InWorldz successor Islandz is up and running

InWorldz farewell party, July 27, 2018. (Image courtesy Brooklynn Peretzâ€Ž via Facebook.)

Islandz, the successor to InWorldz, officially opened for business last week, writes Ryan Schultz.

InWorldz, one of the most successful and longest-lasting commercial grids in the OpenSim ecosystem, closed in August due to financial problems.

InWorldz was one of the last remaining closed grids. Almost all other OpenSim grids allow easy hypergridÂ travel to other grids. InWorldz also charged higher land prices than average OpenSim prices, did not allow Kitely Market deliveries, and did not allow residents to export regions or inventories.

In addition, InWorldz has been running a fork of OpenSim that split off from the main code several years ago, and was missing many major improvements that the rest of OpenSim grids have benefitted from.

According to our reader survey from this summer, most former InWorldz residents and merchants have opted to move on to one of three other commercial grids, all hypergridÂ enabled –Â DigiWorldzÂ andÂ Discovery GridÂ were the two top destinations of formerÂ InWorldzÂ residents looking for a new home, with respondents almost evenly split at 38 and 36 percent, respectively.Â KitelyÂ was in third place, with 18 percent of respondents.

Destinations of former InWorldz residents. Totals add up to more than 100% because some people split their time on more than one grid. (Hypergrid Business data.)

Will any of them come back to Islandz? Given the way grid managers have mismanaged the technology, the finances, and resident relations, the future is in doubt.

“The Welcome Center was, with the exception of one AFK avatar, deserted on the Saturday afternoon when I visited,” wrote Schultz.

In addition, while userÂ accounts have been transferred over from InWorldz, user inventories have not.

“It remains to be seenÂ how much InWorldz inventory that people frantically tried to saveÂ will be able to be resurrected and returned to them,” Schultz wrote.

The new Islandz website is still not fully operational, either. New user registrations, for example, are deactivated.

Thanks to Talla Adam for the heads up.

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Maria Korolov

Hypergrid Business editor and publisher Maria Korolov is a science fiction novelist. During the day, Maria Korolov is an award-winning freelance technology journalist who covers artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and enterprise virtual reality. See her Amazon author page here and follow her on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn, and check out her latest videos on the Maria Korolov YouTube channel. Email her at maria@hypergridbusiness.com. Her first virtual world novella, Krim Times, made the Amazon best-seller list in its category. Her second novella, The Lost King of Krim, is out now. She is also the publisher of MetaStellar, a new online magazine of speculative fiction.