How Many Second Life Communities Will Follow Pfaffenthal 1867 to Sansar?

Linden Lab has created Sansar partnerships with a Hollywood movie, e-sports groups, and YouTube/Twitch personalities (including the just-announced comedian Steve Hofstetter), but little has been reported about any outreach with the many communities and brands in Linden Lab's Second Life. One possible exception is Pfaffenthal 1867, a sub-community built around roleplay in a detailed recreation of a Luxembourg City district from the 19th century. But last week, Pfaffenthal 1867's leader, Hauptmann Weydert, announced the roleplay sims would be closed, so the project could move to Sansar:

The moment has finally arrived, for the 1867 project to move on to SANSAR, were land is free, where we can have better graphics,VR headsets and real physical interactivity. Note that Sansar works very well on a normal PC [Editor: Some would argue otherwise] for desktop mode you do NOT need a gamer PC. IMPORTANT! All the 1867 sims in second life will be shut down next Monday, on the 26th of November. Please pack all your stuff by then.

The sudden move is surprising, so I asked Hauptmann Weydert donations were running short to cover tier.

"No," he told me via SL IM, "it was arranged that the museum paid until that date and after this we were to move to Sansar."

The passive voice of his answer was a bit ambiguous, so I asked him if (as many have speculated) that Linden Lab was helping the community make this move. No answer at press time, but I'll update this post if I get a reply. Until then, and until Pfaffenthal emerges in Sansar, here's a lovely tribute by Pepe Cometa to what the community created in Second Life:

Hat tip: /SecondLife, which has much comments on this move.

Comments

[Chic Aeon]

I visited 1867 in Sansar not long after the announcement last week. I was mostly worried about the SIZE of the experience and if it could possibly load in under half an hour (that was not a joke). It loaded very quickly, but there was a reason for that.

What I found was one finished building, a lot of pretty baskets scattered about and plenty of "cube and roofed cube" mesh to designate where buildings would go. It is a VAST VAST area made up of blocky mesh hills and valleys; I can't see that role play events can do much in the exceedingly uncompleted scene. There may be other finished buildings somewhere of course, just not anywhere near the landing point.

The work on 1867 has been going on for at least the last four months (when I joined the platform).
It may be a showplace in a few years but I know how long it takes to build a whole sim from scratch and it ain't a couple of months. I do wish them well and hope it works out for the group. Perhaps some more builders will join in the project.

Sansar has quite a few things going for it; one being no costs and the other being a stellar atmosphere.

But it will take time, building dreams -- for all of us.

[JohnC]

It is sad that a company appears to compete against itself.And rather sickening to hear that one of the things "going for Sansar" is no costs. When I open a new sim in the coming weeks in SL it will have cost me a great deal, So why not move to Sansar instead? You mean Build beautiful world and attract more people to Sansar, help out a company that abandons its true supporters. Those who in truth supplied the money that funded the very existence of the place that the company hopes will on day kill them off. Sure why not

[Clara Seller]

I'm with JohnC on this. It's a head-scratcher.

I wouldn't trust which ship is going to sink first, the one you're leaving or the one you're going to? I would also be hesitant about shaking the right hand of any company who clearly have their left hand wrapped around their old customers neck.

[Bixyl Shuftan]

I imagine the move may get some people to look again at Sansar out of curiosity, but I don't see other communities making the move anytime soon.

[YourThere Sometimes]

Agreeing as well with JohnC (welcome back!)..while as expected Clara has me cracking up=)

[Pulsar]

Even the better known Berlin 1920 has a traffic of only 3k today. How much traffic there was in Pfaffenthal 1867, Luxembourg?
I visited Pfaffenthal the first time in 2015. I think it was among the Destinations Editor's Picks. At that time it was pretty nice and fascinating, sometimes I came back; but usually there were only few people or almost nobody there.

If Pfaffenthal 1867 was little visited, and the museum stopped paying for that sim (whatever because of the low traffic and/or other reasons), it makes sense to transfer where it's free, rather than close down entirely.
On the other hand, a low traffic sim won't bring many people from Second Life to Sansar. And only few of that handful of people would move there, without inventory and their friends. Attracting someone else? Maybe. Meanwhile visitors in Sansar 1867 are zero.

[Eight Nine]

Sansar sucks

[Adeon Writer]

“Please pack all your stuff”

Not hard since you can’t take anything with you.

[JhonD]

I agree with JhonC. I will not go to Sansar, I will not close my community, nor my business, nor my club in SL to go to Sansar. LL is an executioner of those who helped that company grow. Why do not they tell us that they will transfer our inventories to Sansar? Want even more money to keep growing? After Sansar? There will be a Sansar II and we will have to put even more money? I looked at San Francisco the LL's CEO driving a Lamborghini, after Sansar he will drive a Rols? bahhhh ....

[cyberpiper alias weydert]

All of you were right back then. As it’s creator, I miss what we had in SL.
But the problem lies in the rather volatile nature of the SL community. You do something new, nice, interesting, and folks will come. In order to keep it up though you have to put in a bug work load, mainly organizing one event after another. But despite our best efforts, traffic waned. Gosh we offered free housing to our 1867 community!! Rare in SL!
The contract with the museum came to an end, and frankly we could not afford to pay 7000.-€ tier to LL a year out of our own pocket!
Sansar has been a dissapointment. We managed to do a whole street eventually, but had to start over because of too much lag, trying to figure out ways of more efficient texturing or building. also sansar had promised mobile development, which was then taken of the roadmap, a big dissapointment for us. And.... we all know it.... no traffic in sansar.... for now...
So we have put sansar dev on the backburner, and decided to develop our own mmorpg, starting of by developing a ‘childrens version’ on ROBLOX.... check it out: https://www.roblox.com/games/3030166262/1867