Tyche didn’t do this – Ciaran Laval

May 3, 2016

Linden Lab’s Grandfathered Tier Offer Shows Early Signs Of Promise

On April 4th Linden Lab made an offer many estate owners couldn’t refuse : Want Lower Tier? Now You Can Get Grandfathered Land Rates! The offer, which remains on the table until at least October gave estate owners to permanently lower their tier rates for an upfront fee :

Full Island:

One-time buy-down fee: $600
Grandfathered maintenance fee: $195/month (regularly $295/month)

Homestead:

One-time buy-down fee: $180
Grandfathered maintenance fee: $95/month (regularly $125/month)

So how is this going? Well Tyche “Statto” Shepherd has been on the ball and reveals some of the progress in an awesome Private Estate Survey April 2016. The survey revealed that since the March 2016 survey there had been a net loss of 35 regions (down 0.2%). However when it comes to the new buy down rate, Tyche reveals :

20.8% of Full Regions of all types are now at Buy Down tier rates while 3.8% of Homesteads are now Buy Down, homestead uptake of this offer has been low because most homesteads are already grandfathered (85% of them) .

Overall to date I estimate there are 1960 buy down full regions taken up since announcement and another 302 Homesteads , the margin of error on these estimates is +/- 145 and 117 regions respectively.

As Tyche points out, there were already a high number of Homestead regions with a grandfathered rate, to be honest I’m surprised that 302 have been converted to the new rate. When it comes to full regions, 1960 is quite an impressive figure.

Continue reading “Linden Lab’s Grandfathered Tier Offer Shows Early Signs Of Promise”

April 6, 2016

Tyche Shepherd’s Awesome Private Estate Survey March 2016

Tyche “Statto” Shepherd has published her first private estate survey for over two years and it makes for very interesting reading. Tyche’s last private estate survey was published in November 2013. This survey covers Second Life only.

The methodology for these surveys is, to quote Tyche :

these results are based on a sample of 5000 randomly selected private estate regions designed to estimate full/ Homestead/ Openspace penetration.

So with that said let’s get straight to comparisons.

November 2013

Full Regions : 2,368
Homestead Regions : 2,005
Openspace : 29
Closed to Public : 598

March 2016

Full Regions : 2,266
Homestead Regions : 1,921
Openspace : 21
Closed to Public : 792

Now remember that this is a survey, not a comparison of the overall number of regions, the above comparisons designed to gauge an idea of how the land lies regarding the type of regions in terms of the percentage of the grid they occupy.

November 2013 Accessible Regions (4,402)

Full Regions : 53.8%
Homestead Regions : 45.5%
Openspace : 0.7%

March 2016 Accessible Regions (4,208)

Full Regions : 53.9%
Homestead Regions : 45.6%
Openspace : 0.5%

Tyche comments further on the methodology for this survey :

The Margins of Error are +/-1.30% , +/- 1.29% and +/-0.21% respectively for the three figures figure at the 95% confidence level.

Remember the above is part of a survey, not an overall comparison of the number of regions on the grid. Tyche does comment on the numbers overall in her commentary, but we’ll come to that later.

As we can see from the comparisons, the shape of the grid in terms of the percentage of Full, Homestead and Openspace regions has changed very little in the period between November 2013 and March 2016.

Continue reading “Tyche Shepherd’s Awesome Private Estate Survey March 2016”

November 10, 2015

Second Life May Be Losing Regions But It’s Not In Betamax Territory Yet

“Betamax? Is that still around?” I pondered today as I read news on The Guardian that Sony are going to stop creating Betamax cassettes in March 2016. The main reason that Betamax appears have continued long after many felt it had departed is due to the use of Micro MV cameras, which use Micro MV cassettes in Betamax format. However all good things come to an end and over 40 years after its release and almost thirty years since Betamax lost the video format wars, Betamax finally seems to be going beneath the technical waters.

Which brings us on to Second Life. Daniel Voyager recently reported; Second Life regions drop under the 25, 000 mark. Daniel’s blog post was based on a report by Tyche “Statto” Shepherd over at SLUniverse, where Tyche announced :

Well as I predicted , a milestone of sorts was passed this week as the Grid dipped below 25,000 regions for the first time since June 2008.

The scores on the doors on November 8th were :

24,985 Regions
17,888 private estates
7097 Linden owned

The net loss of private regions for this year stood at 712 on November 8th. However let’s compare this to some previous years to try and get a picture of what’s going on.

11/11/2012 – Total Private Regions 21,334. Year to date loss of 2,523 private regions (-10.58%)
10/11/2013 – Total Private Regions 19,462 . Year to date loss of 1,530 private regions (-7.29%)
09/11/2014 – Total Private Regions 18,735. Year to date loss of 538 private regions (-2.8%)
08/11/2015 – Total Private Regions 17,888. Year to date loss of 712 private regions (-3.8%)

Therefore we can see that this year we’re seeing an increase in the rate of net losses of private regions compared to last year, but the rate of losses is still a lot lower than in 2012 and 2013. Let’s play about with some more figures.

Continue reading “Second Life May Be Losing Regions But It’s Not In Betamax Territory Yet”

January 6, 2015January 6, 2015

Second Life Grid – Rate Of Net Private Region Losses Slows During 2014

2014 was a year when the Second Life grid shrunk in terms of private regions and yet, the number of adult private regions rose. However there were signs of encouragement in terms of the rate of losses during 2014, especially when you compare the rate to 2013 and 2012.

The person to turn to for more information is of course, Tyche “Statto” Shepherd. The big blow for Linden Lab during the year was an expected one, at the end of July, Tyche Shepherd reported :

As slow as this years losses have been it still means that this weeks changes bring Private Estates below 19,000 for the first time since 15th June 2008. Net Private Estate losses for the year to date amount to 285 regions which is a 1.5% loss.

Tyche Shepherd’s grid survey report for the week ending 28/12/14 gives us the chance to look at the figures for the year as a whole and what we see is a very dramatic slow down in the number of net losses in terms of private region losses, during the year as a whole, although there were more net losses in the second half of the year than the first half.

A note on the charts in this post, they are published here due to the kind permission of Tyche Shepherd, they are Tyche’s work so please respect that. We’ll start with a chart showing the big picture .. well it might look small in this post!

Chart Should Be Here — Net Change In Private Estates

Now if you having trouble reading that the scores on the door are a net loss of 673 regions during the course of the year, or 3.5%. At the end of December private regions stood at 18,600. This is still around the levels of June 2008, the reason for this is because June 2008 was a time of unbelievable boom for Second Life, for example Tyche’s report of 8th June 2008 told us that 613 private regions had been added to the grid during that week. At this time Linden Lab were also still able to auction off new mainland sims and were building new mainland continents. Therefore don’t expect the number of private regions to drop to April or early May 2008 levels any time soon.

Ok, back to comparing this year’s private region net losses with the previous two years, If we look at last year’s stats we see :

A Chart Should Be Here — Net region losses 2013

A total net loss of 1,719 private regions, or 8.2%. That’s a net loss of 1,046 more private regions during 2013 than 2014. This is demonstrated well in the above chart because you see far more weeks last year where weekly losses were over 40.

Continue reading “Second Life Grid – Rate Of Net Private Region Losses Slows During 2014”

July 28, 2014

Second Life Private Regions Drop Below 19,000 Mark

Tyche Shepherd reported yesterday that private regions have dropped below the 19,000 mark for the first time since June 15th 2008. There are currently 18,988 private regions on the grid. However it should be pointed out that the rate of loss has slowed down and that is particularly apparent for this year, although the last couple of weeks have accelerated the fall to below the 19,000 mark.

This comes around 53 weeks after private regions dropped below the 20,000 mark. Then the private region count stood at 19,997. However by the end of 2013 there had been a further net loss of 724 private regions, leaving the score on the door of 19,273. At that point a fall below 19,000 looked likely to come in the first couple of months of 2014, but private regions have fought a brave fight against that until the last fortnight. Two weeks ago there were net losses of 39 private regions and this week a net loss of 26 private regions. That means that 65 of this year’s net loss of 285 regions have came in the last fortnight, or to put it another way, 22.8% of this year’s losses have came in the last fortnight.

There’s no rational explanation as to why private region net losses have risen like this, at around this time last year, give or take a week because Tyche went on holiday, there was a net loss of 29 private regions during a fortnightly period. Back in 2012 at around this time of the year there was a fortnightly net loss of 154 private regions. Actually, a fun with numbers quirk from that fortnightly net loss shows that in the first week private regions dropped by 59 and a week later those numbers flipped around with a weekly loss of 95 regions ….. ok it’s just me who finds that interesting isn’t it?

If we go back to the heady days of 15th June 2008, Tyche reported things a little differently, so I don’t know what the net change was but 593 regions were added to the grid that week. Yes that’s right, 593 new regions came online. This was also at a time when Linden Lab could auction new mainland regions and in another, fun facts incident Tyche reported :

Only one new mainland sim was added this week , or more to the point a mainland region has returned to the Grid “The Corn Field” is back since last Monday.

Play spooky music now!

Continue reading “Second Life Private Regions Drop Below 19,000 Mark”