What really gave me to think when looking at
Hypergrid Business' OpenSim statistics for May was the varying discrepancy between active users, Hypergridders included, and land mass on the various grids.
The biggest grids in land mass are both special cases. Being the second-largest grid with 29,248 standard regions, the
Wolf Territories Grid is one because it's largely varsims, and at least the mainland is varsims from 4x4 upward. Whereas other grids are dominated by standard-region-sized sims, a typical Wolf Territories sim is 16 of these. Also, @
Lone Wolf himself is probably still the owner of the most land in the metaverse. At the same time, the Wolf Territories Grid tops the list of most active grids with 6,232 MAUs.
OSgrid, largest with 32,547 standard regions, easily leaving Second Life in the dust, and second-busiest with 5,186 MAUs, is a special case because it doesn't offer land rentals. Everything that isn't an official sim is attached to the grid and hosted by its users. Size-wise, that goes from single personal sims hosted at home to whole archipelagos of varsims like Tropicana Estates (which used to be a whole lot bigger even) or Nautilus Estates. Technically speaking, OSgrid is the one grid with the most region servers. Also, for this reason, OSgrid's land mass always takes a little dive whenever they do a clean-up and remove dead sims from their map because many don't shut their sims down properly when removing them. At the same time, of course, OSgrid is a popular destination for Hypergridders even beyond parking your avatar at Lbsa Plaza.
Now let's take a look at some other grids.
Kitely is the third-largest grid with 18,077 standard regions, but the 20th-busiest grid with only 627 MAU. But it's a popular builders' grid due to its stability. Kitely's trick to cope with that much land is to shut all sims down when they aren't populated and start them up again when someone wants to enter them, a trick that was later re-implemented by DreamGrid.
ZetaWorlds is the fourth-largest grid with 12,910 standard regions, but only the 21st-busiest grid with only 596 MAU. I doubt that this includes the 3rd Wind community. Still, one reason ZetaWorlds is so large and underpopulated is its huge ocean, consisting of dozens upon dozens of varsims; I think it was 3x3s. It's so big that it takes well over five minutes to cross in a motor boat at full speed. Even Stark, a nudism-encouraging archipelago of 14 4x4 vars, that's still 224 standard regions in the hands of three owners, doesn't make up a large percentage of ZetaWorlds' land area. The lack of MAU can be explained by ZetaWorlds not letting avatars from lots of grids in for reliability reasons.
Alternate Metaverse is actually balanced. It's the fifth-busiest grid with 2,025 MAU and the fifth-largest grid with 10,178 standard regions. This may not seem balanced, but AMV residents love to build big, too. Grid owners Cataplexia Numbers and Clifford Hanger seem to almost always build vars because they always need lots of room. Welcome and Annex are exceptions because they're practically entirely indoors. Chris McCracken builds vars so big that even he gets lost without a proper map. And AMV was where Jimmy Olsen inflated Norway-themed Alfheim from an already respectable 4x4 with lots of details to a 10x10 giant before it sadly vanished. At the same time, AMV has
loads of events which also attract Hypergridders.
GroovyVerse, sixth-largest at 7,837 standard regions and 23rd-busiest with only 514 MAUs, is a community effort in building a whole lot of land. It's actually building a sim-crossing railway network which by now may be larger than the one in the Wolf Territories, and that one already takes quite some time to travel.
One reason for the lack of activity may be because only few sims are advertised on OpenSimWorld, and so only few people know about them in the first place. That's partly because of @
Hyacinth ?️⚧️ ☮️'s very justified love-hate relationship towards OSW to say the least. In fact, she "loves" OSW so much that she is working on an alternative to replace it.
Shoalwater Bay is another interesting case: The tenth-largest grid with 1,072 standard regions isn't even in the top 25 of busiest grids. The reason becomes apparent if you look at its grid map, and the grid name is a dead giveaway: It's a sailing grid with only 49 adjacent sims, six of which are 8x8 vars, the other 43 being 4x4 vars. Over half a dozen sims don't even seem to have any actual land on them.
The
GBG Metaverse, formerly GreekLife Breath Grid, is the opposite case. It's the third-busiest grid with 2,239 MAU, but only the tenth-largest grid with only 956 standard regions. This is astounding for two reasons. One, GBG is the result of two grid mergers. First, the Tranquility Grid was merged into the younger Little Breath Grid. And then Little Breath merged with GreekLife. Two, GreekLife used to make renting at least one sim mandatory for every resident. GBG has switched to a different model: Your inventory is limited to 5,000 items unless you rent land or donate. Still, I wonder where the discrepancy comes from, seeing as GBG doesn't have any super-popular events or freebie sims.
Even more extreme:
Darkheart's Playground and
WaterSplash are number seven and eight in MAU, both between 1,600 and 1,700. But neither is even in the top 40 of largest grids. However, both are famous for one very popular freebie sim each, Darkheart's Boutiques and iPleasure respectively, the latter being the home of the R. Lion "brand". I think both grids have only got about half a dozen sims each or so. So either the stats are vastly dominated by Hypergridders, or people create alts on these grid to make grubbing freebies and passing them on to their mains easier and circumvent grid blocks. For example, AFAIK, ZetaWorlds has blocked both, and in the case of Darkheart's Playground, the block is mutual. I'd really like to see the faces of the users when they discover that most content offered on both grids is no-transfer.
Last but not least,
Neverworld makes me wonder, too. It reported 1,101 MAUs, ranking ninth, on only 343 standard regions, ranking 22th. And that's considering this grid is mostly vars, too. Most of it is joined together in one big mainland connected by a network of streets. A lot of it is owned by grid owner Govega Sachertorte and split into parcels for everyone to rent for free, even Hypergridders. Still, most of that land is vacant, maybe also because you can't set your home out in the Hypergrid, so it isn't quite useful as a dwelling-place unless you're a Neverworlder. What probably causes the most traffic, however, are Nexus Storm's several large freebie sims.
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