30,000 people in SL!

According to the website, by the time you read this message, SL will have 30,000 accounts.

Faboo!

LF

I visited, but we were two shy. This is a very momentous occasion.

quick, someone make two alts!

This isn't just from people making alts to see if they can find that elusive third pic of Aimee, is it?

woowoo!

Two years and ONLY 30K players? Well, atleast the player count hasn't gone down.

nope still 29,999

Considering there is no store penetration (ie boxed sales), I'd say that's pretty good.

Most MMORPGs rely on boxes to get themselves wedged in the mind of the potential customer... once the boxes start getting removed from shelves, the population starts taking a dive. And usually WELL before 2 years of operation.

LF

YAY!

omg lF!!! LOL i just seen it and i ran here and u post it damn it! ROFL

U a quicky huh!!! LOL this was suppose to be my post.. LOL o well..

WOOHOOO !!! 30,000!!!!

i wonder who was Mr.30,000!!!!!!!

they should get a prize! how about a poorly textured plain t-shirt with the sl logo on it? jk

I couldn't resist. I made account #30,000, when I saw it at 29,999 last night.

-Flip

*so* feted.

Considering that SL hasn't been heavily hyped (like TSO was), not boxed on store shelves and does not have the action/adventure/RPG features that lure players to other games, I think 30,000 is very remarkable. Toss in the fact that most of SL is slanted towards builders, designers, and scripters of content and I'm actually impressed with the number.

MMOG Charts has been trying to capture the subscription trends of online games for years. Since many companies don't release exact subscription numbers, it's sometimes been an exercise in assumption but still, the best information available.

Now total online subscriptions of all games have topped something like 4 1/2 million. It's so big that, in order to show the smaller games, Bruce has had to split his chart into 3 parts. Second Life doesn't look so bad on the third chart (0 - 120,000), outperforming There, Asheron's Call (!), Horizons, and even my 2-year addiction Anarchy Online (the latter 3 of which WERE hyped on shelves) - and the stat they're using looks to be at least 5,000 under what SL's front page claims.

There are a lot of alts and inactive account in SL, I would guess way more than any other game, because of certain perverted incentives. For example, the 10% land bonus for groups causes people (like me, for example) to create three accounts in order to take advantage of that.

Also, if you are trading $L anyway, there is actually a positive cash flow for each additional account created. (i.e., the L$ stipend is worth more than the annual membership fee.) This effect is greatly reduced by the low exchange rate recently, but its still there. I am sure there are people out there with as many accounts as LL lets them have. I wouldn't doubt that there are people who've obtained additional credit cards in order to be able to open more accounts!

The MUCH more interesting number, I think, is the number of people who are concurrently logged in. Recently this has been 600 to 700 during the day, and around 2000 in the evening (when I've looked at it, which has only been a few times).

I would speculate that something like half of all the accounts are either alts or inactive.

Buster

You're probably close to the truth there, Bruce, but I think the same thing could be said of most games. On the charts I linked to, Everquest has held steadily at around the 350,000 to 500,000 mark for almost 2 years despite the fact that much of the bulk of EQ's subscription population left the game sometime between DAOC and World of Warcraft. Those friends of mine who still have accounts in EQ tell me that they rarely log in, and when they do it's to raid with their guild, AND have as many as 3 or 4 accounts full of alts. I wouldn't be surprised, either, if Verant wasn't still counting some of the cancelled accounts if they've been active at all during the last year. (Imaginative accountants can do magic with numbers).

Actually, I don't mind that SL isn't one of the powerplayers. That's not why I'm here. I played World of Warcraft (1.5 million subscribers) from beta until this past spring, and I do not miss the immature fan base, the constant spamming and harrassment that comes from being in a popular world. I much prefer the quiet spaces of SL where I can think, create, and make friends with people who share my interests. But that's just me.

Cindy

Fair enough, except most of SL is geared towards the lowest common denominator with it's clubs, sex, and focus on making money before anything else. I wish LL would just remove the L$ completely, since it would improve creativity (people wouldn't worry about making the most money), kill the clubs and AV sex (which I still think is the most hilariously sad thing to ever happen), and cause all of those who are in SL to make a buck leave.



Ok, now your venturing into hilarity. Horizons sucks, There is all of the bad things I listed above from SL into it's own game, and asheron's call is about 5 years old.

I'll respect your view of the AV sex thing as long as you respect mine -- the one thing I admire most about the Linden's philosophy is that it reminds me of the old Usenet days when the user community policed itself. Freedom is a 2-sided coin: for every wonderfully creative, productive participant you'll probably end up with three or 6 or 10 who are either mercenary or are using the world as their own sexual fantasy playground. Your freedom to write almost any scripted behavior you can imagine will also result in phenomenons like today's self-replicating land scanners being discussed in another thread. Or furniture objects with embedded sexual animations. It just comes with the territory unless you're willing to entertain limits on your own freedom.

And in reality, if you take out the profit and sex motives, you'll probably be left with about 2,000 users who are here to learn how to script and animate, period. The world will lose much of its color, flavor -- including the "mad dog sauce" that burns the mouth (sorry, going analogy-crazy here). So even though some of you may be offended or not appreciate the seedier side of SL life, personally I think it's part of what makes SL seem alive and vibrant, even if I choose not to participate in that part of the world.


I know about Horizons. I was one of the beta testers who refused to buy the game and was blunt in my appraisal to the rest of the game community after release. I got roundly flamed on Vault Network and other boards for my harsh criticism. But it feels good to be right.

Re: Asheron's Call. I misspoke. SL has more subscribers than Asheron's Call 2, not the original Asheron's.

For a game with the kind of niche appeal and lack of Blizzard-style massive profit model as we have in SL, I still think it's not doing that badly. To increase the subscription rate you'd need to go commercial (PvE or PvP features, pre-programmed action/adventure content, massive ad campaign) and I don't see how those things would really add anything to the world. Given the choice between the immature Diablo kiddies who swarmed over WoW and co-existing with the adult entertainment industry in SL, I'll go for the latter every time. I've just had my fill of the kiddies in most other communities.

Cindy

I'll respect your view of the AV sex thing as long as you respect mine -- the one thing I admire most about the Linden's philosophy is that it reminds me of the old Usenet days when the user community policed itself. Freedom is a 2-sided coin: for every wonderfully creative, productive participant you'll probably end up with three or 6 or 10 who are either mercenary or are using the world as their own sexual fantasy playground. Your freedom to write almost any scripted behavior you can imagine will also result in phenomenons like today's self-replicating land scanners being discussed in another thread. Or furniture objects with embedded sexual animations. It just comes with the territory unless you're willing to entertain limits on your own freedom.

And in reality, if you take out the profit and sex motives, you'll probably be left with about 2,000 users who are here to learn how to script and animate, period. The world will lose much of its color, flavor -- including the "mad dog sauce" that burns the mouth (sorry, going analogy-crazy here). So even though some of you may be offended or not appreciate the seedier side of SL life, personally I think it's part of what makes SL seem alive and vibrant, even if I choose not to participate in that part of the world.


I know about Horizons. I was one of the beta testers who refused to buy the game and was blunt in my appraisal to the rest of the game community after release. I got roundly flamed on Vault Network and other boards for my harsh criticism. But it feels good to be right.

Re: Asheron's Call. I misspoke. SL has more subscribers than Asheron's Call 2, not the original Asheron's.

For a game with the kind of niche appeal and lack of Blizzard-style massive profit model as we have in SL, I still think it's not doing that badly. To increase the subscription rate you'd need to go commercial (PvE or PvP features, pre-programmed action/adventure content, massive ad campaign, TSO-style cartoon world) and I don't see how those things would really add anything to the world. Given the choice between the immature Diablo kiddies who swarmed over WoW and co-existing with the adult entertainment industry in SL, I'll go for the latter every time. I've just had my fill of the kiddies in most other communities.

Cindy

For my opinion on AC2, see my opinion on Horizons.

People like that stuff. As long as I can do my thing, and you can do your thing, and Joe ClubGoer can do this thing, I don't see what the problem is. It's a WORLD, not a development platform.



Would it really? Many folks on here make amazing stuff simply TO make money; it's a great incentive, and doesn't hurt you in the least.



It wouldn't kill that at all... since when was AV sex directly tied to the linden dollar?
You'd need to remove human nature in order to remove AV sex. Fuck, there were cybersex clubs in Ultima Online for god's sake.




And then LLabs promptly goes under 4 months later because they lost 90% of their userbase. Brilliant!

Are you serious?

Is he serious?

I just died a little inside.

Well, atleast they are being removed from the gene pool.

I am going to try and respond to this nicely, forgive me if I fail.

1. Sex Sells. Look at marketing today and it is very clear this is the case.

2. Kill the Clubs and you lose a good portion of the social players that enjoy those clubs. You also lower the market for animations, clothes, makeup, skins, etc. as it is a lot of the club going people buying things like that for contests etc. The combination of eliminating your club-going social players and the money they spend on creations would hurt the SL economy.

3. Remove L$ completely and you have no INCINTIVE to create. Right now a designer can make a product, make some L from the product, cash that L in, and Pay their tier and probably break even if they are most designers. Take away the L and they can do what.... create something, get nothing in return for it, and then pay their tier out of pocket to continue creating.

4. Cause all of those in SL 'to make a buck' to leave. Money is quite an incintive to try and create things that have never been done. Those creations in turn help SL to be a better place.

If all of those ideas, or even some of your ideas were implimented, you would kill SL Mr. Jade.

Jess

ROFL!

This IS the problem. Rather, it was before I stopped caring to argue the point.