With nearly a quarter-million registered users, Linden Labs' Second Life is nowhere near the massive success of massively-multiplayer front-runner World of Warcraft. CNET asks the fascinating question of will they be able to get there. They don't mean will MMOers accept the unique environment that Second Life offers but, quite literally, can their technology scale as high as World of Warcraft's has. To outside observers, the world's 2,579 dual-core servers for only 240,000 players equates to an unusually high ratio of servers per user. SOE's Everquest II has over 250,000 users and manages on as few as 1,100 dual-CPU servers. According to Linden Labs, however, these numbers only tell one part of the story.
Linden Labs' CEO Philip Rosedale equates Second Life's infrastructure to the decentralization of the Internet, and to companies like Yahoo! and Google. Interestingly, this is an equally apt metaphor for the distinction between Second Life and its more centrally controlled competition like Everquest II and WoW. Rosedale said, "Can it scale indefinitely? Absolutely. It can scale to infinity. The underlying architecture of the Internet and of Second Life is perfectly scalable." Now they just have to put it all to good use. How long until we're at 6 million?
(Update: my servers were all mixed up with my users)
