Second Life Residents logged nearly 400 million hours in 2008, growing 61% over 2007

I am happy to see that things ended so good for Linden Labs 2008. That the place still growing is fun and I am so happy for you guys!

I mean, what does that matter that you killed my own and so many others dreams in Second Life last year? What does that mean that i lost A LOT of dollars when you changed the opensim? And of course, i am not in any way angry or disappointed that you waited week before you send out a mail to the people who pay your salary. And your totally lack of interest in trying to calm down the people was just fun and respectful. And then to read that M Linden says that their isn't really any income from the paying members, yes that was also a very nice thing to say about the supporting customers. I laughed all the way to the cancel page when i went back to a free member again.

So words like...

Full regions will provide the best Resident experience, and we think that the expanded product line, which now includes Openspaces, Homesteads and full regions, provides a better product mix and end-user experience for Residents.

...Only make me happy and I am proud and honored that i was able to help you guys to come to this conclusion! And I am happy I lost all this money for nothing.

Thank you Linden Labs! 2008 was a great year! I can't wait too see what you will do with 2009. I do everything I can right now to save money so i can throw then in the lak....i mean...so i can put them in Second Life and see them disappear once again.

Yay!

The total number of Alts and Bots remains highly intriging.

Why ? Well, maybe the impact on the statistics isn't much as Zee said, however this is quiet hard to be believed.

At least the impact on the overall system performance is highly disturbing.

Now i do understand that mathematical differentation would be a heavy and a pricy burden for LL, however, here are my experiences, just to share info.

In any given population you can do multi point sampling, or observing if you will.
At least when you have reached 50 at random multi points through time your answer is very close to be high reliability.

I went to ~50 higher traffic areas spread through time, at random.
In appr. 1/4 of those regions at least 10 - 20% turned out to be Bots and Alts.
How do i know? Well, when avies are sitting, dancing, or stand as a group, say nothing, all created just a few days after eachother, joining exactly the same group (mostly 1 upto 3), with no Payment on File, empty picks, a total empty 1st life, and.... beyond 768 meters in the sky... it's pretty obvious isn't it. Some even are parked as campers. The owner of such a sim has the Alts/Bots paid back to the Sim owner. Yep, lean practices, and certainly misuse of already scares resources.

To my best guess ~15% in SL are Alts and Bots... but that is only my best guess.
Maybe it's 10 or even 25%. It is already far out of proportion isn't it !

Now, i could start to mention the Sim names, however for the sake of disclosure i will not do that, however, ~25% of the sims counting more than ~16000 traffic is a reason to raise questions, i would check them out LL
All i can say is that many of the most well known and respected Sims in SL are on that list

Showcases selected by LL also use those methods, however to minimum scale.
It's just a pity that large 'scammed' high traffic areas steal the majortity of the traffic and lag the overall grid severly,


I would love to see SL make an end of it by letting a 2nd account tolerated.
Over that, make it US$ 15, then owners must have a darn good reason to create them !

And deal with Abuse Reports regarding this matter swiflty.
Boy, would that change this world !!

They'd just signup with new accounts with fake details. However it might reduce the number.

Alts and bots should be differentiated. I have alts, but I never logon with more than one av at a time. 25 groups simply isn't suffice for my needs.

Might reduce? LOL Big time !!! Most important is not stressing the servers !!!
It is the reason normal accounts who play and want to run a fair business can't login from time to time or experience high lag... not to mention the Spin machine at LL indeed.
I can ensure you that many of the most well known Sims in SL use these lean methods.
Even Sims you had never thought they would. Highly disturbing actually.

And... they steal traffic... huh. Cause they do also.

I know it's foolish to argue in edge cases or anecdotes but in my personal case this would represent a big tax on my business. Each of my mainland rental groups require one premium alt to donate tier and one other alt to make sure the group never gets deleted. Let's say I have 100 mainland renters, that amounts to 8 separate alts required if I do everything in the most optimal way and a few more in a more realistic scenario.

I was talking about Island Sims...
~25% of the high traffic Sims apply these methods.
Some place a high mega prim platform high in the sky 256 x 256 m ( sim dimensions) to not let avies thru, other place many alts/bots on dance pads, some use an ejection system on the moment that you come to a sky height where Alts/Bots are standing.
Again... to my best guess ~25% of the high traffic Islands apply these methods.

"Smelling" those regions is easy too.
When the green dot count on your map does not match real traffic and when you see clustered green dots, however you can't find them at all... and/or...
When you see the same avies on dance pads somewhere in the region's clutterly build corners far away from the tp arrival point 24/7... and/or...
When you have staff not saying very much, just put out a variety of repeating robo gestures then the chance is pretty high that they are bots too, or/and the ower has to multitask between alt avies for different roles.

Creating many Alts for those pays off easy.
For example, create a mature island, put an 24/7 active club on it, rent shops or houses, or even sell own content, create alt/bots, park them somehow in the region... Bam... you got 60.000 traffic points already without real visitors, because;
each avator has 4500 traffic points to give each day distributed over the regions they visit. A region gets traffic points based on how long avies stay in the region > 5 minutes.
Put 20% alt/bots (and accept the lag) in the region 24/7 and done !

Most want to find high traffic regions right? Specially high quality content sellers,
and party people of course.

They just harvest a lot of L$ too in that way, because of the sales in the region.
The US$ 295 monthly tier is earned back easy, and much more if only high quality content is allowed in the shops.
In that case you can ask high rent for the shops and get 50% of the sales too.
Create many groups (as they cost only L$ 100 per setup) for creating even more mist...
All is set and run? The Island then mostly changes to PG... Done !

That's how they do it



Believe me, what i have seen is most disturbing for the Grid, it:
1 Fakes
2 Causes technical disturbances, causing failures


I would love to see LL take serious action. It would certainly correct the grid majorly to a more realistic and fun playable thingy;
without the heavy resource disturbing fakes.

It is possible to run a legitemate business with a high feasable RL profit without Alts and Bots really. I've done it, anyone else can.
All we need is limit the Alt & Bots and LL to create.
That would majorly help both platform reliability on both short and long term notices.

I fear we must limit the alts too.
However, i do think we should not ban alts completely.
Maybe 3 alts a resident is reasonable.

Because there ARE many users the use alts for roleplay and not to increase traffic on a sim.

I think the best way to solve this issue is by banning the BOTS, making a special program that runs through the grid, making sure it kicks all the bots.
Bots require special software to be online, right..?
If LL can make something against that, so that software wont work with the vieuwer anymore... that would be a solution.

And of course, make a new Anti Alt Policy.
Like they did with Gamblers and Bankers
Only this new policy would make sense..

Good idea Proxima. I agree

I'm a big fan of WoW style logins Linda. With WoW have one account and then you can enter the world with whichever character you choose, but you can only login with one character at a time.

Hi Ciaran,

That works with WoW very well i do think, because it is only a role play game i've heard. However i don't have own experience concering WoW.
In SL you can simply change your avi with a press of a button for another role.
SL is an economy too. For some even a very serious RL economy.
So i'm not sure WoW's solution would be carried by many in SL.

Proxima's idea is a good one i think + the combination of your idea that we could only login ones and not twice or more, specially not let 3rd party light client software make it possible to allow multi login.

WoW style logins would circumvent the false traffic issue. I have alts for more groups, that wouldn't be an issue for me but it would prevent bot abuse. The thing with WoW style logins is that we all still can have alts but we can't log them in at the same time.

Ohhhh ok yes i understand better now. I agree on it then
Proxima's idea is a good one i think + the combination of your idea that we could only login ones and not twice or more, specially not let 3rd party light client software make it possible to allow multi login.

There are some valid uses for having two accounts online at the same time. Example: working on objects with multiple poses that have to be adjusted to each other.

Just to say... there's nothing about "WoW"-style logins that makes them specific to WoW. It is a common MMORPG login/character selection mechanism that's been around for a very long time, even prior to WoW.

That said, yes, it would be much better.

In order to run my rental business I need a large number of premium and non premium alts. For just 100 mainland renters optimally configured I'd need a minimum of 8 avatars, in reality I need many more than this.

So of course I'm against these crazy plans to limit alts because it would seriously affect me. Regardless, I think the entire concept is extremely misguided. The fundamental problem is not that people have alts, or lots of alts. It has no effect on anyone else if I choose to register names all day long and have thousands of them. Banning or limiting alts is far too broad and action, it affects far too many other people conducting perfectly legitimate business.

The problem, as I see it, is that dozens of avatars online jammed in a box screws up sims and hurts neighbours. Fix that problem by restricting that behaviour don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Further, it's worth noting that I regularly log in as two or three alts at once. These days I'm spend a fair amount of time in a meeting with one alt and helping customers with a different one. My wife could being doing the same thing as well. So from my IP we spend a significant amount of time logged in as 3 or 4 separate alts. Anyway, to be fair, it wouldn't seriously concern me if they restricted multiple logins by IP or whatever but it would certainly be a pain in the ass.

Well i certainly understand you.
Having 2 or maybe 3 alts online for legitimate reasons i can certainly accept too.
Having 5 - 20 logged in via a rd party robot client just to get an Island high in Search i have totally no respect for. And to my best guess ( see earlier posts ) ~1/4 of the vey high traffic Islands seem to do that for pure economic selfish reasons.
They have NOT my respect in any case.

They abuse and clutter the system in general weather concerning the whole grid's performance or even individual neighbor's land owners in mainland regions.

Let not be these thin robot clients login would be a starter.

Maybe at this time we are asking a bit much from LL, however i do hope they come with solutions this year.

The way SL is now does not have my approval to say the least.
It's a dead track, for being more than an entertainment thingy that is.

Why is it a dead track? Some simple math:

New signups
2007: ~ 9.4 mil
2008: ~ 5.0

Residents logins
2007: ~11.6 mil
2008: ~11.2 mil

Conclusion:

Older residents stay ~1.5x longer online (including the Bot & Alt invasion in Q1 2007).
Monthy new signups steadily drop since Jan. 2008.
From Sep. 2007 upto now we see a downtrend from avg 0.5 montly to 0.4 now.

There has been a massive Alt and Bot 'invasion':
From Feb. 2007 upto March 2007, suddenly 2.1 mil new signups which was an enormous sudden jump from 0.5 mil monthly signups.
It was in that time that certain well known high traffic islands had been created and not really have changed much... yep 50% of those use the Bots on large scale, and still create new bots to cover up.
It was also in that time when Land sales peaked as never before ( land bots ).
Also at that time the SL economy flourished as never before... but it was spin afterwards.
It is also since then that alt campers have been coming inworld by the mass.

Since no new mainland mass is created by LL also over a longer period of time, and the addition of new Islands has not been very exciting (not even talking about the drop of Openspace regions), i not much see so many more new things in sl as used to be.
Clearly also seen inworld: the high speed of change is strongly less.

Conclusion: market saturion... that is a dead track if nothing is done.

Getting a CNN island inworld might look a smart move to get a higher rl media exposure btw, however there is no activity. I don't see CNN staff active; residents seem to be able to roleplay a reporter, but the whole thing looks totally boring and desolated.
Boy haven't we seen that already on large scale in SL. History seems repeating itself over and over again.


Now i do understand that LL is working hard on the technical side, however i don't think they will be able to catch up fast enough. The progression is way to slow; technically it seems almost impossible to scale fast enough to address a differentiated market approach.
However, SL is becoming more and more a place for older signups and more and more less for new.
So... i think in the end... SL fades out or will not be able to do as they intend.
Not that they don't want to, but because of the complexity and market isolation.

We'll see if 2009 will be a turnaround...
Personally i see sl becomes a dead track from the user point of view

Impressive traffic growth figures!

Of course you will have seen the need for addditional resources to handle the growth?
Oh, you didn't?

Such figures should be used in P-L-A-N-N-I-N-G. Your growth shows that you need extra capacity or you'll have to block logins everytime online population reaches 71k.

Oh - you DO block logins every time online population reaches 71k?
Problem solved, then. Ignore me, I'm just the customer.

(BTW - need anyone numerate to start up a Planning Dept?)

Agreed, Eve Online and City of Heroes use the same sort of system, I just cited WoW because of its popularity

You need them? You'd adapt, you know you would.

I bet that the report from Q1 2009 will be more difficult to write in the positive way all these reports are made. The database problem is starting to get kinda stupid now.

One log in per ip address ways round yes but would offer some solution

multiple log in required why schedule arrange tp prople can no have rl clones and survive

for rp etc you still only need 1 char at a time

yes get annot lookl intrest as did few day ago island shop display with 60 bots on 2 cust inc me is inane

some will few scream but most happy 1 log in at a time please


みどり

well another weekend goes by with no access. and to make it worse it tells be to check out the status page which is mostly useless. we know there is a problem - what are you doing about it? i had a new exhibit, a mall to deliver, a regular shift and other things. quite frankly ll couldn't run a seoncd hand schmatter stand in a downrun market. seen better efficient brain damaged whelks. and no i dont want the login to sit there for ten minutes til i get bored and do something else only to pop up and tell me it didn't work. you are not the be all and end all of my life. get used to it. downgrade info on hand - if that even works

woo got on...but not many here but...woo got on...

Concerning the new Homestead offering, has the lab yet considered running just two of them per processor? Is there any hope that the price increase will result in that effort to provide some better performance for us?