The good news is that net private estate losses in Second Life are showing a quite significant slow down. The bad news is that the losses are still too high, as is the damn tier.
As it’s Monday and I’m lazy we’ll go back in time to December 9th 2012. Insert funny whirly time travel music now. On December 9th 2012 Tyche “Statto” Shepherd reported:
“A net loss of 33 regions this week with Private Estates down by 29 and Linden Owned by 4
Total number of Main Grid regions is now 28254 ( 21168 private estates & 7086 Linden owned)
29 new regions were added and 15 returned to the grid, with 78 regions removed (11 were renamed and 2 came and went since last report)
There were no significant Estate changes detected in what was a very quite week. The total net loss in private estates since January 1st this year is now 2689 , a decline of 11.3%”
Now fast forward to December 1st 2013 when Tyche reports:
“A net drop of 16 regions this week with Private estates down by 17 and Linden Owned up by 1
Total number of Main Grid regions is now 26403 ( 19424 private estates & 6979 Linden owned)
32 new regions were added and 8 returned to the grid, with 55 regions removed (14 were renamed and 1 came and went since last report)
Little changes in yet another quiet week , YTD private estate losses now 1568 (7.5%).”
The point Tyche makes about another quiet week is interesting because recent net losses for private estates have been 17, 8, 13 and 30 whereas around this time last year those losses were 56, 25, 56 and 23.
Whereas this is no cause for celebration it does mean that the scores on the doors are more encouraging. There’s no obvious indicator as to why there has been a slow down, one could speculate but speculation is often not useful.
The Tier remains too damn high, it’s stifling for those who want to create experiences rather than sell wares but this has long been the case within Second Life so all that people can do is to try and make it work within the bounds of the fees Linden Lab charge. This is of course a shame but it’s also a reality.
The ideal scenario would be to see growth, but the slow down in net losses is a little bit more encouraging than reading of regular losses above the 3o sim mark each week.
For more Tyche statistical goodness go visit http://gridsurvey.com/ where you’ll find more data, more stats, historical Incident Reports and you can even check out whether anyone has taken photos on your sim and posted them to Snapzilla! All good clean fun.