The Alphaville Herald

24 Responses to “Op/Ed: Beginning of the End? Or End of the Beginning?”

1. 

   Bruno Ziskey
   

   Dec 3rd, 2006
   

   If it wasnt for the fact that Lindens keep getting distracted by shiny objects, they might be able to actually fix the problems we have now instead of new developments that will eventually be doomed to cause problems later, and end up being slowly fixed/kicked/dumped at a later time! Fix whats wrong now, and introduce the shiny new virtual features later! Whats the use of these new features if we cant even use them properly! Stop trying to buy us off with new features like…..hey, is that a new server? Ooohh…..its soo shiiinnyy…….
2. 

   Urizenus
   

   Dec 3rd, 2006
   

   Wow Doc, that was a fabulous essay. I could not agree more with this ‘graph:

   >Further development of Second Life will have to be placed in the hands of a properly managed development team with clear cut targets and priorities, namely to stabilize Second Life in the short term while the entire system is rewritten from the ground up in a sensibly structured way. Rather as Apple froze and bug-fixed System 9 while OSX was developed by an independent team who were able to concentrate on that and nothing else.<
3. 

   Dana Strauss
   

   Dec 3rd, 2006
   

   LL is in a nice, comfy position where they don’t have any real competition. None of the MMORPGs ofter the kind of free-form user-created environment that Second Life does, and it’s going to take a lot of work for someone else to make as mature a solution as SL. So who is LL trying to compete with by introducing new features all the time?

   If there are problems that can be traced back to having crummy code out there, what’s stopping them from taking a few months off for even just basic refactoring? It’s not like Warcraft is going to be able to jump in and offer the same experience as SL in the meantime.
4. 

   Inigo Chamerberlin
   

   Dec 3rd, 2006
   

   They aren’t trying to compete with anyone Dana. They aren’t even thinking ‘competition’ – they are thinking ‘cool’, ‘fun’, ‘kudos from my peers’…
   That’s why SL is so fucked up. It’s NOT being developed in anything like the way a normal software product is – SL is being developed like a software toy, or an early beta.
   So all the important stuff, like proper development documentation, structured modular programing, debugging, reliability – that can all be left ’til later – and has been. For FIVE YEARS. And now, sorting the resulting mess out isn’t ‘cool’, or ‘fun’ and the only people who’ll give ‘kudos’ for sorting it out are the users. Who don’t count, because THEY aren’t your peers… After all, you’re so much cooler and smarter than they are, you must be, Philip keeps telling everyone you are.
5. 

   Bob the Tomato
   

   Dec 3rd, 2006
   

   Yet through all this, Torley can still put a positive “yayzerama” spin on it.

   One day, Torley will crack under the strain of trying to be nice, and the fallout isn’t gonna be a pretty sight.

   Bob
6. 

   Prokofy Neva
   

   Dec 3rd, 2006
   

   It’s funny, I find myself disagreeing with this essay, somehow. Some of it resonates, but most of it just seems like that over-the-top hysterical moaning and groaning about SL that oldbies seem to do who can’t kick their SL habits cleanly. They should walk away cold turkey. If you can’t live with it and can’t live without it, then you need to throw it across the room and never look back. I thought Doc *left*? But…she still logs in for Ginko’s? *Ginko’s*????

   I think Doc Nielsen has personally always had a lousy game set-up. She was cranking mightily about her game in the Thompson area, at a time when I, too, had the exact same problems — not even being able to fly to my land in Portage — but then some patch fixed them for me. There’s nothing worse than having a persistent game problem. It has to do with the way packets work and your ISP and your computer — whatever, you can keep trying to fix it and it never aligns — hugely frustrating. 99 percent of people do not log in and find inventory as valuable as a Starax statue missing. My statue is still there — I know it is for teeth-grating to hear people say, “but I dont’ have that” but it helps to keep the whole thing in persspective.

   Despite the persistent and deep problems of a layer of midbies and oldies, SL just keeps on going like the energizer bunny. It has the hugest volume of Lindens sold ever. It has more people logged on for longer periods. They pour in and keep renting and buying and making stuff, even. Some have the problems of those with 15,000 items in their inventory and some deeply laggy properties on bad sims; but most don’t.

   Because I attempt to keep 15,000 things in my inventory after 2 years, I figure I indemnify LL of having to render that mess for me upon every visit. They should cap inventory — maybe charge for it.

   One thing they could do is get rid of the Library. They could put it out in world and you could pick up pieces of it if you need it.
7. 

   Prokofy Neva
   

   Dec 3rd, 2006
   

   Also, regarding the concept of either shutting down SL 1.0 or slowing it way down and throttling it, while the other SL 2.0 is built — I thought one of the Lindens already told us they were “swapping out the plane’s engine in mid-flight.”
8. 

   John Hardy
   

   Dec 3rd, 2006
   

   What these managerial types don’t get is that these systems are really really hard to write and keep running and that no amount of corporate hogwash is going to solve that.

   But whining seems to be the name of the game in SL.
9. 

   Doc Nielsen
   

   Dec 4th, 2006
   

   Hmmm, you really should READ stuff before you comment on it Prok?

   Ginko – yes, I log on to grab my earnings from Ginko. OK, ok, so it’s a Ponzi, right? Well it’s a Ponzi that earns me a very nice return on the bulk of the proceeds of selling off, Tompson, Honawan and a chunk of Portage – plus a lot of other stuff down South you never knew about – alts y’know? And it’s a ‘Ponzi’ that’s somehow managed to run a very long time.

   My Starax ‘statue’? – No, the Orca is an animated and highly detailed object, a ‘working’ killer whale. I also lost an Achilles (which IS a statue), a Pegasus, some Deer and other animals. Plus houses, clothes, etc… And it’s not just me. I know several people who have lost far more important stuff over the last 10 days or so – the latest version of a complex product under development for example. Just because YOU haven’t lost anything, or know anyone who has, it doesn’t mean that ’99 percent of people’ haven’t. And with 15,000 items in your inventory, how can you be SURE you haven’t lost anything?

   The Library… – Oh that’s good! You really DON’T understand SL, do you? ‘The Library’ is ONE folder full of stuff that resides in the asset server cluster. EVERYONE accesses the same library – effectively the Library folder you see in your inventory is a ‘shortcut’ or ‘alias’ – I assume you know enough about computers to recognise those terms? So putting the Library in world wouldn’t make a bit of difference – except make it less accessible and generate rather a lot of congestion wherever it was placed.
   The problem isn’t several hundred thousand ‘copies’ of the Library, because there aren’t any ‘copies’ of the library – it’s several hundred thousand copies of the contents of Yadni’s aptly named Junkyard in the inventories of several hundred thousand freeloaders – many of whom are now inactive.

   ‘the concept of either shutting down SL 1.0 or slowing it way down and throttling it, while the other SL 2.0 is built’?

   WHAT! Who’s article said THAT? Yet again you either didn’t read my article properly, or failed to understand what you did read, or, more likely, as usual, decided to put words that were not uttered into another’s mouth.
   What I said was that ‘SL1′ (nice concept there btw) should be frozen and bug fixed. Meaning that the development of the software should be halted and no further work carried out other than bug fixes to repair all the broken functionality. (This is a technique used in the past by software companies when things have gone horribly wrong and it dawns on the management that a clean start is the only sensible option)
   I then suggested that in the breathing space thus gained a completely independent development team should be engaged to create ‘SL2′ being free from the distraction of trying to keep SL1 creaking along.
   This technique was used most notably recently by Apple who employed third party developers to build OSX while the inhouse development team did a fairly creditable job of freezing and fixing the old Mac OS – which resulted in the fairly decent OS9.2, somewhat to everyone’s surprise. And proving the point that placing a moratorium on new ‘Oooooh – Shiny’ and getting down to the gutty and unpalatable job of fixing bugs and stabilising the software DOES produce results. But ONLY with firm and rational management at the helm.
   As far as throttling SL is concerned – well, the nearest I came to that was saying the free accounts have to stop and they should be given the choice of either paying, or finding another persistent virtual world which offers free access (lots of luck there guys).
   That is simple economic reality. And the only ‘throttling’ of SL that’s happening is right now. MOST of us can estimate just how bad SL is going to be before we log in simply by visiting the home page an noting the numbers logged in. 8k’ish – not bad at all. 12k’ish – lag. TP failure, rezing issues, etc. 17k’ish – welcome to SL, the world’s slowest 3D chatroom.

   There – I hope that repairs the misconceptions you seem to have created in your mind about the content of my article?
   Comment – be it negative or positive – I welcome Prok. What amounts to wilful public misinterpretation I DON’T. Please don’t do it again.
10. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Dec 4th, 2006
    

    Excuse me, but you are full of shit, Doc Nielsen.

    The library resides on one assset server. DUH. We all know that, you don’t hold the item, you get it on demand. But the acts of constantly searching to pull it up, the clutter that it causes people in search of other things when the library things are returned in the way, etc. is certainly a strain on the system. If it isn’t, shoot me. I just thought that it would help search load if the system doesn’t constantly have to turn up what you have in your library, every rock, every grass, along with what you WANT to have. I just think it makes sense to have the library be opt-in. If it doesn’t make sense, load-wise, then shoot me.

    Yes, Ginko is a Ponzi that has run a very long time. I think that’s one of the benefits of synthetic economies, they can make Ponzis work for a very long time, especially with the volatile nature of the Linden, and the dependable dips in value either on Tuesdays or Wednesdays, or whenever there’s a crisis like CopyBot. Those playing the LindEx consistently can clean up if they stay on the ball.

    But I hope we don’t hear you screaming at some point that Ginko lost all your savings. I can’t imagine putting all my proceeds from all my land in Ginko, not becaue Ginko doesn’t perform — it does over and over again and has now for 2 years — but because you should never put all your eggs in one basket.

    I sympathize with inventory loss. I’ve lost entire builds on entire sims, over and over; I’ve lost all kinds of stuff over the years. I’ve learned to stop buying expensive stuff and stop expecting to hold on to it. I sympathize more on behalf of my tenants. And I find in 99 percent of the cases where they say something is lost, they haven’t done two things:

    o clear cache and relog
    o take everything out of lost & found sorted by date, because the Lindens now clumb stuff. So 33 objects might be hidden in one L&F item called “object.

    If you’ve done that already, I find that it helps to bug report it and give the bug report number to a capable Linden who can actually find bugs and find stuff. And I have seen them find things like $15,000 Tringo sets or whatever.

    I’m referring to other articles, including a comment from Uri, that talked about building a separate 2.0 then moving people — not to what you said, which was not quite the same.

    Like most tekkies or tekkie wannabees, you speak in prefabricated platform statements that you regard as absolute truth, and can’t bear to debate your premises, as you hold them as etched into motherboards in acid.

    If nobody could ever question you, you types would never make anything work.

    Yeah, we already grasped your Apple example the first time and I imagine even tekkies looked at it and yawned as not applicable. Because they didn’t have a world with 15,000-20,000 people spending $650,000 US with millions of objects to contend with live and simultaneously while they did this other thing. The circumstances are different.

    Um, urging that the Lindens stop the free accounts and force them to pay IS throttling. You can’t tap-dance your way out of that one, Doc. Don’t be silly. And I think Philip actually makes a fair case for saying that free accounts with no payment info on record are not the drag on the system.

    The tens of thousands who are hardcore players with land, thousands of scripts with all their poseballs and LockTites, their inventories loaded with millions of pieces of bling, their many visiting avatars — these are the people lagging the system. In other words, us, not them. There is a great need to assign some poor class of people the evils of SL. Blaming newbie freebie accounts for SL’s problems is like blaming immigrants for unemployment. Just like immigrants take the jobs nobody wants, for pay nobody would accept, so the free accounts fly around and take the scraps of Second Life. All as a whole, the free new accounts are better for business as they do spend some. A lot of them are merely the alts of oldbies who had to pay $9.95 to get them anyway.

    I don’t have misconceptions. Not at all. I have a different opinion. Try to grasp the difference.

    Your notion that you can actually gage lag by the number of log-ins like 8, 12, 17, etc. is the most fucking *ridiculous* thing I’ve ever seen.

    What I can tell about you is that you are one of those people who sits on their own sim or handful of sims and fumes and fumes and fumes. As I said, you have a bad game, and you are inflicting your keyhole view on the rest of us, and the Herald, which grabs anything that’s negative, understandably, publishes it.

    But I have land spread across 55 sims, so I have to fly around endlessly visiting them all. And in the course of this, I fly around to many more hundreds checking out all kinds of other things. I find some laggy; I find some not. I get rid of things like crashed helicopters; lag goes away. I can’t find lag on others; others inexplicably hum like a Swiss watch though they shouldn’t, given they have 15 avatars on them.

    Lag begins at home. Most people are unable to part with the scripts that cause lag when they own them or do anything to mitigate their own situation.

    I have seen LL lag at 3 a.m when there are 7,000 people on because it has a built in TP problem throughout the game. And I’ve been able to zip around feeling no lag at all when there are 16,000 as there often are, like last night when SL began to work fine after they knocked the kinks out of the latest patch.

    I find the performance when sampled across sims is very much a factor of 1) whether the Lindens are successful with whatever bug thing they’re tackling with that week’s patch or 2) that sim’s deep pre-existing problems.

    I’ve found that certain sims are just always sick — and given that the servers for them swap around all the time, I can only assume that something in the composition of their content is lagging them or there’s something flawed in the copying of their assets somewhere. I’ve long observed this fact of the sick sim, and I can’t account for it except to report that some sims, from the moment they are born puny, just never, ever thrive. They have failure-to-thrive syndrom. The reasons seem to be related to whether they are next to Linden land or void sims or are “edge of the world,” possibly.

    Once the Lindens fix things, you can find most sims working.

    I’m definitely a big critic of LL. But one thing I can’t get on the bandwagon with is this screaming in hysteria about the world about the crash and the hugely bad performance. Why?

    Because it is not my own, or my tenants’ documented behaviour of the system. It’s the documentation of a small percent of demanding and crabby oldbies on a few islands or sims that indeed may be broken but cannot be taken as indicative of the whole.

    In fact what I’m finding, curiously enough, is that some islands seem to perform far worse than mainland sims. I see the Concierge Group fill up with people screaming about everything not working — no rezzing of objects, no tps — where on the mainland, we are rezzing fine. I go out to my own one island — can’t rez a thing. Go back to the mainland eevn to the laggiest of my sims — rezzing works.

    So it’s very much local perception. Because I have hundreds of customers who constantly get in touch with me, trust me, I know what lag and crashing and everything else is about. Most people, especially new people, blame *me* for anything that is wrong with SL.

    Example: when objects stopped rezzing, or when tps stopped working, I instantly had several move-outs with people telling me “Your land won’t let me create” or “Your land is laggy and I can’t teleport”. They go and rent *other* land thinking the problem will stop. This happens all the time so I can use those kinds of complaints as a gage of how SL is doing.

    If I were getting dozens of complaints of the kind you are telling me night after night, I could concede and even amplify your complaints. But I can’t. Most people log on, go to their McMansions, watch their dolphins, screw on their poseballs, watch a movie, and log-off, happy with yet another well spent evening in SL. They aren’t experiencing what you experience. You simply must concede that if you call yourself an intellectual of any type. There are multiple realities in the virtuality of SL — it is not all your perception that is truth.
11. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Dec 4th, 2006
    

    The problem isn’t several hundred thousand ‘copies’ of the Library, because there aren’t any ‘copies’ of the library – it’s several hundred thousand copies of the contents of Yadni’s aptly named Junkyard in the inventories of several hundred thousand freeloaders – many of whom are now inactive.

    New accounts with handfuls of stuff from YadNi’s can’t possibly account for the draw on servers especially if the accounts aren’t live, logged on, and trying to search for and use the junk.

    Existing, long-term, hard-core players are far greaters draws on the assets.

    And again, it’s the SEARCHING that is the lag. Not the presence of the library shortcut. And it won’t cause congestion because most of the stuff in the library is worthless and not accessed.
12. 

    Doc Nielsen
    

    Dec 4th, 2006
    

    That’s BETTER!

    Far more like the Prok we’ve all come to know and love.

    I really don’t mind you saying you think I’m full of shit either The feeling is ENTIRELY mutual you see.

    Laggy sims – yup. Agreed. Back in ‘my day’ finding out what the hell was causing it was near impossible. Only experience, intuition and luck would get the job done, if at all.
    Estate controls now make the job much easier and often removing a couple of easily identified resource hogging scripts does the trick straight away.

    Ginko – hey! I never said I put ALL my SL cash into Ginko, just what I ‘wrote off’ in my mind by investing in SL in the first place – play money if you like. I cashed out the profit over and above that, and I’m still taking profit from Ginko. If it crashed tomorrow it wouldn’t hurt me a bit. And if it does crash, well, it’ll be fun trying to spot it coming and pull out in the nick of time – bit like poker.

    Lindex though, ugh, that IS playing with a crooked dealer with Lawrence holding all those extra aces – no way!

    Bits and pieces here and there we agree on. The rest we can at least agree to disagree about. Like SL being more complex than the Mac OS I don’t think Apple would agree with you, any more than MS would agree with Phil’s recent claim that SL was on par with MS Server. After all, that doesn’t go tits up every time MS updates it!

    I do wish you wouldn’t bring personalities into debates though Prok. It defeats the point and lowers the tone. You can’t possibly know what’s in my head, you don’t know me, because we’ve barely met in world.
    And you certainly don’t know me from RL.

    I like SL – a lot. But because I like it I’m not happy to see it degrade.
    Try and remember back a few years to when we had a detailed landscape, not a jagged mess when viewed from over 60m, when cylinders and spheres rendered as smooth objects – not as obvious polygons.
    Remember when sim crossings were possible? When sailboats used to be able to race from Tompson to Portage, and further? You can’t do that now…

    We have, well I do, I wouldn’t know about you, let’s say, many of us have, far more powerful computers and graphics cards today than we had when we started SL. The SL client/server combination has been ‘updated’ many times from 1.5x to the current software.

    If the development of SL is improving, and we have better hardware, WHY aren’t things in SL improving? Or at least staying much the same?
    WHY do we see a remorseless decrease in performance, both in speed and visual effects?

    That’s the sort of question the most rabid Pro-Linden types can’t answer. Oh, they witter on about my ISP , my hardware

    Thing is, I use several different ISP’s, depending on where I am at any given time. And I have access to several different machines, different OS’, different specs, from state-of-the-art through to mid-range. Desktop, laptop…

    And it doesn’t make much difference, allowing for individual machine specs. The performance drop is pretty much constant, update by update.

    Sorry Prok. It’s fun sometimes to argue. But this is like arguing with the band leader on the Titanic about what tunes to play as the boat goes down…

    Time to get things done. That water looks damn cold to me.
13. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Dec 4th, 2006
    

    Um, there’s no “we”. There’s only you, and your experiences. Perhaps, as a tekkie, you have higher demands than others. I tend to be pretty happy in SL. I don’t have the best set-up by far, I lag, freeze, see grey, and my graphic card, even being the latest, somehow doesn’t do it. But it’s still a marvel for me. Nothing has been so bad so far that it has interfered with my basic, essential enjoyment of Second Life. I think that has to be said. Unlike you, who has dramatically “tiered down” and “left” (but not left), I’m still there, still working hard, still appreciating that there even is a world like this.

    There isn’t any Titanic going down; there’s only YOUR perception of it. If I experienced even 30 percent of what you describe, I’d agree. If my tenants experienced even 10 percent of what you describe, I’d agree. But we don’t.

    We live in a DIFFERENT Second Life.

    And please, stop being so annoying and saying that my insistence that your perspective is just yours, and not a trend, is somehow “personalizing”. You need, in fact, to personalize it more. You need to realize that your experience, your demands, your world, is not mine. Is not ours.

    I’m hardly pro-Linden. I think they have downright evil ideas. But, they turn it on, it runs, more or less. What’s not to like? I guess I always find something to do there, even when I can’t TP or search or anything like that.

    Why are you still here? It seems *being right* is all you have to cling to.
14. 

    Doc Nielsen
    

    Dec 4th, 2006
    

    Ahhh. so, *I’m* wrong because *I*, and others, believe it or not, have the perception that SL is substantially less than perfect?

    *You* on the other hand are right because *you*, and others, are reasonably happy with SL’s current level of performance?

    I see…

    And ‘being right’ is all *I* have to cling to?

    And you’ve never entertained the remote possibility that there’s something a little… odd… about that?
15. 

    Petra Ochs
    

    Dec 4th, 2006
    

    As a newbie who has earned and spent upwards of $L 1000, I do not know what SL was like last month, much less a year ago. I like what I see in SL, and have found about the same amount of wonderful people as scumbags.

    More than that, I find the above discussions, especially by Doc and Prokofy Neva incredibly interesting, with comparisons between upper classes dumping on lower classes while seeking to make them scapegoats for existing problems. In 10+ years of using the internet, I have found nothing that matches this level of social complexity that so mirrors real life.

    This noob is going to ride this ship as long as she can, while doing as much good in-world as possible. Thank you all for providing insights into this new world I have stumbled upon.
16. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Dec 4th, 2006
    

    Well, Doc, it isn’t about me. I have the log-in records to point to on their website. And the dollars spent. They don’t seem significantly diminished. Oh, maybe on one day when it was especially messed up, but overall, it’s moving from glory to glory, Doc.

    Whereas what you have to show for yourself is like 2 1/2 people whining and leaving — but not leaving lol.
17. 

    Nacon
    

    Dec 5th, 2006
    

    Doc: blah blah blah blah
    Prok: blah blah blah blah blah blah!
    Doc: blah blah BLAH!!!
    Prok: blah blah blah blah blah… blah blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah.
    Doc: blah blah? BLAH! blah blah blah blah.
    Prok: Bleh blah blah blah bleh blah blob blah blah. blah blah blah blah. blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
    Doc: blah blah blah blah blah blah BLAGH!
    Prok: blah blah blah blah blah blah.

    I need sleep and… please try not be a noob, ok guys? Jesus.
18. 

    Warren Dwi
    

    Dec 5th, 2006
    

    At the risk of being chewed up and flamed very quickly, I’ve recently come *back* to SL after a 4 month haitus..

    SL was reasonable before I left, its still pretty much the same now that I am back. The only real difference I’ve seen is a change in which sims are shafted with lag.

    Overall, ignoring the new features or screw ups.. its still pretty much the same. For the sake of people who seem to complain one way or another, who’s going to be the first to document things?

    Who has the guts to sit down and get actual figures from debug mode today and compare them with figures a month down the line.. and come out with something thats *not* biased?
19. 

    Nacon
    

    Dec 5th, 2006
    

    welcome back… yeah someone already document it. SL is still going strong while people aren’t going very strong about it…. wait, no, people are piling up on SL with uncontrolled growth rate going on.

    My bad… it’s people and SL are going strong, Linden Labs isn’t.
20. 

    Warren Dwi
    

    Dec 5th, 2006
    

    ^_^ bang on the money.
21. 

    SLLA
    

    Dec 5th, 2006
    

    The SLLA has said this all along – there must be a refurendum by residents on the fee accounts. The situation in untenable.
22. 

    Brian Roop
    

    Dec 5th, 2006
    

    I am rather a newbie, got into SL Oct. 21 and bought into premium membership about ten days later. Everything has been going downhill from there. Maybe it’s all my fault. Maybe I’m the jinx. Maybe I am causing the end of this world. Yikes!
    I’m not at all a techie type, just in this for the fun of it. Since I’ve sunk some rl $ into this entertainment I have a right to complain, I’m the customer and not a very happy one. The LL management style stinks, pure and simple, and I don’t have to be nice about saying so.
23. 

    humanoid
    

    Dec 6th, 2006
    

    I have my doubts as to the harm caused by unpaid users. Most of them never make it beyond the basic avatar customization stage. Bored housewives who log in three or four times and then lose interest are hardly taxing the system.

    Let us assume unpaid users are causing the majority of the problem, though. LL isn’t doing a very good job of encouraging these people to sign up. They lowered the stipend without lowering the subscription prices. They even had the audacity to raise land fees. These actions haven’t done anything good for the paid membership roll.
24. 

    Nacon
    

    Dec 6th, 2006
    

    HAHAHAHA! SLLA, fat chance anyone gonna listen to you about your silly uppermost demand about giving all resident a vote power. Bad idea, you have any idea how many ALTS on SL? you have any idea how many MINORS on MATURE account? How many are on basic accounts and how many people are actually clueless about business and SL itself?

    I don’t have the actual count but… let’s play with math and guessing…

    SL has 1,836,507 accounts. 690,800 accounts was accessed in last 60 days.
    That’s 37% of total accounts.
    Most accounts online to date was around 16,800 accounts.
    That’s 0.9% of total accounts.
    But thoses on other side of the world, sleeping at different hours, most online accounts are 8,000.
    That’s 0.4% of total accounts.

    those are fact, now let’s play guessing.
    Say most people are on SL half of the day. 16.8k count for online has been for a while through the whole day from morning to night. Double that up, that is about 33,600 people, add same result for those who lives on the other side of the world, which mostly around 8k. Double that and it’s 16k adding 33.6k is..
    49,600 people. Now how will I find a guess count of alts? let’s see… there’s 49.6k real people and 690,800 account in last 60 days. Linden Labs has a data on count for the last 7, 14, and 30 days.
    (http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy_stats.php)

    I noticed the count is doubling up as more days go by. So, half of those number is alts and half of newbies trying out SL and then gave up on it.
    So cut 690.8k people in half and you get 345,400 ALTs people.
    So that bring it to 18.8% of Total accounts!
    That’s about 7 or 6 accounts for each real people?

    I know most people that I met have about 2 or 4 accounts and that result I did was kinda close. That’s just me guessing on possibility. You can try finding out on your own but…

    Forget it, SLLA.

Leave a Reply