What if you woke up tomorrow, and SL had vanished?

[Kimmi Zehetbauer]

Another one is waking up and finding out SL went mobile only.  That happened on another game I played recently. I'm one of 19 that don't have a smart phone.

[Conifer Dada]

I belong to OpenSim and I also have an OpenSim standalone of 4 regions.  My avatar now looks the same across SL, OS and OS standalone, since I created my own skin, shape and some of my hairstyles.  This one of the reasons I still use a system avatar.  OpenSim is indeed rather empty and reminds a bit of the  SL Beta Grid.  My standalone is good for creating an environment and testing things but it's not a social experience.

If SL disappeared overnight I might use OpenSim more, but it depends what happens there.  I guess quite a lot of ex-SL people would go there, so it wouldn't be so empty.  I would probably spend a lot less time in virtual worlds because anything else would be second best to SL at most, unless someone brings out a super new virtual world that is better than SL, that is.  But nobody's managed that yet.  Sansar has great graphics but it's still really a test platform that's interesting to look at but not a place to live your 'second life'.

[LittleStarDrop]

I'd go play another game and hopefully still keep in touch with those on SL who I grew close enough to give my outside contact information to. 

There'd be no need to be sad over it. Just keep moving.

[Love Zhaoying]

I’d save US$170/month.

[Arielle Popstar]

On 8/5/2019 at 1:59 AM, Fritigern Gothly said:

Personally, I think I would try and find an OpenSim grid which will be popular amongst content creators, and where creators have found a refuge after the future closure of SL. I can't imagine wanting to be in any other type of virtual world. SL/OpenSim offers so much to creators and residents, I have not seen anything similar anywhere else.

To me S/L is like a trip to the big city but I am mostly a resident of a couple of Opensim grids as well my own self-hosted one. S/L is a nice place to visit but I couldn't afford to live here in the style I am accustomed to. I would certainly miss it for the groups i am involved with but then would put more focus on trying to duplicate that in Opensim.

I've never found it difficult to find people or friends in Opensim and have quite a few more then I do in S/L but I suppose being a long term resident there helps in knowing where and how to look. Myself I shy away from the more commercial types of Grids in Opensim as i find the populaces of them aren't as easy going and relaxed as ones like Osgrid or HGluv. Perhaps their economies and creative content put them on more of an edge in trying to protect it resulting in more kicks and bans if one inadvertently has picked up an item that may not have the right pedigree. Don't need that stress especially considering the last few years has seen Opensim in general being used as a dumping ground for all kinds of content from unknown sources and creators.

[Maitimo]

I would migrate to whichever Opensim the bulk of the content-creators go. It would probably also give me the push I need to start making mesh  because a lot of what I need to make my avatar the way I want it would have to be custom-made.

Edited August 6, 2019 by Matty Luminos

[Alyona Su]

I would demand a proactive refund on my Premium subscriptions then just dust off my many characters at Star Trek Online and Neverwinter and keep myself entertained after a quick shrug. Because Lifetime Subscription to Star Trek Online was the bestest investment for my entertainment EVAR!

Edited August 6, 2019 by Alyona Su

[Selene Gregoire]

I left for almost 5 years (end of 2013). It wouldn't be much of a stretch to make that permanent.

[Selene Gregoire]

1 hour ago, Alyona Su said:

I would demand a proactive refund on my Premium subscriptions then just dust off my many characters at Star Trek Online and Neverwinter and keep myself entertained after a quick shrug. Because Lifetime Subscription to Star Trek Online was the bestest investment for my entertainment EVAR!

Such a good bargain at the time I paid for 2 STO lifetimes. That's a fairly hefty chunk of credits building up. \o/

[Alyona Su]

3 minutes ago, Selene Gregoire said:

Such a good bargain at the time I paid for 2 STO lifetimes. That's a fairly hefty chunk of credits building up. \o/

Hahaha! YESSS! I got it just after beta period, so it's paid for itself a long time ago. and while I play in SL those Zen Dollars keep piling up every week so... free new spaceships and stuffs all the time! I wanted to do lifetime for Neverwinter, but they are all about free-to-play from the beginning, so not available. 😕  

And I am NOT talking about competing service to SL so there! 😛
~Ducks before someone bops her on the head for talking about other online places to spend time and money~ 

[rasterscan]

On 8/5/2019 at 6:31 PM, animats said:

I worry that LL will dig itself into a debt hole with the Sansar money drain and go bankrupt. SL is profitable, but Sansar generates zero revenue and is draining substantial development resources.

(LL is funding Sansar from their own revenue, and, perhaps, debt. Their last external equity round was in 2006, according to Crunchbase.)

Ouchies. Anyway I'd go to opensim to wean myself off loosing sl, slowly. I don't like opensim, after I tried it and saw the jaw dropping amount of content theft from sl there, but loosing sl 'cold turkey' would be bad for my state of mind, (scripting and building withdrawl ), and opensims the closest alternative I know of.

As for Sansar I cannot understand why so much resource would be poured into it. Maybe it will take off in popularity in 3 / 5 / 10 years time, but the suggested drain on resources cannot go on for that long. Can it ?  Cheers all and long live SL !

Edited August 6, 2019 by rasterscan

[Seicher Rae]

I've come and gone out of SL quite a bit in my ten years. I don't use it as much as I used to. My circle of friends here is no more,  and so it is lonely out there. All that said, if SL were to disappear I would be heart broken. It is my fall back place. I enjoy the photography and exploring, and I would miss that. I'm in a situation where I can't make up the deficit in RL, so I would have a hole in my life. I've tried Sansar, a while back, and it was kind of interesting but mostly meh and too sterile, and I haven't been back since (although I know they have been making improvements all along). I suppose I'd try it again in the event of SL's demise. Life would carry on, but I would miss the heck out of it.

[Coffee Pancake]

6 hours ago, Matty Luminos said:

I would migrate to whichever Opensim the bulk of the content-creators go. It would probably also give me the push I need to start making mesh  because a lot of what I need to make my avatar the way I want it would have to be custom-made.

No. You wouldn't.

If SL dies. Opensim is a smoldering crater minutes later as we DDOS their servers.

They do not have the slack infrastructure to take us all, or even a tiny fractions of us, or the SL landmass. 

It is unlikely that Opensim scales anything like as well as SL does (like SL scales well or anything!)

The work required to make Opensim viable would take months, massive cash injections, and it would be dead/hammered into the floor the whole time.

Meanwhile you and everyone else will move on to a new game and make hundreds of "SL Exiles" guilds, discords and whatnot.

Edited August 6, 2019 by CoffeeDujour

[Arielle Popstar]

That's only if one tries to jam everyone into one grid. Opensim is not one grid. The Hypergrid allows multiple grids to be tied together.

Edited August 6, 2019 by Arielle Popstar

[Fritigern Gothly]

36 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

That's only if one tries to jam everyone into one grid. Opensim is not one grid. The Hypergrid allows multiple grids to be tied together.

Not to mention that it doesn't take a computer wiz to run OpenSim on your own computer if you can't or don't want to fork over the money to get your regions hosted on professional servers. From there, you can optionally connect your own region(s) to most other grids (OSgrid is one such grid), or use hypergrid to teleport from one grid to another.

There are grids that specialise in a single theme, and there are large grids and small grids. Grids where they have their own currency (attractive for content creators that would like to see some financial appreciation of their efforts) and there are grids where everything is free (attractive to many users, especially the ones that don't have much money).

To those that may be confused by the terminology, OpenSim is just the software to run your own regions on a computer or server. It is the tool to create different grids with.
If SL were to suddenly go poof, I would expect OpenSim to see a dramatic increase of its user base. Nearly all content (some mesh items excepted and perhaps a script or two) will work unmodified in OpenSim. It is possible to have a currency in OpenSim so that the residents can spend some RL money. 

The biggest problem IMO is that it will take some time for creators and users to reconnect after they get scattered due to a catastrophic event at LL which causes SL to be gone.

[Coffee Pancake]

No. Really. Not a rats chance....

Even with all the grids and all the hyper, Opensim is not an SL life raft. 

The region software does not scale. The grid infrastructure does not scale. Even account sign up does not scale.

None of it scales anything close to SL concurrency, none of it has been tested with more than a couple of hundred users.

All of us hammering and trying to make it work will make sure it's dead, stays dead, and not even money and more servers can make it work worth using.

[otagatico]

If that happens, I will go back to runescape hunting some chickens.

[kali Wylder]

I'd find something else.  Don't know what it would be, but I'd go looking for it and I'd find it.  I have RL links to many of my SL friends so I would continue to be in touch with them.

Not that I wouldn't be real sad, mind you.  I'm very fond of my virtual life and I would miss it terribly until I found the something else.

[Madelaine McMasters]

I started online in 1986/7 with the Milwaukee Computer Club's BBS. It eventually vanished.
I moved to The Well. It eventually vanished.
I moved to the Usenet. It eventually vanished.
I moved to IRC. It eventually vanished.
I moved to Yahoo Messenger. It eventually vanished.
I inhabited, at one time or another, quite a few technical forums. Most of them vanished.
Now I'm here.

I use "vanished" loosely, as some of those venues are still around, but sparsely populated. SL will not fade like low overhead systems such as IRC that can be hosted on a single computer. When the finances finally roll over, I think SL will... vanish. When that happens, I'll move somewhere else.

[Erwin Solo]

Quote

What if you woke up tomorrow, and SL had vanished?

I'd have to log on to Sansar again. 

[VanillaLovelace]

I would trust the economic mechanisms: If SL may vanish in future, there will be already several other startups in pole position to fill the hole and they maybe will attract us with some new ideas and advanced technology. 

[Arielle Popstar]

1 hour ago, CoffeeDujour said:

 

None of it scales anything close to SL concurrency, none of it has been tested with more than a couple of hundred users.

It doesn't need to scale to SL concurrency individually. As an example, Outworldz which is a popular grid software package, already reports 3700 listed grids which would each only need to be home to 10 people each to equal or surpass SL concurrency. That doesn't even include  the more well known grids that are already home to thousands of accounts and hundreds of current active users. 

Having said that, I doubt it would ever be needed as I'm confident SL will be around for a while yet, but Opensim could technically easily scale to accommodate everyone because it scales by IP address, not grid servers.

[Fritigern Gothly]

2 hours ago, CoffeeDujour said:

No. Really. Not a rats chance....

Even with all the grids and all the hyper, Opensim is not an SL life raft. 

The region software does not scale. The grid infrastructure does not scale. Even account sign up does not scale.

None of it scales anything close to SL concurrency, none of it has been tested with more than a couple of hundred users.

All of us hammering and trying to make it work will make sure it's dead, stays dead, and not even money and more servers can make it work worth using.

I just love your optimism.

[Stephanie Misfit]

I've left for extended periods of time before, so in a way it would be like that. I would save money, but also probably regret the money I had spent on land.

The biggest thing for me would be concern for friends who rely on SL for their livelihoods.

[Coffee Pancake]

I'm not being pessimistic .. Talk of opensim in the event of SL's demise is like discussing what colour scarves the band on the Titanic should be wearing, perhaps a milky blue to match that giant floating rock.