OpenSim User Growth Slows Amid Cooler Weather – Hypergrid Business

Lately, the weather’s been cooling off in the US—well, on certain days, it gets a bit unpredictable. With all that’s happening around the country, I’m finding the lure of virtual worlds increasingly enticing, which probably explains the uptick in registered users and land area in the public OpenSim grids.

What really caught my attention, though, was the drop in the active user count—down by over 2,700 users. This dip comes despite issues like Moonrose not updating its stats due to website trouble, Vida Dupla also not reporting this time around, and the closure of Great Canadian Grid, which had over 600 active users last month.

Several other grids reported noticeable declines in active users. OSgrid saw a decrease of more than 800 active users compared to last month, Craft World noted a drop of over 200, and five grids each lost more than 100 active users.

So, what’s driving this trend? Maybe everyone got caught up in Halloween fun, or perhaps more folks are venturing out to enjoy the fall weather in their favorite cozy sweaters.

But hold on! According to Paul Clevett from Wolf Territories, it’s more about technical downtime—OSgrid is undergoing maintenance. Thanks, Paul, for the heads-up!

OSgrid’s been offline since November 7 due to space issues with their storage cluster. They announced: “OSgrid has 17 years of data, amounting to several hundred million assets,” with an added challenge of storing a redundant copy and inflated asset sizes.

To tackle this, they’re reconfiguring storage, which involves moving millions of assets and reclaiming phantom space. They’ve had to put the grid into maintenance mode to prevent disruption while they do the heavy lifting.

The downside? There’s no telling how long it’ll take. The silver lining? They don’t anticipate any asset loss.

In my tracking, there are 2,677 public grids, with 295 being active this month and 232 publishing their stats. If you have a stats page that’s not on our list, shoot me an email at [email protected] to ensure your grid is highlighted in reports, boosting visibility for both search engines and users.

This month, despite losing over 2,000 regions, OSgrid still leads by land area with 32,867 standard region equivalents. Meanwhile, Wolf Territories Grid takes the crown for activity with 7,379 unique logins over the past 30 days.

Most grids running on DreamGrid, a free OpenSim version, don’t make it into our stats as they’re usually private. OpenSim lets anyone create virtual worlds without technical know-how. Those with tech skills can run the grids on their servers for free, with commercial hosting starting at under $5 a region.

For those interested, a list of OpenSim hosting providers is available. The recommended Firestorm viewer can be downloaded here, along with resources for obtaining content for your OpenSim world or region.

Good news! Our Hypergrid Business newsletter is now live. It’ll feature all the OpenSim news monthly on the 15th, following the stats report. Subscribe now to stay updated.

When choosing grids, activity levels often judge popularity. For general-purpose social grids, especially closed ones, busier is often better. It attracts those looking to socialize, merchants seeking customers, and organizers planning events.

Here’s the list of the top 25 most active grids this month:

1. Wolf Territories Grid: 7,379 users
2. OSgrid: 4,046 users
3. GBG World: 2,498 users
4. DigiWorldz: 2,190 users
5. Alternate Metaverse: 2,058 users
6. Darkheart’s Playground: 2,011 users
7. WaterSplash: 1,497 users
8. Trianon World: 1,092 users
9. Neverworld: 1,042 users
10. AviVerse AlterEgo: 1,020 users
…and so on until, New Life Italy with 434 users.

Kitely Market showcases 20,973 product listings with 41,105 variations, of which 35,866 are exportable. It’s delivered orders to 632 OpenSim grids. Most growth in Kitely has been in exportable content, with non-exportable figures remaining steady for nearly eight years.

The Kitely Market is OpenSim’s most extensive legal content collection, open to both hypergrid-enabled and private grids. They recently added support for PBR materials and larger textures.

This month, NakedWorldz made its debut in our database. If you’re aware of any grid we’re missing, drop me an email.

Meanwhile, nine grids got suspended, including Angel Grid and Ghost Area. If they don’t come online soon, they’ll be marked as closed. Grids shifting login URIs or website addresses should inform me to update our records.

The top grids by land area include:

1. OSgrid: 32,867 regions
2. Wolf Territories Grid: 29,987 regions
3. Kitely: 18,126 regions
…continuing down to Logicamp with 120 regions.

If there’s a public grid we’re not tracking, let me know at [email protected].

Photography, writing, and virtual worlds bring science fiction writer and journalist Maria Korolov to center stage. Keep up with her adventures on her Amazon author page, YouTube, or any of her other social media channels. Email [email protected] for further engagement in the captivating realms she navigates daily.