SL, A Sleeping Beauty and Blue Mars

You've heard it all before. SL is dying etc, etc.

But this time something really is happening. SL is falling asleep. She's drowsy. Things are slowing down and she may slip into a sleep that will last a year and a day.

The reasons for this are many and manifold, but the poisoned pin that pricked her finger was the recent increase of land tier and sim costs.


LL tells us that the land price increase was to cool down a hot market, but it's cooled down too much now, way too much

SL, the sleeping beauty, is getting colder and drowsier. And while she sleeps there are other beautiful princesses preparing for the Ball.


If Blue Mars entry level city islands, 1km in size, are priced anywhere near the SL tier prices of a full sim - we could see mass migration. First will be the content creators, experienced users and land barons, tempted by the possibilities and wonders of the Cryengine. Second will be everybody else.

The question is :
Will LL (her prince) act in time to revive her or will she slip into a never ending sleep ?

How much did Blue Mars pay you?

Clarissa I love SL that's why I made that post.
I don't want her to fall into a deep sleep. I want her to be the belle of the Ball !

She's still pretty.

Blue Mars is a low rent Cinderella.

My real concern is that we don't know and neither does LL, what the effect of another virtual world, a real competitor, with UGC and a beautiful graphics engine, will be.

LL doesn't have good brand loyalty at this time

There really might be mass migrations.

yes i think she's pretty and beautiful - I called her a sleeping beauty !

but to consider Blue Mars a low rent Cinderella is really quite inaccurate. The potential with the Cryengine is so incerdible that it may make SL look like an ugly sister

Ting, any company that excludes thousands or millions of potential users by making a PC only platform in the 21st century IS a low rent Cinderella in my book. For profit organisations should not be that pretentious or lazy (whichever it is). Humility is what set Cindy apart, remember.

So why are you trying to whisper in people's ears about mass migrations to another platform if you have no agenda? And on the game in question's own site yet. I call it poor form.

I'm concerned, that's why I post.
And I think, now, reading your post, I think you have put your finger on the real issue. Mass migration. Could it happen ?

I do hope it's not bad form to express concerns about a 'World' I am invested in - emotional, psychologically and financially.

I want SL to succeed and grow, and I don't want her to be an ugly sister

WAIT a minute - nice try. But *I* did not put my finger on anything.

(luckily not a phrase I have to utter often)

YOU said there would be a mass migration. I disagree(d) with you. But, nice try, passive aggressive guy. LOL

direct quote from the blue mars website:

"When will the Blue Mars Client be available for end users?

Our limited Beta for players will launch in June."


note that:
- it does not mention a year
- based on the fact that it is july by now it must mean 2010, at least.
- according to wikipedia, it was supposed to mean 2008.


deduction:
nothing to see there.

ok Claissa you got me !

but, mass migration is and should be a concern to all of us.

Blue Mars IS coming and SL has never had any effective competition before, ever, in any form. So we don't really know what will happen and it would be silly of us all and of LL if we were to be complacent in this regard.

and I'm not really passive aggressive ( only on the weekends perhaps ), I'm more neurotic compulsive, with manic tendancies

Lance, Blue Mars IS really going to happen sometime fairly soon. And while SL sleeps, Blue Mars is putting on her make up and doing her hair ! getting herself ready for the Ball

Are LL being complacement ?
Do they underestimate this competition ?
Do LL really think nobody can do UGC virtual worlds apart from them ?

They did let this thread run for over 2 and a half months

/327/70/317029/1.html

maybe they don't think its a serious competitor, I hope it is not but as new worlds come people will go and play there as well as here but ultimately it is here that will suffer over time as people only have so much disposable entertainment budgets available to spend and what they spend elsewhere they won't spend here.

yes, what if LL have to share the market 50/50 with BM, will they still be in profit with only half as many sims on the grid ?

without the monopoly, without being the only UGC virtual world - will it still be profitable for LL ?

Get over it...... there WILL be other virtual platforms eventually.....SL can't remain the only golden child forever.....but like ANY OTHER technological advancement....competition is just par for the course.

I don't think the idea of everyone jumping ship to check out a new system...and be 'newbs' all over again....and so on.....is all that realistic. Many many people in SL have a lot vested in their experience....and friends....and a sense of loyalty to the platform. I think 'worrying' about it.....is just a way to stir the pot. It's just unnecessary drama....what ever happens happens....doesn't matter.....

I seriously doubt LL is living in a bubble with regards to the potential competition in cyber space......um.....that's what these people DO....play in cyber land for a living....I'm sure they have a pretty good grip on what else is out there. For all we know they're having cocktails every weekend with folks from the that 'other place'....

That would be when, 5 minutes after Duke Nukem 3d?

"sometime fairly soon" means "nobody knows when but i heard rumors that there are actually people working on it somewhere."





Yes.



no, since they don't believe the writings on the wall... There IS no competition.



Yep.

What's your point?

I said nothing on the topic of LL's allowing such threads. I said that I, personally, found it in bad form to advertise/tout a competitor on the rival site. Bit rude.

Not really the same thing at all. Also, let's see if the lax viewpoint will be the same on the new forums.

Agree w/Milla that LL is well aware of other platforms.

To anyone: At any rate why does it have to be either/or?

I don't know where you have been lately, but I don't see that at all. There's still a lot of loving going on at the old ship.



Not true. The only price increase lately was the homestead one, and honestly? If the start of the whole opensim debacle didn't break SL's neck, this one won't either, especially since they grandfathered homestead tier now.



Dream on, dear. I think when BM finally releases pricing about their city plans, a lot of people will roll around on the floor and cry and stomp their feet like unruly children because it's just not faaaaiiiiir. This puppy ain't gonna be cheap.

Aside from that, BM is so far not something I'd call an SL killer, simply because it doesn't offer its users the same freedom SL does. For God's sake, you're not even allowed to wear accessories that are marked for the opposite gender.

It's very worrying if it's true and LL don't take this seriously.

I must admit - if you are listening LL :

1. I am very tempted by 1km entry level city islands
2. What content creator could not be enamoured of the Cryengine - she's looking at me and she's got pretty eyes and she's a terrible flirt !
3. The shear scale of the environments possible in BM are Cybertastic !! as virtual worlds should be

Maybe there is an SL V.2.0 we don't know about. A secret SL with bigger sims, better graphics, mesh import and better avatar mesh. Let's hope so

tl;dr
ss;dd

Drag up any number of back posts and threads to see all the same arguments again.

sure I agree.

The princess is not asleep yet. But she's drowsy

Unfortunately SL is not growing at an appropriate rate. The churn-over of new users is very high. And SL is failing to grow in a timely manner and time may be running out.

For instance, check this data on Mafia Wars, a little facebook app :

http://www.virtualworldsnews.com/2009/07/quickstat-mafia-wars-hits-4m-user-milestone.html

4m daily users for Mafia Wars. How can this be ?
SL is much better than mafia wars x1000 - it should have considerably more users right now !

Something is not right

You make an assumption that's just not so.

Linden Lab is not just sitting around watching Blue Mars happen.

When I walk around on my beach, I see shadows.

I was here when sculpted prims, flexis' and prim lighting were introduced. I saw the Havok 4 get updated, and the scripting engine switch over to mono. The details of the sky and water is changeable now. I've watched LL make slow steady progress in upgrading the backbone of the grid. When I got started, a busy night was maybe 6k people.

Other people who are still around remember when you could visit every sim in a single day, and it wasn't possible to actually cross a sim border. (I know, I know. No need to make the obvious joke.) There was a time when you paid for each and every prim you rezzed onto the grid, and there were only so much to go around, and people hoarded them in order to be able to build something some day, while other peoples projects languished for want of resources.

I've seen a number of scandals and policy changes that rocked SL. And I've seen established competition fade, and new competitors come and go.

I've walked around on Blue Mars. And it's pretty. And empty. Also, building for Blue Mars is a bit more work than I want to do and I'm not sure I like the idea of paying upload fees and Avatar getting a cut of everything I sell. I'm not saying Blue Mars is bad, just that I'm not overwhelmed by what I've seen so far. So I still have my reservations.

We have no idea how well Blue Mars will handle crowds, what the economy will be like, or, for that matter when Blue Mars is actually going to be available to the public.

Meanwhile, Linden Lab WILL continue to plod through the bug list, and introduce new features, and tweak the technology and policies as they see fit. And some of their changes are going to require more from us than the computers we're using now can handle. But so what? You have to upgrade or replace your computer every few years and the technology gets cheaper all the time

The Lindens might be doing a lot o jumping without paying a lot of attention to where they're landing, but don't think they're just sitting around.

As you made your point that it was in bad form I made my point that they seem to allow it selectively, sometime you seem to take things personally notice I had a smiley wink at the end I wasn't having a go at your point, I was making mine as you made yours lol

As far as lax on the new forums, i think we will see a new and heavy handed censorship not seen before as far as what we can say or post. SL is changing and not always for the better since I have joined that's for sure. However it is still the only one of its kind available and many of us who have been here for a while have a love of this crappy at times platform and have invested a lot of time, effort, money and love into it and do not want it to fail or become a barren wasteland, but ultimately that is up to LL not us.

I agree with you that BM will not be a serious competitor just because they block out so many players and as Rhonda says same old threads being rehashed lol

Eventually a serious competitor to SL will come along, but up to now I haven't seen any.
Blue Mars looks to have the edge in some of its graphics - especially landscaping and foliage, but until we know what it's like to be in-world there for ourselves, we can't really judge it.

When I look at Virtual Worlds news, most of the new worlds seem to be cartoony big-head chatroom types aimed at children and teens, so in a way the trend seems to be backwards from SL, not catching up or moving ahead of it.

The OpenSim based SL clone grids might be where the eventual threat to SL comes from, if some clever people can modify their systems so they do more than we can in SL.

ppl may be confident in sl, but cashing out of sl and putting that $ into blue mars is a very real option not only for me, but for many well known sl ppl as well.