Second Life: scalin' on up
by Christopher Grant 
{ Jun 6th 2006 at 12:45PM }
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)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Cottonball @ Jun 6th 2006 1:27PM
Shouldn't that be an unusually low ratio of users per server? I.e they have more servers and the same number of users?
GalileoAce @ Jun 6th 2006 1:33PM
No, high ratio of users per server is correct.
Low ratio of server per users would also be correct..but very odd wording..So the first one is correct.
Nathan @ Jun 6th 2006 1:52PM
I doubt Second Life will even reach twice it's current user base. I took a look at it and all it is is a virtual chat room with game-like features. You'll find 30 somethings looking to cyber or sell you something. Whee!
Moogle @ Jun 6th 2006 1:59PM
I'm all confused now. I thought it was odd, then I thought it was ok, now I think it's odd again.
Article says "high ratio of users per server"
~250,000 users on ~2,500 servers is 100 users per server.
EQ2's ~250k users on ~1k servers is 250 users per server.
EQ2 has a higher users per server number. Wouldn't SL's users per server be kind of low? 100:1 is lower than 250:1, right?
Draco @ Jun 6th 2006 2:08PM
you live with a woman long enough you will learn that anything can mean everything, and eveerything can mean everything.
if you take what it sais out of context enough it would be correct :P
ishtar @ Jun 6th 2006 2:17PM
Right on, more servers and lesser users is more servers per user, not the other way around. Since less is not more, at least not figuratively speaking ;)
Rob @ Jun 6th 2006 2:24PM
WOW doesn't scale! They just stick on new realms. Guildwars Scales.
moron @ Jun 6th 2006 7:08PM
I find it hard to believe that the user per server ratio is that horrible, only 250 users per server? That leaves a razor thin (if even present) profit margin I would think (dual CPU servers aren't that cheap and you still need to factor in bandwidth, power consumption and a roof overhead).
I would have expected 10,000 to 100,000 users per server as a more sustainable user to server ratio. Coming from a web server background it just seems crazy that you have to dedicate that much hardware for what's going on.
Cheers
t2ed @ Jun 7th 2006 2:07PM
Those folks may have a Second Life account, but they probably need to Get a Life (not the defunct Chris Elliot Fox sitcom.)
Nathan's correct. No fun = no issues with scalability.
KirbyMeister @ Jun 10th 2006 12:14AM
I will never understand why people actually care about Second Life. First of all, the entire game is based on user-created content (bad) and real money trade (very, very bad). The problem here is that a new user will have little to do. Look at the popularity of WoW which has lots of quests and things to do, versus Second Life which IMHO sucks.