For a limited time only: get a huge 64-region Mega World running on a dedicated server for just $99.95/month

[Selby Evans]

Ever since we introduced Advanced Worlds with 16 regions, people have been asking us how they could combine these worlds to make an even bigger world. So today we're happy to announce a new type of world: Mega Worlds, with up to a whopping 64 regions!

Each Mega World is as big as four of our Advanced Worlds combined. In order to provide great performance for these monster worlds, when a Mega World is active it gets a dedicated server of its own, so it doesn't have to share server resources with any other world.

Mega Worlds are Kitely's biggest and fastest worlds. Learn more here.

[Alexina Proctor]

Would it be possible to get a current 4-region standard world and a 16-region advanced world combined into a mega world?

[Tony El]

Converted this morning and no issues so far and everything is intact. Thanks Ilan this is fantastic!

[Alexina Proctor]

Hi Alexina,

We don't currently support merging existing worlds, but it's something we can consider implementing if there is sufficient demand for it.

In the meantime, you can export your Kitely worlds, merge them outside Kitely, create an OAR file of the result, and upload it into a Kitely Mega World. Please note that export restrictions may apply if you do this so make sure to read the Export World Reports.

A question for everyone: Would you order a new Advanced World or Mega World if we implemented this feature?

[Dot Matrix]

Being able to merge worlds within Kitely would be very useful, especially for larger worlds. From experience trying to create combined OARs offline for a 4x4 Advanced World can be a nightmare, which is why I no longer offer the service. How you might go about creating one for an 8x8 world, well...

How would the Kitely method work in practice? Would you need to have all worlds live in Kitely (potentially prohibitively expensive even for a limited time)? Or would it be possible to load OARs to specific regions within the larger world? Is there a potential tie in with Organisation Archives?

Would you need to do the merging in one step or could it be developed in several steps? Given the size and potential complexity of a mega world, my preference would be for multiple steps.

I guess there may need to be a fee involved to help cover the cost of resources.

[Alexina Proctor]

Hi Dot,

It's not trivial to implement world merging in a way that makes financial sense for both the people who would want to use it and for Kitely. That's why we've yet to implement it. The difficulty isn't just technical, it's conceptual as well:

Merging content that is owned by different world owners requires navigating permission, namespace, and content ownership questions that don't have clear answers. This problem also exists, to a lesser extent, even for worlds that are owned by the same person. For example, what do you do with Estate Managers and with scripts that will only work when the person who rezzed them in one of the source worlds is also an Estate Manager in the merged world.

Allowing the merging of multiple worlds into one can also create worlds that have way too many unique assets and running scripts to run properly on anything but our most powerful world options (and in some cases even those won't suffice). Optimizing that isn't trivial. Even when that works, those worlds with many gigabytes of content will take a long time to start.

Any automation we create for merging will likely have some people encountering problems and thus requiring us to spend time to support their particular requirements. In other words, implementing this will have a customer support cost for us as well as an R&D and operational cost. As a result, it isn't clear that adding this feature won't result in more lost business than what adding it could create.

That's why we aren't going to implement this feature unless we're sure it will contribute enough to our business to justify the significant effort and costs of doing so.

[Dot Matrix]

Thanks, Ilan, for the helpful, detailed reply.

This suggests that a better approach for me might be to start with an Advanced World, then resize and build the rest "from scratch", optimising resources as I go along.

So, no, I wouldn't be interested in a merge option.

[Alexina Proctor]

I will go Dot’s route and upgrade my Advanced world to a mega world and bring in elements from Calchester.

How long do you think it will take after I hit the button to do the upgrade until I can login? It is a fairly light advanced world with roughly 40,000 prims out of 120,000 allowed.

I am waiting until I have a meeting with merchants and tenants on Wellspring.

[Alexina Proctor]

Hi Alexina,

Your world has to be offline for us to upgrade it (you can look at its world page to see if it is and use the Stop World link if it isn't). Once the world has been turned off you can upgrade it and it will become a Mega World the next time it is started. If you wish to resize it to be 8x8 regions in size then the world also needs to be offline. The resizing process can take a few minutes but just changing the world type is immediate.

See: https://www.kitely.com/virtual-world-ne ... ical-tool/

[Dot Matrix]

Well, this announcement has had quite an impact on the size of Kitely grid. It's grown by 500+ regions in a couple of days!