, so you lose a day of your weeks rent straight away.

 

Maybe they didn't respect you because you couldn't figure how to click on the checkbox that says "Allow access only to Residents who are age 18 or older."

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Most of this anecdotal response ranks below my interest level, suffice to say that multimedia production is a long long long long way from managing a persistant online service populated almost entirely by user-generated content. I've been an integral part of both combat and roleplay locations in Second Life for years, since at least 2008. People have been poorly managing sims for as long as SL has been a thing, is no big news.

You can see the numbers of people joining SL each day here. That many of them don't log in a second time is well publicised, but doesn't change the numbers coming in.

64-bit devices can emulate x86 or 32-bit software and have been able to since their inception, not having a 64-bit QT player is not a hinderance to you seeing media in SL. I run 64-bit and watch media in-world regularly, like others are also reporting.

Also this:-


Michaelatv Destiny wrote:

I think your like a Tory, completely out of touch with the real world, "in world"!

...is just about funny enough to consider framing. Thanks.

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Because, when LL first broke the news that it was going to be switching over to a brand new SL, eventually leaving this one behind, most land owners said, welp, time to pack it up and leave.

Then you had people saying to stick around and support LL, because if a bunch of people left, LL would re-evaluate their stance and say that the current SL version should be trashed with no warning.  My response, what's the point in staying at a place where there is zero activity?  You get bored quick, you see all the other people cutting their losses and just up and leaving.

If I had to do it all over again, I don't think I would have gone back to SL.  A friend told me about it, I joined, a few months later he leaves, I couldn't figure it out so I quit, and then came back to it some time later on, and would stay with SL for a total of about 4 to 5 years.

It's an extremely expensive world to be involved in, and that is why most of the people are leaving.  I've left SL without looking back, but I have no intentions of ever returning.

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I briefly skimmed some replies. When I first joined no matter where I went it had lots of people. Then again so did The Palace if anyone remembers that 2D program. I feel it is simply time that does a program in. Some will move on to new and better things for themselves. Every product has a shelf life. And at this point I think Second Life is simply nearing its end. That end may take up to 4 years or less but it will come soon enough. People talk of SL 2.0 but then fail to read heavily up on it. It is not a SL 2.0 in the least. It is as I said before something to move to for those that choose.

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