On SL Cities Again

Some time ago, I can't remember when and I don't feel like digging up the post itself, I wrote on why SL cities are a pipe dream. They aren't feasible and if they were, no one would buy land or rent there. I believe my argument was that due to the lag induced by all those avatars into a single sim, along with the American Dream of a wide open parcel upon which to build your cabin or beach house, kills any city concept in SL aside from an extremely dedicated group of people determined to make one. Which hasn't been anyone thus far.

But the Department of Public Works, oblivious to what is clear to anyone else on the Grid, continue on their merry way building an extension onto Nova Albion (an island city theme centered around the Miramare sim). As I recall, as a noob way back in 2006 wandering to Nova Albion since I am something of an urbanophile, and finding it dead and empty. Since it was an 'infohub' in the broadest sense of the term, there were a few people strung out here and there. Many had wandered from the actual infohub/welcome area, the Luna Sim. On a side note, Luna itself is more a museum than a welcome area, but hey, whatever.

Anyway, it seems, according to Massively and Prokofy, that Linden Lab has adjusted orientation so that a larger portion of new people are shunted to Nova Albion (the other chunk being the Help Island, and the tiny percent remaining goes off to the various user infohubs). They are making it so that, in the event someone like me points out that no one outside of roleplay goes to anything like a city in SL, they can point to the newbie congestion and say, "O ho! But what about this?" They're fudging their own numbers.

I find this extremely hilarious. Let them go and build their massive cities. I'll just keep in mind a poem.

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Philip Linden, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

-Percy Bysshe Shelley, edited for Second Life