Now that we all know that Linden Lab is working on a brand new next generation virtual world that eventually will replace Second Life, some people feel that it is time to pack their bags, put on a lifebelt and jump overboard.
After all, why should we continue to build for and invest time and money into a world that we know will eventually cease to exist?
It is way too early for that.
Put your suitcase down, take off your coat.
Ebbe Altberg (CEO of Linden Lab) and the official announcement both make it clear that Second Life is going to live on for quite some time and will not be neglected.
Of course, now that quite a large part of Linden Lab is going to concentrate on building this new world, they will spend less time doing work for Second Life.
Nevertheless, the Beta testing for this new venture is still at least a year away according to Ebbe and till that time comes, it will be (almost) business as usual in Second Life.
And I say business because until this new world is up and running and making Linden Lab a pile of money, Second Life will remain to be a very important source of income to them.
I think that as long as there are people using Second Life, paying their tier and as long as LL doesn’t suddenly have to invest a lot to keep it running, they will not turn the lights off for a long time.
Ebbe promised that not only will there be a team still running Second Life, but that they will also keep improving it.
Of course, things will change.
A huge team of LL employees will not be spending time and money on changing SL dramatically, but it won’t be abandoned either… yet.
Second Life and the New World (we really need a name), will coexist for a while.
We will be able to choose and if we desire it, stay in Second Life.
Eventually, one day, yes Linden Lab will probably take a good look at Second Life and realise that most of it has been abandoned, people have moved to the new world and that it really cost effective anymore.
Then they will switch it off.
But this could be years away.
I guess we are, sort of, in the same boat as Linden Lab.
If you have a shop or club in Second Life, would you close it even if it is still being used and making you money?
And although I might reconsider starting huge new building projects or another sim until they can confirm that we can at least transport our mesh builds to the new world, most people in SL are here for experiences, and these will continue.
As I told a friend yesterday, if you want to keep drinking my virtual schnapps you better keep paying for it.
Till the big move comes, business as usual…?
Jo Yardley's Second Life 
I agree Jo, for me the only change is that I will think thrice before I spend a lot of money on a new build or more land. Once we have more and better information on cross compatibility and how that will work I may loosen up the purse strings again.
I will use [SL2] as a place holder name until I know otherwise.
The desire to have at least some content moved / shared between worlds at the resident (as opposed to creator) level goes a long way toward explaining the TOS change we were so upset with and LL’s apparent reluctance to change it. To me the whole key to the enterprise is our inventories!
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My plans are to do business as usual in SL and prepare myself to implement my SL projects in Third Life (How about we agree to call it Third Life till the Lindens come up with an actual name?) and High Fidelity as well. So my plans are actually to be present in all 3 worlds. If the Lindens are smart, they would build some kind of Hypergrid between them anyway, because only few people will abandon SL for the new world entirely since they have friends and content overhere.
But I would suggest that the Lindens finally drop the setup fee for new sims, because the setup fee is an investment in the future and a lot less people would be willing to pay that now.
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FYI: The development team for SL has been downsized already, and it seems it was somewhere in the summer or autumn of 2012. Has this stopped or slowed SL development down? Well, let’s see: SSB/A, Project Shining, Interest List, Project Interesting, Fitted Mesh, group bans, HTTP improvements, the Experience Tools (which are going to give people who want to make better immersive experiences more toys to play with) are going to hit the grid soon, various loopholes that griefers used to exploit for years now were finally plugged and others are being worked on, and I may very well be forgetting some of the things that were done or are being worked on in the two years that SL has been under the care of the small team.
As with other things in life, size isn’t everything…
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