Popular places and dwell?

Anyone notice how much the popular places have changed since the end of dev incentives?
Just last week the traffic #'s were up to 100k and have now dropped to 45k...

The odd thing about it is, I have talked to some sim owners with high traffic, and they claim they had no idea that there were no more dev awards...

Perhaps the closing of Furnation is just the beginning of closing sims

I didn't notice because I never look at pop places.

I'm not surprised that some sim owners with high traffic where unaware about the DI situation, but I wish I was.

It'll be like the dot.com crash.

I can tell you that AzureIslands will stay open. We never did count on dev incentives to stay in business. They ended in March. Everyone got an email about the end of dev incentive payouts in December (I think) they said that they were going to phase them out in 3 phases; Jan(66%), Feb(33%) and March(0%).

Now I think that dwell will reflect more accuratly 'Popular Places' in SL. Too bad they can't do a dwell count PER group land. I swear AzureIslands would have tones

A good chunk of the drop from 100K to 45K is many of these popular places were PAYING players to attend (camping chairs, anyone?) in order to get more DI from LL. I mean you HAVE to wonder how a single club that doesn't own a sim outranks popular sims but you never see anyone but idlers there. Now, with no DI, no reason to pay merc's to camp your area, traffic numbers should begin to be a more accurate reflection of popularity.

And yes, I expect to see a lot of 'marginal' and 'vanity' sims start to fold when they have to actually pay without LL-supported, DI manipulating gimmicks. Sad though...

Marginal and vanity sims that weren't using DI-manipulating gimmicks and just doing a good job of making interesting builds... what about them?

It's sad on the one hand, but on the other, SL has been long overdue for a crash course in economics. With luck, the many boring clones out there will die out, to be replaced by relatively few, but good, original, compelling things to do.

Looking at the real world entertainment business suggests that high costs and low returns create more clones of the things that are established and known to make money, not less.

You mean that to draw people in to your property, it's going to end up being more down to who provides a quality experience rather than how much disposable income you have to pay people to sit there? The shame of it!

I treat SL as I would gambling ... never invest more than you are prepared to lose. If you can afford $100 a month on SL, pay it, if you make no money back then you've done as expected, if you make $10 profit then it's a bonus. Too many people think that they have to recoup L$x per month before they break even because they are overstretching themselves in the first place.

Lewis

I still don't see how fails to weed out camping chair wastelands.

You're looking at it backwards. It's going to end up how much bling someone can sell on their property rather than how good a build they have that determines whether they can afford to keep it.

I treat SL as entertainment, and when interesting builds go away and entire islands that are a single themed store show up to replace them, that reduces its entertainment value. How the guy who was doing that build afforded it is only relevant when he can't afford it any more, so i don't care if he treats it as gambling, a business, or a public service. I only care whether LL's policies are rewarding or punishing people for doing cool stuff.

The fact that DI was killed is at least as significant a cost of the camping chair phenomenon as any of the direct costs to people on adjacent properties. On a scale of precision responses from actual brain surgery to fuel-air carpet bombing, killing DI was pretty far from the "surgical" end.

Those are the ones I will really miss. I won't miss club #9472 playing techno and inflating its ranking with camping chairs. Unfortunately, SL is geared for and populated by mostly, darwinian capitalists...the kind that do anything for a buck/linden, including gaming the system. The intersting builds don't stand a chance unless LL changes the way things work, and I honestly can't see that happening (though I wish they would de-emphasize capitalism/money somewhat to achieve a greater balance of ingame business, ingame beauty).

Since when have a linden response shown restraint? Quick and dirty, carpet bombing of perceived problems are their most common response (unless its a griefer, who gets their hand slapped).

I have seen a dwindling in the camping chair phenomenon, but how much of that is to do with the loss of DI and with the now higher competition between them? Right now, you'd have to offer a pretty good amount 4/10 to 5/10 to get people to camp.. and is that actually allowing them to make money or is it costing them?

Many of them will blame it on the loss of DI. But it would be really interesting to actually compare the last few lists of people who got DI with the people who blame DI for having to close their sims. (I don't recall very many 'marginal' and 'vanity' sims on the list at all.)

LL really made a lot of mistakes lately. Makes me wander how long it will last. It's like their TRYING to chase people away... We already lost FurNation (the lindens seemed to really love them too), Losing parts of dr3amland, the popular places have dropped in dwell, while the newbie count encreased with griefers and underagers who dont know how to act around adults who are trying to run a business or live their lives.

1. Incentive died.
2. No new land tools for the mainland.
3. Mainland Sims now being auctioned bulk instead of its former creativeness.
4. Tried to ban AN$H33 knowing shes the puppet master and their the puppet.
5. Keeps adding features adding to the already buggy line of features we have.
6. Newbie startup funds and how account creation is managed.
7. lack of support for paying members.
8. The sky texture is horrible. Reminds me of a gradiant fill tool from ClarisWorks.
9. LL Needs to stop screwing up the currency and bring back GOM.
10. The prices of sim is worse then the price to be a dragon for life in furcadia! (which allows you to create your own world for free by the way. even though its 2D).

And I suspect that the loss of DI has little to do with any changes in camping chair phenomenon. Because few camping chair operators got any to start with. An analysis published in December showed no 'camp kings' on the DI list at all, which stands to reason as most camp chair operators were small time operators - with 5-8 chairs on a plot and one plot per operator. (The operators thereof may have believed they were capable of getting there - but the fact is they weren't.)



Wndering about the Grid, I haven't noticed any significant drop in the number of camping chairs about.

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Not sure about the DI list but this is the top 20 most popular places right now:

#1 ... Camping chairs, L$4/10 minutes: 45821
#6 ... Camping chairs, L$50/10 minutes (via slot multipliers): 33036
#7 ... Camping chairs, 32752
#8 ... Camping chairs, L$4/10 minutes: 29068
#10 .. Camping chairs, L$4/10 minutes: 27670
#14 .. Camping chairs, amount unspecified: 23179

Those are the ones that specifically state camping in their descriptions... I didn't look at the others although I have no doubt that some of them do have dance pads or camp chairs there.

Lewis