I’m an ESAK

I’ve taken the good, old Bartle-test to see what kind of player in MMORPGs I am. Ok, some of the questions don’t apply to SL, of course – like killing dragons, gaining experience points – but when you carefully answer the questions, you got a real good picture about what kind of player you are.

So I am an ESAK. This means:

Based on your answers, you are ESAK.
Breakdown: Achiever 33.33%, Explorer 86.67%, Killer 13.33%, Socializer 66.67% ESAK players often see the game world as a great stage, full of things to see and people to meet. They love teaming up with people to get to the hard-to-see places, and they relish unique experiences.

Some further explanations show the four categories. The categories mean:

  • People with high Achiever scores tend to prefer collecting points, levels, treasure and accomplishments that set them apart from other players–or simply present challenges.
  • People with high Explorer scores tend to enjoy finding all of the unique areas of the world, often enjoying the immersion of the experience. Finding a place with unique monsters and seeing what those monsters do is usually more fun for an Explorer than defeating the monsters themselves.
  • People with high Killer scores prefer the player-versus-player aspect of any game more than anything offered by the environment. They often relish the adrenaline and challenge of pitting themselves against real players.
  • People with high Socializer scores enjoy interacting with other people, forming organizations, and finding cooperative solutions to the challenges within the virtual world.

Although the test is now somewhat old, the results are still a very good match. If you want to try it on your own go to this page and just answer the 30 questions. That’s all, done in under 5 minutes and it’s fun.

More math on the land business

I’ve taken a look at the Land Auction page from Lindenlab today for closed auctions. Seems they’re adding eight new regions per day at the moment, most appear at the new continent in the east, I guess.

The average prize a new region is sold for is around 3.000 US$. Now 8 regions auctioned off per day makes 24.000 US$ income per day and for the tier-fees later 1.560 US$ safely per month. Not bad, he?

And all that for a dual CPU machine which can host two regions alone.

Well, and if you convert the price into land values and the owner wants to make some profit with the region, this means high land prices. Of course.

A region has 65.336 square meters. So, you can buy 270 L$ at the moment for 1 US-$. This means already that you need to take about 12 L$ per square meter only if you want to get this investment in. Now take the tier-fees into account, too, makes around 0.80 L$ per square meter in the first month. Let’s say if you want to sell the region without loss in the first month you need at least a prize from 13 L$ per square meter.

But many want to make big profits, so 13 L$ is not being seen so much on the regions, quite often you’re going to see higher prices. Well, that’s the reason still why land prices are high and not going down, soon, I suspect. Since it’s also LL main income source they’re going to milk the cow as long as its being possible and in the end we’re all paying the price for it. Well, all that want to own land on the mainland.

Well, and because of missing covenants at most mainland sims, the housing can be real terrible.

Island deliveries today – some math

Well, seems the Lindens are clearing their backlog and delivering today (!) about 300 islands.

Let’s calculate a little. For normal users (non educational) reserving a region costs 1.675 US$ and the monthly maintenance fee for an island is 295 US$.

So alone on reserving costs 300 new arriving islands mean: 300 islands * 1.675 US$ = 502.500 US$ income for Lindenlabs. Of course not all of it profit, since they’re using these fees to pay the server hardware, plain and simple, but surely are still making some profit with it.

Then 300 islands * 295 US$ maintenance fee per month and per island = 88.500 US$ income on maintenance fees per month with these islands. Most are surely used to pay the staff and the location, but that’s where the real profit comes from for Lindenlab.

So – not bad, hu?

EU considers a presence in SL

According to this article the European Union considers opening an own presence in Second Life. They’re saying it could happen in the future, but right now they don’t have enough manpower to do it, so it’s still in consideration to communicate via unusual mediums.

Hm… could be starting a new trend, that nations are entering the space like many RW companies have already done it. We’re going to see.

PC&E opened in world presence

Packaging&Converting Essentials, a content provider for the graphics and packaging industry, has opened up its in world presence last week in the sim Sede de Marte.

The building is outstanding in regards of architecture; one of the few pentagons you’re ever going to see in world. They’re handing out RSS reader huds and of course you can get in touch with their staff, my good old friend Ludwig "Lu" Stapleton as communication officer. And yes, she’s a female avatar, just being very much in love with Ludwig van Beethoven, hence the name.

Ah and since everybody loves pictures, here’s a picture of the building taken by myself. The building itself was done by Alex Bader. Building PCE

If you want to listen to nice music or inform yourself about matters of the graphical and packaging industry, just go there and get yourself informed.