In her regular weekly report on the state of the nation regarding land mass, Tyche Shepherd has reported that private sims grew by 13 sims during the last week. This is the first time they’ve shown growth since June 2012, a period of 40 weeks of pretty much decline has been reported since then.
The last reported growth came week ending June 24th 2012, when Tyche reported growth of 30 private regions. At that stage we had 22,864 private regions on the grid. This week’s report shows that the growth of private regions now puts private region numbers at 20,482. That’s a loss of 2,382 private regions over the period of 40 weeks since growth was last reported, around 10.4% loss by my calculations.
Whether this is a sign that grid losses are stablising, it’s way too early to tell but the decline in the number of private regions has been slowing in recent weeks, here are the recent changes
- 24th Feb -36
- 3rd March -55
- 10th March -18
- 17th March -6
- 24th March -23
- 31st March +13
Another way to look at this is to compare the last report of each month so far this year:
- January -242
- February -179
- March -89
So there are definitely signs of a downward trend in the number of sims leaving the grid, although those monthly reports can be skewed, for example there are five weekly reports during the March period, as opposed to four in January and February, so not an exact science.
These reports are based on net losses, so it may be that some sims have left the grid and been replaced by others. One thing to look out for is signs of large estates growing, we’ll have to wait for Tyche to produce the stats on one of her private region reports to see that data but if the large estates are growing we can speculate as to why ….. it’s probably not wise to do that though!
This still doesn’t move us away from the tier being too damn high, but it is positive news. Personally I expect more sim losses on the road ahead but I’d expect them to be at a slower rate than we saw during the second half of 2012. That’s what the stats for this year seem to be indicating.
For more statistical goodness from Tyche, visit her gridsurvey website: http://www.gridsurvey.com/