Tyche didn’t do this – Page 4

July 21, 2013

Private Sims Drop Below 20,000 Mark

Whereas at one point in time, private regions dipping below the 20,000 mark looked inevitable, when it actually came to private regions dipping below the 20,000 mark, boy did they make a fight of it.

Last week’s loss of 20 private regions left them teetering on the brink at 20,006, but signs of a fight were on the cards then and this week, they fought like mad, by Thursday they had increased by 2, standing at 20,008, a day later on Friday another 5 had been added and private regions stood at 20,013. They had a bit of a swagger about them at this stage and were ready to collect on bets made that they would sink below thr 20k mark this week.

However they were dealt a body blow yesterday when they dropped to 20K, they were against the ropes, wobbling around the ring, the referee took a good long hard look to ensure they weren’t taking too much damage and then, today, they were hit with an uppercut as the scores on the doors from Tyche Shepherd revealed a weekly net loss of 9 private regions, meaning they now stand at 19,997.

This means they stand at their lowest level since June 28th 2008. However are there any positives from this, well there might be.

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July 15, 2013July 16, 2013

Private Regions Tread Water Just Above The 20,000 Mark

Like a plucky last wicket stand by Australian batsmen at the first ashes test, Private sims are desperately clinging on to their status above the 20,000 mark, with the latest Tyche Shepherd survey revealing there are 20,006 private sims on the grid.

Like the plucky last wicket stand, resistance to going below the 20,000 barrier would appear to be somewhat futile. the amount of private sims on the grid will dip below the 20,000 mark soon. However a couple of weeks ago, on June 30th, Tyche was reporting that private sims had descreased by 4.6% for the year, with a loss of 959 sims, which at that point left 20,033 private sims on the grid. However by the same time last year there had been a decline for the year of 5.2%, 1,230 sims, so the rate of decline is slowing although it shows no signs of stopping.

The tier remains too high and slashing tier would probably halt the decline, but that would hit revenue for Linden Lab. There are other underlying factors behind the decline.The reasons for the decline are not just due to the costs of tier or even the change in dynamics brought about by the rise of the Marketplace.

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July 6, 2013

Tyche Shepherd’s Awesome Mainland Census June 2013

All graphs/charts in the blog post are reproduced with the kind permission of Tyche Shepherd, they remain the copyright of Tyche Shepherd and should not be reproduced without Tyche’s permission.

Tyche “Statto” Shepherd’s mainland census for June 2013 is out, it can be read here at SLUniverse. This does not make pretty reading unfortunately and whereas it’s far from fatal, it does appear that mainland is wounded, far more than I realised. Some key points to take in when compared to the March 2013 Census:

Overall number of parcels down 2.2%.
Total number of Owners down 2.8%.
Individual Owners down 3.0%.
Total number of land holding groups down 1.6%.
Abandoned land up from 11.7% to 12.6% to a new record high of 13.4% to 14.2%.
Governor Linden owned land up 1.6%.
All Linden land holdings up 1.5% to 49%.
Land for sale down 35.8%.

The extremely worrying figures relate to the increased Linden Lab holdings, which at 49% amont to nearly half of all mainland, the increase in abandonded land and the significant drop in land for sale. Tyche reports that land is being abandoned faster than it is being sold and the fact that land prices are basically rock bottom explains why people would rather abandon that wait to sell, but even then, land at rock bottom prices simply isn’t moving.

An Image Should Be Here — Abandoned Land

Now if you squint and look at the above graph from a funny angle, you’ll be able to see how it represents an ongoing increase of abandoned land. Alternatively you can go to the SLUniverse link and look at the graph properly, all graphs will follow this pattern because I can’t squeeze them in nicely, but trust me, this bar chart shows an increase in abandoned land and it’s quite staggering. The increase of abandoned land over the last quarter is the the equivalent of 108 to 115 full regions.

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May 7, 2013

Tyche Shepherd’s Private Estate Survey For April 2013

Tyche “Statto” Shepherd has some really interesting reports going around right now and I think I’m going to have to poke her about using some of them, but the results of her private estate survey for April are in. As usual I won’t report all the findings, you can find them in the link. There isn’t anything eye catching in terms of changes in land holdings this month, the grid has shrunk and at a faster rate than in March but one interesting point to note is the change in class of Servers, there has been a leap, a rather significant one, in class 8 hardware.

Now remember this is a survey, not a census, so there are margins of error.

The key points I will highlight for this survey are:

Private Regions down 158 regions (0.8% since last month)
Total private regions now stand at 20,324
Estimated monthly tier income – US$4,091,000 +/- US$51,000 (Down around $45,000 or 1.1% on last month).
Top 20 landowners own 38.3% of private regions (Up 0.8% on last month).
Top 20 landowners pay 30.7% of private region tier (Up 0.4% on last month).

Nothing earth shattering in these figures, although the decline in private regions was higher during April at 0.8%, when compare to March where it was 0.3%.

Whereas the top 20 landowners holdings are up slightly, the Top 10 are down slightly, very slightly at 0.1%.

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April 1, 2013April 1, 2013

Private Sims Show Growth For First Time Since June 2012

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.

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