NWN's True Community Search: NORSim dominates the Top 20 Sites for week ending September 30

Dark, fantastic, and sprawling, with the intimation of sex and violence always hanging in the air, NorSim (NoR) is a multi-sim city that's actually a goth RPG, created under the direction of alabaster-skinned Luxa Budan.  And without question, it was last week's most active True Community in Second Life, racking up over 43,000 visits during the seven day period.  "NoR is, in short, the war of the Armageddon," Luxa explains to me, shortly after an interview near a gutted gas station and a Suicide Booth, "where Demons, Angels, Humans, Vampires, Nekos, Lycans, Supernaturals and more to come, struggle to survive, manipulate and dominate."

After launching my search for SL's True Communities (i.e., without camping chairs or excessive freebie giveaways), I asked Tateru Nino to apply the same headcounting methodology* she uses to track visits to real world corporate sites.  Here's her top twenty for last week:

Site/Category (Direct teleport      SLURL at link)	Est avg hourly visits	Est avg hourly visits (peak hrs)	Estimated total weekly visits
NORSIM MultiSIM (Goth RPG)	259	223	43,646 (new)
Nude Island (Mature Social)	173	128	29,198 (new)
Avilion Grove (Fantasy Roleplaying)	158	130	26,578 (new)
Phat Cat's Jazzy Blue Lounge (PG Social/Shopping)	138	150	23,220 (down 2.32%)
Heavenly Rose Gardens (PG Social)	90	82	15,154 (new)
Hedonistic Isle (Mature Social)	90	71	15,120 (new)
Midian City (Goth RPG)	89	58	14,986 (new)
Bound and Determined (BDSM Social)	88	72	14,818 (new)
Blackheart's Cafe (PG Social)	87	65	14,717 (new)
Independent State of Caledon (Steampunk Roleplaying)	81	100	13,608 (up 18.37%)
Laguna Nude Beach (Mature Social)	79	64	13,406 (new)
Bare Rose (Asian Roleplaying/Shopping)	78	58	13,205 (new)
City of Lost Angels (Goth RPG)	78	82	13,152 (up 2.53%)
Capture Roleplay HQ (BDSM Roleplaying)	78	48	13,104 (new)
Lost Gardens of Apollo (PG Social)	77	84	12,936 (down 5.52%)
New Citizens Incorporated (Education/ Social)	70	76	11,808 (stable)
Toxian City (Goth RPG)	64	51	10,901 (new)
Icedragon's Playpen (Casual Gaming/ Social)	52	45	8,803 (new)
Isle of Lesbos (Mature Social)	49	70	8,232 (stable)
The Shelter (Education/Social)	48	55	8,220 (down 6.68%)

As you'll notice, the chart has little or no relation to the Lindens' Popular Places listing, which is choked over with free money camping chairs and other freebie giveaways.  (Even the sex-themed sites in the Linden twenty have them.)

In fact, the only regular overlap between this New World Notes chart and the Linden chart is Phat Cat's, and this week, Nude Island.  (Which despite what the name suggests, actually seems to be more of a beach-themed casual social area, than a 24/7 naked orgy. Least the couple times I've visited.)  For that matter, there are far more PG-oriented communities with an emphasis on socializing (The Shelter, Ice Dragon's, New Citizens, Lost Gardens, Blackheart's, Heavenly Rose, Phat Cat's) than Mature-rated sites with an arguable focus on sex (Nude Island, Hedonistic, Bound, Laguna, Capture, Lesbos.)  Seven to six.

Luxa says Norsim has close to 1300 members, while the game's official website has about 500 registered members. "Being a realist," she adds, "I would say we have a base in the area of 800 players at the moment. We recently set an all time high of 209 people in NoR at one time and average well over 100."  This points out an important consideration with our headcount: while NorSim had 43K+ visits for the week, unique visitors were likely much less than that: say an estimated 1000 who are part of the NoR community, and likely several hundred visitors/gawkers.

Why?  Because with the headcount methodology (see below), Tateru counts visitors during random searches, and calculates on the assumption that a visit lasts for an average of an hour a day.  Factoring in Luxa's membership numbers, it looks like individual visitors to NoR stay there far longer than an hour. 

This would not be a surprise, for while Luxa drew from an epic narrative she's been creating over a decade, to design Norsim, along with older goth communities like the cities of Midian, Toxia, and Lost Angels (also on the top twenty), "I think the biggest inspiration at this point is the players themselves," she says. "There are so many creative minds that add to what NoR is and is becoming."

In the coming days, look for the full True Community list at Tateru's site.

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DON'T SEE A POPULAR TRUE COMMUNITY SITE YOU LIKE IN THIS SEARCH?

If you know of sites not listed here which consistently generate 25,000 or more in Traffic daily, please post the name and location in Comments for future consideration.

DISCLAIMERS TO THIS SEARCH

- Due to SL's poor search function, this list doesn't necessarily reflect all the most popular places in SL. In fact, some omissions are quite likely.
- All effort is made to check sites for camping chairs and other excessive freebie/free money giveaways. If any on this list include those, please IM me (Hamlet Au).
- If you're the owner of a site on this list and would prefer not being on future listings, please contact me with that request.  (Related note: future updates may include SLURLs.)
- Shopping-only areas excluded.

*TRUE COMMUNITY SEARCH METHODOLOGY

Sites in this headcount are selected for their prominence, either from publicity or real world name recognition. Sites with consistent low traffic (500 or less weekly) may be dropped in future counts in favor of other sites. We do not count sites with camping chairs, or visitors in the orientation sims, as there seems to be little evidence to suggest that they will become visitors to the parent site - and if they do, we catch them when we headcount the site anyway.

We collect data four times per day for each site at 2am, 8am, 2pm and 8pm (times in SLT/US Pacific) plus/minus 1 hour. For each sample we count the number of people at the site at the time. We average those samples across the week, and then assume that average to hold constant, with each visitor spending a half hour on-site. This methodology does not necessarily include one-time events that generate high traffic missed by our sampling, which we'll make note of whenever possible. Headcounts do not factor in returning visitors, so assume that the total number of unique Residents are likely to be significantly less than the estimated total visits.