Zalificent Corvinus Don't forget the radioactive fish with 3 heads and hooves all over their fins!

SweetShaylie Resident Very well said! As for the ownership, I noticed many people have never realized how most of the Blake Sea consists of private estates that were created for the sailing community, and most of these estates are still owned, managed and maintained by the same people who founded them, and with the same goals. And the LL-owned "open" part of the Blake Sea is managed by the same community, and the whole place wouldn't exist if those people hadn't put a lot of effort and money into it back then and ever since. It is them who should decide what to do with it, not any of us if we just randomly spend time there for our own enjoyment.

If the past cant be touched, then in the least, more mainland continents should be rolled out, as Bellisaria is constantly. The mainland concept is the reason SL was successful in the first place & the main draw to a virtual world for the public. The Bellisaria strategy only appeals to one specific section of the public.

Further to this point, if SL was serious about being a virtual world, it would enlarge the land footprint to reflect that. Currently the landmass equates to a small country that could support 2 million people. That is not a world!

"If the past cant be touched"

It's not about the past. What is the problem with these old features? The roadways for example can be used, there is nothing wrong with the road prims. Except when terrain protrudes through them because terrain lives its own life. You don't know how much time I spend asking the Lindens to fix those and any other problems with roads. (About 40-80 hours each month for all issues, can't tell how much exactly goes into terrain issues on roads.) So yes if something is broken it needs a fix or update. If it is not, why change it? Just because someone doesn't like how it looks? Because it looks outdated?

Should Greece decide to destroy the Acropolis of Athens because it is thousands of years old and a ruin, and build something modern that is more appealing to someone's eyes?

"more mainland continents should be rolled out, as Bellisaria is constantly"

Not constantly, they stop for long periods because there is no demand for all those new homes. In fact now that many P+ users are at the P+ areas and due to other factors as well, many of the standard home parcels are empty. Check the Sakura area for example. There is no point building more of something that won't be used, some areas are already huge ghost towns. The same would happen with extended mainland continents as there is a lot of abandoned land everywhere already.

They build new roads on mainland continents sometimes and manage to fix or update trouble spots too, so they are being maintained even if it doesn't necessarily look like it. Some of us keep pushing them to do so.

"the landmass equates to a small country that could support 2 million people"

So it could support 50 times more people than we can see logged in every day. And many of the 40k are bots and afk avatars used to cheat with traffic scores. And the number of active users is dropping slowly and steadily. Among the reasons is definitely that SL is outdated but that's mostly in terms of the software. You can always build something better and nicer on your land or for someone else and we do that so this way a mainland region or a private region is much better than LH. If the reason for leaving mainland and SL were the "outdated objects", Bellisseria would be booming. It is not.

AlettaMondragon Resident The point was really that for new users in the first 10 years or so, there were occasional new mainland continents that arrived. That was part of the way SL was, that was a driving factor in its appeal. A new territory to discover. Kept things fresh from an interest point of view. The Bellisaria strategy is only targeting one demographic of SL users.

Irishk9 Aeon It's a great point, but nowadays it is clearly unsustainable. They would have to run many more regions and the demand for land wouldn't increase, pretty sure we wouldn't see a lot of people joining SL (or returning) just because there would be new mainland continents sometimes. As for exploration, I'd be very happy about it but the thing is these places need maintenance too, and that is a huge weak point in SL.

AlettaMondragon Resident I disagree entirely that its unsustainable. It was what made the platforms reputation & clearly drove log in numbers before the economic crash that caused a drop in those figures. I believe the wrong strategy was chosen as its actually the short term choice that will eventually result in a very small elite user of the platform. It will not appeal to the general public at all. I don't believe its more expensive for server infrastructure now over then, given the advancements the technology has made. The choice for the lab is, a virtual world as they first sold it as or a limited sims styled housing simulator.

Irishk9 Aeon It can't be very cost efficient either if the regions don't generate any revenue, otherwise they would have already added simple, empty water regions to complete waterways around mainland continents which comes up often, and every time one of us brings it up, the only excuse from LL is that it isn't worth adding many more water regions at a lot of places. Obviously they don't think sailboat and other watercraft sales would go up if they did, which would be a long-term positive effect on the economy, they focus on direct revenue, but the point is, they could just add water regions effortlessly if they were so cheap to run they didn't have to be mindful about it.

As for the login numbers, as long as Bellisseria was something new and exciting, it had the same effect, more people were online, they went out to explore the new additions, were really excited about new themes and home choices, etc. (I am still very excited about Bellisseria's development but that's mostly about having the railroad reach Shobu and then possibly connect to the Newbrooke loop too. The railroad network is very incomplete and full of technical issues, so the only thing to be excited about is to see it all connected one day.) Of course when Bellisseria was new we had a pandemic and lockdowns and "stay at home" stuff, so that clearly added to the number of active users. Daily maximum was over 50k and almost every day, not only Saturday and well, nowadays it's only 42k on Saturday too. Sometimes 45. Still, most of those are not real people.

Bay City has open ends on the south and west, Shermerville on the east. Sailing around Heterocera is still not possible because of one region. Sailing around Sansara isn't an option either. Same at Southeast Satori. Gaeta I is about half of its planned size and Gaeta II, III and IV were never built. Zindra was 131 regions larger before its release and it is incomplete ever since. Horizons has open ends all around except its connection to Zindra. This all means they planned to expand these continents and areas originally when they designed them, and then there was just not that much demand and they didn't expand them. Economic crash or not, this keeps happening in SL all the time and it is a thing with Bellisseria too. They clearly expected some themes to become really popular and then they just didn't.

AlettaMondragon Resident Totally agreed! We should preserve SL's history. So much hard work, and thought, went into creating some amazing spaces.

AlettaMondragon Resident Ok, so when you calculate the expense of servers for the lab, you add them all up together. Some make more than others, covering the overall cost. How many empty sims that may or may not be used once a year at best do the lab own? Waste is a part every business in this way. It is factored into the overall economic model. You have things that are only occasionally used because you feel you need them and their cost is covered by the stronger performing things. That is how business works and the world in general. These things are a sign of a healthy strong business, as SL certainly was in its first 10 years.

Irishk9 Aeon I'm not saying their decisions always make sense, they often don't. For example there are quite a few redundant empty water regions (2 rows instead of one) at the edges of some continents here and there, while not far from there the same waterway is only a tiny region corner. And they could have figured if about half of a continent looks like the Moon (Corsica) it will never be too popular, especially if many of those regions are G rated as well. They probably got away with these things back then since it was indeed a healthy, strong business, but it certainly isn't now. Or they take too much out of it and don't invest back as much as they should.

By the way, a not-so-up-to-date chart from Gridsurvey:

It shows clearly how the number of Linden-owned regions increases slowly and steadily, while it is the private regions that saw a serious drop in 2008, then after reaching a new peak in 2010 their number is slowly and steadily decreasing, except for some occasional spikes. The overall growth since September 2018 is basically only Linden-owned regions (that is Bellisseria, including its dev regions, hence the little drops). Too bad the graph ends in 2020, I'd like to see the rest of this trend.

There are probably many ways to interpret this, mine so far is that the demand for Linden-owned regions (Mainland and LH) keeps increasing slowly despite the lower number of active users, otherwise they wouldn't make more of them. At the same time the demand for private regions is getting lower, and we could say their number dropping back to the level of 2008 is really not good.

And it is not because people just got back to Linden-owned regions, most of those people are not in SL anymore. And we clearly don't get many new users. Why? Definitely not because there are prim squids and sharks in some of the SL seas. Can SL as a platform compete with modern platforms? In a technical way it just can't.

SL is often like walking into a steakhouse where they say they're sorry but they can only serve coleslaw at this time. Those who didn't want the coleslaw didn't stay. Those of us who try to make some steak are still here. I had detailed examples written for this but it is over the 2500 character limit and I don't feel like adding two comments for this, so I'll just have this coleslaw metaphor here.

AlettaMondragon Resident I like the steakhouse analogy.

spirit Wingtips You can have season change in several of the residential estates at the Blake Sea. As for changing how the existing landmarks at the Blake Sea look: NO.

AlettaMondragon Resident IMO its not so much a CHANGE as it is an UPGRADE to more current standards and technology. such as is with the case of PBR for lighting effects on numerous objects and ambient lighting for scenes and mood, it could be as simple as an upgrade to PBR textures on a lighthouse, to upgrading undersea creatures and plants to mesh and ones that move better and look better, i get preserving some of SL history too, you can upgrade and add other things to enhance an already thriving and popular area and encourage new people to join your community, you can also have a civil conversation or debate without coming across like a SL Feedback Karen Police.

"you can also have a civil conversation or debate without coming across like a SL Feedback Karen Police."

Yet it is you who resorts to insults and namecalling. Congratulations.