Second Life's Top Twenty Most Popular Regions for August (According to Metaverse Business)

Franks Place 2, photo by Sharcrista Quan

Here's the top twenty most popular regions in Second Life last month, according to data compiled by Louis Platini of Metaverse Business, using a bot-driven avatar counting system. After the name of each sim is the average number of unique avatars in the sim at any given moment:

1. Italia 4 Milano - 58
2. Cidade do Medo - 56
3. Sexy Islands - 56
4. Franks Place 2 - 48
5. A Lesbian Paradise - 44
6. Hy Brazil - 44
7. Midnight Reflections - 43
8. escort oasis - 43
9. Sweethearts - 42
10. Lu Dongbin - 41 (NEW TO TOP 20 FROM JULY)
11. Ilha Brasil - 40
12. Brasil Sul - 39
13. IYC Addictions - 39 (NEW TO TOP 20 FROM JULY)
14. Arab Avatar - 38 (NEW TO TOP 20 FROM JULY)
15. Italia 2 Torino - 38 (NEW TO TOP 20 FROM JULY)
16. Bondage Ranch - 38 (NEW TO TOP 20 FROM JULY)
17. Brasil - 38 (NEW TO TOP 20 FROM JULY)
18. Quantico - 38 (NEW TO TOP 20 FROM JULY)
19. Caladan Island - 38 (NEW TO TOP 20 FROM JULY)
20. AMTS - 38 (NEW TO TOP 20 FROM JULY)

As with the last couple month's listings, there's a strong presence of Italian and Portuguese-language themed sims. I just visited the top site, Italia 4 Milano, and teleported into a nicely detailed Italian city square, where there was a dance floor, a free L$ machine, and a dozen Residents cheerfully chatting in Italian. Another recurring favorite is depicted above: Frank's Place 2 [SLurl], a fancy dress jazz club. (Official website here, Wikia listing here.) And no, far as I can tell, "Quantico" is not a sim for people who want to roleplay as US Marines, but a mall/casual hangout area.

Notes on potential bots: If you believe any of these regions are heavily bot-populated, state your concerns (civilly!) in Comments, and I'll contact the region owner, for confirmation. ("NA" indicates data compiling issues for those particular sims.)

Comments

[Renmiri]

5 Brazilian sims among the top 20 ? (Cidade do Medo is probably Brazilian since it is a portuguese name). Is Second Life turning into Brazilian Life ?

[SecondLie]

What? No Emerald Point?

[Victor Komparu]

How many of these sims are flagged as Adult?

[Kudzumai Kinomis]

Brilliant.. a furry sex club made it to the top 20 XD

[Ignatius Onomatopoeia]

Why so many educators are going to grids with only PG and Mature zoning...a short history:

College Dean: So you are teaching in this "Second World" thing again?

Faculty Member: I am. It's "Second Life," too.

Dean: Yeah, I read a little about it. We have a replica of our campus there?

Faculty: It's more of a series of projects on a virtual island...

Dean: Island? Well, can students walk to the rest of this place?

Faculty: They can actually fly or go from place to place by a teleport...kinda like Star Trek.

Dean: Really? One of our I.T. guys e-mailed me a link to some information on what's popular in The Second Life. I saw this list of places that you can "teleport" to visit. So what the hell is a "Bondage Ranch?"

Faculty: /facepalm

Faculty: Um, that sort of content is adult zoned and has a lot of bots.

Dean: Lot of what? So what about Sexy Islands and Lesbian Paradise? I.T. says we are paying something called "tier" to this Linden Labs company.

Faculty: We have four faculty using the campus island for class-related work.

Dean: Good, but to continue this experiment we'll need assessment data you've collected that shows it improves retention and performance on our communications-skills rubrics as compared to similar courses. And then we'll call a meeting of the Academic Computing Committee...

Faculty: I'll let my colleagues know. See you.

Dean: (when door closes, picking up the phone) "Can you get me the Director of Academic Computing?....." (under his breath) "Bondage Ranch???"

[Dave Bell]

An average of over 50 AVs?

I don't know how much the total varies but that's the sort of figure that lags a sim to hell and back. The big events at SL7B had regions limited to 33 AVs.

(I'm not going near Frank's Place until I get my new computer...)

[Winter Seale]

I tried visiting Frank's Place a while back and couldn't move for the lag. SL's basic scaling problems highlighted there.