When Silence Slows Down a Region
In one of the regions owned by Anshe Chung, I was renting a parcel for my store. Over time, I started noticing a growing number of bots appearing in the area-avatars that aren’t controlled by real users, but run by scripts to simulate traffic. This kind of activity creates an illusion of popularity while actually overloading the region’s resources and reducing its performance.
On October tenth, I reported the issue to the Estate Manager, hoping they would take action. I didn’t want to burden the Linden Lab staff unnecessarily, since I believed such matters should first be handled by the Estate Manager. However, despite my report, nothing was done. As days went by, even more bots showed up, and the region’s performance significantly dropped.
According to rental contracts, there’s a limit on how many avatars can be present on a parcel at once. It’s meant to ensure stability and fairness among residents. Yet, it seems this rule wasn’t being respected in this case.
The Estate Manager even asked Linden Lab directly whether the avatar limits for regions had been changed, as some residents noticed that InfoHubs now cap the number of visitors at around forty-five, while other full regions still allow up to one hundred. This inconsistency raises questions-if an InfoHub, designed for social interaction, restricts the number of users so severely, how can similar limits be so different elsewhere?1 Our article has been updated with footnote.
I experienced the consequences firsthand. My store’s region became almost unusable due to the bot traffic, forcing me to relocate entirely. A month passed without any action from the Estate Manager or further communication from Linden Lab.
It would be good if Estate Managers paid closer attention to such abuses and, when unable to act, escalated these cases formally to Linden Lab.
But perhaps the deeper question is this: what’s the real point of inflating traffic with bots? Does it truly make a place more popular, or just distort reality? After all, a region filled with lifeless avatars is no more alive than an empty one. Maybe it’s time to decide what truly matters - statistics, or genuine human presence.
Maximum number of agents
Event Regions: 175 agents
Full region: 100 basic account users plus 10 additional available to premium accounts. (Typically set to 40 on mainland, 55 on Linden Homes regions, but this does vary. Some meeting areas have this set to 60 and higher.)
Recent server performance improvements make regions with 60 agents in them perform quite well.
Homestead: 20 (plus 5 additional available to premium accounts)
Openspace: 10 (plus 2 additional available to premium accounts)