yesterday-in-second-life
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Yesterday in Second Life, Sunday 9 December, 2007
Yesterday in Second Life there was: 16,547 new signups bringing the total to 11,338,848 signups. A peak concurrency of 57,898 at 1:40PM, and a minimum concurrency of 31,425 at 11:50PM. Median concurrency for the day was 40,533. The Grid Stability Index for the day was 1.68 (lower is better). Due to some problems with a RAID drive during the day we lost some chunks of concurrency data while the array was bogged down rebuilding. We've struck through the unreliable figures. Users have found it simple to bypass Aristotle/Integrity's age-verification system. WGA strike pickets took place - and may become a regular occurrence. Vodaphone has extended the open beta for their cellphone-to-grid service until end Q1 2008. Robin Harper has given another update on Age Verification. Only one piece of information in the update is new: That parcel flagging and restriction may remain voluntary, unless it becomes necessary to do otherwise. We've had a query in about this since last week, and are still waiting for answers.
Yesterday in Second Life, Saturday 8 December, 2007
Yesterday in Second Life there was: 16,604 new signups bringing the total to 11,321,826 signups. A peak concurrency of 54,479 at 2:50PM, and a minimum concurrency of 32,032 at 1:35AM. Median concurrency for the day was 42,627. The Grid Stability Index for the day was 1.66 (lower is better). Linden Lab's statistical data feeds messed up on one or more of their servers today, and we lost about four hours of useful through the course of the afternoon.
Yesterday in Second Life, Friday 7 December, 2007
Yesterday in Second Life there was: 15,380 new signups bringing the total to 11,304,907 signups. A peak concurrency of 53,479 at 2:45PM, and a minimum concurrency of 30,210 at 12:50AM. Median concurrency for the day was 42,805. The Grid Stability Index for the day was 1.53 (lower is better). Apparently an inventory server or group of inventory servers failed during the morning. You can see the sudden drop in concurrency in the charts after the fold page as users were booted out during the repair process. We have no information on whether any data or inventory was lost by those affected. Linden Lab divulged their plans for land supply and tier pricing to the end of Q1 2008. The beta grid got another Havok update during the day, giving the whole weekend over to testing. Robin Harper pronounced the failure rate of international age-verification to be 'unacceptable', and gave an update on plans for fixing it.
Yesterday in Second Life, Thursday 6 December, 2007
Yesterday in Second Life there was: 16,444 new signups bringing the total to 11,289,171 signups. A peak concurrency of 53,289 at 2:00PM, and a minimum concurrency of 29,290 at 1:05AM. Median concurrency for the day was 41,342. The Grid Stability Index for the day was 1.40 (lower is better). Estonia opened an embassy. It was announced that the grid (main and beta) would be shut down on Tuesday for four hours of equipment upgrades. A new Second Life First Look Windlight viewer was released. Linden Lab wants to hear your voice about voice.
Yesterday in Second Life, Wednesday 5 December, 2007
Yesterday in Second Life there was: 18,283 new signups bringing the total to 11,272,727 signups. A peak concurrency of 52,990 at 1:40PM, and a minimum concurrency of 28,428 at 12:20AM. Median concurrency for the day was 40,495. The Grid Stability Index for the day was 2.46 (lower is better). Akela looked at some strangeness in NBC's reporting. The new 1.18.6(0) release-candidate viewer came out with some expected and unexpected additions. Age verification has gone into beta. So far, we know of only three people outside the USA who have managed to make it work - one with correct information and two with incorrect information. A major services outage caused problems for users for over half an hour in the early evening. We learned that the Linden Lab V-team has their own blog. SLOz expanded to cover more worlds - now called the Metaverse Journal.
Yesterday in Second Life, Tuesday 4 December, 2007
Yesterday in Second Life there was: 18,848 new signups bringing the total to 11,254,028 signups. A peak concurrency of 53,585 at 1:45PM, and a minimum concurrency of 29,585 at 1:20AM. Median concurrency for the day was 40,838. The Grid Stability Index for the day was 2.02 (lower is better). There was a major glitch at 11:55AM, dropping approximately 5,000 users at once. Linden Lab did not make any announcements or acknowledgement of the failure. A new Windlight viewer was released as 1.18.6(74965) and then replaced (with a forced downgrade) to 1.18.5(74965). There was talk about new authentication in a release candidate yesterday - but we don't know if that was it. If it was, we can only assume it failed. The Havok 4.6 beta was reopened. The JIRA and the Second Life wiki were taken down for a short maintenance period. Linden Lab is looking for testers with access to downtown San Francisco (including people who have never used Second Life before). This sort of thing is almost always done for user-interface and usability testing. The Second Winter Holiday Festival was announced, running from December 14 to January 8. For those of you for whom this is shaping up to be an unusually hot Summer season, this may be (ahem) cold comfort.
Yesterday in Second Life, Monday 3 December, 2007
Yesterday in Second Life there was: 16,413 new signups bringing the total to 11,234,744 signups. A peak concurrency of 54,376 at 1:50PM, and a minimum concurrency of 30,074 at 1:10AM. Median concurrency for the day was 41,041. The Grid Stability Index for the day was 1.67 (lower is better). Linden Lab says they bollixed up the DNS again. This seems to be becoming a regular thing. Having trouble accepting the Terms of Service at login? Smiling Teeple Linden has a solution for you. Havok on the beta grid was taken down for an update. The update didn't go so well, and some bugs turned up. Havok on the beta grid remains closed until further notice. AOL Pointe (AOL's presence in Second Life) was shut down. Thomas Simon/Rase Kenzo settled with plaintiffs over charges of copyright infringement. Dwight Allen seeks people to help him with research for his Master's thesis.
Yesterday in Second Life, Sunday 2 December, 2007
Yesterday in Second Life there was: 19,216 new signups bringing the total to 11,217,919 signups. A peak concurrency of 58,300 at 1:50PM (that's a new record!), and a minimum concurrency of 31,222 at 11:50PM. Median concurrency for the day was 43,312. The previous record concurrency was on Sunday 25 November at 1:50PM, and was 57,925. The Grid Stability Index for the day was 1.44 (lower is better). Linden Lab has decided to acknowledge April 17 as Remembrance Day in Second Life - though why they mentioned it to news.com but didn't announce it to their users - that's a bit of a head-scratcher.
Yesterday in Second Life, Friday 30 November, 2007
Yesterday in Second Life there was: 14,411 new signups bringing the total to 11,180,308 signups. A peak concurrency of 53,084 at 2:50PM, and a minimum concurrency of 28,916 at 2:05AM. Median concurrency for the day was 42,430. The Grid Stability Index for the day was 1.44 (lower is better). A dangerous exploit in QuickTime was revealed today which has troublesome implications for Second Life, as well as for any software that can access third-party QuickTime streams. SLCC 2008 is gearing up for its run in Tampa, Florida next year. Conference track proposals are open to the public. Though some might say "Open Tracks = Closed Conference". Gamepro hates the Second Life err.. HUD. We're actually not sure which of many elements they're objecting to. While Second Life's UI has drawn some deserved criticism (including by us), there are worse out there. Voice maintenance went more smoothly than expected, but the (now normal) nightly troubles settled in as usual in the wee hours of the morning.
Yesterday in Second Life, Thursday 29 November, 2007
Yesterday in Second Life there was: 16,356 new signups bringing the total to 11,165,897 signups. A peak concurrency of 52,731 at 1:50PM, and a minimum concurrency of 29,440 at 1:10AM. Median concurrency for the day was 40,682. The Grid Stability Index for the day was 1.67 (lower is better). Aside from some asset-server and inventory delays and glitches in the early hours of the day, things were actually relatively smooth today, considering. It was the end of another release-candidate cycle, as viewer 1.18.5 became the official Second Life viewer. The Windlight First Look viewer also got an update yesterday with some minor bugfixes. The test deployment of Havok 4.6 physics on the beta grid (Aditi) got some bugfixes pushed through for it as well. All the while Linden Lab have been struggling with issues from the grid instability through the week and fallout from the updates.
Yesterday in Second Life, Wednesday 28 November, 2007
Yesterday in Second Life there was: 17,245 new signups bringing the total to 11,148,841 signups. A peak concurrency of 51,966 at 1:50PM, and a minimum concurrency of 30,144 at 1:15AM. Median concurrency for the day was 40,304. The Grid Stability Index for the day was 1.74 (lower is better). The patching process for the update being applied this week was generally quite troublesome for grid operations. Voice maintenance has been announced for Friday morning. The Second Life wiki dropped out for over an hour in the early hours of the morning from what seems to have been a configuration error. A Florida court found Robert Leatherwood in default.
Yesterday in Second Life, Tuesday 27 November, 2007
Yesterday in Second Life there was: 16,759 new signups bringing the total to 11,130,045 signups. A peak concurrency of 54,152 at 1:50PM, and a minimum concurrency of 29,127 at 1:50AM. Median concurrency for the day was 40,648. The Grid Stability Index for the day was 3.49 (lower is better). Rough day for the grid - between what seem to be random failures coupled with deliberate changes behind the scenes through the day. Some of the hacked banks are back in business. Rase Kenzo is determined to fight the copyright infringement case, rather than settle - though his chances don't look good. Gartner says virtual worlds are leading the drive to electronic currencies - of course almost all currencies are largely electronic these days.
Yesterday in Second Life, Monday 26 November, 2007
Yesterday in Second Life there was: 14,399 new signups bringing the total to 11,113,286 signups. A peak concurrency of 54,775 at 1:55PM, and a minimum concurrency of 29,818 at 1:05AM. Median concurrency for the day was 40,809. The Grid Stability Index for the day was 1.43 (lower is better). At 8:10AM a circuit breaker tripped, taking out roughly 700 simulators It was approximately one hour before all of them were back online. We received word that Linden Lab has closed their Sansome Street office in favor of the larger premises around the corner in Battery Street. A new release-candidate viewer became available, which residents discovered in advance of the announcement. Linden Lab held their first in-world press-conference today. We here at Massively were unable to attend in due to short notice of dates/times and awkward scheduling. Transcripts of the session were promised, however, and we'll be taking a look at those as soon as we get them. The topic was the new search system. Service outages were scheduled for the ailing Support Portal, which as far as we know is still messed up. Maintenance is set for Wednesday morning and Saturday night (the busiest night of the week).
Yesterday in Second Life, Sunday 25 November, 2007
Yesterday in Second Life there was: 17,331 new signups bringing the total to 11,098,887 signups. A peak concurrency of 57,925 at 1:50PM (a new record!), and a minimum concurrency of 30,705 at 11:55PM. Median concurrency for the day was 43,333. The Grid Stability Index for the day was 1.98 (lower is better). DNS problems messed up the grid for a little while in the morning, but things got quite a bit smoother through the afternoon. Eloise examine's Nicholaz Beresford's thoughtful response to Philip Linden's blog post earlier this week.
Yesterday in Second Life, Saturday 24 November, 2007
Yesterday in Second Life there was: 18,593 new signups bringing the total to 11,081,215 signups. A peak concurrency of 53,864 at 2:05PM, and a minimum concurrency of 32,133 at 1:15AM. Median concurrency for the day was 44,781. The Grid Stability Index for the day was 1.40 (lower is better). Voice services went out for an unspecified period in the very early hours of the morning. The cause is unknown.
Yesterday in Second Life, Friday 23 November, 2007
Yesterday in Second Life there was: 17,049 new signups bringing the total to 11,062,571 signups. A peak concurrency of 54,218 at 2:25PM, and a minimum concurrency of 30,769 at 1:35AM. Median concurrency for the day was 41,770. The Grid Stability Index for the day was 1.45 (lower is better). There were some unspecified 'technical failures' affecting the Second Life grid in the morning. While these were apparently resolved within two hours, there were numerous complaints of things remaining unusually slow throughout the day.
Yesterday in Second Life, Thursday 22 November, 2007
Yesterday in Second Life there was: 19,605 new signups bringing the total to 11,045,222 signups. A peak concurrency of 48,521 at 1:55PM, and a minimum concurrency of 27,490 at 1:50AM. Median concurrency for the day was 37,027. The Grid Stability Index for the day was 1.64 (lower is better). The Second Life Support Portal continued ill. Neither users nor staff can respond to open support tickets, hampering things significantly. This issue remains unresolved. A failing inventory server from Wednesday failed more completely yesterday morning, necessitating disconnecting the users whose inventories were served through it while it was replaced. You'll see that mass disconnection on the chart below the fold. Being Thanksgiving in the USA, there were quite a few private celebrations among people who (for one reason or another) could not be physically together on the day.
Yesterday in Second Life, Wednesday 21 November, 2007
Yesterday in Second Life there was: 22,271 new signups bringing the total to 11,025,617 signups. A peak concurrency of 41,903 at 10:30AM, and a minimum concurrency of 28,998 at 11:50PM. Median concurrency for the day was 35,425. The Grid Stability Index for the day was 2.12 (lower is better). More network problems took place between 7:30AM and 8:30AM this morning, followed by a slew of login and inventory problems around peak time and throughout the afternoon. The Support portal - the primary contact avenue for support tickets and information began throwing spurious error messages at users at about 10PM. Linden lab announced a server-side software update next week - introducing support for a new login system that has drawn considerable technical criticism. A new Windlight viewer was released, for those of you who just adore the eye-candy. Philip Linden took some time to post about Linden Lab's revised mission statement.
Yesterday in Second Life, Tuesday 20 November, 2007
Yesterday in Second Life there was: 15,378 new signups bringing the total to 11,003,346 signups. The 11 millionth signup took place at approximately 2:10PM. A peak concurrency of 52,654 at 2:20PM, and a minimum concurrency of 20,093 at 5:35PM. Median concurrency for the day was 40,466. The Grid Stability Index for the day was 48.04 (lower is better). The grid was functionally inoperable for a couple of chunks of the day. Not quite inoperable enough to be called down, but you can push a car down the street with effort when it's broken down. That doesn't make things easy or pleasant. Since the outage early in the evening, there are signs of increased stability. It's too early to call a trend but it looks promising. We're coming up to what's increasingly becoming known as 'the witching hour' for Linden Lab's servers, so we'll wait and see.
Yesterday in Second Life, Monday 19 November, 2007
Yesterday in Second Life there was: 19,190 new signups bringing the total to 10,987,968 signups. A peak concurrency of 54,269 at 1:50PM, and a minimum concurrency of 29,908 at 1:10AM. Median concurrency for the day was 40,232. The Grid Stability Index for the day was 3.03 (lower is better). We counted five definite partial service outages today, and a possible sixth. Whatever is going on, it isn't fixed yet. As a bonus, there was an additional 8 hour outage in the third-party voice system, and network problems as well. Median signup rates have fallen over the last few days - at the new, lower rate, we expect the 11 millionth signup at about 3PM SLT (US Pacific) today. A new release candidate viewer (1.18.5-RC1) was released. Kindly State High School has reinvented itself as Kindly State University. Professor Edward Castronova spoke at this week's Metanomics session.
