A recent article in “Massively” spelled out what many residents have kept saying would happen if the Lindens didn’t get their act together. More people are moving on from Second Life than moving in.
Second Life’s “User Concurrency” reached 88,000 in Spring 2009, and then began to slowly fall. Officially, the reason is Linden Labs new policies against bots used in camping and gaming. It’s also been thought that after several years, most computer users inclined to give Second Life a try already have. However, this decline comes after a number of questionable decisions by Linden Labs, the Openspace/Homestead controversy, “Age Verification” rules, the end of the Mentor Volunteer group, and others.
Of these decisions, the Openspace debacle may have been the most damaging to Second Life’s numbers. One former SL resident explained that with the new rules and prices, a number of his favorite places closed down, “if the really cool areas with your friends go, then you have little reason to go back.”
By all means, it’s not too late to turn back, but given the Lindens’ past history, people can be forgiven for looking to see what else is out there.
It’s interesting that Massively compared Second Life to Everquest, saying the Metaverse had just about reached the same number of users at the MORPG’s peak. Everquest had been the top game for a few years, then it declined. The arrival of a better game, World of Warcraft is recognized as the big reason, but one gamer pointed out another. The makers of Everquest kept making changes to the game that gradually robbed the game of it’s social aspect, the shrinking number of players finding it harder to meet up to trade or team up. A one-two punch that sent Everquest into a shadow of what it once was.
So far, there is no “Second Life killer” on the horizon that would do it what WoW did to Everquest. But already the actions of the Lindens are driving people to look for new pastures, even if it means abandoning open-ended virtual landscapes and going back to games.
Bixyl Shuftan
Source: Massively
Showing posts with label metrics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label metrics. Show all posts
Statistics of September 2007
On October 2nd, we posted the resident statistics of August 2007 (or, the SL Metrics as Linden Lab calls it) in a handy format. This time, I will just give you an update on the most important changes.
Usercount:
Number of 'unique' residents: + 571,881 (+ 9.3%)
Number of residents: + 343,961 (+ 3.7%)
Number of premium accounts: + 454 (+ 0.5%)
What does this mean? Well, the number of accounts is ever increasing. But that's not so strange with all the alts and increasing popularity of Second Life. The number of 'unique' (as LL calls it) residents seems to increase more than the total number. This could indicate that less people have extra accounts (alts), at least legal alts. That's alts that are linked to primary accounts. The group of people that have more alts than average, are griefers. So we suspect that the amount of griefing has been decreased, maybe because in September the Summer holidays came to an end, so less bored teens on the grid.
However, the number of premium accounts lags badly, compared to the resident count. This could have to do with the introduction of VAT for European Union based residents. We can probably safely say that the growth of premium accounts in the rest of the world would approximately go ahead as normal. And that would mean that more EU residents actually have gone back to basic accounts. However, Linden Lab does not provide numbers of premium accounts per country, so this is not exact science.
Activity of residents:
Number of active residents: - 24,002 (- 4.4%)
Number of hours online: + 699,996 (+ 3.0%)
Average hours online per month: 45.9 (42.7 in August, + 3.2%)
Obviously, the number of residents who logged into SL at least once a month decreased, but the total number of hours increased. If you look at the number of hours per user per month, spent in-world, increased quite a lot. Again, this could have to do with the Summer holidays being over, but nonetheless it seems that there is a shift from quantity to quality.
Origin of active residents:
It seems that there are only minor shifts between EU residents, USA/Canada residents and residents in the rest of the world. EU residents have broken through the 40% barrier though, looking only at active residents. And residents outside EU/USA/Canada have increased a bit more in hours online than residents within EU/USA/Canada.
Top 10 of countries:
America is still leader, although the market share of active users has gone down a bit. Japan is down by 2 places, from 2nd to 4th. Germany is up by 2 places, from 4th to 2nd. That's a swap and can be called a substantial shift. In the lower ranks, the Netherlands have dropped from 8th to 9th and swapped with Spain. Other than that, no significant changes took place.
Overall conclusion:
The most important difference between September and August is that the average numbers of hours online have increase quite a bit. Other than that, it's mostly minor shifts.
Source: official Linden Lab blog
Usercount:
Number of 'unique' residents: + 571,881 (+ 9.3%)
Number of residents: + 343,961 (+ 3.7%)
Number of premium accounts: + 454 (+ 0.5%)
What does this mean? Well, the number of accounts is ever increasing. But that's not so strange with all the alts and increasing popularity of Second Life. The number of 'unique' (as LL calls it) residents seems to increase more than the total number. This could indicate that less people have extra accounts (alts), at least legal alts. That's alts that are linked to primary accounts. The group of people that have more alts than average, are griefers. So we suspect that the amount of griefing has been decreased, maybe because in September the Summer holidays came to an end, so less bored teens on the grid.
However, the number of premium accounts lags badly, compared to the resident count. This could have to do with the introduction of VAT for European Union based residents. We can probably safely say that the growth of premium accounts in the rest of the world would approximately go ahead as normal. And that would mean that more EU residents actually have gone back to basic accounts. However, Linden Lab does not provide numbers of premium accounts per country, so this is not exact science.
Activity of residents:
Number of active residents: - 24,002 (- 4.4%)
Number of hours online: + 699,996 (+ 3.0%)
Average hours online per month: 45.9 (42.7 in August, + 3.2%)
Obviously, the number of residents who logged into SL at least once a month decreased, but the total number of hours increased. If you look at the number of hours per user per month, spent in-world, increased quite a lot. Again, this could have to do with the Summer holidays being over, but nonetheless it seems that there is a shift from quantity to quality.
Origin of active residents:
It seems that there are only minor shifts between EU residents, USA/Canada residents and residents in the rest of the world. EU residents have broken through the 40% barrier though, looking only at active residents. And residents outside EU/USA/Canada have increased a bit more in hours online than residents within EU/USA/Canada.
Top 10 of countries:
America is still leader, although the market share of active users has gone down a bit. Japan is down by 2 places, from 2nd to 4th. Germany is up by 2 places, from 4th to 2nd. That's a swap and can be called a substantial shift. In the lower ranks, the Netherlands have dropped from 8th to 9th and swapped with Spain. Other than that, no significant changes took place.
Overall conclusion:
The most important difference between September and August is that the average numbers of hours online have increase quite a bit. Other than that, it's mostly minor shifts.
Source: official Linden Lab blog
Ever wonder ... where everyone is?
... where everyone is? Or how well your country is represented? SL Newspaper gives you this info in a handy shortlist:
Representation by country/group (# active residents):
European Union: 39.1%
USA & Canada: 32.0%
Other countries: 28.9%
Total # of active residents: 540,151
Total # of residents: 9,252,781
Representation by country/group (hours online):
European Union: 39.8%
USA & Canada: 39.0%
Other countries: 21.2%
Total # of hours online: 23,300,913
Top 20 of countries (# active residents):
1 United States 29,1%
2 Japan 7,7%
3 Brazil 7,7%
4 Germany 7,7%
5 United Kingdom 7,0%
6 France 5,2%
7 Italy 4,7%
8 Spain 3,3%
9 Netherlands 3,2%
10 Canada 2,9%
11 Australia 2,5%
12 Portugal 1,3%
13 Poland 1,2%
14 Belgium 1,1%
15 Mexico 1,1%
16 China 0,9%
17 Switzerland 0,8%
18 Argentina 0,8%
19 Denmark 0,8%
20 Sweden 0,7%
Other: 6.7%
Source: Linden Lab blog, SL Metrics August 2007
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