Tyche Shepherd’s last report of the year revealed a distinct slow down in the net number of private region losses during 2013 when compared to 2012. The report also reveals that despite net losses, the overall number of adult rated sims is on the rise. The usual caveats should apply here, just because sim is adult rated it doesn’t mean it’s a den of iniquity. Setting your sim as a rating of adult means that only people who have age verified should be able to visit.
An adult rating also gives a sim owner the greatest flexibility. This is the reason why moderate sims have always been the rating of choice. When LL added adult as a rating, many people still felt moderate was a high enough rating but some have clearly moved to adult. This shouldn’t be taken to mean that adult content or activities in Second Life are on the rise.
The report also shows that Linden Lab have definitely been rolling out newer hardware to support the service, hurrah!
Let’s first take a look at the number of sim losses during 2012 and 2013.
- 2012 Net Private Region Losess – 2865 (12.0%)
- 2013 Net Private Region Losses – 1719 (8.2%)
The overall number of private region losses over the two year period stands at 4584 (19.2%), so down by almost one fifth in two years, which is definitely cause for concern but the fact that losses are slowing down should be welcomed. A point to note here is that these are net losses, so more than 4584 sims have gone, some have been renamed, some have been sold and some have been replaced by new purchases.
Now let’s take a look at maturity ratings. These figures are for the year ending, so year ending 2012, year ending 2013. I should also point out that I haven’t double checked my calculations and figures can make my eyes go funny, so I may have made an error in my calculations. I apologise therefore in advance in case I have made an error, don’t be shy about pointing out errors. I’ve also included tables, which hopefully display properly! Ok on with the show.
Maturity Ratings By Region At End Of Year
| Rating | 2012 | 2013 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adult | 3789 | 4376 | + 587 |
| General | 4036 | 3571 | – 465 |
| Moderate | 20262 | 18300 | – 1962 |
This table is for all regions, Linden owned and estate. As we can see, Adult sims are up by 582 during the course of the year, whilst General and Moderate sims show a decline. This is to be expected as there has been an overall decline but this also means that Adult ratings are now the second most popular rating, whereas at the end of 2012 they were the third most popular maturity rating.
Now I’ve already been over the usual caveats and this does seem to back the theory that sim owners like to give themselves the greatest flexibility with maturity ratings. Therefore as Adult offers the greatest flexibility there’s a good chance that the reason the Adult rating is rising is because when people select a rating for a new venture, they decide to go with the rating that offers the most flexibility.
I have no evidence to back this up of course, but it seems the most likely scenario.
Now let’s split this down by Linden owned sims and Estate owned sims.
Maturity Ratings By Linden Owned Region At End Of Year
| Rating | 2012 | 2013 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adult | 345 | 347 | + 2 |
| General | 1736 | 1622 | – 114 |
| Moderate | 5020 | 5017 | – 3 |
Here we see little change in Adult and Moderate rated sims, a very small increase for Adult and a very small decrease for Moderate. However General rated Linden owned sims show a rather large drop by comparison. I am not sure why that is, maybe they removed some Linden Realms sims.
Maturity Ratings By Estate Owned Region At End Of Year
| Rating | 2012 | 2013 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adult | 3444 | 4029 | + 585 |
| General | 2300 | 1949 | – 351 |
| Moderate | 15242 | 13283 | – 1959 |
The first point to note is that Adult rated Estate owned sims were more popular than General rated sims at the end of 2012. However during 2013 that gap widened. I’m not going over the theories about this again!
Moderate rated sims show a large decline but that falls in line with Moderate being the most popular choice of rating and there have been net losses this year.
Now let’s move on to Class of sims. This is interesting and shows, without any shadow of a doubt, that Linden Lab have been rolling out improved technology during the year as part of their service.
Class Of Sim By Region At End Of Year
| Class | 2012 | 2013 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Class 5 | 10184 | 3546 | – 6638 |
| Class 7 | 14328 | 10514 | – 3814 |
| Class 8 | 2503 | 11261 | + 8758 |
| Class Unknown | 1079 | 938 | – 141 |
Here we can see a significant increase in the number of Class 8 sims along with a significant decrease in the number of Class 5 and Class 7 sims. Class 8 sims now outnumber Class 7 sims, whereas at the end of 2012 Class 8 sims were in the minority.
I’ve included Class Unknown because I don’t know what it means, it may or may not be significant. They may just be sims that Tyche’s survey couldn’t read the class for on that particular day. However for comparison value I thought they were worth including.
Class Of Sim By Linden Owned Region At End Of Year
| Class | 2012 | 2013 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Class 5 | 3757 | 1305 | – 2452 |
| Class 7 | 2304 | 1324 | – 980 |
| Class 8 | 813 | 4214 | + 3401 |
| Class Unknown | 228 | 143 | – 85 |
Now when it comes to Linden Owned regions, we can see a huge increase in the number of class 8 sims. However in terms of ratio values, Linden owned regions still have a significant number of Class 5 sims, so we can see that LL are not hogging all the Class 8 sims for themselves.
Class Of Sim By Estate Owned Region At End Of Year
| Class | 2012 | 2013 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Class 5 | 6427 | 2241 | – 4186 |
| Class 7 | 12024 | 9190 | – 2834 |
| Class 8 | 1690 | 7047 | + 5357 |
| Class Unknown | 851 | 795 | – 56 |
Here we can see that Estate owned regions are definitely getting some Class 8 loving from LL. We can also see the decline in Class 5 and Class 7 sims being applied here too. At the end of last year around 30.6% of Estate owned regions were Class 5 but now that’s down to around 11.6%.
Therefore we can conclusively see Linden Lab are improving the service in terms of server resources.
Overall, of course it’s disappointing to see net region losses continuing, but the slowing down of those losses is encouraging, now let’s see if LL can come up with a plan to slow them down even more.
For more Tyche Shepherd goodness go to http://gridsurvey.com/