Okay, so in a time period where I'm mostly reporting doom and gloom from Second Life, I wanted to make sure to report some good news as well...

Regular residents already know that the grid has been experiencing something of a land boom these days; and that's mostly because Linden Lab, the company that owns Second Life, is severely understaffed these days, and have been so busy dealing with the tech issues that come with all these millions of recent new residents, that they haven't had time to create new land for these millions of recent new residents. In effect, it's been much like if you suddenly doubled the population of Manhattan in a three-month period, without changing the city limits; a whole lot of people, with very little land available, and with prices reaching the outrageous for what little land people were willing to give up. (Want a good example? As of a week or so ago, I could've sold the little 512-square-meter waterfront parcel I own for the ITG headquarters for over 100 American dollars, versus the 20 dollars I originally paid for it.)

Ah, but I'm glad to report that Linden has finally made the time recently to start miraculously creating new land in the grid, and in a big way too -- over 40 brand-new sims in just the last week, or effectively 2.6 million square meters of new land for residents to buy and use, situated on the west side of the "mainland's" south continent, seen in the yellow circle above. And what's more, as you can see in that red circle above, this leaves a rather glaring large hole in the south continent, which Linden is swearing that they're going to fill in over the next couple of weeks; that could potentially add up to another 80 new sims of land to the metaverse, making for over 8 million square meters of new blank land added to the grid over the period of a month. These new additions, by the way, finally bring the south continent on par with the other areas of the mainland (which I call the north continent and "Linden Lakes"), in terms of total land area; yeah, not bad for a continent which didn't even exist a year ago at this point.

Eight million square meters -- that's a lot of land! And just what the grid needed, too, at least in my opinion, although I'm sure there are economic theorists out there who would disagree with me. The sudden influx of such a profound amount of new land has already had a noticable effect on the market, even just a week after it happened; any random shopping trip through the metaverse now will show lower prices for the land that's already available, in some cases down 25 percent or more from just a week ago. Yes, this recent new land glut is bad news for those trying to make serious money from virtual real estate; but it's good news for you and me and all the other regular players of SL out there, who are mostly searching simply for a mid-sized estate in which to host personal events.

So what exactly is going on over at all those new sims right now, a week after they first appeared? I wondered that myself, so yesterday spent an afternoon looking around the area, and taking random photos for this blog. And surprisingly enough, the answer for the most part is not a whole hell of a lot; which yeah, I think definitely says something about Second Life and the speed at which things happen there, that it would be surprising for a piece of land to exist for seven whole days without it being entirely developed already. I admit, it was kind of weird to go walking around a huge area of land again that had nothing on it; I haven't regularly experienced such a thing since I first joined last year, when the tips of the metaverse were always abandoned, which was great for homeless players because you could just teleport out there anytime you wanted to be alone. It's something I hadn't really thought about before; of how industrialized the grid has become in the last six months, to the point that I don't even think about it anymore.

Of course, this is not always the case with the new land on the south continent; here's an area about halfway down the coast, for example, that's already been developed to within an inch of its life. It's unbelievable, I think, how fast such enormous structures can go up there, especially when they're created in advance so that they can simply be plunked down on a new piece of land.

Oh, and speaking of which, look what else I stumbled across while over there (specifically, at Cajeiri 94/232/24); an almost exact replica of the Burj Al Arab luxury hotel in Dubai, with multiple floors and a working helipad on the roof, a copy of which can be bought by any high-end commercial or residential developer out there, with it even being designed with a small footprint to save on land costs. Legal? Probably not; I doubt these ingenious designers have anything officially to do with the actual Burj Al Arab hotel. But cool? Oh, you bet!

Next door to the hotel, by the way, is another example is something I find fascinating in the grid; of those who choose to live on luxury yachts while there instead of land-based houses, either owning underwater land on which to park the boat or renting a slip at a larger pier. In some ways, after all, it combines the best of both worlds; even a yacht affords a resident a lot of room for customization and interior design (the photo above, for example, is just of the master bedroom, which takes up only one-third of one of the yacht's multiple levels), while still giving the owner spectacular access to the water, and in some cases even with the ability to crank that boat up as a vehicle and go sailing away. As the owner of underwater land myself, it's something I definitely think about on a regular basis.

Of course, it's not just commercial developments that are popping up on this new land this week; here, for example, is a sorta nature sanctuary I came across as well, apparently owned by a small group of private individuals, and featuring a cool Eisengard-type mossy tower in the middle of the parcel. Such things are the saving grace of the mainland these days, and the one thing that prevents it from becoming a full-blown type of virtual MySpace; that there are still plenty of people there dedicated to prettying up their surroundings, or to building estates that simply show off their design skills instead of trying to sell something. As long as there are smart, creative people on the mainland, as far as I'm concerned, there will always be reasons to visit the mainland.

While I was looking around at the big map yesterday, by the way, I came across something pretty intriguing; as far as I know, it's the first large-scale area of "deep" (i.e. reddish) desert in the grid, a dramatic form of terraforming which I personally think is quite beautiful. And the funny thing is that it's not an official creation of Linden at all; instead, it's the newest themed area to arise at Azure Islands, a sort of "super structure" of connected private islands that are all owned by a small group of private individuals. It's interesting, I think, that the first largish area of a new terraforming type I've seen since first joining would come from a private group of entrepreneurs, not Linden themselves; it makes me wonder what kinds of similar new ventures we'll be seeing once the entire open-source transition of the grid has been made.

The more I stuck around Azure, in fact, the more intrigued I became; in actuality it is just a mammoth-sized organization, with over 170 private sims now chained together as a unified whole, for a whopping 11 million square meters of usable land. And even more interesting, over the course of development Azure has dedicated many of these sims to larger, more unified terraforming experiments, like ten-sim volcanoes for example that have sandy beaches ringing its perimeter. Pictured above, for example, is yet another intriguing new development at their overall space; a densely-forested region that's starting to spring up as well, only six sims large at this point but with a look that says there's a lot more to come.

Ultimately, I think, when you sit down and really talk with semi-serious players of Second Life, the above photos are ultimately what most of them are shooting for, when it comes time to have a mature personal estate; something that's been designed beforehand with residential space in mind, that's controlled by a central body that regulates what exactly can and cannot be built. Places like Azure can be a jarring contrast sometimes to various areas of the mainland one comes across; it makes me wonder if there's a way to add some of this regulation to the mainland as a whole, to put together even the basic steps towards guaranteeing an area of mainland dedicated to residential buildings integrated with the existing natural surroundings.

So anyway, there's my look at what's happening at these new sims right now; and of course I'll make sure to bop back down there again soon, if Linden ends up filling in that 80-sim hole soon that's currently there. If you come across your own things worth noting on the south continent these days, do make sure to mention them in the commenting section; and as always, I appreciate you being patient with the delays this blog continuously seems to face right now.