ft.com/techblog

Like the United States, Second Life is beginning to suffer the strains of being a popular destination for those seeking a new world to explore.

The metaverse created by San Francisco-based Linden Lab has become a victim of overcrowding and its systems are being overwhelmed by a wave of fresh immigrants.

Second Life passed its millionth-registration milestone over the past month and more than 200,000 accounts have been created in the past fortnight alone.

Many of these are people joining from overseas with more than  50 per cent increases in people arriving from Turkey, India, Portugal, Israel, China, Singapore, Columbia, Hungary, Romania, Malaysia, Philippines, Hong Kong, Peru, Chile, Croatia, and Taiwan, according to the Second Life November newsletter.

As a consequence, the Orientation Islands, where new members get their bearings, are now full and volunteers from the Mentor and Live Help groups are struggling to keep up with the influx.

But Linden Lab again echoes the US’s stance in the real world in insisting its values won’t change.

"We continue to believe in free expression, tolerance, creativity and community as the foundation for building the world," it says.

More prosaically, it promises it is committed to revamping customer support services and rationalising and improving communication systems.

That also carries a real-world price: Second Life’s virtual town hall meeting on Thursday was dominated by a debate on Linden pushing up its charges next week for acquiring private islands in order to meet its cost of hosting the worlds and properties being created by its ever-growing population.

Set-up fees will rise from $1250 to $1675 and monthly rent from $195 to $295.

Chris Nuttall, San Francisco

November 10th, 2006 in Games | Permalink