Over 1000 new orders at Openlife

I guess I should add a preface here for those that don't know about the change in pricing and policy of the mini sims in Second Life (R) (low prim region estates) that goes into effect I believe at the beginning of the year. There was a lot of fist waving, name calling and finally an ESCAPE of sort for many folks to the one year old Openlife grid. It's been a fast paced week for many individuals. Regions on the Openlife mainland were selling as fast as they were added. Estate clusters were being ordered in GREAT demand it seems. I didn't realize HOW much land had been sold until this evening when an official person was in the Openlife chat.

I thought this would most likely be of interest for some of you.

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OK. I just got some official info that Openlife is processing 1000 new orders -- I am guessing from the weekend but may be from the last week. Either way that is a LOT of new people there. I am among them and waiting semi patiently for my land to transfer. It is a manual thing there.

Since most ALL of this is a reflection of the pay increase of the mini sims and since most ALL the chatter in the sandboxes etc. is about LL and movement, I thought it would be of note to post this on the feed.

Since Openlife has only 256 mainland regions on the foundation continent of Alice and some of those were of course TAKEN before the great hiatus from SL, that means that there will be a TON of new islands going in.

So that is a lot of new folks since there was only one or two islands on the map before all this happened. The folks in Australia where Openlife is based (and maybe other spots as we are in a digital age) are working round the clock on orders and keeping the grid up and the like. And we are all waiting.

I moved to the mainland purposefully. One -- it is cheap by region terms at $59 a month and $30 set up fee and I sort of liked being in the pioneering region. I scored a region next to the stock exchange which has an impressive build and in theory will be a stable neighbor. And I decided I liked being more of a community gal than a separatist.

Since I would like to put forth a few thoughts for my new blog http://sl2ol.blogspot.com/ which I planned as a business blog but I think will morph into a mix of help and personal and business with labels on the side so you can find what you are looking for -- here it is.

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Here is what I see from the conversations, chat rooms, blogs etc.

• Most of the newcomers are LEAVING SL -- not exactly COMING to Openlife.
• Some of them JUMPED without looking around much and may leave soon. There is no viable economy at the moment and while there is one planned and promised "soon" -- "soon" gets put on the back burner at times when grid stability and other concerns get in the way. Rightfully so.
  
• A lot of people are planning on MOVING thier SL inventory to Openlife using Second Inventory which may be fine for builders. It seems however that most people are not reading the fine print. You need to be the CREATOR or the item needs to be full perm (and do we want that stuff really anyway?) in order to transfer. People in the chat rooms are talking about moving their "skin" over (not plural mind you and that would be a simple upload process). I asked them if the skin was full perms and they just stared blindly into virtual space (wink). So there WILL be some issues there.
• SL appears to be having a short term recession at the moment -- much like when the casinos closed. We will make it through, but I am personally glad I do not have a large "nut" to pay each month :)
• I am not convinced from talking to people that the new citizens realize that Openlife is in BETA (Alpha - Beta really as they sometimes say). Things often don't work. The grid is down a lot. For people who joined SL two or three years ago, this is just a deja vu. For the people that joined in the last six months? They have no idea what they are getting into.
• I, personally, look forward to the frontier -- the newness, the struggles and many of those early days I missed in SL. I was here long enough ago for the semblance to be obvious, but not long enough ago to be a pioneer (wink).
  

I think the past week will -- in the long run -- be good for both Phil's Place and Openlife. We cannot have another world to expand our metaverse TO , if the toddlers can't grow. They need energy and vision and CONTENT CREATORS. I plan to do my part there savoring the adventure -- and enjoy the smoother flow of things here.

That works for me.